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Here’s what happened on Wednesday.

Published

10 months ago

May 1, 2025

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.

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Iran and the US lean into gunboat diplomacy as nuclear talks hang in balance

Published

3 hours ago

February 19, 2026

Press Room

Iran and the US lean into gunboat diplomacy as nuclear talks hang in balance

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran and the United States leaned into gunboat diplomacy Thursday as nuclear talks between the nations hung in the balance, with Tehran holding drills with Russia and the Americans bringing another aircraft carrier closer to the Mideast.

The Iranian drill and the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea underscore the tensions between the nations. Iran earlier this week also launched a drill that involved live-fire in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow opening of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes.

The movements of additional American warships and airplanes don’t guarantee a U.S. strike on Iran — but it does give President Donald Trump the ability to carry out one should he choose to do so. He’s so far held off on striking Iran after setting red lines over the killing of peaceful protesters and Tehran holding mass executions, while reengaging Tehran in nuclear talks earlier disrupted by the Iran-Israel war in June.

“Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website, seeking to pressure the United Kingdom over its plans to settle the future of the Chagos Islands with Mauritius.

Meanwhile, Iran struggles with unrest at home following its crackdown on protests, with mourners now holding ceremonies honoring their dead 40 days after their killing by security forces. Some of the gatherings have included anti-government cries, despite threats from authorities.

Iran holds drill with Russia

The drill Thursday saw Iranian forces and Russian sailors conduct operations in the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported. The drill will be aimed at “upgrading operational coordination as well as exchange of military experiences,” IRNA added.

China had joined the “Security Belt” drill in previous years, but there was no acknowledgment it participated in this round. In recent days, a vessel that appeared to be a Steregushchiy-class Russian corvette had been seen at a military port in the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas.

Iran also issued a rocket-fire warning to pilots in the region, suggesting they planned to launch anti-ship missiles in the exercise.

Meanwhile, tracking data showed the Ford off the coast of Morocco in the Atlantic Ocean midday Wednesday, meaning the carrier could transit through Gibraltar and potentially station in the eastern Mediterranean with its supporting guided-missile destroyers.

Having the carrier there could allow American forces to have extra aircraft and anti-missile power to potentially protect Israel and Jordan should a conflict break out with Iran. The U.S. similarly placed warships there during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip to protect against Iranian fire.

Anti-government chants made at mourning ceremonies

Mourning ceremonies for those killed by security forces in the protests last month also have increased. Iranians traditionally mark the death of a loved one 40 days after the loss. Both witnesses and social media videos showed memorials taking place at Tehran’s massive Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. Some memorials included people chanting against Iran’s theocracy while singing nationalistic songs.

The demonstrations began Dec. 28 at Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar, initially over the collapse of Iran’s currency, the rial, then spread across the country. Tensions exploded on Jan. 8, with demonstrations called for by Iran’s exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi.

Iran’s government has offered only one death toll for the violence, with 3,117 people killed. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous rounds of unrest in Iran, puts the death toll at over 7,000 killed, with many more feared dead.

___

Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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Zuckerberg grilled about Meta’s strategy to target ‘teens’ and ‘tweens’

Published

15 hours ago

February 18, 2026

Press Room

Zuckerberg grilled about Meta’s strategy to target ‘teens’ and ‘tweens’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives at the Los Angeles Superior Court ahead of the social media trial tasked to determine whether social media giants deliberately designed their platforms to be addictive to children on Feb. 18, 2026. Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify Wednesday.

Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

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Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was clearly getting testy.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” said the tech billionaire. “I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying,” Zuckerberg responded. “You’re mischaracterizing what I’m saying,” he shot back.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify Wednesday in a major lawsuit against social media companies that claims their products are defective and harmful to children.

The executive was testifying on Wednesday before a jury in Los Angeles in a marquee social media trial accusing Meta of deliberately designing features of Instagram to addict children, and the legal team for the family suing was intent on showing that Zuckerberg’s fingerprints were all over the company’s big decisions.

Mark Lanier, a Texas trial lawyer and pastor with a folksy courtroom demeanor, directed Zuckerberg’s attention to a 2020 internal Meta document showing that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to keep coming back to Facebook, compared to older users. Instagram’s minimum age for signing up is 13.

“People who join Facebook at 11 years old? Lanier asked Zuckerberg. “I thought y’all didn’t have any of those?”

Lanier then went over Meta internal documents highlighting goals to increase the time 10-year-olds spend on Instagram.

“I don’t remember the context of this email from more than ten years ago,” Zuckerberg said. “I think the way we should build things is to build useful services for people to connect with their family and friends and learn about the world.”

One 2018 internal Meta document stated “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens,” Lanier pointed out, saying that undercut Meta’s own policies.

The legal team representing the plaintiff, a 20-year-old California woman known in court documents as “Kaley,” attempted to demonstrate that the top-down goal of Meta has always been to encourage users to get on their platforms as young as possible, and once there, to figure out ways to keep them around. Often features like “beauty filters,” made the app more alluring, Lanier argued.

When the company hired experts who affirmed that such appearance-enhancing filters contributed to body-image issues among young girls, Zuckerberg would not dispense with the filters tools, calling getting rid of them was “paternalistic.”

Under questioning in court, the billionaire Facebook founder responded: “What we allowed was letting people use those filters if they wanted but deciding not to recommend them to people,” he said. “So that was the balance we came to to let people express themselves the way they want.”

Kaley, who’s also identified as KGM in court documents, often used these filters, which her lawsuit says contributed to body dysmorphia and other mental health issues.

