This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. In the hours before President Trump abruptly dialed back his sweeping reciprocal tariffs, Senator Jacky Rosen led her Democratic colleagues in sending a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, warning about the tariffs' impact on small businesses. Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, was re-elected to her second term last November, even as Trump won the state for the first time. She talked to TIME about how the tariffs will be felt back home, why Nevada is a bellwether for national trends, and why Sen. Cory Booker's filibuster-style speech was so important. What do you think will be the implication of these tariffs? Really what they are is a national sales tax. What all of this comes down to is, where does everyone manage their lives from? The kitchen table. Everywhere I went, I heard about the price of food. Well, I can tell you that food is going to go through the roof. The price of gas, the price of affordable housing, all the things that go into building a home or apartment, every little nail and insulation and lumber—all of that. So everybody is gonna get squeezed. And of course Nevada, we're going to get double squeezed, because when people are uncertain about their future or how they're going to pay for things, do you think they go on vacation? They do not. We've already seen a reduction in visitors from Canada. We've seen a 70% drop. My friends, my community, my state: We're gonna get hit with the higher prices and lower tourism, and we're gonna get squeezed from both ends. And that's gonna hurt our businesses. You won re-election last year in Nevada, a state Trump won after losing it in the previous two presidential elections. What went wrong for Democrats there, and what did you do differently? Nevada is the most working-class battleground state. We are a pragmatically purple state. Independent-minded people look for pragmatic problem solvers. It's why I won. Hardworking families are hurting from the high cost of living. They wanted change. At the national level, I think Democrats have done a poor job talking to working-class voters and addressing the issues that they care about most. We saw pretty significant losses in 2024 with working-class voters, particularly in our Latino communities, our Asian communities, and those were the key places that I actually overperformed on the ticket. Voters want a leader who's going to listen and going to stand up to the corporate special interests. Can you be more specific? What were you doing that Kamala Harris wasn't? I think that I focused on specifics. Go back to the kitchen table. What's the first thing people think about? They have to buy food. In Nevada, they have two primary grocery store chains: Kroger and Albertsons. They wanted to merge. Now what does that mean? In some of our rural communities, they were the only two stores in town. So if they merge, you think they're going to keep both stores? Certainly not. That means they're going to lose jobs. And then what else does it mean? Well, there's only one store in town, do you think they're gonna lower the prices? Certainly not. And so we blocked that Kroger-Albertsons merger, which meant a lot to Nevada. We have an affordable housing crisis. Particularly in Southern Nevada, we have these corporations who come buy up homes and apartments. So we have legislation trying to block those corporate investors from price-gouging folks. We ran TV ads on both of those issues. I talked about it everywhere. I think too many Democrats in D.C. just spent time trying to convince people that maybe inflation wasn't as bad in America as other places, or that they were doing better than they actually were doing. And that's not how people were feeling. And it made our party, I think, seem out of touch. Do the Democrats have a plan to counter Trump? What is it? The losses in the last election and Trump winning, it was a little shocking to everyone. And it's no secret that we're in the minority in Congress and the levers are few and limited. It hasn't even been 100 days. I think we're starting to find our footing now of what the levers are that we can pull here. I think a real turning point was Cory Booker's speech. I think a lot of people went into it thinking, who's gonna tune in at 2 in the morning, it's just another speech. I will tell you by the end of it, all of the Democrats came that last hour, and there were tears, and clapping, like this emotional response. Then we go into all of those Hands Off demonstrations. And people started calling us saying, 'You guys all stood up. You used your voice. We aren't powerless, we're gonna use ours." I didn't expect it to be such a powerful moment. The tears and applause were coming out in this cathartic moment of, 'We may not have all the legislative tools, but we are not powerless. Now let's get to work." It was kind of a call to action. I think I feel kind of a renewed purpose.

