Author: Richell Fredson

Lawmakers Warn $30 Billion Welfare Program Is Vulnerable to Abuse
More than $30 billion in taxpayer-funded welfare money intended to help America’s poorest families has instead beeen used as a ‘slush fund’ – diverted into programs ranging from college scholarships to government budget backfills.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, known as TANF, was created nearly three decades ago to provide direct financial support and services to struggling families.
Today, the program distributes about $16.5 billion annually in federal funds, supplemented by roughly $15 billion in state contributions.
But federal auditors and analysts say the program’s structure, which gives states broad control over spending with limited reporting requirements, has made it difficult to track how billions of dollars are ultimately used.
States often use TANF money to finance programs with only indirect connections to helping poor families, said Hayden Dublois of the Foundation for Government Accountability. He described the system’s lack of oversight as ‘fraud by design.’
‘There are very little, if any, safeguards,’ Dublois told the Wall Street Journal.
He estimates that roughly one in five TANF dollars, or about $6 billion each year, is misspent.

Then President Bill Clinton prepares to sign legislation in the Rose Garden of the White House overhauling America’s welfare system on Aug. 22, 1996. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Despite the program’s size, fewer families now receive direct cash assistance than in previous decades.
Federal data shows that about 849,000 families received monthly TANF payments in fiscal year 2025, down from approximately 1.9 million families in 2010.
Instead, states have increasingly directed funds to contractors, nonprofits and other government programs.
Nick Gwyn, a policy expert with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the shift reflects a broader transformation in how the program operates.
‘The program has drifted away from the core purpose of supporting families with very little income,’ Gwyn told the WSJ.
Audits conducted in multiple states have uncovered persistent problems with oversight and financial reporting.
In Louisiana, auditors found in 2024 that state officials failed to verify required work participation hours tied to TANF eligibility – the 13th straight year auditors flagged the same issue.
The audit also found gaps in documentation showing how TANF funds were distributed to contractors.

Even though employment numbers are back up, many people are worse off now because the government is no longer providing the cushion it did in 2020 and 2021. Rick Bowmer/AP
Louisiana officials said they agreed with the findings and would improve oversight.
In Connecticut, auditors reported that the state did not adequately review financial reports from more than 130 subcontractors receiving $53.6 million in TANF funds, making it difficult to confirm whether the money was spent on approved purposes.
Connecticut officials said they would strengthen compliance procedures.
Auditors also identified oversight problems in Florida, underscoring how weaknesses in TANF spending controls extended across states regardless of political leadership.
In Oklahoma, state auditor Cindy Byrd said her office has similarly found weak documentation tracking TANF expenditures.
State and federal records show TANF money has been used for a wide range of programs critics say fall outside the program’s intended mission.
These include college scholarship programs benefiting students from middle-income families, payments to antiabortion pregnancy centers, and child welfare programs already supported by other federal funding sources.
In Michigan, more than $750 million in TANF funds were directed into scholarship programs between 2011 and 2024, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy.
In Texas, federal data shows the state spent about $251 million in TANF funds in fiscal year 2023 on foster care and child welfare programs, while just 1.9 percent of TANF spending went directly to basic assistance payments.
Ann Flagg, who oversaw TANF at the federal level during the Biden administration, said the program’s layered structure made it difficult for federal officials to monitor spending.
‘Knowing that there were so many layers between the activity on the ground and the federal perch, there were many, many instances, I am sure, that funds were used in crazy ways,’ Flagg said.
The biggest scandal involving TANF funds took place in Mississippi. The embezzlement scheme saw at least $77 million of taxpayers’ money go toward frivolous things instead of helping those in need in America’s poorest state, according to authorities.
Instead of helping the less fortunate, cash was splurged on a lavish home in Jackson, cars, paying off a non-profit leader’s speeding ticket, and funding a new $5 million volleyball stadium at Mississippi University, among other items, authorities said.
A total of seven people have pleaded guilty to state or federal charges related to the fraud case, but former WWE wrestler Ted DiBiase Jr decided to plead not guilty and stand trial.
Concerns about misuse of public welfare funds have been amplified by a series of major fraud scandals in Minnesota, where federal and state investigators uncovered schemes involving millions of taxpayer dollars intended for child care and food programs.
Trump’s fraud crackdown was ignited by issues in Minnesota, but the state’s cases are unrelated to TANF.
In one case dating back to the 2010s, authorities found the operators of several daycare centers billed the government for services that were never provided, with surveillance footage appearing to show parents briefly bringing children to facilities before leaving immediately.
Prosecutors later said the scheme allowed providers to collect reimbursement payments despite not delivering actual care, and several individuals pleaded guilty to felony theft by swindling.

More recently, federal authorities have investigated what they described as a vast fraud network involving federally funded child nutrition programs.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau had ‘surged personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota’ to dismantle fraud schemes exploiting federal assistance programs.
Patel warned that such activity may represent ‘the tip of a very large iceberg,’ adding that ‘fraud that steals from taxpayers and robs vulnerable children will remain a top FBI priority in Minnesota and nationwide.’
Federal watchdog agencies have also repeatedly warned about weaknesses in TANF oversight.
The Government Accountability Office found that audits in 37 states identified 162 deficiencies in financial oversight, including 56 considered severe.
The agency criticized what it described as ‘opaque accounting practices’ among groups receiving TANF funds.
The GAO has recommended since at least 2012 that Congress strengthen reporting requirements and expand federal oversight.
Those recommendations have not been enacted.

The ongoing fraud scandal in Minnesota dates back a decade as a 2015 video shows parents appearing to pretend to drop their children off at a phony daycare center
In testimony to Congress, GAO official Kathy Larin said states often use TANF funds precisely because of their flexibility.
‘States told us they use TANF because it’s more flexible and can cover costs not eligible’ under other federal programs, she said.
TANF was created in 1996 as part of sweeping welfare reform legislation signed by President Bill Clinton, who described the measure as ‘ending welfare as we know it.’
The reforms replaced an open-ended federal entitlement with block grants, giving states significant authority over spending decisions.
Supporters credited the program with reducing welfare dependency, but critics say the system created incentives for states to redirect funds away from direct aid.
Robert Rector, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who helped draft the legislation, said the program has drifted from its original goals.

TANF Trends and Its Oversight—Welfare Assistance Continues to Shift Away from Cash Assistance
‘Today all states are in de facto violation of the law’ because they aren’t spending all TANF funds on the intended purposes outlined in the original law, Rector said.
He added that both Republicans and Democrats share responsibility for failing to enforce stricter oversight.
The Trump administration has recently moved to freeze billions in federal welfare-related grants to several states over concerns about fraud and misuse, including funds tied to TANF.
Several states challenged the move in court, and a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze.
Despite growing scrutiny and repeated warnings from auditors and watchdog agencies, Congress has not enacted any comprehensive reforms.
February 8, 2026
How a $30 Billion Welfare Program Turned Into a ‘Slush Fund’ for States
When the Trump administration targeted billions of dollars in federal welfare funds recently over fraud concerns, it singled out five Democratic-run states.
An examination by The Wall Street Journal found that the main federal aid program the administration is seeking to block, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, has long been plagued by poor financial oversight and questionable spending in states led by both Republicans and Democrats.
Auditors in numerous states, including Connecticut, Louisiana and Florida, have uncovered problems with TANF—once America’s primary welfare program for low-income families. Created three decades ago, it comprises more than $30 billion.
TANF funds flow annually through block grants to states, which have wide latitude to spend them and minimal reporting requirements—a structure critics say hampers oversight. Meant to allow states to be creative in serving needy families, it has resulted in a shift: States now award most of the money to nonprofits, companies and their own state agencies. An average of about 849,000 families got direct cash aid each month in fiscal 2025, federal data shows, down from about 1.9 million in fiscal 2010.
Average number of families receiving direct TANF aid
Average number of families receiving direct TANF aid
Note: Monthly averages for fiscal years ending in September
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Audits have shown a range of problems, including states inaccurately reporting large expenditures and disbursing millions of dollars to contractors without tracking how the cash was spent. State and federal records show red and blue states alike have directed hundreds of millions of dollars to programs with tenuous—or no—connections to TANF’s goals.
Questionable expenditures have included college scholarships that benefited middle- or upper-income families, antiabortion centers, a volleyball stadium in Mississippi, and an Ohio job-training nonprofit where leaders and employees were later sentenced to prison after prosecutors said they used TANF money for vacations, real estate and salaries for people who didn’t work there.
Both conservative and liberal groups—and repeated reports from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog—say the federal government for years hasn’t paid enough attention to how states use the money.
