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Here’s what happened on Wednesday.
President Trump took office 101 days ago after a campaign in which voters bought his argument that he could skillfully manage the economy and that his policy prescriptions could both bolster growth and eradicate inflation.
So the news on Wednesday that the nation’s gross domestic product had contracted in the first three months of the year was a sharp political jolt as well as a blinking economic warning.
It came at the end of a quarter in which stock prices were down sharply, Wall Street’s worst performance at the start of a new presidential term since Gerald R. Ford tried to steer the country out of scandal and inflation 51 years ago. And it only added to the widespread uncertainty among businesses and consumers about what the rest of the year might hold as Mr. Trump pursues a trade war that is already choking off supply chains and threatening to push prices up and lead to shortages of critical components and products on shelves.
It is too soon to predict where the American economy is headed for the rest of the year, and Mr. Trump remains insistent that he will produce a flurry of trade deals that will bring manufacturing back to the United States and usher in a new age of prosperity.
But the first-quarter figures brought the political risks for him into focus. For Mr. Trump, what is at stake is a question of fundamental competence on an issue that he has always used to define himself.
If the report proves to be a harbinger of an extended slowdown or recession, the situation could become the economic analog of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s fumbled withdrawal from Afghanistan four years ago this summer. Mr. Biden’s job approval ratings never recovered from that early debacle. Nothing he did later — not the millions of jobs created, not the big legislative victories, not the rapid response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — could restore the sense among voters that he could be trusted to carry out the job with the skill they assumed he brought to it.
Mr. Trump stood in the Rose Garden on April 2, what he called “liberation day,” and rolled out a broad and punitive set of tariffs on trading partners. He has promised that other countries will come begging for a deal to roll back those levies and other tariffs he has imposed.
A substantial number of Americans appear skeptical. In a New York Times/Siena College poll last week, 55 percent disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy, with 43 percent approving. About half of voters disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of trade.
Some of Mr. Trump’s economic advisers now recognize that the timing and execution of his tariff announcements could prove to be colossal mistakes, even if they applaud the underlying strategy. That is why, every few days, they are announcing new exceptions, most recently to relieve the pain for American carmakers.
“On April 2, standing in arguably the most powerful place in the world, President Trump thought he was projecting American strength,” said Matthew P. Goodman, who runs the geoeconomics center at the Council on Foreign Relations and served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “But he discovered that trade is complicated, that you need to be more surgical, and he has had to tack back from that ever since.”
Mr. Trump, the billionaire real estate investor, has acknowledged that his strategy will bring some temporary pain to Americans, but seemed to argue on Wednesday that it would hardly be noticed by ordinary Americans, at least at toy stores.
“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?” he said. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Whatever the cost of a Barbie, Mr. Trump is facing a fundamental timing problem. It will take years for the huge investments he predicts will flow into the United States to unfold and bring about the industrial renaissance he has promised. Building the most cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication plant, for example, can easily take five years.
“Those chips, those beautiful chips, make those suckers in the U.S.A.,” Mr. Trump said in the White House on Wednesday as he addressed executives and called out how much each had committed to spending on new facilities in the country.
It is too early to know how quickly those investments will take off, including Apple’s commitment, hailed again by Mr. Trump on Wednesday, to invest $500 billion, including a chunk of its manufacturing capability, in the United States over the next four years.
But the economic pain of the tariffs could start within months, with upward pressure on prices and shortages of both industrial and consumer products made abroad.
Much of Mr. Trump’s political problem lies in that disconnect. For many of the products Americans will be paying more for — especially Chinese-made products — there is no American alternative. And for many more, producing them in the United States may make no sense.
For all his downplaying of economic concerns, Mr. Trump is clearly sensitive to the prospect of being blamed for rising prices. When reports began to circulate this week that an Amazon subsidiary was thinking about posting the tariffs customers would be paying on every product, Mr. Trump called Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, to complain.
Giving consumers a breakdown of how much tariffs are costing them, the White House said, would be a “hostile and political act.” Amazon quickly said it had never fully approved the plan, and that it would not go into effect.
But many business leaders are rattled by the environment, saying they have no way of projecting their earnings for the second quarter because the economic environment has never been more opaque.
