Is the U.S. Heading Into a Recession Amid Trump’s Tariffs? ‘Liberation Day’ Fallout Sparks Fresh Fears

On April 2, President Donald Trump held his long-promised “Liberation Day,” during which he took to the Rose Garden of the White House and announced a vast swath of tariffs that he will be implementing. 

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Trump’s “Liberation Day” moves saw the introduction of a 10% tariff on all imported goods, and additional import taxes—of varying degrees—placed on 60 other countries.

The U.S. and global markets have already started to feel the impact of Trump’s tariffs, with the U.S. stock market taking the worst hit thus far. The Wall Street slump and global dip in stocks have sparked fresh fears in economists and concerns as to whether the U.S. is heading into a recession.

In the aftermath of the tariffs, the U.S. dollar fell to a six-month low against the EURO, falling along with U.S. bond yields.

Read More: Trump Announces Sweeping Tariffs in Bid to Reshape U.S. Economy and World Order

Felix Tintelnot, economics professor at Duke University, says that though tariffs are meant to stimulate economic growth and production in the U.S., the uncertainty generated from the Trump Administration’s tariff delays and changes has had the opposite effect.

“Looking back over the last few weeks, we have had so many revisions to past tariff proposals that it’s really difficult to tell for decision-makers in the industry what the tariff policy will be in the next couple of months, and then the rational response to that is to delay investment,” Tintelnot says, remarking that people are expecting even further changes. “If everyone does that, then you’re generating a recession.”

Here’s what you need to know about the fresh recession fears amid Trump’s highly controversial tariffs. 

What tariffs did Trump announce on April 2?

Trump had initially publicized his tariffs as “reciprocal tariffs”—meaning taxes on other countries equal to the existing tariffs foreign countries have set against American goods.

However, the tariffs announced on Trump’s “Liberation Day” were not, in fact, reciprocally calculated but instead were calculated based on countries’ U.S. trade deficit levels. Countries with which the United States have a higher trade deficit received a higher tariff.

In addition to this, the math used by the Trump Administration to come up with these tariffs also factored in each country’s exports to the U.S.

Per an Axios breakdown: “The formula is to divide the U.S. trade deficit with each country by that country’s exports to the U.S. The final reciprocal tariff was then divided by 2, with a minimum of 10% (which applies even to those countries with which the U.S. has a trade surplus).”

Tintelnot says that the logic is confusing—for example, Israel eliminated tariffs on U.S. goods on April 1, but were still hit hard by a 17% tariff in the April 2 announcement. The resounding response from the global economist community has been one of confusion about how exactly the incremental tariffs added on top of the 10% tariffs was calculated.

“It’s murky,” says Brian Bethune, professor of economics at Boston College, emphasizing his belief that the tariffs are likely to change again, adding even more “uncertainty” to trade policies.

“The fact that countries that charge zero tariffs on the U.S. have been hit with tariffs illustrates that these are not reciprocal tariffs in their true meaning,” Tintelot says, in agreement. “It is perfectly normal in an integrated global economy for a bilateral trade deficit to exist. A little introspection helps: You have a bilateral trade deficit with your grocery store, but a bilateral trade surplus with your employer. Why would you put a tariff on your local grocery store?”

Tintelnot also notes that this method of tariff calculation hits a wall because “trade deficit can change.” This only adds to the uncertainty already being expressed by businesses, and again, economists are in agreement that uncertainty is not good for recession calculations and only fuels the risk.

LIBERATION DAY RECIPROCAL TARIFFS 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ODckbUWKvO

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 2, 2025

Per analysis conducted by The Budget Lab at Yale, Trump’s April 2 tariffs are the equivalent of a rise in the effective U.S. tariff rate of 11.5 percentage points. “The average effective U.S. tariff rate after incorporating all 2025 tariffs is now 22 ½%, the highest since 1909,” per the policy research center’s data.

Read More: What Are Tariffs and Why Is Trump In Favor of Them?

Some countries, including Brazil, are seemingly intending to impose retaliatory tariffs back onto the U.S., thus raising concerns of a far-reaching trade war.

