This year’s new college graduates are heading into a tougher job market than last year’s — who had it worse off than the class before that — just as the Trump administration cracks down on student loan repayments. Recent grads’ unemployment rate was 5.8% as of March, up from 4.6% a year earlier, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported last week. The share of new graduates working jobs that don’t require their degrees — a situation known as “underemployment” — hit 41.2% in March, rising from 40.6% that same month in 2024. “Right now things are pretty frozen,” Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said of entry-level prospects. “A lot of employers and job seekers are both kind of deer-in-headlights, not sure what to do.” Employers and job seekers are both kind of deer-in-headlights, not sure what to do. Allison Shrivastava, economist, Indeed Hiring Lab That squares with Julia Abbott’s experience. “I just feel pretty screwed as it is right now,” said the psychology major who’s graduating this month from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She said she’s applied to over 200 roles in social media and marketing, but “minimal interviews come out of it.” Internship postings typically rise sharply in early spring, but they’re lagging 11 percentage points behind last year’s levels, Indeed said in April. The hiring platform sees demand for interns as a stronger gauge of new grads’ job prospects than entry-level postings, which increasingly target people with at least a few years’ experience. In a worrying sign for the class of 2025, internship openings are “far below where they were in 2023 and 2022, when the labor market was exceptionally competitive,” Shrivastava said. Young college grads have historically seen lower unemployment levels than the labor force overall, and they still do. But as The Atlantic pointed out Wednesday, this gap has narrowed to a record low, taking some of the shine off the traditional benefits of a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is restarting the “involuntary” repayment of federal student loans in default, a move that could sap money from paychecks, tax refunds, Social Security payments and disability and retirement benefits from millions of borrowers. Repayments were paused during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2020 in response to Covid-19. The pandemic-era reprieve from forced collections ends Monday, just as a new TransUnion report finds a record share of federal student loan borrowers are 90 days or more past due and at risk of default — at 20.5% as of February, up 10 percentage points from five years earlier.

Seventeen states sued the Trump administration Monday over its halting of permits for wind-energy projects, arguing that its actions posed an existential threat to the burgeoning industry. “This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable and affordable energy,” said Attorney General Letitia James of New York, which is one of the plaintiffs. She said the halt threatened “the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments” and was “delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet.” The halt on federal permits for wind energy was first laid out in a Jan. 20 executive order, one of a barrage that President Trump signed immediately upon taking office. It directed agencies to stop all permits for wind farms pending federal review. The lawsuit says that, by complying, federal agencies have put major investments that have already been made at risk. The order also instructed the United States attorney general and the interior secretary to explore “terminating or amending” existing leases to wind farms, further increasing uncertainty for companies. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The wind industry provides about 10 percent of the nation’s electricity, and has many new projects under development, particularly in the Great Plains and the Atlantic Ocean. Last month, the Trump administration halted a major wind farm under construction off the coast of Long Island, the Empire Wind project. It was designed to provide enough electricity to power a half-million homes. It had already received the permits it needed, but Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested the Biden administration’s analysis during the approval process was rushed and insufficient. Ms. James noted that Mr. Trump had also declared an energy emergency. Energy experts have called that declaration overstated. Nevertheless, she said, the moratorium on wind permits is harming the ability to provide a new source of energy. New York also has a new law on the books requiring it to dramatically increase the amount of electricity that comes from renewable sources. Achieving that goal will become more complicated without wind sources. The lawsuit, by 17 states and Washington, D.C., names numerous federal officials and agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. The E.P.A. didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, accused the Democratic attorneys general who sued of using “lawfare” to thwart the president’s energy agenda. “Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda,” she said. The Interior Department said in a statement that it was committed to “overseeing public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans, while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the American people.” The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, asks a judge to prevent federal agencies from taking any action to block wind-energy development and to declare the executive order unlawful. “The Trump administration’s directive to halt the development of offshore wind energy is illegal,” said Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California. His office said the federal policy would “derail the clean energy transition” and lead to higher costs for Americans. In addition to onshore wind sites, the state has five federal offshore wind leases, the office said. Offshore operations are more complicated and expensive to operate. Timothy Fox, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington consulting firm, said that he expected the lawsuit to face an uphill climb in convincing the court to block the executive order. The firm’s “best-case scenario” for the offshore wind industry is that facilities that are already operating, or far along in development, may continue without opposition from the Trump administration, he said.