It’s been a volatile few days for the stock market since President Donald Trump’s April 2 announcement of 10% baseline tariffs on all imported goods, as well as additional import taxes on 60 countries. On April 9, Trump went on to pause most of his tariffs for three months, while keeping in place the 10% baseline and significantly increasing the tax on imports from China. The stock market immediately surged after Trump announced his “90-day pause.” The S&P 500 rocketed more than 9% Wednesday afternoon, though the Thursday saw a return to extreme volatility as the Dow dropped 1,900 points and the S&P 500 dipped 5%. Hours before he announced the pause, as stocks were still in negative territory over an intensifying trade war, Trump posted messages on his social media platform, Truth Social, that seemed to be addressed to investors. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” the President wrote, signing off with his initials “DJT,” which also serve as the stock symbol for his company, Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. It was noticeable that Trump signed the post with his initials—something he does not always do. Trump Media and Technology Group saw its stocks shoot up nearly 22% after the announcement of the tariff reversal on Wednesday and they were up a further 5% in pre-market trading early Thursday morning. Lawmakers have made accusations of “insider trading” Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, called on Wednesday for an investigation into Trump’s “great time to buy” post, flagging it as potential proof of insider trading or stock market manipulation. “Family meme coins and all the rest of it are not beyond insider trading or enriching themselves. I hope to find out soon,” Schiff told TIME. (Trump previously received criticism over the launching of his Trump meme coins in January.) According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), market manipulation is when “someone artificially affects the supply or demand for a security,” which can include spreading false information or rigging quotes, prices, or trades to make it look like there is more demand. Insider trading, on the other hand, is described as “buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, on the basis of material, nonpublic information about the security.” A classic example of this would be if someone privy to information that would change a volatile stock market let their close family or friends know, so that they could either sell or buy stocks in the hopes of turning a profit. Schiff and other Democrats in Congress argue that the timing of Trump’s post raises “legal and ethic concerns,” and that Trump should make clear who knew about his tariff reversal decision before he announced it, and if any of those people let others know about Trump’s decision. When asked about the timing of his decision to pause most tariffs, and when he had settled on that, Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he had been considering it “for a period of time." He explained: “I wouldn’t say this morning. Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it… I think it probably came together early this morning.” A letter sent to Trump's White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Jamieson Greer, Acting Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, on Thursday by Schiff and Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, addressed a number of concerns. They called for a review of “any communications between White House and executive branch agency employees… and external parties, including financial institutions, brokers, dealers… that may have included non-public information.” As a Senator, Schiff can investigate these claims, but lacks the subpoena power that a Congressional committee might employ in such an investigation. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, also spoke out, calling for all members of Congress to disclose any stocks they had bought in the past 24 hours. “I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor,” she wrote on X on Wednesday night. “Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things. It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.” In Schiff’s letter of inquiry, he singles out Elon Musk, who's played a high-profile role in the Trump Administration through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “[Stock] in Elon Musk’s company, Tesla, increased 18% immediately following the President’s announcement to pause most tariffs, which Mr. Musk had publicly opposed,” Schiff wrote. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said on Thursday that House Democrats will be launching investigations into “possible stock manipulation.” What are experts saying about the “insider trading” accusations leveled at Trump? Karen Woody, professor of law at Washington and Lee School of Law, says that an investigation into whether the President or others in his circle engaged in insider trading or other illegal financial transactions is “valid.” “This isn't a witch hunt, where it seems like allegations that have come out of thin air. This is a pretty clear example of what we would say is some potential of real market manipulation by someone who has the ability to move the markets,” Woody says. Typically, the next steps, according to Woody, would be for the SEC to investigate these accusations, “given that [the SEC] is sort of the market watchdog.” However, Adam Pritchard, law professor at the University of Michigan, says that Trump’s Truth Social post itself was “pretty clearly not insider trading,” unless there is evidence that Trump himself was trading or providing more detailed information to others privately. “If he [the President] says things, you know, to Donald [Trump] Jr, and then Donald Jr. goes and trades on those things, when he was the only one who heard about it, then we've got an issue, right?” he says. “But when [Trump] says things at a press conference or on social media, then, no, it's not insider trading.” Insider trading law can make violations of it difficult to identify, says Kevin Douglas, an assistant law professor at Michigan State University, who notes there are no federal statutes that explicitly prohibit insider trading and current case law doesn't provide a road map. “The Stock Act, which prohibits the President and federal employees from trading on non-public information, defines non-public information in a way that keeps the law fatally ambiguous,” Douglas tells TIME in an emailed statement, highlighting how the lack of a clear definition can complicate matters. Woody notes that the situation around Trump's tariff pause is particularly murky, as the same key players are involved across the board. “This is an instance where you have the creators of the crisis, then those who are able to either throw fuel on the fire or try to douse it all, being the same people,” Woody says. “These [Trump] tariff policies are what created this market crash. And then [with] the stroke of—not even the pen, but [Trump’s social media post]—you can fix that. Of course people who know about that are able to take a significant advantage.”