Last year, the GAO identified 37 states where recent audits found 162 deficiencies in financial oversight, “56 of which were severe.” It criticized “opaque accounting practices” by many groups receiving TANF funds.
States often use TANF money as a “slush fund” to plug budget shortfalls and finance initiatives that don’t help poor people get jobs or strengthen families, said Hayden Dublois of the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability. He describes TANF’s lack of oversight as “fraud by design.”
“There are very little, if any, safeguards,” said Dublois, who estimates one in five TANF dollars, or about $6 billion, is misspent every year.
Ann Flagg, the top TANF official under then-President Joe Biden, said she and other officials tried to rein in questionable state spending through a proposed regulation change that would have limited how TANF dollars can be spent.
“Knowing that there were so many layers between the activity on the ground and the federal perch, there were many, many instances, I am sure, that funds were used in crazy ways,” she said.

Then President Bill Clinton prepares to sign legislation in the Rose Garden of the White House overhauling America’s welfare system on Aug. 22, 1996. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Trump has focused on fraud after a safety-net scandal in Minnesota, but those cases don’t involve TANF. The most prominent scandal involving TANF funds, at least $77 million, took place several years ago in Mississippi. The Trump administration in January signaled plans to extract a potentially hefty penalty from the state after earlier pausing a Biden administration effort to do so.
Reinventing welfare
Today’s TANF program was created during a fleeting moment of bipartisan cooperation 30 years ago. The GOP, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pushed for the welfare overhaul as part of the Republican “Contract with America.” Leaders of both parties hailed the program as giving more freedom to states, which knew their own needs better than anyone in Washington.
President Bill Clinton praised it for “ending welfare as we know it.”
States which receive TANF funds were given broad flexibility to disburse the money as they saw fit. Some observers point to successes, primarily a dramatic drop in welfare rolls, though critics say that was driven partly by onerous work requirements and not declining poverty rates.
TANF, overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, supplies $16.5 billion a year from the federal government, matched by about $15 billion in state funds. Nationwide, around 20% of impoverished families receive cash assistance, according to recent analyses. Time-limited maximum monthly payments for a family of three ranged from $204 in Arkansas to $1,370 in Minnesota in 2024.
“The program has drifted away from the core purpose of supporting families with very little income,” said Nick Gwyn, who studies TANF for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank.

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Audits and reports on the use of TANF funds have been have been limited in scope. But those conducted show state officials have often failed to track where the money goes or whether it is spent properly.
A Louisiana audit in 2024 found that state employees didn’t verify or document the hours worked by some TANF enrollees, a federal requirement. It was the 13th consecutive year that auditors had reported the same problem. The audit also said the state hadn’t accurately documented TANF distributions to contractors.

Louisiana said it concurred with the findings and would step up compliance.
In Connecticut, auditors said the state in 2024 didn’t sufficiently review the financial reports of 131 subcontractors who received $53.6 million in TANF funds, making it difficult to assess whether the money was being spent on “allowable activities.”
Connecticut promised to verify that contractors met their obligations.
Oklahoma Republican state auditor Cindy Byrd said her agency’s audits have found weak or nonexistent documentation showing how TANF funds have been spent.
The GAO recommended at least as early as 2012 that Congress tighten reporting requirements for TANF spending by states, and called on HHS to increase program auditing. No legislation was passed.

Oklahoma state auditor Cindy Byrd pointed to instances of weak or nonexistent TANF documentation.
In 2016, an HHS official testified before a House committee that limitations in federal law prevented the agency from estimating improper payments in TANF. “That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Republican Rep. Gary Palmer of Alabama said at the time.
In a recent interview, Palmer said he supports mandating such reporting through legislation. “Just from fiscal responsibility, we have an obligation to do this,” he said. Several Democrats have pushed for legislation to monitor third-party TANF contractors.
Unlike with some other welfare programs, states don’t have to spend all their TANF money in a single year, and many have built up large surpluses. In times of fiscal pressure, such as the 2007-09 recession, many states used TANF funds for purposes that had little to do with the program’s original goals, said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who helped draft the 1996 legislation that created the program.
He said as the number of welfare recipients dropped, states were supposed to direct funds to help poor parents get jobs and to strengthen families. Instead, states spent the money on unrelated programs, and the federal government didn’t intervene.
“Today all states are in de facto violation of the law” because they aren’t spending all TANF funds on the 1996 law’s goals, Rector said in an interview.
Rector said Democrats and Republicans are both to blame after the law was passed. Many Democrats didn’t want the reforms, and Republicans, after 1996, “told their base that they had ended welfare and just closed the book. I was flabbergasted,” he said.
Scholarships for rich kids
Missouri set aside several million dollars in TANF funds annually in recent years for its Alternatives to Abortion program, state records show. For this fiscal year, the state says it allocated about $12 million in TANF funds to 10 providers, including eight antiabortion pregnancy resource centers.
The program aligns with TANF’s aim of supporting needy families so children can be cared for at home, a Missouri state Department of Social Services spokeswoman said. During pregnancy and for a year after a child’s birth, low-income parents can access services such as counseling and parental education and get help with basic needs.
Abortion-rights supporters say using TANF for services limited to poor Missourians who commit to taking a pregnancy to term is a misuse of funds and intended to support a conservative agenda.
Some states spend large amounts of TANF dollars on child-welfare programs such as foster care, despite receiving dedicated funding for them from other sources, Kathy Larin, a GAO director, testified to Congress in April 2025. “States told us they use TANF because it’s more flexible and can cover costs not eligible” for reimbursement, she said.
Texas used about $251 million of its $884 million in TANF expenditures in fiscal year 2023 on child welfare and foster-care services and payments, according to federal data. The state used just 1.9% of its TANF dollars on basic assistance to needy families. Texas officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
States use TANF for so many purposes that it raises the question of who is benefiting, the GAO’s Larin said. For example, she noted, one state has a “marriage promotion program, but they can’t assess whether the program improved marriage quality or duration.”
Several states have also used TANF money for programs available to people well above the poverty threshold.
Between 2011 and 2024, Michigan faced criticism for pumping more than $750 million in TANF funds into two college scholarship programs that aided many students from middle-income and even affluent families, according to the nonprofit Michigan League for Public Policy.
In November 2024, under Biden, the federal Administration for Children and Families, which oversees TANF, picked five states—California, Minnesota, Kentucky, Maine and Ohio—for a pilot program aimed at measuring outcomes of TANF spending to improve effectiveness.
Months later, the Trump administration canceled the pilots except in Ohio, and substituted in Arizona, Virginia, Iowa and Nebraska.
In April 2025, the GAO again called for Congress to require states to provide more data on TANF spending.

So far, Congress hasn’t acted on the proposal, and the Trump administration has taken no position on the issue.
The GOP’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” a tax-and-spending megabill passed in 2025, imposed various requirements on states’ spending of federal social-welfare funds, including stricter verifications for SNAP and Medicaid recipients. States can be penalized if error rates are too high. But the legislation didn’t address TANF.
Last month, the administration said it was freezing about $10.6 billion in child-care and family-assistance grants, much of it under TANF, to the Democratic-led states of California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York.
The states sued, and a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration’s effort. The federal agency that administers TANF declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
February 7, 2026
The S&P 500 ended the day just shy of a $9.8 trillion comeback
The S&P 500 on Thursday flirted with closing at an all-time high, vying to complete a whirlwind roundtrip that saw the benchmark US stock index shed and then regain roughly $9.8 trillion in market value across just four months.
The S&P 500 has been on a roller coaster ride this year as President Donald Trump’s trade policy has jolted markets.
The S&P 500 hit its last record high on February 19 before dropping as low as 18.9% by early April as tariff confusion rocked markets.
The index has soared more than 23% since hitting its low point on April 8, in what has been a remarkable come back from the precipice of a bear market.
US stocks were higher on Thursday. The Dow closed higher by 404 points, or 0.94%. The broader S&P 500 gained 0.8% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 0.97%.
The S&P 500 briefly rose above its February record high during trading but fell below that level by the closing bell. The index needed to finish the day with a gain of 0.86% or more to officially notch a record high.
The Nasdaq on Thursday briefly rose above its previous record in December but similarly finished below the mark needed to notch a record high. The tech-heavy index dropped into a bear market in early April before surging into a new bull market and gaining 32%.
Stocks had pushed higher on Thursday amid a flurry of economic data, including a downward revision to how much the economy contracted in the first quarter.