“I keep telling them not to underestimate Donald Trump,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, the anti-tax advocacy group whose members almost unanimously cheered Mr. Trump’s return to office.
Mr. McIntosh said he is optimistic that Mr. Trump will be successful at negotiating down tariffs with Western-style democracies that rank among America’s biggest trading partners. “I run into a lot of executives who ask, ‘OK, how does Donald Trump do this?’ And my answer is to wrap their minds around ‘The Art of the Deal,’ that he is negotiator in chief.”
The way to calm the markets now, he said, is to “get Congress to get the tax cut bill done,” and to extend the tax cuts Mr. Trump got enacted in his first term.
Mr. McIntosh is pressing to expand that tax cut, specifically by permitting businesses to write off the cost of building new production facilities immediately, rather than depreciate those costs over decades.
Mr. Trump may score some early wins. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday that “we are very close on India.” He added that South Korea was “sending its A-team” to negotiate and that a deal was also possible soon with Japan. Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, had called him the day before and said “‘Let’s make a deal.’”
Perhaps so, but Mr. Carney also had this to say on Tuesday after winning the Canadian election: “Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades, is over.”
Mr. Carney has vowed to reduce Canada’s dependence on its huge neighbor, no easy assignment since bilateral trade amounts to about a fifth of the country’s economy. China, the most powerful player in Mr. Trump’s trade wars, has been pursuing a similar strategy. And its leader, Xi Jinping, has every incentive to make the next few months as politically painful for Mr. Trump as possible.
Mr. Xi has largely maintained radio silence since Mr. Trump announced an escalating set of tariffs on Chinese goods, settling at 145 percent after several angry moves and countermoves with Beijing. That rate is so high that it essentially freezes trade; already there are reports of freighters loaded with goods that are being turned around, so that importers do not have to pay those tariffs.
Mr. Trump’s bet is that Mr. Xi will blink first because the pain for the Chinese economy will be so great that he will have to strike an accommodation that will, over time, allow the United States to get back to something approaching normal. Mr. Xi is betting the opposite: that Mr. Trump has overreached, and can’t withstand bad G.D.P. numbers, rising inflation or plummeting polls.
Only one of them is right.
The announcer’s voice broke the silence that had fallen over the racetrack: “Here comes Spunky!”
As a white, fluffy object, supposed to look like a hare, shot past the starting box, a line of eight greyhounds burst out, a blur of canine energy rocketing down the straightaway.
Such races were once a familiar sight across the country, as bettors flocked to tracks in 19 states, from Florida to Massachusetts to California. At its height, in the 1980s and early 1990s, dog racing drew tens of millions of spectators, routinely posting higher yearly attendance figures than hockey or tennis. Spectator bets totaled roughly $3.5 billion every year.
But today only two dog tracks remain, down from more than 60. Both are in West Virginia, the only state where commercial races still take place. Attendance has waned as pressure from animal rights groups led many states to ban dog tracks and as the legalization of sports betting nationwide gave people a bounty of new gambling options.
Now a bill is making its way through Congress that would ban dog racing altogether. Fans and critics agree that the sport is on its final lap.
“I know at some point, it’s going to end,” said Ronald Welch, who was sitting at a picnic table last month at the track in Wheeling, W.Va. “But still I’d be heartbroken if it did.”
Public sentiment about greyhound racing had already started shifting by the early 2000s, due in part to the efforts of Carey Theil and Christine Dorchak.
Through their Boston-based nonprofit, GREY2K USA Worldwide, the couple has led lobbying to end dog racing over concerns about animal welfare.
The industry has faced criticism for killing dogs that could no longer race, though many of the documented cases took place before adoption programs became common in the 2000s. Critics also draw attention to confined living spaces in the kennels where most of the dogs live, along with reports of performance enhancing drugs, and diets of low-quality meat.
The New York Times reached out to five kennels associated with the Wheeling racetrack. They did not respond or declined to comment.
The efforts by GREY2K and other organizations have yielded changes, with 44 states banning greyhound racing. When voters in Florida, once a stronghold, approved a ban in 2018, it was a gut punch to the industry.