After two years of doing their own back-breaking yard work on their acre-and-a-half property in Cold Spring, N.Y., Renata Kero and her husband were ready to finally give in and spend a few thousand dollars to hire a landscaping company. Then they started re-thinking the purchase, given the uncertainty roiling the economy. Tariffs are being levied and reversed. The federal government is cutting jobs across the country. The stock market is historically volatile. It seemed like any kind of big expenditure was not a good idea. “It feels like the Wild, Wild West every time you open the news,” says Kero, a 45-year-old freelance journalist with a 5-year-old son. "I feel a very real sense of instability and volatility, like who knows what economic pitfalls await us." Families and businesses across the U.S. are pulling back on spending amid President Trump’s trade war and abrupt reversals, including Wednesday’s announcement that he would pause the sweeping reciprocal tariffs he announced just days earlier, while ratcheting up levies against China even higher. As an index that measures economic policy uncertainty spikes, consumer confidence fell for the third straight month in March; it’s down more than 30% from November, according to the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers. Consumer spending fell for the first time in two years in January. Businesses are worrying, too. Delta CEO Ed Bastian said Wednesday that because of “broad economic uncertainty around global trade,” revenue might fall in the current quarter. Bastian predicted a recession might come soon, echoing the words of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. FedEx lowered its full-year profits and revenue forecasts on March 20, citing “weakness and uncertainty” in the economy. And Warner Bros. Discovery has reportedly advised staff to cancel all “non-business critical” travel due to economic uncertainty. Small-business optimism declined in March, according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which also said its uncertainty index decreased. New policies have “heightened the level of uncertainty among small business owners,” NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg said in a release. “Small business owners have scaled back expectations on sales growth as they better understand how these rearrangements might impact them.” Uncertainty makes businesses uncomfortable because they don’t know what conditions they will be operating in. Once economic trends and policies are clear, they can adjust. But if those policies keep changing, they can’t respond or plan, so they reduce spending and avoid making major moves until conditions stabilize. Consumers pull back amid uncertainty too, putting off big purchases because they don’t know if they’ll have a job, how mortgage rates will respond to whiplashing policy decisions out of Washington, or what their investment portfolio will look like in a few months. When consumers and companies pull back on spending, GDP turns negative, which leads to a recession. Uncertainty causes “precautionary reductions in spending because of the lack of clarity and difficulty in terms of forecasting where we're going,” says Laura Jackson Young, an economics professor at Bentley University who has studied the economic effects of uncertainty. Trump’s moves have created a moment of acute uncertainty, and Young’s research suggests that makes people and businesses even more cautious. Her work found that when uncertainty is already high, people pay even more attention to “uncertainty shocks”—big changes that cloud the horizon even further. “When everything's okay and we're in tranquil times when nothing's really outlandish, people don't pay as much attention to that uncertain component,” she says. “Whereas in an environment where uncertainty is already pretty high, we're very attentive to something that's going to spike uncertainty, and it has a more pronounced effect.” Businesses are feeling this profoundly. TJ Semanchin runs Wonderstate Coffee, a small coffee roaster in southwest Wisconsin. Semanchin started the year optimistic about the business—he’d just won a prestigious award from a coffee roasting magazine, and hoped to increase sales at his retail locations as well as chains across the country, including Whole Foods, where he sells his product. Now he’s rethinking everything. Coffee prices are already near all-time highs because of climate conditions, and then the beans he imports from countries like Nicaragua were going to be slapped with tariffs so high that his costs would amount to about $20,000 more per shipping container, Semanchin says. Even though Trump has now paused those higher tariffs for 90 days, Semanchin’s worries remain. He’s put off plans to buy a new packaging machine, and is reducing investment for now until the uncertainty clears. “The climate we’re in definitely has me in a more defensive posture,” he says. When businesses and families move into the same defensive posture, it can push the economy into a recession. And when seemingly each day brings sharp new policy shifts, economists—let alone individuals trying to plan household budgets—can’t be sure what to think. The tariff reversal “does very little to resolve the uncertainty,” says Philip Luck, director of the Economics Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. The tariffs might have been “bananas,” he says, but no one can really predict whether they’ll return after 90 days—or even before then. Because of this uncertainty, Kero and her husband decided that they’d once again do their own yard work this year, no matter how miserable it is. She’s not buying a new phone either, even though it’s on its last legs. Summer travel is now out of the question. “We just need to sock away as much as we can,” she says.