That revised data is “backward looking,” and markets were higher on Thursday because they have already priced in the turmoil from earlier this year, Paul Stanley, chief investment officer at Granite Bay Wealth Management, said in an email.
“The market is betting on continued progress on trade and a de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East is giving investors confidence,” Stanley said.
While the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have recovered, the Dow is still 3.75% away from its record high set in December. The Dow this year has been weighed down by stocks like UnitedHealth Group (UNH), which is down 40%.
A $9.8 trillion recovery
At its low on April 8, the S&P 500 had shed $9.8 trillion in market value since its record high on February 19, according to FactSet data. The index is set to recover all of that market value as it tests a new record high.
Wall Street analysts are mixed on whether the S&P 500 can grind higher, or whether its return to record highs means there’s more downside to come.
As tensions in the Middle East have settled, the focus returns to Trump’s agenda. Lawmakers hope to deliver the president’s budget bill to his desk by July 4, and his administration’s deadline for trade deals is July 9.
“Meaningful progress on any of the two matters can bolster equities to fresh records,” José Torres, senior economist at Interactive Brokers, said in a note.
Investors in coming weeks will be focused on how tariff rates ultimately settle and whether Trump’s trade policy might reignite inflation.
“It would help stocks if we were to see a narrative shift from a focus on tariff, trade policy and geopolitics to company fundamentals,” Carol Schleif, chief market strategist, BMO Private Wealth, said in a note.
Despite the rally, the ratio of bullish versus bearish outlooks for the market remains below the historical average, Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, said in a note.
“That suggests more upside for the stock market since many investors remain wary and are not overly bullish,” Yardeni said.
“Greed” was the sentiment driving the market on Thursday, according to CNN’s Fear and Greed index. It was the highest reading on the index in two weeks.
Dollar stumbles to three-year low
The US dollar on Thursday dropped to its lowest level since February 2022 after a report by the Wall Street Journal that Trump plans to announce his pick for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s successor as early as this fall.
Powell’s term ends in May 2026, meaning there would effectively be a “shadow” Fed chair in the months before his term expires.
The US dollar index, which measures the dollar’s strength against six major foreign currencies, was down 0.45% as of the afternoon.
“A candidate who is perceived as being more open to lowering rates in line with President Trump’s demands would reinforce the US dollar’s current weakening trend,” Lee Hardman, senior currency analyst at MUFG, said in a note.
The dollar index has tumbled nearly 10% this year. The euro and British pound this year have both hit their highest levels against the dollar in four years.
Francesco Pesole, an FX strategist at ING, told The NYBudgets that concerns about the Fed’s independence have been one of the contributing factors to the dollar’s broad decline this year.
“One of the key foundations of the strong dollar, of the dollar as a dominant currency globally, is to have an independent central bank,” Pesole said. “So, if [global investors] feel there is greater influence of politics into the Fed’s decisions, then they are pricing in a greater risk for the dollar.”
Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist at AGF Investments, said in a note that Trump announcing Powell’s successor is a “terrible idea,” as it would be “sure to annoy and confuse the financial markets if there are two Fed chairs.”
“The damage to the Fed’s independence would be considerable if Trump becomes a monetary back-seat driver, second-guessing Fed policies this fall,” Valliere said.
June 26, 2025
China is an obstacle to a U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement
China’s giant logistics machine was humming inside rows of metal warehouses near Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam this month. Hundreds of workers packed cosmetics, clothes and shoes for Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion retailer. Recruiters needing to fill hundreds more jobs were interviewing candidates outside.
At another industrial park, owned by the supply chain arm of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, trucks drove in and out at a steady clip.
This kind of activity, powered by Chinese money, has brought jobs to Vietnam. It is one of the forces that have made Vietnam a thriving destination for companies around the world looking for alternatives to China’s factories.
But as President Trump’s trade war is turning supply chains upside down, China’s role is emerging as the biggest obstacle for Vietnam as it tries to avoid a 46 percent tariff.
Vietnamese officials are rushing to secure a deal before a 90-day pause on the new tariffs ends in early July. They met with administration officials in Washington this week for a second round of talks. The talks will resume next month, Vietnamese officials said.
The Trump administration wants Vietnam to do more to crack down on companies that are rerouting goods from China to Vietnam to avoid tariffs, a practice known as transshipment.
But the administration is also taking a view of the issue that goes beyond the usual definition of transshipment as it tries to wean the American economy off its dependence on Chinese imports. That puts countries that rely on China to make goods they export under heavy pressure.
For Vietnam, the challenge is proving that what it sends to the United States was made in Vietnam and not in China. In a sign of the awkward position it finds itself in, Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to Mr. Trump, recently called Vietnam “a colony of China.”
Vietnam was a big beneficiary of tariffs that Mr. Trump placed on Chinese goods during his first presidency. Its trade surplus with the United States swelled to $123.5 billion in 2024, from $38.3 billion in 2017.
The reordering of trade flows accelerated in April, when China was facing 145 percent tariffs, Vietnamese imports from China ballooned to $15 billion while its exports to the United States totaled $12 billion. Beijing and Washington have since reached a temporary deal to slash the tariffs.
“The priority for Trump is for Vietnam to fix the transshipment problem and make sure that the two countries can sign something that shows Vietnam is taking action,” said Adam Sitkoff, the executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi.
In response, Vietnam created a special task force this month to “aggressively crack down on smuggling, trade fraud” and “the export of goods falsely labeled as ‘Made in Vietnam,’” and its finance ministry has met with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to talk about working together and sharing information.
Despite the efforts, Trump officials have said it is not enough.
“It has become very difficult for Vietnam to justify to the U.S. government that this isn’t just rerouting Chinese goods,” said Priyanka Kishore, an economist in Singapore and the founder of Asia Decoded, a consulting firm.
“China is Vietnam’s biggest intermediate goods supplier, so if you are pushing your exports to the U.S. up, you would see an increase in imports from China,” Ms. Kishore said.
Vietnam and other Asian countries depend on China for the supplies used to make finished goods. So as production shifts from factories in China to factories elsewhere, much of the spike in exports from China to its neighbors may be raw materials used by factories.
Still, some Vietnamese imports from China are undeniably finished goods shipped through Vietnam to other countries with their origin in China disguised, which is universally considered illegal.
There is little data on exactly how much falls into the category of transshipment, Ms. Kishore said. By one estimate, rerouting activity increased to 16.5 percent of exports to the United States after Mr. Trump’s first-term tariffs on China, driven in part by Chinese-owned companies.
The prohibitively high tariffs on Chinese goods last month caused more manufacturers to seek options in Vietnam. After Mr. Trump ended a loophole that let Americans buy cheap goods from China tax free, Shein offered guidance and subsidies to factories to move operations to Vietnam. Shein did not respond to a request for comment.
Much of that activity has been the legitimate movement of the supply chain as companies shift their production out of China and into places where tariffs are lower.
But the Trump administration is taking a hard line. “China uses Vietnam to transship to evade the tariffs,” Mr. Navarro said. The goal is to put a fence around China’s exports.
“The United States seems to be arguing that anything that comes from China is by default transshipment, so you tar and feather every single product that comes from China,” said Deborah Elms, the head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation, an organization that focuses on trade.
Stopping illegal transshipment is one thing; disconnecting supply chains from China would be much more complicated. Most of the things that Americans buy have raw materials from China — whether it is the plastic in their children’s toys, the rubber in their shoes or the thread in their shirts.
“Asian governments are being asked to redefine supply chains to something that might be decades in the making in exchange for what? It’s a little unclear,” Ms. Elms said.
For Vietnam’s textile and garment industry, taking China out of the equation would be hugely problematic. Factories import around 60 percent of the fabrics they use from China, according to Tran Nhu Tung, the vice chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association.
“Without China, we cannot make products,” he said. “Vietnam would have no material to produce to make the finished goods. And without the U.S., Vietnam cannot export the finished goods. So the Vietnamese government has to find a balance between China and the U.S., and it’s very difficult for them to do this.”
To try to sweeten any deal with the Trump administration, Vietnam has offered to increase its purchase of American goods like agricultural products and Boeing aircraft, and curb the shipment of Chinese goods to the United States.
But the flood of investment and hiring by Chinese companies continues to complicate things.
In the southern province of Long An, where many shoe and textile factories are based, Shein is on a hiring drive.
On a recent Friday, Huy Phong, a recruiter, hung an advertisement for jobs on the fence outside a Shein warehouse soliciting work to load goods and sort, classify and package fashion items like handbags, clothing and footwear. The pay: $385 to $578 a month. Shein needs 2,000 workers for its warehouse and has hired only half that number so far, he said.