“We’ve been in the endgame phase since,” Mr. Theil said.
But in West Virginia, a law passed nearly two decades ago has made it harder to land the final blow. In an effort to keep gamblers from taking their betting dollars to neighboring Pennsylvania, which had just legalized slot machines, West Virginia in 2007 said casinos could sweeten the pot by offering table games — so long as they also were operating a track with live racing.
It also diverts a percentage of slot machine and table game revenue to a fund that pays race purses. This provision comes out to roughly $15 million to $22 million a year, accounting for about 95 percent of payouts.
“Without the subsidy, this industry wouldn’t exist,” Mr. Theil said.
A 2017 state bill would have allowed the casinos to operate without a live track, and done away with the subsidy. In a sign that support was fading even in West Virginia, it passed in both the state House and Senate. But then-Gov. Jim Justice vetoed it, saying “eliminating support for the greyhounds is a job killer.”
Mr. Theil has focused on rebutting assertions that the industry benefits the local economy. This year, a study by Ball State University commissioned by GREY2K found that apart from providing minimal low-paying jobs, the industry was buoyed almost entirely by the subsidy and provided nearly nonexistent economic benefit.
The concerns have made their way to Capitol Hill, where a bill being considered by Congress could spell the end of greyhound racing. The Greyhound Protection Act would make it illegal to train or possess greyhounds for racing and to bet on the races in-person or via simulcast.
The legislation was incorporated into the Farm Bill, a huge legislative package, which reauthorizes major food and agriculture programs roughly once every five years. The Farm Bill, which totals $390 billion in proposed spending, passed the House in April and is awaiting a Senate vote.
The act now looks like GREY2K’s best bet.
“Greyhound racing is going to end in the United States,” Mr. Theil said. “The real question is how.”
One hour southwest of Pittsburgh, the Wheeling Island Hotel, Casino & Racetrack sits at the southern tip of the most populated isle in the Ohio River. “The Island,” as locals called it, was once the home of wealthy industrialist families. Now, it is lined with dilapidated Victorian houses and beset by flooding and opioids.
But it is still home to the racetrack, which has welcomed locals and out-of-staters from Ohio, Pennsylvania and even Canada, since 1937.
In the 1940s, when horses raced there, the track was nicknamed “Little Churchill Downs,” after the storied Kentucky venue. The track transitioned to greyhounds in the 1970s.
Nearly 40 years ago, Delaware North, a food service and hospitality company based in Buffalo, purchased the track and added a full casino. Now, the course stages around 500 races a year.
In-person attendance is down about 60 percent over the last decade, according to Delaware North. But many of those who still come are fiercely loyal.
With the third race of the day about to begin, Donna and Dennis Kennedy lounged at a table in the betting area overlooking the track.
The couple, both former teachers from Bridgeport, Ohio, often hit the track together. It wasn’t always that way; for years, she refused to join her husband because of concerns about the dogs’ welfare.
“I’m an animal person,” she said.
But when the track was raffling off a free car, Ms. Kennedy couldn’t resist. “The first thing I did was march up to the adoption center,” she said, referring to a spot at the track where people can take in retired racing dogs. She ended up volunteering for a decade and adopting four dogs of her own.
Mr. Kennedy, 84, had the likeness of one of them, Fancy, inked on his forearm two years ago. It was his first and only tattoo. “If those were my dogs, I’m not going to allow anyone to abuse it because that’s an investment — and we love them,” he said.
Chuck Galloway has been betting at the track since greyhounds started racing there in 1976. On the small screen in front of him, race lineups showed dogs with names like Gonz Megatron, Loyal Duck, Bulldozer Mozer and Venus.
The races are simulcast so patrons in other states and countries can bet remotely — about 95 percent of bets placed on Wheeling races are made this way.
But even with lots of the bets coming from elsewhere, there’s a certain camaraderie at the track, Mr. Galloway said. He likened it to his time campaigning for Barack Obama. “I got to know people that I never would have crossed paths with,” he said.
Several track patrons pointed to what they said was a double standard — horse racing, a sport with a blue-blood pedigree, can still capture a mass audience, while dog racing is on the verge of extinction.