When Preston High School in the Bronx announced in February that it was closing, it seemed to many that it was just another in a long list of urban Catholic schools that lacked the money and enrollment to survive. Not even this girls’ school with a famous alumna (Jennifer Lopez, class of 1987) seemed immune to a trend that has shuttered scores of parochial schools in the last few decades. But to Preston alumnae, current students and their families and some staff, something seemed off. Preston was not like those other schools. It was financially sound, and enrollment was close to 100 percent of the target number of roughly 370 students. What’s more, it has a powerful and organized group of former students that has refused to accept the explanation for the closure given by the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, the Roman Catholic religious order that owns the school. Now Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has been drawn into the fray.Ms. James presided over a boisterous public hearing on Tuesday to investigate the murky circumstances around the decision to close Preston at the end of this school year. A crowd of about 500 people packed the large auditorium at Lehman, another Bronx high school, delivering hours of testimony along with loud cheers and numerous standing ovations. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This is a call to action for other schools and other folks who find themselves in similar positions to get organized and start preparing,” Jackeline Stewart-Hawkins, Preston class of 2002, said in an interview. Ms. Stewart-Hawkins is part of a wide-ranging effort by graduates, staff, families of students and elected officials to keep the school open. Amanda Farías, the majority leader of the New York City Council, who graduated from Preston High School in 2007, was one of the people who urged Ms. James to step in. In an interview last week, Ms. Farías called the school a “cornerstone of the community” and said she was mystified by the decision to close it, given its relatively solid financial standing and high enrollment. She accused the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, which owns the two buildings that house the school, of not being transparent. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “They either don’t want to keep educating young women of color in the Bronx, despite the school being one of the places that has successfully done that and created people like me,” Ms. Farías said, “or they just want to completely eliminate their arm in the education space and don’t want to leave a legacy behind them.”She also spoke at the hearing, along with Vanessa Gibson, the Bronx borough president, and Kristy Marmorato, the City Council member whose district includes the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx that is Preston’s home. They all condemned the closure. Ms. James, who has the authority to ask the courts to take action, appeared sympathetic and promised a “thorough analysis” of the case. Her office is authorized to look into how nonprofit organizations like Preston conduct business. “We want to make sure every requirement was followed,” Ms. James said. The Sisters of the Divine Compassion did not have a representative at the hearing but submitted a letter that was read into the record. The order said in a statement on Wednesday that it had listened to all the speakers and would cooperate with the attorney general’s inquiry. With an average age of 83, its members say they can no longer govern the school or be landlords, and that they need to prepare for retirement. In a video released to explain the decision, several of the organization’s representatives said that the school’s enrollment, although steady now, is 34 percent lower than in 2012 and that the buildings are old and in need of expensive repairs. They criticized what they called a misinformation campaign and said that they had been “betrayed” by school administrators since the decision was made. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I would have hoped that somehow the Preston community would be better dealing with it than they are,” Sister Susan Becker said in the video. In its letter to the school community, the group also cited financial instability and “changing demographics,” a phrase that was brought up repeatedly at Tuesday’s hearing. “The demographics have changed,” said Jennifer Connolly, the school’s principal, a vocal opponent of the closure who received a standing ovation when she was introduced. “I don’t know why that’s a bad thing.” Shortly after the decision to close was announced, The Bronx Times reported that the Bally’s Foundation offered $8.5 million to the Sisters of the Divine Compassion for the two buildings and offered to allow the high school to remain with rent of $1 per year on a 25-year lease. The foundation is the charitable arm of the gambling company that seeks a casino license in New York. The order rejected the offer with little explanation. Many Preston alumnae wonder whether the order received a better offer that requires the building to be delivered vacant. “That’s conjecture,” said Andrea Donkor, who graduated from Preston in 1999 and is a former member of its board of trustees. “But we cannot make sense of it otherwise.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In a statement to The New York Times, the Sisters of the Divine Compassion said that in their negotiations, despite the promise of a 25-year lease, Bally’s would not commit to long-term operating support for the school. “Bally’s was also unwilling to commit that the property would continue to be used as a school,” the statement continued, “or that Bally’s would not seek to monetize the property in the future.” Soo Kim, the chairman of Bally’s, disputed that assertion and said in an interview that the offer still stands, and it also includes an option for the school to buy back the buildings at any point at the same price, adjusted for inflation. He added that as long as Bally’s has its golf course in Throgs Neck, “the school will still exist.” “It’s a part of our company’s philosophy to reinvest in the communities,” Mr. Kim said. “We don’t know why they rejected the offer.” The Sisters of the Divine Compassion (also known as the Religious of the Divine Compassion, or R.D.C.) was founded in 1886 to care for and educate underprivileged children; it opened the school in 1947. Ms. Donkor and her sister, Crystal Donkor, are two former students who helped, along with Ms. Stewart-Hawkins and others, form Preston Forever, a group of graduates fighting the closure. Like Councilwoman Farías, they credit their Preston education and the Sisters of the Divine Compassion with instilling in them the independence, leadership skills and curiosity that motivated them to take action. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Preston was the foundation for my trajectory to be the woman that I am today,” said Crystal Donkor, an English professor at Southern Methodist University.Their cause was boosted recently when John McCarrick, a lawyer whose wife and cousins attended Preston, submitted a brief to the attorney general. He said he was approached almost three years ago by two of the Sisters of the Divine Compassion — “rebel nuns,” as he called them — who he said were unhappy about the organization’s process of pulling away from the school. His brief asserts that the organization is illegally breaking its lease agreement with the school. “The notion that they somehow have the right to monetize this property because it’s valuable real estate sits wrong with me,” Mr. McCarrick said.