Oil prices resumed their slide after the OPEC Plus cartel of oil producers said over the weekend that it would pump more oil, even though analysts say demand could fall if President Trump’s trade war curbs economic growth. The U.S. benchmark oil price settled at $57.13 a barrel on Monday, the lowest level in more than four years and down more than 25 percent since just before Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Trump has said he would reduce energy costs for Americans and called for increased drilling. But for many oil and gas executives in the United States, who were big donors to the president’s campaign, the steady price decline means it will not be profitable to drill new wells. The leaders of OPEC Plus appear to be making a calculated decision to raise production even if that reduces prices — and, thus, how much money they make from selling oil — for geopolitical reasons. They want to punish cartel members that have been producing more than the quotas they agreed to, analysts said. Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s de facto leader, also wants to strengthen its ties to Mr. Trump, according to energy experts. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Prices briefly fell to around $55 a barrel in midday trading in early April, just before Mr. Trump said he would pause reciprocal tariffs on most countries for 90 days. That announcement led to rallies in both the stock and the oil markets, though oil prices have since waned. That is partly because OPEC Plus is raising output at the same time that economists are warning that higher tariffs on most American trading partners will slow global economic growth and potentially cause a recession in the United States. The countries that make up OPEC Plus said on Saturday that they would further ramp up production in June. The oil cartel had agreed to production cuts as a way to bolster prices, but analysts said Saudi Arabia has grown weary of pumping less oil while other countries, like Kazakhstan and Iraq, surpass their production quotas. OPEC Plus has pressured Kazakhstan to curb its output, which was 400,000 barrels a day above its ceiling in March, according to the International Energy Agency. But the country seems unwilling to constrain investors like Chevron, which spent nearly $50 billion to expand its Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan with the intention to pump an additional one million barrels a day. The increased production may also be a sop to Mr. Trump, who has pushed producers to pump more oil to cut prices. The president is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East soon. While lower prices help American consumers, they hurt the large and politically important U.S. oil industry, which has an outsize presence in states like Alaska, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas. Some companies are already pulling back. There are about 9 percent fewer rigs drilling wells in the Permian Basin, the top U.S. oil field, than there were this time last year, when oil was trading near $80 a barrel, according to Baker Hughes. On Friday, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil and gas companies, reported their lowest first-quarter earnings in years. Those results reflect the market before Mr. Trump further escalated tariffs on China in early April. “It is clear that this uncertainty is weighing on economic forecasts, causing significant volatility and raising the prospects of slower growth,” Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, told analysts.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Texas has a brand-new city, and its name is Starbase. A vote Saturday to decide whether to turn part of south Texas into a new city centered around Elon Musk’s SpaceX delivered a victory to the tech billionaire and his rocket company. As expected, the measure passed with broad support, paving the way for a newly incorporated city made up almost exclusively of SpaceX employees and people connected to the company. The final vote tally Saturday night was 212 in favor of incorporation and six against; only 143 votes were needed for the measure to pass. “It’s officially statistically impossible for the measure to fail,” Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza said. “Cameron County is about to have a new city.” Musk celebrated the vote in a post on X Saturday night. “Starbase, Texas Is now a real city!” he wrote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried something new on Monday. Instead of just addressing credentialed journalists in the storied White House briefing room, she held a separate “influencer briefing” for 10 people. “Tens of millions of Americans are now turning to social media and independent media outlets to consume their news, and we are embracing that change, not ignoring it,” she said during her seven-minute introductory remarks. “All journalists, outlets and voices have a seat at the table now, and you being here today for this briefing proves that.” But as the new briefings continued through the week, it became clear that a very specific group was being given the