Finding workers was hard. A lot of warehouses and logistics companies were recruiting.
Nearby, Duong Minh Giang was leaving his interview feeling dismayed. He said the job would entail handling raw materials from China like thread and chemical dye to store at the warehouse and send to nearby factories to make clothes.
“But I don’t think I will take the job,” he said. “The salary is low.”
May 24, 2025
Supreme Court Keeps Halt on Using Wartime Law to Deport Venezuelans
The Trump administration will not be allowed to deport a group of Venezuelan detainees accused of being members of a violent gang under a rarely invoked wartime law while the matter is litigated in the courts, the Supreme Court said on Friday.
The justices sent the case back to a federal appeals court, directing it to examine claims by the migrants that they could not be legally deported under the Alien Enemies Act, the centuries-old wartime law invoked by the Trump administration. The justices said the appeals court should also examine what kind of notice the government should be required to provide that would allow migrants the opportunity to challenge their deportations.
The court said its order would remain in place until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled and the Supreme Court considered any appeal from that ruling.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a dissent, arguing that the justices had no authority to hear the dispute at this stage. He was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
The ruling deals a sharp blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy the wartime law to pursue swift, sweeping deportations of Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of the gang, Tren de Aragua.
It also suggests that a majority of the justices may be skeptical of whether the migrants have been afforded enough due process protections by the administration before being deported, potentially to a prison for terrorists in El Salvador.
In their order, the justices said that the stakes facing the detainees are “particularly weighty,” citing the case of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was “deported in error” to the El Salvador prison in March. So far, the Trump administration has said it is unable to bring him back, despite an order from the justices to “facilitate” his return.
Under such circumstances, the justices wrote, “notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster.”
President Trump reacted with fury to the ruling. “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” he said on social media. In a subsequent post, he wrote, “The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do,” and called it “a bad and dangerous day for America.”
Lawyers for the migrants responded with relief.
The decision “means that more individuals will not secretly be sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. He added that the administration’s use of the wartime law “during peacetime, without due process, raises issues of far-reaching importance.”
The Trump administration has attempted to use the law as a tool in its signature initiative to speed the deportation of millions of migrants, leading to a clash with a skeptical judiciary.
Several lower court judges have concluded that the administration has exceeded the scope of the law, which can be invoked only when the United States has been subject to “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” and have blocked the deportation of groups of Venezuelans.
The Supreme Court justices have been asked to weigh in on the Trump administration’s deportation plans a few times in recent months, and they had already stepped in to temporarily block the deportation of a group of Venezuelans held in northern Texas.
Friday’s order came after a high-stakes legal fight between the Trump administration and lawyers from the A.C.L.U. in one of those challenges. The lawyers rushed to the court on April 18 after getting word that Venezuelan migrants detained in Texas and accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, had received notices of imminent removal and were being loaded on buses, presumably to be taken to the airport.
The group quickly filed a lawsuit in a federal trial court in Abilene, Texas, on behalf of two of the Venezuelans held at the detention center. Justice Department lawyers responded, telling a trial court judge that they had no immediate plans to deport the detainees.
The judge, James W. Hendrix, who was appointed during the first Trump administration, declined to issue an order temporarily blocking the deportations.
The A.C.L.U. subsequently asked the Supreme Court to act instead.
After midnight on April 19, the justices temporarily paused the deportations, writing, “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the order said.
The justices moved swiftly that night, and the emergency application had been pending before the court since.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer had urged the justices in a court filing to allow lower courts to weigh in before intervening further in the case. He did not address the specifics of the A.C.L.U. claims that the deportations had been imminent, with buses being loaded for the airport. Rather, he said the government had provided notice to detainees subject to imminent deportation and that they “have had adequate time to file” claims challenging their removal.
In a reply to the court, the A.C.L.U. disputed this, arguing that the Trump administration had taken “actions contrary to this court’s specific ruling” that the government provide notice and time to challenge deportations.
Instead of providing notice to allow detainees to challenge their removal, the group’s brief said, “the government gave detainees an English-only form, not provided to any attorney, which nowhere mentions the right to contest the designation or removal, much less explain how detainees could do so.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Sauer again nudged the justices to allow the deportations. In a filing, the administration contended that “serious difficulties have arisen” from the detention of the group of 176 migrants who had been shielded from removal by the court’s emergency overnight ruling last month.
The Trump administration claimed that on April 26, a group of 23 migrants had barricaded themselves inside a housing unit for several hours, threatened to take hostages and harm immigration officers, and tried to flood the unit by clogging the toilets.
“The government has a strong interest in promptly removing from the country” gang members “who pose a danger” to immigration officers, facility staff members and other detainees, Mr. Sauer wrote.
There have been few public glimpses into the conditions at the Texas facility. On April 28, Reuters captured aerial images of the men held there. In the dirt yard of the detention center, 31 men, some wearing red jumpsuits designating them as high-risk, formed the letters SOS.
May 16, 2025
Changes to the dress code at the Cannes Film Festival are creating controversy
The Cannes Film Festival is getting more covered-up — and just in time for the opening ceremony honoring the octogenarian Robert De Niro. Bella Hadid, newly blonde, is already in town, and stars expected include Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Stone. But anyone expecting one of the most reliable moves on the red carpet might be disappointed. The new dress code for gala screenings includes the admonition, “for decency reasons, nudity is prohibited on the red carpet, as well as in any other area of the festival.”
Cue a crisis in the fashion-film industrial complex.
After all, nowhere has the naked dress been more of a presence than at Cannes, where the combination of Mediterranean, sun and a certain Gallic disdain for prudishness (or at least perceived disdain for prudishness) have conspired to create its own tradition of sartorial liberation.
And “nudity,” when it comes to celebrity dressing, is a relative term. The idea that it may no longer be a shortcut to the spotlight is even more shocking than the clothing it may be proscribing.
“Naked dressing,” or that mode of dress in which large swaths of the normally private body are aired for public viewing, has been a tent pole of the publicity machine since long before Marilyn Monroe cooed “Happy birthday, Mr. President” into a microphone in a flesh-colored sheath so tight it left little to the imagination.
In recent years it has become practically a category unto itself, especially at events like the Met Gala. That’s where Beyoncé played Venus on the half shell in 2015 in sheer Givenchy with strategically placed floral embroidery. Where, in 2024, Rita Ora wore a nude Marni bodysuit covered in what looked like strings, and Kylie Minogue modeled a Diesel dress with a naked torso superimposed on her actual torso. It has been framed as a post-Covid libidinal celebration and a post-#MeToo reclamation of the body. Either way, it is pretty much always a talking point.
La Cicciolina at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988. (Garcia/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images)
Cameron Diaz at a “Gangs of New York” party in Cannes in 2002. (J. Vespa/WireImage)
All the way back in 1985, Ilona Staller, or La Cicciolina, the porn star, politician and former wife of Jeff Koons, walked the Cannes red carpet in a white satin … well, what would you call it? An evening version of Rudi Gernreich’s monokini, with breast-baring straps and a long white satin skirt. Madonna dropped her opera cape to reveal her Jean Paul Gaultier bullet bra and undies on the carpet in 1991, and in 2002 Cameron Diaz wore a sheer beaded gown and panties, starting a peekaboo trend that is still going strong.
Indeed, the dress as scrim, a transparent piece of nothing draped over bare skin or lingerie to suggest clothing without actually covering much of anything, is perhaps the most popular current form of naked dressing. It is more omnipresent than, say, the skirt slit up to here and the top cut down to there that has also been modeled by many on the red carpet. It provides the illusion of clothes while also teasing what is underneath.
It’s unclear from the wording of the Cannes dress code if the new policy applies only to literal nudity or to clothing that exposes body parts that might reasonably be termed “indecent.” According to Agnès Leroy, the head of press for the festival, the new rules were established to codify certain practices that have been long in effect. The aim, she said, “is not to regulate attire per se, but to prohibit full nudity — meaning the absence of clothing — on the red carpet, in accordance with the institutional framework of the event and French law.” (Even if French law allows toplessness on some beaches, a reality that may add to the confusion around the Cannes rules.)
Still, that leaves the dictum somewhat open to interpretation, given the general absence of fabric in many evening looks. One person’s vulgarity can be another person’s celebration, and who is to say who gets to police whose body?
Leila Depina at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. (Yara Nardi/Reuters)
Natasha Poly at the premiere of “Emilia Perez” at Cannes last year. (Vianney Le Caer/Invision/Associated Press)
(This is reminiscent of the time Melania Trump addressed critics of her naked photo shoots in her memoir, situating them in an artistic tradition that includes John Collier’s “Lady Godiva” and Michelangelo’s “David,” and noting that “we should honor our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression.”)