Prosecutors on Thursday filed felony charges against 12 pro-Palestinian protesters — all but one of them a current or former student at Stanford University — for breaking into administration offices in June and causing extensive damage. The charges were among the most severe levied against participants in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. More than 3,000 people were arrested at college protests and encampments in the spring of 2024, but they generally faced misdemeanor charges or saw their charges dropped. Jeff Rosen, the district attorney for Santa Clara County, which includes the Stanford campus, charged the 12 protesters with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. They face up to three years and eight months in prison, as well as the payment of restitution to reimburse the university for the damage. Stanford is one of dozens of schools being investigated by the Trump administration for how they have handled pro-Palestinian protests and whether they have done enough to combat antisemitism on campus. The administration has also revoked the visas of several Stanford students and recent graduates, though the reason is unclear. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Rosen said that President Trump’s intense focus on Stanford and other universities played no role in the decision to charge the crimes as felonies. “What the federal administration is doing is what they’re doing. What I’m doing is applying the California Penal Code,” Mr. Rosen said. Mr. Rosen said he was swayed by the extent of the damage caused by protesters and what he characterized as deep, coordinated planning before the building was taken over. “Whenever you have multiple people working together to commit a crime, it’s much more dangerous to the public,” he said. That the actions were intended to highlight the group’s opposition to the war in Gaza made no difference, he added. “Speech is protected by the First Amendment,” he said. “Vandalism is prosecuted under the Penal Code.” Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On June 5, police arrested 13 people in connection with breaking into the office of the Stanford president early that morning and barricading themselves inside. They made several demands, including that the university trustees vote on whether to divest from companies that support Israel’s military. They were cleared out of the building and arrested within a few hours, but not before they had broken windows and furniture, disabled security cameras and splashed fake blood inside the building, Mr. Rosen said. Mr. Rosen did not file charges against one of the 13 individuals, a student reporter for The Stanford Daily newspaper who was covering the protest, but not participating in it. Journalists and press freedom groups had demanded for months that Mr. Rosen decline to pursue charges against the student, Dilan Gohill, who was held in jail for 15 hours after his arrest, according to his lawyers. Mr. Rosen said that his office undertook a deliberate, methodical investigation before determining that 12 of those arrested should be charged but that Mr. Gohill should not be. He announced in March there would be no charges for Mr. Gohill. Mr. Rosen said the 12 protesters attempted to hide their communication, including the deletion from their phones of the Signal messaging app, through which they had exchanged messages shortly before their arrests. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT He said his investigators were able to “work around” the protesters’ attempts to conceal their planning and found they had surveilled the building; studied the patterns of local police officers and security guards; and assigned themselves specific tasks, such as who would break the window and who would use a crowbar to pry open the door. The protesters carried backpacks that were recovered in the barricaded building and contained hammers, chisels, screwdrivers and goggles, according to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office. Tony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, Hunter Taylor-Black, said that he was upset that Mr. Rosen took more than 10 months to file his charges. Ms. Taylor-Black, a 25-year-old Stanford film student, and other protesters had already completed their suspensions from the university and were beginning to put their lives back together, Mr. Brass said. “The voice of student protest is an important voice in American history — always has been,” Mr. Brass said. “Everyone accepts there will be consequences for actions, and so did the protesters. But there was no need for adding this delay. Let them move on with their lives.” The other 11 protesters either could not be reached or did not respond to requests for comment. On the same morning as the protest, red graffiti appeared on the sandstone walls of the university’s main quad that condemned the police, Stanford, Israel and the United States. Phrases included “Pigs Taste Best Dead” and “Death to Israehell.” Mr. Rosen said he declined to file hate crime charges because his office could not prove that the 12 protesters were responsible for those messages. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Dee Mostofi, a spokeswoman for Stanford, said on Thursday that the university respected Mr. Rosen’s charging decisions. The university had separately levied its own sanctions on the protesters who were current students, including suspensions that lasted two quarters, a delay in degree conferrals and community service hours. Mr. Rosen said he did not want to see the 12 Stanford protesters serve prison time. Instead, he said, he would like them to plead guilty and to join the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s work program, in which they would clean highways or government buildings. “This is kind of biblical,” he said. “You trashed a building, so your punishment should be cleaning things up.” Felony charges for pro-Palestinian protests on campus have occurred in at least several instances elsewhere over the past year. Michigan’s attorney general brought felony charges against seven protesters at the University of Michigan, accusing them of resisting police officers who were breaking up an encampment in May 2024. Those cases are still pending. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, 11 people were charged with felony vandalism in February, a few months after they were accused of smearing red paint over buildings and a statue, causing $400,000 in damage. At the University of Rochester in New York, four students were charged with felony criminal mischief after putting up “Wanted” posters with photos of university community members, including some Jewish officials, in November. The university’s president condemned the posters as antisemitic. The severity of the charges stemmed from the cost of the damage caused by the posters, which were stuck to chalkboards and walls with “Super Glue or a similarly strong and durable adhesive,” according to court documents. The charges are still pending. Safa Robinson, a lawyer in Rochester who represents one of the students, said it was not unusual to see criminal mischief charged as a felony, since by law the seriousness is dictated by the cost of damage done. What is unusual, she said, is to see such a charge brought against student protesters. “In a college environment, a lot of times posters are plastered all over the wall — frats, sororities, bake sales, elections, all that kind of stuff,” Ms. Robinson said in an interview. “I think that because these posters touched on a sensitive topic or had a certain type of view, that they’re being treated in this kind of way.”