special access. Of the 25 influencers identified by NBC News who attended the briefings, all but one have a history of explicit support for President Donald Trump’s administration, and some had direct connections to Trump — through either previously working in his administration, or maintaining a personal connection with his family or members of his Cabinet. “Where’s the list [of] conservative leaning voices the Biden administration invited to the White House for similar engagements? The fact of the matter is, the legacy media is furious that information flow is not exclusive to them anymore,” Kaelan Dorr, the White House deputy communications director, said in a statement. “We will ALWAYS find ways to meet people where they are, no hit piece will dissuade us.” Indeed, the Trump White House isn’t the first or only to engage with influencers. Joe Biden did so as president as well, at one point inviting more than 100 content creators to discuss a range of issues. But the current administration has more explicitly embraced pro-Trump media, pushing aside some traditional media outlets to exert more control over who gets access to the president. “The legacy media has had access to all open press events for decades, now new media gets access too,” a White House official added, noting that the influencer briefings were also livestreamed. Trump’s tribe In the first briefing, former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer, who has nearly 1 million followers across various platforms, was welcomed as one of the influencers. After complimenting Trump for his “commitment to transparency,” Spicer asked questions about Trump’s legislative priorities and why Trump continues to sit for interviews with mainstream outlets and publications. In the second briefing on Tuesday, two of the eight influencers welcomed had clear ties to Trump’s current and former administration. Link Lauren, who has over 1 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, served as a senior adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his presidential campaign. In the briefing, Lauren threw a softball, asking Leavitt what advice she has for young working parents like herself. In the same briefing, former Treasury Department official William Upton appeared in his new role as political editor at the conservative publication The National Pulse, asking a question about the status of the Trump administration’s rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine. In the third briefing, on Wednesday, one of the nine influencers present was 18-year-old Bo Loudon. The son of Trump surrogate Gina Loudon and former Republican Missouri state Sen. John Loudon, Bo Loudon has called himself Barron Trump’s “best friend” and appeared in numerous photos with both Barron Trump and the president. Loudon praised Leavitt during the influencer confab, calling her “an inspiration to Gen Z,” before asking what her “biggest highlight” was “during these first 100 historic days.” Also present were Newsmax host David J. Harris, who was recognized by Trump at a Black History Month reception in February for being by his side “from Day 1,” and former Fox News host Eric Bolling, who authored the book “The Swamp: Washington’s Murky Pool of Corruption and Cronyism and How Trump Can Drain It” after he departed Fox News following allegations that he sent lewd photographs to three female colleagues. Bolling has denied the allegations. Jack Posobiec, a longtime Trump supporter who has promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory, also attended Wednesday’s briefing. He has reportedly been invited on and attended trips with members of Trump’s Cabinet, according to a post Posobiec made himself and a report by The Washington Post. Fringe meme-makers Alongside the well-connected crowd was a slew of other right-wing influencers and personalities. On Monday, influencers Grant Godwin and Rogan O’Handley, who run the highly followed conservative meme accounts @the_typical_liberal and @DC_Draino, asked about the Jeffrey Epstein files and a campaign to implement laws that would allow concealed gun carrying in all 50 states. On Tuesday, Brenden Dilley, known for leading a pro-Trump meme team that created a controversial video shared by Trump in May 2024 that mentioned the “creation of a unified Reich,” played a game of “Truth or Trolling” with Leavitt. On Wednesday, Dom Lucre, a highly followed conspiracy theorist on X who was briefly banned from the platform after he shared child sexual abuse material, asked Leavitt about the possibility of an investigation into Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over election integrity. Leavitt welcomed the question and called it “refreshing.” ‘Opposite of authentic’ Jackson Gosnell, who appears semiregularly on right-leaning One America News, appeared at Monday’s briefing. On TikTok, he’s built a following of over 150,000 followers through videos where he shares news in a more traditional newscasting style. In a phone interview, he said he was surprised at how favorable some of the other influencers were to the Trump administration in the briefings.