Perhaps the new code is simply calculated to prevent the sort of attention-grabbing stunt that occurred at the Grammys in February, when Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, crashed the red carpet with his wife, Bianca Censori, only to have her take off her fur coat to reveal her fully naked body “covered” by an entirely transparent nylon slip that provided no coverage at all. That seemed to have taken the trend to its ultimate, disturbing extreme by breaking the last barrier in naked dressing: genitalia.
Even though Ye had not actually been invited to the event, he and his wife dominated the headlines the next day more than the actual award ceremony.
The fact that the Cannes dress code also prohibits “voluminous outfits, in particular those with a large train, that hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating in the theater” suggests that what the organizers were really forestalling was the appearance of dresses that act as their own sort of performance art, grabbing eyeballs and dominating conversations that might otherwise be focused on the films that are the nominal point of the festival.
Bella Hadid at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. (Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
If that was the aim, however, it has somewhat backfired. By officially banning nudity on the carpet, the Cannes organizers simply sparked a raft of pieces (like this one) discussing nudity on the carpet. Most of them focus less on the actual meaning of the term in all its thorny nuance than the opportunity to revisit notorious nude-adjacent moments past.
You could have seen that one coming.
May 13, 2025
Stock prices jumped after the U.S. and China agreed to a 90-day pause in increasing tariffs, with Apple’s stock price rising by more than 6%
The world’s two superpowers have reached an accord on their bruising trade war—for 90 days, at least. On Monday, the U.S. and Chinese governments announced they had agreed to slash reciprocal tariffs for 90 days as they continue to hammer out details on a broader deal. Markets soared on the news, with the S&P 500 gaining 3.26%.
Though Trump has imposed wide-ranging tariffs against all imports coming into the U.S. during his second term in office, China has been his primary target. Trump has argued that the Chinese government has not done enough to stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.
As part of Monday’s deal, both countries will reduce their so-called “reciprocal” tariffs from 125% to 10%, though a 20% tariff imposed by Trump related to fentanyl will remain—meaning U.S. levies will be 30%. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hailed the agreement, describing it to reporters on Monday as “substantial progress” between the two countries. He told CNBC in an interview that he does not want a “generalized decoupling from China,” but rather a more strategic approach to make U.S. supply chains more resilient.
Stocks surge
While investors expected booming markets under Trump’s second term, his insistence on a severe tariff campaign against many of the U.S.’s top trade partners has sent markets reeling. Stocks fell dramatically after Trump’s Liberation Day event in early April, where he introduced the tariff plan. Though they have largely recovered from the dip, markets have yet to rise to the levels achieved around his inauguration.
Monday’s announcement—the latest reversal by the Trump administration from its initial trade strategy—spurred stocks to rise to a two-month high. Though Bessent has argued that the administration is prioritizing moving manufacturing of key industries such as steel and semiconductors to the U.S., much of the country’s economy remains dependent on imports from China. On Monday, Trump described Monday’s deal as a “total reset,” while adding that it doesn’t apply to specific sectors such as cars, steel, and aluminum.
Still, the long-awaited accord represents a temporary pause, with investors still anxious for further clarity. Bessent told CNBC on Monday that the two countries would be meeting again in the next few weeks for a “more fulsome agreement.” He added in a later interview with Bloomberg that the reciprocal tariffs with China will likely not fall below 10%.
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives argued on Monday that the deal meant new highs for the market—and tech stocks in particular—are possible for 2025. “These massive tariff reductions at this time likely take a recession off the table for now in our view,” he wrote. Apple’s shares rose 6.31% on Monday, while Amazon rose 8.07%.
A key question is still on the table for both countries: rare earth minerals. Dexter Roberts, nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, argued to Fortune that China will likely use the key resources, which are used in everything from smartphones to missiles, as a negotiating chip. “Dominating this sector is probably one of their most important sources of leverage over the U.S. and over the world,” he said.
May 13, 2025
L.A. Finance Gathering Marked by Hope and Anxiety
Beneath the grand chandeliers of the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, at rooftop bars and at private parties at billionaires’ mansions, there was a mix of emotions among the financial titans gathered in Los Angeles this week.
Many of the thousands of attendees at the Milken Institute Global Conference — a who’s who of finance and corporate America — remained anxious amid volatile markets, continuing trade tensions and deep cuts to the federal government.
“I’m a C.E.O., I talk to a lot of C.E.O.s, and there is nervousness there,” Kamal Bhatia, president and chief executive of Principal Asset Management, said while he sat on the same stage that hosts the Golden Globes.
But there was also a palpable sense of growing optimism after a rocky three-month start to President Trump’s second term: “I’m optimistic about technology, I’m optimistic about the direction of the economy, I’m optimistic about cutting costs,” said Tony Minella, co-founder and president of Eldridge Industries, an asset management firm. “I think there is a lot of excitement in the world right now, and it’s a fantastic time to live.”
The Milken Institute Global Conference was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg)
The mood at the annual West Coast confab echoed the mood in financial markets.
After Mr. Trump’s unexpectedly high tariffs sent stocks tumbling, there has been some relief from the initial panic as the administration has offered concessions and promoted deal talks that it says will lower tariffs.
The S&P 500 dropped almost 20 percent below its peak in February, but it has since rebounded, recovering roughly two-thirds of its losses.
But despite the recovery, uncertainty remains. Skeptics on the sidelines of the conference suggested that some fund managers were simply painting a rosier outlook to avoid spooking the investors in their funds. Others described it as more hope than conviction.
“Nobody, myself included, can say how this is going to end,” said Ron O’Hanley, chairman and chief executive of State Street. “There may be wishful thinking in all that.”
Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, speaking at the Milken Institute. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, right, and Cinny Kennard, executive director of the Annenberg Foundation, sat beside him. (Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, set the tone on Monday morning, as he tried to soothe the financiers’ concerns. He had started his mission the night before, hosting a private dinner for a handful of investors, according to some of the attendees.
Many in the audience on Monday were left hopeful that tariffs would ease as trade deals were made, buffeted by more pro-growth, pro-business policies like tax cuts and deregulation to come later in the year. But there was also an awareness that the reality may still look very different. Business is on hold, corporate deal making is dormant, and the longer that continues, the worse the consequences could be.
With that doubt, many speakers at the conference noted that they were looking more closely at investing in Europe and other parts of the world, diversifying away from the United States’ uncertain future.
Pension funds, university endowments and insurance companies, which have been heavily invested in the United States in recent years, are beginning the slow process of reassessing where they put their money going forward.
Kim Lew, president of the Columbia Investment Management Company, the endowment for Columbia University, noted that while there was good reason so many fund managers became heavily exposed to the U.S. economy, “I think we all wish we had invested in the world more globally.”
Investors souring on U.S. markets fed into another widely discussed concern: the role of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and its importance in supporting the government’s $36 trillion of debt.
The corollary of trade deficits is when international investors hold more dollars that have been reinvested in U.S. assets like the government’s debt. If investors begin to back away, either because of tariffs or geopolitics or declining confidence in the stability of the dollar, then the government’s ability to continue financing its debt could be called into question.
“I believe the underlying foundation of the dollar and the Treasury market has been eroding over the last number of years, and we better pay attention to it soon,” said Alan Schwartz, executive chairman of Guggenheim Partners.
Late on Tuesday afternoon, Michael Milken took the stage for a rare keynote speech. Since the conference began in 1998, he has given just two speeches — in 2000 and 2017.
Mr. Milken is widely credited as the father of the high-yield bond market, having devised a way in the 1980s to lend to risky companies that banks and other financial institutions had typically shunned.
In 1990, he pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy. He served just under two years of a 10-year prison sentence and was barred from the securities industry for life. He was pardoned by Mr. Trump in 2020.
In his keynote speech, Mr. Milken made a case for the American dream and the importance of economic freedom, equality of opportunity, public health and broad access to education.
“One of the things that has differentiated America from almost every other country in the world is that you have a chance to try, and if you fail, you have a chance to try again,” he said. He added that “quite often, people in our own country have forgotten how lives are changed by freedom.”
Immigration — nor the aggressive detention and deportations that are upending immigrant communities in cities like Los Angeles — was not a big focus of the official discussions at the Milken Institute gathering.
But Mr. Milken chose to conclude his own remarks by celebrating immigrants and referring to the words in President Ronald Reagan’s final speech from the White House in 1989.
“When people think about this speech, they often think about it as an ode to our immigrants in this country and how they have come to this country for the hope of a better life, and they renew each of our focus on the importance of freedom,” Mr. Milken said. “And they make significant contributions to us.”