As stocks gyrate in response to President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs, the world is understandably focused on the immediate chaos affecting the global economy. Yet over the past few months a number of signals have pointed to a far more profound disruption on the horizon: the growing economic cost of climate change. In a recent report about the rising demand for air-conditioning, Morgan Stanley casually observed that the planet was all but certain to blow past the goal of limiting the global average temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, a threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement. The company’s “base case,” the report said, was that the world was moving toward a temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius. That forecast, once thought of as extreme, is now becoming commonplace. The United Nations’ Emissions Gap report for 2024 said that the world was likely to warm 3.1 degrees Celsius over the course of this century without efforts to rapidly reduce emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast that without drastic action temperatures will be even higher than that by the end of the century. A constant challenge when talking about global warming is appreciating that little numbers — a rise in temperatures by just a single degree, for example — represent utterly profound changes. Which is why it’s worth pausing to consider what scientists have said about what the world would look like if average global temperatures rose 3 degrees Celsius, and what it will cost. A planet transformed At 3ºC of warming, rising seas are likely to inundate many coastal cities, including metropolises like Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Miami and Osaka, Japan. A litany of other problems, including extreme weather, unrelenting heat waves, the proliferation of insect-borne diseases, widespread species extinction and declines in crop yields, would also get worse. It’s impossible to know the actual cost of all these disruptions. Yet as the prospect of more intense warming becomes more likely, some estimates are beginning to emerge. By 2049, costs from the effects of climate change could total more than $38 trillion annually, according to a paper by scholars at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In the United States alone, climate change is expected to wipe away $1.47 trillion in value from real estate around the country by 2055, according to a February report from First Street, which models climate risk. Just in New York City, more than 80,000 homes could be lost to floods in the next 15 years, my colleagues Mihir Zaveri and Hilary Howard reported this week. Beyond the immediate losses inflicted by severe weather and flooding, a decline in output is likely as crops fail and extreme heat strains supply chains. Researchers at ETH Zurich recently calculated that in a world that has warmed 3ºC, global gross domestic product is likely to fall by an average of 10 percent, with poorer countries hardest hit.

Phoenix hit a scorching 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, notching the city’s first triple-digit temperature of 2025 nearly a month before it typically reaches that high. And it’s far from alone: An area across the Southwest from Southern California through the Central and Northern Plains is expected to have temperatures spike between 10 and 30 degrees above average this week. This rise in temperatures is being driven by a huge high pressure system that has settled across much of the western United States. Acting like a lid on the atmosphere, it traps heat near the ground and keeps clouds and rain away, resulting in a large supply of sunshine that allows temperatures to soar. “That area between Los Angeles all the way to Phoenix is where you’ll see your well-above-normal temperatures,” said Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. Phoenix is known for its sweltering summers, but on average it reaches its first 100-degree day on May 2. But it’s already been a warm spring for Phoenix, which hit a record-breaking 99 degrees on March 25. This week, the Weather Service expects the intense heat to linger, with temperatures remaining at or above 100 degrees through Saturday, and some daily record highs most likely being broken, too. On Friday, Phoenix is forecast to reach 102 degrees, and 100 is expected again on Saturday. The Phoenix office of the Weather Service has warned of a moderate heat risk for lower desert communities, saying that the extreme heat could lead to heat-related illnesses, especially among vulnerable people. The experts have advised local residents to stay hydrated, limit their time outdoors during the afternoon, wear lightweight and light-colored clothing, and to check on older neighbors, children and pets. ‘Spring is flexing its muscle.’ The Weather Service said highs in the 70s, 80s and 90s were expected through Saturday across the Southwest, and into the 90s and 100s across portions of the Southern Plains. At the same time, much of the eastern United States is experiencing a stark contrast, with cool, wet and stormy weather, driven by a different system moving southward. “Spring is flexing its muscle,” Mr. Kleebauer said. “You have a period, usually around mid-to-late March and it carries through maybe even most of April, where both winter and spring are kind of fighting back.” He added that while this pattern wasn’t unusual for spring, the strength of the divide between east and west, and the early occurrence of the extreme heat in the Southwest were “definitely an anomaly.” The risk of wildfires is also expected to go up this weekend in the Southwest. The Storm Prediction Center’s fire weather outlook warns that strong winds and dry conditions, driven by a system moving through the northern Rockies and into the Dakotas, could increase the risk of wildfires for much of the Desert Southwest. Some relief is on the horizon starting Sunday, when temperatures are expected to ease into the upper 80s or low 90s. “These well-above-normal temperatures across the Southwest into the Southern Plains will kind of linger all the way through Sunday,” Mr. Kleebauer said. “And then things start to finally cool down a bit in those areas as we head into early next week.”