Former national security adviser Mike Waltz was photographed using a Signal-like messaging app during Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, more than a month after he first came under intense scrutiny for accidentally including a journalist in a group chat that discussed military plans. A photo published by Reuters showed the screen of Waltz’s smartphone with message threads labeled “JD Vance” and “Gabbard.” The app had a similar interface to Signal, the encrypted messenger that was at the heart of “Signalgate,” but appears to instead be an app called TeleMessage, which seemingly uses some of Signal’s encryption technology while also allowing clients to archive messages for compliance purposes. In the photo, the app displays a prompt for the user to “verify your TM SGNL PIN.” TeleMessage uses similar phrasing on its website. A search by NBC News did not turn up any other apps that use that terminology. On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he would be nominating Waltz to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after being relieved from his role as national security adviser. The image adds to ongoing concerns around how Waltz and other members of the Trump administration are communicating, and especially how they are discussing classified or sensitive information. Waltz’s apparent use of the app was first reported by 404 Media. Even though Signal is highly regarded by cybersecurity experts, the federal government has specific systems and protocols for the transmission of sensitive information and messages. Officials are expected to use intranet systems that are almost entirely closed off from the rest of the digital world, to prevent the potential breach of information via physical theft of a compromised mobile device.

The United States added 177,000 jobs in April, more than analysts had expected, in the face of broader economic uncertainty sparked by President Donald Trump's tariffs. Last month's job gains were a bit softer than the revised 185,000 added in March, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but ahead of forecasts for 133,000 net new roles in April. The annual unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.2%. Transportation and warehousing employers added 29,000 roles in April as consumers and businesses went on a pre-tariff buying spree of foreign goods. Federal government head counts, meanwhile, fell by 9,000 and have declined by 26,000 since January, reflecting the impact of sweeping cuts largely driven by multibillionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency initiative.Despite the jobs gains, the report showed signs of a slowing economy elsewhere. Average hourly earnings climbed just 0.17% for the month, below the 0.3% forecast by economists. The share of unemployed people out of work for at least 27 weeks also returned to its pandemic-era high of 23.5%. So did the median unemployment duration, which climbed to 10.4 weeks. Those latter two figures "both suggest that it is taking longer for unemployed workers to find new opportunities, and reinforce a growing divide in the market between those out of work and those who are employed," Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab said in a statement. "So far in 2025, the market has been marked by a low firing, low hiring trend that can’t last forever."Trump took to his Truth Social platform following the report to repeat his recent calls for another rate cut. "Just like I said, and we’re only in a TRANSITION STAGE, just getting started!!! Consumers have been waiting for years to see pricing come down. NO INFLATION, THE FED SHOULD LOWER ITS RATE!!! DJT," the president wrote, returning to a theme he has recently emphasized despite campaigning on "immediate" economic relief. Some analysts expect to see further headwinds turn up in the weeks and months ahead. The impact of tariffs on slowing port shipments, for instance, has begun to appear only recently. “Not unlike an earthquake that’s offshore, it can take a while for the tsunami to come to land,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at the consumer finance firm Bankrate. "So what happens after that? You have a diminution in cargo being trucked or perhaps carried by rail to some degree across the country," he said, which could lead to supply chain disruptions that "consumers will begin to notice at some point in the coming weeks or months." Hamrick also pointed to cracks in a retail landscape where hiring has flatlined, and warned that even modest sales declines due to potential product shortages "can be sufficiently significant to cause a problem, and therefore then be reflected in employment trends.”