Mr. Welch, 60, the man who was sitting at the picnic table, had a theory.
“Horse racing is like apple pie. Like baseball, the Wild West,” he said. “But the dogs, they aren’t part of that American mystique.”
Mr. Welch grew up attending races in Iowa before the state banned the sport. In need of an anchor in his life after his mother passed away, he moved to Wheeling to live near the track.
“When I see them run,” he said, “it’s a spiritual experience.”
In downtown Wheeling, many people seemed to have at least a tangential connection to the racetrack — an uncle who trained dogs, a friend who worked there one summer. But not everyone knew that greyhound racing’s days could be coming to an end. Some said they were ready to see it go.
Outside Coleman’s Fish Market, Mitchell Visnic, 40, was adamant about his distaste for any animal-related sport. “I don’t even like the zoo,” he said.
Others were disappointed but not surprised. Michael Mudrak, 42, who was sitting nearby on his lunch break, said it was emblematic.
“Take another thing away from West Virginia,” he said.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Lyndsey Sickler, one of Pittsburgh Pride organizers.
Hannah Frances Johansson
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Hannah Frances Johansson
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Pride celebrations across the country continue to lose out on large sponsorships as corporations, a key source of funding, shrink their affiliation with diversity causes and LGBTQ+ events.
Corporate sponsorships of celebrations in several cities, including New York City, Salt Lake City, Louisville, St. Louis, Orlando, and Pittsburgh are down from previous years, organizers said.
Jordan Braxton, co-president of the United States Association of Prides, which supports Pride celebrations nationwide, said that while some smaller Prides have seen a growth in sponsorships, a majority have seen a reduction.
She said the Trump administration’s dismantling of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, has scared corporations away from sponsoring Pride celebrations. “I think that’s why some of the corporations have pulled back, because they don’t want that government scrutiny,” she said.
In his first days in office in 2025, Trump issued presidential actions targeting DEI within the federal government and encouraging the private sector to end what the administration considers “illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”
In Pittsburgh, Pride organizers are trying to make up for lost sponsorships in time for their festival and parade in early June.
“It takes a lot of money to do this,” said Dena Stanley, director of Pittsburgh Pride. “Permittings costs, security costs, headliners costs, staging costs, cleaning crew costs, insurance costs, all of these are expenses.”
Pittsburgh Pride organizers think it will secure 30-40% of the sponsorship dollars they were able to fundraise a few years ago.
To narrow the gap, the group said they received a state grant and solicited individual donations.
Dena Stanley, director of Pittsburgh Pride.
Hannah Frances Johansson.
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Hannah Frances Johansson.
E Ciszek, who researches advertising and public relations at The University of Texas at Austin, said the downturn in corporate sponsorships is happening amid a movement against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and the “attack on trans rights, in particular.”
“I think this is not just a matter of budget cuts, right?” Ciszek said. “It’s important to take a step back and see this more as a moment of risk, a moment of political pressure, and looking really at the limits of corporate allyship, particularly when LGBTQ visibility has become really politically costly.”
Corporations, she said, are calculating the risk of public support for Pride, which could expose them to litigation, political retaliation or consumer boycotts.
“What once was [an] organizational asset, has now become an organizational risk,” Ciszek said.
Lyndsey Sickler, another Pittsburgh Pride organizer, described Pride celebrations as empowering for LGBTQ+ people who live in communities where they feel scrutinized for their identity.
For some people, it’s their first time being in, “a space that is actively, loudly celebrating everything that is us,” Sickler said. “Nothing else matters at that point.”
Less sponsorship money can also impact year-round events and resources for the LGBTQ+ community.
“People sometimes look at Pride festivals just as a big party, which they are, but they’re also resource fairs, job fairs, and we also use it as a fundraising event,” said Braxton of the United States Association of Prides.
In Florida, Tampa Pride announced a one-year hiatus after a slew of corporations dropped their sponsorships, said Carrie West, who ran the organization.
“All of a sudden, bingo. Here you have no money, no grant money, no supporting money, to make operations, to plan, to get any kind of anything,” he said. “Oh my gosh, it was, it’s devastating.”
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