Calvin Sun was a healthy 37-year-old when a full-body MRI scan showed a cyst in his kidney. Sun saw a urologist who was cautiously optimistic that it wasn’t cancerous and offered him a surgery appointment several weeks away to inspect the kidney and operate if necessary. “I was like, how about tomorrow?” Sun recalls. As an ER doctor, Sun is used to decisive problem-solving. It’s the “right mindset” for undergoing a whole-body MRI, he says. “You have to be willing to take 100% responsibility for the consequences, good and bad.” Advertisement Instead of traditional scans, like CTs or MRIs of a specific part of the body, full-body MRI scans require just an hour to image you from head-to-toe. Celebrities and influencers are holding them up as a pillar of preventive health to catch problems early on, wherever they’re hiding—before they become hard-to-treat diseases. Dwyane Wade, for example, recently credited a whole-body MRI with alerting him to an early-stage kidney cancer. However, most medical experts are more wary. “The odds that you’re going to be hurt are higher than the odds you’re going to be helped,” says Dr. Matthew Davenport, professor of urology and radiology at the University of Michigan. Here’s what to know about this relatively new technology—both its promise and shortcomings.

Climate change is bad news for a lot of reasons—the droughts, the floods, the heat, the hurricanes. And then, too, there’s all the sneezing. If you suffer from hay fever—or allergic rhinitis (AR)—and have found your symptoms growing worse in recent years, you’re not alone. Increasingly, health care professionals are concluding that as global heat increases so too do allergy symptoms. In industrialized countries, hay fever diagnoses are rising by 2% to 3% per year, costing billions of dollars in health care and lost productivity. Spring pollen season, which typically begins in late February or early March and ends in early summer, is now arriving as much as 20 days early in North America. Now, a new study in the journal The Laryngoscope has taken a deep dive into the research surrounding the link and has found that not only is it a real phenomenon, it’s been going on at least since the turn of the millennium. The study is what’s known as a scoping review of the literature, one that takes the measure of the body of papers published on a particular topic in a particular time frame and seeks to come away with an idea of what the emerging consensus is on the science. To do this, the authors of the current work sought to survey all of the available studies that addressed the link between climate change and allergies. More specifically, they zoomed in to focus on studies published from 2000 to 2023 that explored the precise climatological mechanisms that would cause global warming to exacerbate hay fever symptoms and which also measured how a warming world affects the length and severity of hay fever season. Only 30 met these exacting standards. “We were very specific in our inclusion and exclusion criteria,” says Alisha Pershad, a third-year medical student at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the corresponding author of the new study. “By minimizing variability in our included studies, we were able to improve the strength of our conclusions.” Those conclusions revealed a lot. A little over half of the studies Pershad and her colleagues looked at reported longer pollen seasons or higher pollen concentrations—or both—linked to climate change. One projected that pollen emissions in the U.S, would increase by 16% to 40% by the turn of the century and that the average length of pollen season would increase by 19 days beyond the already-observed 20-day increase. Five of the studies found that that lengthening will continue to occur at the beginning of the season. In Europe, projections showed a probable increase in Ambrosia—or ragweed pollen—also linked to rising temperatures. Individual studies deepened the link between climate and hay fever. One 2021 paper out of Australia reported that daily maximum temperature, higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, and the grass pollen index were all higher from 2016 to 2020 than they were from 1994 to 1999, pointing to a causal link running straight from CO2 to pollen. A European study from 2017 modeled projected increased growth in allergenic plants from 2041 to 2060 and predicted that the population of people allergic to ragweed would increase from 33 million to 77 million across the continent in that same time window, as plant coverage encroached into more and more communities. Meanwhile, a 2025 study from China found that pediatric outpatient visits for AR were on the rise, consistent with an increase in peak pollen concentrations. As one 2025 study not covered in the current paper pointed out, children are “particularly vulnerable to these airborne particles due to their higher ventilation per unit of body weight, more frequent mouth breathing, and outdoor activities.” The papers in the survey also looked at the mechanism that links climate change to increases in hay fever. A pair of studies both in the wild and in the lab showed that greater humidity and higher levels of carbon dioxide—which