President Donald Trump on Friday issued his latest call for the U.S. Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, following a better-than-expected jobs report for April. “Just like I said, and we’re only in a TRANSITION STAGE, just getting started!!!” Trump wrote in an exuberant Truth Social post minutes after the latest nonfarm payrolls data came out. “Consumers have been waiting for years to see pricing come down. NO INFLATION, THE FED SHOULD LOWER ITS RATE!!!” he wrote. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning that nonfarm payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 177,000 jobs in April, beating the Dow Jones estimate of 133,000. The figure came in below the downwardly revised 185,000 jobs added in March, however. The post shows Trump continuing his efforts to influence the central bank’s decision-making process, challenging its long-held independence from the executive branch. But it also shows Trump further scaling back his criticism of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose job until recently appeared to be under threat.Since then, Trump has said he has “no intention” of firing Powell, and he has dialed back his criticism. “I have a Fed person who is not really doing a good job,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Tuesday, without ever mentioning Powell by name. “I want to be very nice and respectful to the Fed,” he added. “You are not supposed to criticize the Fed; you are supposed to let him do his own thing, but I know much more than he does about interest rates, believe me.” Trump’s Friday morning message stood in contrast to his response to Wednesday’s news that the U.S. economy contracted for the first time since 2022. Trump in that case blamed former President Joe Biden for the bad first-quarter GDP reading, claiming, “he left us with bad numbers.” Later Wednesday, Trump suggested he would blame Biden again in the second quarter. — CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this report. Trump has long criticized Powell and badgered him to lower rates in hopes of spurring growth. Economic aide Kevin Hassett said last month that the White House was exploring rules under which the president could fire Powell. Powell has maintained that Trump cannot legally fire him before his term as Fed chair expires in May 2026. But fears that Trump might still try to replace Powell with someone willing to bend to political pressure on rates have spooked markets and investors around the world. On April 21, those fears triggered a sell-off that saw major indexes and the U.S. dollar slump on the same day.

The two largest U.S. oil companies reported their lowest first-quarter profits in years on Friday as they braced for the economic fallout from President Trump’s trade war, which has weakened consumer confidence and pushed oil prices down. U.S. crude prices slipped under $60 a barrel this week, a threshold below which many companies cannot make money drilling new wells. Crude oil is now about $20 a barrel cheaper than it was just before Mr. Trump took office. Not only is oil fetching less, companies are paying more for steel and other materials because of tariffs the president has imposed. There are signs that some companies are already pulling back. As of last week, the number of rigs drilling wells in the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. oil field, had fallen 3 percent in a month, according to Baker Hughes, an oil field service provider. That company’s customers have been putting off discretionary expenses, and spending across the industry is likely to fall this year, Baker Hughes executives said last week. “We are seeing significant downward pressure on prices and margins. In this environment, it is more important than ever to focus on what we can control,” Darren Woods, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, told analysts on Friday. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The financial results reported by Exxon, the largest U.S. oil and gas company, and Chevron reflect the market before Mr. Trump announced his latest round of tariffs. Around the same time, the oil cartel known as OPEC Plus surprised the market by saying its members would speed up plans to pump more oil. Exxon’s reported profit of $7.7 billion in the first three months of the year, down about 6 percent from a year earlier. Chevron’s first-quarter profit fell more than a third, to $3.5 billion, as the company earned less for each barrel of oil it produced. Lower margins in refining also hurt earnings. Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said months ago that it would spend less in 2025, and it as not changed its annual production or capital spending forecasts since. But the company said that it would pare its spending on share buybacks in the second quarter, compared with the first three months of the year. “We’re comfortable with where we are right now,” Eimear Bonner, the company’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “We’ve navigated cycles before. We know what to do.” Editors’ Picks Is Whole Milk Propaganda? What About Gracie Abrams? Kristen Stewart Thinks the Critics at Cannes Are Being Too Nice A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Chevron’s stock price was up around 2 percent Friday afternoon, roughly in line with the broader market, which gained on a report that showed the U.S. economy added more jobs in April than analysts had expected. Exxon’s share price was little changed. The question for many energy companies is how long oil prices will remain around $60 a barrel or less. If they slip to $50, domestic production could fall roughly 8 percent in a year, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. The United States is the world’s largest oil producer. Companies are cutting costs where they can as they wait for greater clarity on U.S. trade policy, said Joseph Esteves, chief executive of Maine Pointe, a consulting firm that specializes in operations and supply chain issues. “It’s getting to the point of no rock unturned, no couch cushion unexplored,” Mr. Esteves said. Mr. Woods said lower commodity prices could make other companies attractive acquisition targets for Exxon, which last year bought Pioneer Natural Resources for around $60 billion. “We want to make sure that we’re taking advantage of any of the opportunities that we see out there,” he said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Ms. Bonner said Chevron was experiencing a “limited direct impact” from tariffs. The company has been working to mitigate the effects by buying supplies such as steel locally, she said. Chevron estimated that the cost of wells in the United States would change by 1 percent because of tariffs. Chevron faces a deadline of late May to wind down activity in Venezuela after Mr. Trump took steps to reverse a Biden-era policy that allowed more oil to be produced in the country. The new rules are already having an effect. The company has been unable to load oil onto ships to be exported to the United States from Venezuela because of changes to its license, executives said. “The barrels are flowing, they’re just not flowing to the U.S. today,” Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive, told analysts.