May 8, 2025
Trump has disputes with all of academia, but the Ivy League is his main focus
There it was for all to see, President Trump’s tangled relationship with the Ivy League, delivered in a burst at his rally in Michigan on Tuesday night.
“He’s the top,” the president said of Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity doctor he chose to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. “I mean, he went to Harvard.” But then: “I shouldn’t even mention that anymore because that used to be a good thing. Today it doesn’t mean much.”
There was this about Gen. Mark A. Milley, the president’s first-term choice as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “You know, he went to Princeton,” Mr. Trump said in 2019. “And he went to Columbia.” But then: “I’m not sure, was that a good thing or a bad? Did I like it or not?” The president never answered, although he called General Milley, whom he has since reviled, a “smart cookie.”
And on Justice Brett Kavanaugh: “He was, I believe, No. 1 at Yale,” Mr. Trump said in 2018 of his Supreme Court nominee. “Is that a correct statement?” It was not, since Yale does not calculate class rank.
What is correct is that the president’s war on academia has focused intensely on the Ivy League, the richly endowed collection of eight schools, most founded in the colonial era, that cost $90,000 or more a year, send a disproportionate number of graduates into America’s leadership class and accounted for less than 1 percent of the nation’s undergraduate enrollment in the fall of 2022.
Mr. Trump’s attacks on this elite group — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania — have endeared him to his political base. He is withholding, or threatening to withhold, billions of dollars in federal funding from six of the eight schools because, he says, they are citadels of antisemitism and liberal indoctrination. Officials in higher education acknowledge failures, but call the president’s crackdown a perilous threat to academic freedom.
The Trump administration has targeted many other colleges and universities for potential antisemitism, some 60 in all. And yet the eight Ivies are cultural touchstones for Mr. Trump. Beyond the politics is a complex brew of resentment and reverence that the president, an Ivy League graduate himself, has long harbored for a club that has never really accepted him.
“They don’t return the love to him,” said Alan Marcus, a business and political consultant who oversaw Mr. Trump’s public relations from 1994 to 2000. After the president’s companies went through multiple bankruptcies in the 1990s, Mr. Marcus said that as part of an attempted comeback for his client he tried to get Mr. Trump to deliver a college commencement address or receive an honorary degree.
“I called a few people I knew on boards,” Mr. Marcus said. “But I got essentially laughed at.”
Timothy L. O’Brien, a biographer of Mr. Trump, said the president’s ire about the upper echelon of academia was not surprising. “He has a long track record of criticizing elites that he desperately wants to be accepted by,” Mr. O’Brien said. As far as the Ivy League, he said, “he could barely wait to get in himself.”
(Mr. O’Brien, a former New York Times reporter and editor, faced a $5 billion defamation lawsuit from Mr. Trump after Mr. O’Brien’s 2005 book, “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald,” put Mr. Trump’s wealth at $150 million to $250 million rather than the billions of dollars claimed by the president. The case was dismissed in 2009.)
On Friday, Mr. Trump renewed his recent threats to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, even though federal law prevents the president from ordering the I.R.S. to conduct tax investigations. White House officials have said the I.R.S. would make its own determination about Harvard. In an interview with The New York Times last week, Harvard’s president, Dr. Alan Garber, said the university had “problems that we needed to address” but added that the Trump administration’s oversight demands had “gone too far.”
Earlier in the week, it was Mr. Trump’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, that was in the cross-hairs. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights ruled on Monday that the school had violated Title IX by allowing a transgender swimmer to compete on the women’s team, and threatened referral to the Justice Department if Penn did not restore all honors to female athletes that had been “misappropriated by male athletes competing in female categories.”
The Trump administration had already suspended $175 million in federal funding to the university over the issue.
University of Pennsylvania officials have not commented.
Mr. Trump’s relationship with his alma mater is complicated. He has never delivered a commencement address there, although former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Hillary Clinton have. Penn has also not awarded Mr. Trump an honorary degree.
Mr. Trump was admitted in 1966 as a transfer student from Fordham University in the Bronx to Penn’s undergraduate Wharton School, where he focused on studying real estate, the family business. James T. Nolan, a close friend of the president’s older brother, interviewed him for admission.
“He answered my questions,” Mr. Nolan, now 86, said in an interview. “He wasn’t particularly outgoing.” Mr. Nolan recalled that Mr. Trump had a “high B average, maybe something of that sort” from Fordham, and that a more senior member of Penn’s admissions staff reviewed Mr. Trump’s transcripts and made the decision to accept him.
“People think of how difficult it is to get into the Ivy League schools now,” Mr. Nolan said. “But this was 1966. It wasn’t that difficult.’’
Mr. Nolan remembered Mr. Trump as something of a loner on campus. “He seemed to me to be rather isolated,” he said. “I don’t recall seeing him with people. I do recall that he went home every weekend to New York to do some work with his dad.”
In the years since his 1968 graduation, Mr. Trump has regularly cited his Penn degree as evidence of his intelligence. “I went to the Wharton School of Finance,” he said in 2015 in typical remarks in Phoenix. “I’m, like, a really smart person.” Mr. Trump has also claimed that he was first in his class, although the program from the 1968 Penn commencement does not list him among those students with academic honors. He has never made his grades public.
Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, said in testimony to Congress in 2019 that the president had instructed him to send threatening letters to his alma maters, warning of jail time for anyone who released his transcripts.
“I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores,” Mr. Cohen told the House Oversight Committee.
Mr. Marcus, Mr. Trump’s former public relations man, recalled a conversation he once had with Mr. Trump. “He said to me, ‘You’re really smart. What’s your IQ?’ Well, who knows what your IQ is? So I made up a number, 190. And he said, ‘That’s pretty good. Mine’s higher.’”
Mr. Trump has fewer Ivy Leaguers in his current cabinet than at the start of his first term, and fewer than other recent presidents. But he does have them — five out of 23, including himself.
Vice President JD Vance, who has degrees from Yale Law School and Ohio State, has attacked elite academia as vigorously as Mr. Trump, notably in a 2021 speech when he was running for Senate in Ohio.
“If any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” he told the National Conservatism Conference, drawing applause. He concluded with a rallying cry citing former President Richard M. Nixon: “He said, and I quote, ‘The professors are the enemy.’”
And yet, Mr. Trump highlighted the academic pedigrees of the Ivy Leaguers in his cabinet in the announcements of their nominations, which is something he did not always do for those who attended less elite schools.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got a shout-out for his degrees from Princeton and Harvard, for example. But there was no mention of Linda McMahon’s degree from East Carolina University or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s diploma from Haverford College.
There are some exceptions to Mr. Trump’s view that an Ivy League diploma is a mark of intelligence.
Consider John R. Bolton, one of Mr. Trump’s ousted first-term national security advisers and a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School. Mr. Bolton wrote a book about his time working for Mr. Trump that enraged the president, who retaliated early this year by revoking Mr. Bolton’s Secret Service protection, despite death threats that Mr. Bolton faces from Iran.
Mr. Bolton said his degrees never seemed to impress the president very much.
“He likes to insult me with how dumb I am,” said Mr. Bolton, who pointed out that his 17-month tenure still makes him Mr. Trump’s longest serving national security adviser.
May 5, 2025
MoviePass is hoping a fantasy box office app will be its winning strategy moving forward
MoviePass, the startup that made its mark with its movie theater subscription service, has always been known for shaking things up, and its latest venture is no exception.
The company announced on Thursday the beta launch of Mogul, a new daily fantasy entertainment platform designed specifically for the Hollywood industry.
To understand what Mogul is, it’s important to first grasp the concept of daily fantasy sports. This subcategory of fantasy sports allows players to compete over short-term periods, rather than an entire season. Players assume the role of team managers, creating their own dream teams made up of real-world athletes and earning points based on how those athletes perform in actual games.
Mogul takes this idea by allowing users, who are likely passionate movie enthusiasts interested in this sort of thing, to act as studio heads in the film industry. Players are provided with a budget and “studio credits” (in-game currency) to spend on selecting actors for their leagues.
Users can update their lineup of movie actors each day. They then participate in fantasy-style tournaments that last about a week, plus one-on-one competitions and solo challenges. Participants make calls on the results of various things, such as box office results, audience turnout, critic ratings, and potential award winners.
As users level up, they earn digital collectibles — think signed posters and memorabilia — that help them climb the leaderboard.
Mogul is built on Sui, a layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform developed by Mysten Labs. Beta testers will receive a digital wallet to securely store their in-game virtual currency, rewards, and collectibles.