is a known growth and reproductive stimulator of plants—increase the dispersal of allergenic pollen, while an increase in precipitation effectively washes out the air, bringing pollen levels down. Another study focused specifically on the mold allergen Aspergillus and found that it thrives under present carbon dioxide concentrations compared to lower pre-industrial levels. Not everyone suffers equally from the current trends. As with so many other things, race, income, age, and zip code play a role in the severity and epidemiology of hay fever symptoms, with Black and Hispanic communities, seniors, and lower-income populations being hit worse. Cities, with lower concentrations of trees, weeds, and flowering plants, nonetheless are associated with worsening hay fever symptoms too, due to higher temperatures and the griddle effect of concrete and asphalt, producing the urban heat island phenomenon. “Communities historically impacted by environmental inequities such as red-lining tend to live in regions that experience warmer daytime temperatures,” says Pershad. Allergenic mold discriminates demographically too. “[Mold] is especially a concern for lower income communities that may not have the resources to address the water damage to their home as quickly as necessary to avoid mold growth,” Pershad adds. “Global warming is exacerbating weather extremes such as hurricanes and flooding, which increase the risk of mold growth, a common environmental allergen.” Health care providers are tracking these changes. One 2022 study out of Italy found that 56% of pulmonologists agree that pollen season appears to start earlier and last longer, 45% have observed an increase in their AR patient population, and 61% are seeing an increase in cases among children particularly. Fully 97% of doctors surveyed reported that they wanted to learn more about the impact of climate change on hay fever incidence. “Physicians are uniquely positioned to witness the impact of allergic rhinitis on patient outcomes and can adapt their practice as climate change intensifies,” said Pershad in a statement accompanying the release of the study. “As trusted voices in the community, they should leverage their frontline experience to advocate for meaningful change in addressing the climate crisis.”

With hours to go until the U.S. raises tariffs on goods imported from dozens of countries—including a 104% tax on Chinese imports—world leaders were still scrambling Tuesday to understand President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy and reach the right people in the Administration to secure an exemption. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Congress on Tuesday that “nearly 50” countries have approached him to address Trump’s blanket of new tariffs. Argentina, Vietnam and Israel have “suggested they will reduce their tariffs and non-tariffs barriers,” Greer said in testimony to the Senate Finance Committee. But Trump isn’t budging anytime soon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. Trump is open to talking to countries on a case-by-case basis, she told reporters, but those negotiations wouldn’t stop the across-the-board 10% tariff on all imports that went into effect over the weekend. Higher tariff rates targeting dozens of countries are set to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. That includes a 104% tariff on China, the top supplier of U.S. imports. "Trump has a spine of steel. He will not break. America will not break under his leadership,” Leavitt said. Administration officials continued to stress the prospect of the U.S. making new “deals” with other countries, but the timeline for such negotiations were murky. Leavitt confirmed that Trump insists on putting himself at the center of the negotiations, and is willing to consider offers unrelated to trade in exchange for reducing U.S. tariffs, including having countries cover the costs of hosting U.S. military troops and other foreign policy objectives.. "All options are on the table for each country but again these are going to be tailor-made deals,” Leavitt said. During his visit to the Oval Office on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to remove Israel’s trade barriers. “Israel’s proactive approach should serve as a model for the rest of the world,” Leavitt said. The U.S. tariff on Israel is still set to increase to 17%. Trump’s approval ratings have declined in recent weeks, as dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy has risen. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found his approval rating was at 43% last week, 4 points lower than when he took office in late January. A Wall Street Journal poll published Friday found that 54% of voters opposed Trump’s tariff plans. In his testimony to Congress on Tuesday, Greer, Trump’s top trade negotiator, said the new tariffs are an effort to move the U.S. economy toward producing “real goods and services.” and less dependent on the financial sector and government spending. Greer acknowledged that the country was in the midst of a dramatic shift. “It is a moment of drastic, overdue change, but I am confident the American people will rise to the occasion as they have done before,” Greer said.