Vermont made history last year when it enacted the country’s first climate superfund law. It’s designed to let the state recover money from fossil fuel companies to help pay the rising costs of climate change. If the law can survive intensifying legal challenges, that is. On Thursday, the Justice Department filed federal lawsuits against Vermont and New York, the only other state to have enacted a climate superfund law, arguing that the measures were “a brazen attempt to grab power from the federal government” and force others to pay for the states’ infrastructure spending. Hours later, West Virginia’s attorney general, John B. McCuskey, announced that he was leading another challenge to Vermont’s law, saying the measure would “fine America’s coal, oil and natural gas suppliers into oblivion.” Mr. McCuskey had already filed a similar lawsuit against New York’s law, which seeks $75 billion from oil and gas companies over the next 25 years. On Thursday, he said Vermont’s version might be “even more dangerous” because it has no monetary cap. He and 23 other attorneys general are seeking to join a lawsuit filed late last year by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, in federal court in Vermont. West Virginia is a major producer of natural gas and coal. Its complaint argues that the activities of fossil-fuel companies are legal and that “Vermont seeks to have its cake and eat it too, by both reaping the benefits of affordable and reliable fuel, yet penalizing the entities that help produce such fuel.” The climate superfund laws are modeled on the federal Superfund program to clean up hazardous waste sites. Under that program, which has been in existence for decades, old waste dumps or contaminated industrial sites are cleaned up and the companies that contributed to the contamination must help pay the cleanup bill. The new climate superfund laws are based on the fact that the burning of fossil fuels, which produces planet-warming carbon dioxide and other gases, is the main driver of climate change. So the laws allow states to seek money from fossil fuel producers to help cover the costs of global warming. Similar bills are gaining momentum in several other states, including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Patrick Parenteau, an environmental law expert at Vermont Law and Graduate School, called the Justice Department cases “virtue signaling” and said he expected them to be dismissed. In the Chamber of Commerce lawsuit, he expects the state to argue that the lawsuit is premature, since officials are still in the midst of deciding how to apply the law, and that the chamber has no standing to sue since it is not directly affected by the measure. Julie Moore, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, who is named in both filings, said her office was reviewing the details of the cases. She added that the Justice Department action was “not unexpected” given President Trump’s April 8 executive order, “Protecting American Energy From State Overreach.” That order specifically cited the new Vermont and New York laws, calling them akin to extortion and saying they threaten the country’s economic and national security. Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who is named in the Justice Department lawsuit, said Thursday that the climate superfund law “ensures that those who contributed to the climate crisis help pay for the damage they caused.” Meghan Greenfield, an environmental lawyer who previously worked at the Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency and is now a partner at the firm Jenner & Block, said legal challenges to such a novel law were inevitable. Some of the arguments being used against the measures are also new and untested in this context, like one about “equal sovereignty” between states, which is the idea that they should be treated uniformly by the federal government, she said. “It’s kind of hard to predict how it all will go, because we’re looking at different layers here, a new kind of law, and new kinds of challenges against that law,” she said. She said she expected further challenges to more traditional state climate laws as well, such as New York and California measures that specify how much of a state’s power supply should come from clean energy.