Mogul app interface (IMAGE CREDITS:MOVIEPASS/MOGUL)
MoviePass is taking a bold leap with the introduction of Mogul, as it has never really been done before. But CEO Stacy Spikes believes it’s a huge market waiting to be tapped. He said, “People can name more actors than they can probably name sports athletes. So I think there’s a really big market opportunity there.”
Initially, when we first learned about Mogul, we didn’t anticipate that it would take off, at least not in the early stages. We wondered if there are many movie fans willing to compete with others about box office revenue or ratings.
However, we may have underestimated its appeal. The company claims that more than 400,000 people have already signed up for the early-access waitlist. It remains to be seen whether it can maintain this level of interest leading up to the official launch, but it could become popular among niche film industry followers.
Mogul app interface (IMAGE CREDITS:MOVIEPASS/MOGUL)
During our initial conversation with Spikes, he positioned Mogul as a predictive market platform. Later on, we were told that a more fitting description would be to classify Mogul as a daily fantasy sports platform, but it may evolve to include this functionality in the future. For now, though, Mogul operates exclusively with virtual currency.
This distinction is important, especially considering the regulated nature of daily fantasy sports, as opposed to prediction market platforms, which currently exist in a legal gray area. Kalshi, for instance, has been in ongoing legal battles with state gambling regulators.
“It’s murky what needs to be approved. There are different types of clearances, depending on the markets you want in the U.S. You have to go state by state. It literally is like a Chinese puzzle with stuff all over the place,” Spikes said.
Mogul represents the initial phase of MoviePass’s long-term web3 strategy. The company has previously revealed its intention to provide on-chain rewards for attending movies. It’s also backed by Animoca Brands, a venture capital firm specializing in blockchain technology.
Last year, MoviePass partnered with Sui to allow subscribers to make payments using USD coin.
May 4, 2025
A very close special election saw Reform UK win by six votes, resulting in a loss for Labour
Nigel Farage’s insurgent anti-immigration party, Reform U.K., scored a significant, if razor-thin, victory Friday in a parliamentary special election in the northwest of England. The result served notice that Mr. Farage, a populist fixture and close ally of President Trump, is again a rising force in British politics.
Reform’s candidate, Sarah Pochin, won by just six votes over her Labour Party opponent, Karen Shore, in Runcorn and Helsby, seizing what had been a safe seat for Labour until the incumbent, Mike Amesbury, was forced to resign after being convicted of assault for punching one of his constituents.
On a night of high drama, the outcome — the tightest in such an election in modern history — was so close that the vote had to be recounted, delaying the declaration of the result for hours.
But the victory, by 12,645 votes to 12,639, was the start of what could be an impressive show of strength by Reform in mayoral and local council elections held Thursday across England.
More than 1,600 municipal seats are up for grabs, and polls suggest that Reform could win at least 300 of them.
If Reform’s gains are borne out as the ballots are counted throughout Friday, it would deliver a significant jolt to British politics, potentially accelerating the country’s shift toward a more polarized, multiparty system.
For Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it would be a setback in his party’s first electoral test since Labour swept to power in July. The Conservatives, still licking their wounds after last summer’s stinging defeat, would find themselves even more vulnerable to a threat from Reform. And Mr. Farage could make a plausible case that Reform is emerging as a genuine rival to both major parties.
A polling station in Runcorn and Helsby, a parliamentary constituency that had long been considered a safe seat for the Labour Party. (Phil Noble/Reuters)
By itself, the Runcorn defeat is a blow to Mr. Starmer. Labour won the seat in the last election with a margin of 15,400 votes. But Mr. Amesbury’s conviction, on top of broader frustration from voters with the government, gave Reform an opening. Ms. Pochin, a businesswoman who served in local government, will join Mr. Farage as one of five Reform lawmakers with seats in Parliament.
Her single-digit victory margin in a special election was without precedent in modern British political history. The closest margin until now was in Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1973, when the Liberal Democrats won by 57 votes.
“The people of Runcorn and Helsby have spoken,” Ms. Pochin said after the victory. “Enough is enough. Enough Tory failure. Enough Labour lies.” She was joined by Mr. Farage, who told reporters that “it’s a huge night for Reform.”
Peter Kyle, a Labour cabinet minister, told the BBC that the result was “frustrating.” The circumstances of Mr. Amesbury’s resignation had made it a difficult election, he said, but he added that he understood “why a message like this would want to be sent.”
On Thursday in Runcorn, an industrial town of 61,000 that hunkers on the River Mersey, west of Liverpool, the portents of a Reform victory were in the air. People on the main street said the party had capitalized on anti-incumbent fervor, fueled by dissatisfaction with the economy, as well as on tensions over immigration, to win support among voters with deep Labour roots.
In recent years, immigration has become a fraught issue after a local hotel was converted to house migrants, some of whom cross the English Channel in small boats, seeking asylum.
While the Labour government has announced plans to close the hotel, Reform kept a spotlight on it and tried to claim credit for pressuring the government to act.
The anti-immigrant Reform U.K. party, led by Nigel Farage, was hoping to emerge from Thursday’s elections as a genuine rival to Britain’s two major parties. (Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Terry Osborne, 49, a business development manager, said Reform had tried to exploit the fact that some voters were not aware of the government’s role, and was playing to their pre-existing biases on immigration. “They’ll hear what they want to hear about immigration,” he said.
Mohamed Alosta, 36, a business owner who described himself as a longtime Labour supporter, also criticized Reform’s handling of the hotel issue.
But he said he would not vote for Labour this time because he was disenchanted by the politics of the major parties. Instead, he planned to vote for the Workers Party, a fringe party led by the left-wing firebrand, George Galloway.
In addition to the special election, voters were electing council members in 24 municipalities in parts of England, as well as six regional mayors: in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; Doncaster; North Tyneside; the West of England; Hull and East Yorkshire; and Greater Lincolnshire.
In the first of the mayoral results, Labour won in North Tyneside, the West of England and Doncaster, with Reform performing strongly and coming second in all three regions. In Greater Lincolnshire, Reform’s candidate, Andrea Jenkyns, a former Conservative lawmaker, was victorious, winning 42 percent of the vote.
Much of what these local officials do is centered around mundane work like overseeing trash collection or planning. But the elections function as a referendum on the governing party, which racked up a whopping parliamentary majority last year but did so with a thin 34 percent of the national vote.
Since then, Labour’s shallow support has been sapped by unpopular economic decisions like curbing payments to retirees that had helped them cope with fuel costs, hiking payroll taxes on businesses and changing inheritance tax rules for farmers.
A protest against changes to inheritance tax rules for land ownership for farmers, in front of the London Eye in March. (Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
“They almost appear to have set out to offend every group,” said Robert Hayward, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and polling expert.
With the next general election years away, there is no threat to Mr. Starmer’s position. But a bad result could increase pressure on the architect of Labour’s austere economic policies, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer.
Labour’s struggles are not translating into dividends for the Conservatives. The party is bracing for a major loss of seats because the last time this set of local council seats was contested, in 2021, it did unusually well. Voters rewarded Boris Johnson, who was then prime minister, for a speedy rollout of coronavirus vaccines.
May 3, 2025
The price of Microsoft’s video games is increasing to $80
You’ll have to save more before you pick up the next Call of Duty or Halo game. Microsoft has announced a series of price increases that will see the recommended retail price of its first-party games increase to $79.99.
The systems used to play those games are seeing a stiff increase in price as well. The Xbox Series S (512GB) is seeing prices increase by $80 from $299.99 to $379.99. The 1 TB Xbox Series X will cost $100 more, jumping to $599.99. And if you want the high-end 2 TB special edition Xbox Series X, that will now run you $729.99. Controllers will now cost $65.
The hardware price increases are effective immediately, the company said. Game prices will increase this holiday season.
Microsoft isn’t the first to embrace the $80 price point for games. Nintendo broke that ground earlier this year, announcing that Mario Kart World, an exclusive title for its new Switch 2 console, would carry a price tag of $79.99. Sony, which makes the PlayStation, has not announced any changes to its first party games yet, but the industry typically prices titles equally.
Microsoft did not cite tariffs as a reason in announcing the price increases. Like many Big Tech companies, the company has donated to Trump’s inauguration fund. Trump has lashed out when other tech firms have cited tariffs as a reason for higher prices, most recently angrily calling Amazon founder Jeff Bezos after reports emerged the company was considering displaying the added cost of tariffs on certain items. (Amazon now says it will not do so.)
“We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development,” Microsoft said in a statement. “Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and ensuring value for Xbox players.”