Had Zuckerberg looked at Kaley’s Instagram posts before the trial, Lanier asked? His staff had shown him some, he responded.

Files are brought inside the Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb 18, 2026 as part of a major trial involving Meta and Google over whether their products harm young people.

Jill Connelly/Getty Images

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Jill Connelly/Getty Images

That’s when Lanier, who is known for orchestrating spectacles at trial, had five lawyers unspool a roughly 20-foot collage of hundreds of photos that Kaley posted to Instagram. Lanier implored Zuckerberg to dwell on the posts. Other observers in the room, including the media, were not able to see the photos.

When it was time for Meta’s lawyer to ask Zuckerberg questions, he emphasized that the company does not have an incentive for people to have harmful experiences on its services.

“From a business perspective, people think if we maximize the amount of attention people spend, that that’s good for us,” Zuckerberg said. “But if people feel like they’re not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?”

Keeping users safe, especially teen users, has always been a priority, Zuckerberg said.

“Questions about well-being I consider part of this for sure,” he said. “If you build a community and people don’t feel safe, that’s not sustainable and eventually people go and join another community.”

1,600 other plaintiffs

The appearance of Zuckerberg, the star witness of the trial, came in the second week of what’s expected to be a six-week proceeding. Other tech executives, social media specialists, addiction experts and others have also testified.

Kaley, the plaintiff, is expected to deliver the most emotional testimony later in the trial. Her lawsuit claims she began using social media at age 6, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Snap. After becoming hooked on the platforms, she said her body image issues, depression and suicidal thoughts worsened. The suit points to features like beauty filters, infinite scroll and auto-play as being tantamount to a “digital casino.” Evidence of the harms of these features were concealed from the public, the lawsuit says.

Julianna Arnold, whose daughter died from fentanyl she bought from someone on Instagram, talks about watching Mark Zuckerberg testify outside the Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb. 18, 2026.

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In response, Meta and Google, which owns YouTube, have said the accusations over-simplify the complexity of adolescent mental health issues. The companies argue social media use does not directly cause young people to be mentally unwell, so they should not be held legally liable for a user’s mental health struggles.

Kaley’s legal team called expert witnesses who described multiple studies linking regular social media use with worsening depression, anxiety and body image issues.

The jury will determine to what degree social media platforms should be held legally culpable for plaintiff Kaley’s struggles. The trial is a bellwether case tied to 1,600 similar suits filed by families and school districts. How the jury decides is expected to influence settlement talks in all those pending cases.

While debates about social media addiction have raged for decades, it has taken until now for a major trial on the issue to unfold largely due to a federal legal shield that has protected Silicon Valley. A law known as Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has allowed tech companies to fend off lawsuits over what users post to their sites. Social media firms have also won legal battles, including a key Supreme Court case, that have found how companies curate content on platforms is a type of protected free speech.

Despite these protections, the plaintiff’s lawyers in the Los Angeles case found a way to legally attack tech giants: by treating social media apps as unsafe products, viewing Instagram, YouTube and other services as defective under product liability law. The argument is that tech companies deliberately designed social media sites as harmful and dismissed internal warnings that the services could be problematic for teenagers.

The jury will ultimately have to assess Zuckerberg’s credibility, which was under attack on Wednesday.

Lanier, Kaley’s lawyer, brought up an internal document showing how Meta communications staffers have pushed Zuckerberg to portray himself as more “human” and “relatable,” and “empathetic, and less “fake,” and “corporate,” and “cheesy.”

When questioned about his performance in various other public settings, whether in courtrooms or before Congress, Zuckerberg showed some humility.

He said: “I think I’m known to actually be pretty bad at this,” which drew some laughter from the courtroom.

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What Trump’s Latest East Wing Designs Show

Published

1 day ago

February 18, 2026

Press Room

What Trump’s Latest East Wing Designs Show

President Trump’s latest plans for the East Wing ballroom reveal new details and a few notable changes from earlier designs.

The White House submitted the final plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, ahead of a March 5 meeting, where a board controlled by Trump allies is expected to approve the project.

One pediment, not two

Source: Shalom Baranes Associates.

In an earlier design released by Shalom Baranes — the new architect hired by Mr. Trump in December — the east and south porticoes each had a triangular pediment. The one on the south portico has been removed in the latest plan.

But the pediment on the east portico (not shown in the view above) remains and its height is about four feet taller than the roof of the executive residence. Critics have said the design would dwarf the existing White House.

Changed windows and doorways

Source: Shalom Baranes Associates.

The number of arched windows facing west on the ballroom level has increased to nine from eight.

In addition, the first floor windows have been redesigned, with more doorways leading to the new East Wing garden.

A new garden

These are the first renderings that include details about a garden that would replace the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which was demolished with the old East Wing.

Sources: Nearmap (2025 aerial image); Shalom Baranes Associates.

Renderings show a grand staircase from the new East Colonnade to the garden. Stone-paved paths connect the garden to the first floor of the new East Wing.

According to the plans, the new garden is larger than the old one, and will include a circular brick area and trees replanted from the old garden. The fountain from the old garden will also be brought back.

Asymmetrical pathway

To accommodate the massive size of the proposed East Wing, the main pathway around the South Lawn has been altered and is no longer symmetrical, renderings show.

Sources: Nearmap (2025 aerial image); Shalom Baranes Associates.

The final designs submitted last week have the same overall footprint as the plans from January, making clear Mr. Trump has rejected calls to make the building smaller.

The architects said last month that the White House was considering adding a “modest one-story addition” to the West Colonnade, to “restore a sense of symmetry to the original central pavilion.”