Microsoft did not increase prices on its Game Pass program, which gives players access to a Netflix-like catalog of titles that can be played on demand.
May 1, 2025
The impact of Trump’s tariff policies is highlighting Meta’s expenditures on artificial intelligence
Mark Zuckerberg’s plan is to make Meta the market leader in artificial intelligence. Investors will want to know how President Donald Trump’s tariffs-heavy trade policies will impact that strategy.
Those answers could start to come as soon as this week as Meta’s AI strategy takes center stage when the company hosts its first Llama-branded conference for AI developers on Tuesday then reports its latest quarterly earnings the next day.
Already, tech companies are starting to talk about the potential impact they’re bracing for as a result of the Trump tariffs.
Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said Thursday during the chip giant’s first-quarter earnings call that U.S. trade policies “have increased the chance of an economic slowdown, with the probability of a recession growing.” Meanwhile, Google CFO Anat Ashkenazi said that day during a first-quarter earnings call that the tech giant remains committed to its $75 billion investment in capital expenditures, or capex, this year, but also acknowledged that the “timing of deliveries and construction schedules” could cause some quarter-to-quarter spending fluctuation.
For now, analysts expect Meta to follow Google’s lead and remain firm in its plan to spend as much as $65 billion in capex for AI infrastructure this year when it reports earnings Wednesday. Some analysts believe Meta could even raise the figure because AI is a core priority for the company.
“We do not expect META to cut its CapX guidance of $60B-$65B in 2025, for its GenAI infrastructure, because they see this as an important 10-year investment, we believe,” Needham analysts wrote in a research note published Wednesday. “However, tariffs add risks of upward cost revisions.”
Investors will also be monitoring Meta’s LlamaCon event at its Menlo Park, California, headquarters for any signs that its AI investments are having an immediate business impact. This will be the first time Meta hosts a developer conference specifically for its Llama family of AI models.
“Investors want to see ROI on all these AI investments, and while Meta has shown clear benefits from leveraging AI to improve its products and drive faster revenue growth, it’s been hard to quantify those benefits,” Truist Securities analyst Youssef Squali told CNBC.
Meta in April released a couple of its new Llama 4 models, which Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox previously said can help power so-called AI agentsthat can perform tasks for users via web browsers and other online interfaces.
It’s critical that Meta keep improving Llama to create a major business involving AI agents that companies can use to interact with their customers within apps like Facebook and WhatsApp, William Blair research analyst Ralph Schackart said.
″Meta has an early mover advantage at scale in a multi-trillion dollar market,” Schackart said in an email. “We believe Meta is very well positioned to leverage its billions of global users across multiple platforms.”
Meta is unlikely to curb its Llama investment anytime soon, but should eventually consider doing so if it fails to generate enough money to justify its costs, said Ken Gawrelski, a Wells Fargo managing director of equity research.
“We do believe that over time Meta needs to continue to evaluate whether Llama needs to be competitive with the leading-edge models,” Gawrelski said. “This is a very expensive proposition and thus far, unlike Google, Meta does not directly monetize its model in any material way.”
Chris Cox, Chief Product Officer at Meta Platforms, speaks during The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech Live Conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 17, 2023.(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
Meta AI and the consumer
Analysts are also following the Meta AI digital assistant. That’s because the ChatGPT rival represents the second pillar of Zuckerberg’s AI strategy.
Zuckerberg in January said he believes 2025 “is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant.”
In February, The Budgets reported that Meta was planning to debut a stand-alone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid subscription service, in which users could pay monthly fees to access more powerful versions like users can with ChatGPT.
Although Meta’s enormous user base across its family of apps gives Meta AI an advantage over rivals like ChatGPT in terms of reach, they may not interact with Meta AI in the same way they do with rival chat apps, said Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Deepak Mathivanan.
Gawrelski said that people may not want to use Meta AI within Facebook and Instagram if all they want to do is passively watch the short videos that Meta algorithmically recommends to their feeds.
“This is why a separate Meta AI, where Meta could clearly articulate its use case and value proposition, could be helpful,” Gawrelski said.
A stand-alone Meta AI app could help the company better market the digital assistant and distinguish it from rivals, said Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst at Sonata Insights.
“ChatGPT has such wide brand awareness, that it’s become a moat that is soon going to be very hard to overcome,” Williamson said.
April 29, 2025
Netflix upheld its 2025 forecast, but this might not reflect the confidence it appears to convey
Netflix executives messaged Thursday that all is well with the business in the face of economic turbulence. But its full-year outlook tells a slightly more nuanced story.
Netflix posted a big beat on operating margin for the first quarter, reporting 31.7% compared with the average estimate of 28.5%, according to StreetAccount. And it guided well above analyst estimates for the second quarter — 33.3% against an average estimate of 30%.
By its own phrasing, Netflix was “ahead” of its own guidance for the first quarter and is “tracking above the mid-point of our 2025 revenue guidance range.”
Still, Netflix declined to alter any of its longer-term projections. That suggests Netflix isn’t quite as confident in its second half.
“There’s been no material change to our overall business outlook since our last earnings report,” Netflix wrote in its quarterly note to shareholders.
U.S. consumer sentiment is at its second-lowest level since 1952 as President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies roil markets.
Co-CEO Greg Peters noted during the company’s earnings conference call that Netflix has, in the past, “been generally quite resilient” to economic slowdowns. Home entertainment provides a cheaper form of leisure than most other activities. A monthly Netflix subscription with ads costs $7.99.
But the question remains how — or whether — an economic slowdown would pinch Americans’ wallets and force higher churn among streaming subscriptions.
Netflix stopped reporting quarterly subscriber numbers this quarter, so the company will likely not detail if it sees a customer slowdown later this year beyond reporting its underlying revenue and profit.
First-quarter revenue of $10.5 billion was roughly in line with analyst expectations, while second-quarter guidance of $11 billion is slightly above.
“Retention, that’s stable and strong. We haven’t seen anything significant in plan mix or plan take rate,” said Peters. “Things generally look stable.”
April 19, 2025
Tensions Flare When Father of Track Stabbing Victim Makes an Unannounced Appearance at Suspect’s Family Press Conference
The father of the Texas high school student stabbed to death at a track meet made an unexpected appearance at a press conference being held by the parents of the teenage murder suspect.
Jeff Metcalf, who lost his son Austin Metcalf, arrived at the Dallas venue where the parents of Karmelo Anthony were speaking publicly for the first time on Thursday.
Video posted by CBS Texas shows officers from the Dallas Police Department arriving about 40 minutes after the scheduled start of the press conference and escorting Metcalf from the venue without incident.
Anthony family spokesperson Dominique Alexander began the press conference by criticizing Metcalf for deciding to attend the event, saying that his attendance was “a disrespect to the dignity of his son.”
Alexander went on to say: “He knew that it is inappropriate to be near the family, but he did it. Actions speak louder than words.”
Karmelo Anthony. FRISCO POLICE DEPT.
Karla Hayes, the mother of Karmelo Anthony, said her family has been under attack from segments of the public since her son allegedly killed Austin Metcalf on April 2.
“Whatever you think what happened between Karmelo and the Metcalf boys, my three younger children, my husband and I didn’t do anything to deserve to be threatened, harassed and lied about,” Hayes said. “The lies and false accusations that have been said about us, especially over the past week, has been overwhelming. The lies and their amplification put my family in danger.”
She also addressed the Metcalf family, saying: “To the family who experienced the loss, my heart truly goes out to you.”
Austin Metcalf. AUSTIN METCALF/X
Hayes also made a public plea that her son not be expelled from school just one month from graduation, and instead be allowed to finish his coursework from home,.

Anthony faces a murder charge. He was released from custody this week after the judge overseeing his case reduced his bond from $1 million to $250,000. He is now under house arrest and must wear an ankle monitor at all times.
Anthony allegedly removed a knife from his backpack and stabbed Metcalf while the two were attending a track meet at Kuykendall Stadium in Frisco.
Metcalf was pronounced dead when he arrived at the hospital, according to police.
PEOPLE obtained a copy of the probable cause affidavit in the case, which notes that Anthony had distanced himself from the victim and other athletes when police arrived on the scene.
The arresting officer ordered Anthony to put his hands up, at which time Anthony allegedly shouted: “I was protecting myself.”
Anthony then complied with the officer’s instructions and requests as he was led off the field for questioning, according to the affidavit.
When the officer referred to Anthony as an “alleged suspect,” he seemingly admitted to the crime in response, allegedly saying “I’m not alleged, I did it,” according to the affidavit.
April 18, 2025