Although Canada has not been hit with the so-called reciprocal tariffs issued on April 2, the auto industry-related tariffs and others will impact Canada. In a public address on April 3, the newly-instated Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said: “Three different sets of U.S. tariffs remain in place and will continue to pose significant threats to Canadian workers and business. They are all unjustified, unwarranted, and in our judgement, misguided.”

Tintelnot highlights that it’s important to note how “extreme” all of Trump’s tariffs are. “There is no other industrialized country currently in the world that charges tariffs as high as those announced by the U.S.” he says.

Is the U.S. at risk of a recession? Here’s what economists are saying

According to Tintelnot, recession indicators have risen as the impact of Trump’s tariffs take hold.

As of this morning, Dow Jones reportedly plunged 1,500 points, the broader S&P 500 index was 4% lower, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq sank more than 4%.

Bethune says Americans are already concerned about a possible U.S. recession, pointing to the drop in consumer sentiment seen over the past couple of months. In March, a University of Michigan survey showed a significant drop in consumer sentiment as respondents cited tariff whiplash and policy uncertainty. 

“[Consumers] are not even going to the grocery store and paying more for vegetables because there’s none available from Mexico, or going to Whole Foods, for example, and finding the big sections of fresh fruit are being shut down. They haven’t really felt the full impact [yet], and they’re already saying something isn’t right,” Bethune says.

However, while some economists, including Tintelnot, are more cautious in their discussion about a possible recession, Bethune says it’s “inevitable.” The question, he says, is just how long until it happens and for how long will it occur? He sees Trump’s admission of there being “some pain” on the horizon as only proof of the inevitability.

“At least they [the Trump Administration] are not pretending that it’s not disruptive, but they’re basically soft-selling it, reflecting their ignorance about the way business operates,” Bethune claims.

What has Trump said about the tariffs and mounting recession fears?

Trump has addressed recession fears in the lead-up to these tariffs over the course of the last couple of months.

After signing his memorandum announcing the reciprocal tariffs on Feb. 13, Trump spoke to reporters and said that prices “could go up somewhat” at first, but then “prices will also go down.” 

Since then, Trump has expressed the same sentiment—stating there could be “some pain” felt by consumers, but in the end it will be worth the trouble, and he believes our economy will ultimately benefit from the tariffs.

“I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said when asked if he is expecting a recession this year, during an interview with Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures on March 9. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. There are always periods of… it takes a little time. It takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us.”

During another interview on Saturday, March 29, Trump told NBC News that he “couldn’t care less” if automakers raised prices because of new moves he announced on March 26 to impose a 25% tariff on imports of automobiles and certain automobile parts. “I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars,” Trump said in response to a Wall Street Journal report that stated Trump held a call in March with automaker CEOs and threatened them with even higher tariffs if they raise prices because of the import taxes. Trump denied making such a threat. Doubling down that he “couldn’t care less,” Trump added: “If the prices on foreign cars go up, they’re going to buy American cars.”

On April 2, ahead of Trump unveiling his tariffs, the White House posted an article titled “Tariffs Work—and President Trump’s First Term Proves It,” pointing to tariffs in his first term as evidence that these new tariffs will stimulate the economy.

“Despite the rhetoric from politicians and the media, studies have repeatedly shown tariffs are an effective tool for achieving economic and strategic objectives—just as they did in President Trump’s first term,” the article reads. 

Tintelnot says, though, that these tariff announcements are unlike other tariffs in the past, pointing to how the U.S. dollar has now fallen “substantially against the Euro.”

“I think what this is indicative of is that there’s just a flight of capital and assets outside away from the U.S. in response to this policy announcement,” Tintelnot says, adding that the tariffs are much higher this time around, “meaning we are in for a bigger price shock than in 2018-2019.”

source https://time.com/7274531/trump-tariffs-is-the-us-heading-into-a-recession-stock-market-fears/

Pulse Just Doesn’t Know What to Do With Its #MeToo Storyline

Netflix is finally getting into the world of medical procedurals with Pulse, a Miami-set hospital drama from creator Zoe Robyn (The Equalizer). Like most medical shows, it’s full of intriguing cases, a host of complicated practitioners, and plenty of drama. The series opens with a school bus careening off a bridge and plunging into the water below and only gets wilder from there. While all of that is fairly typical of a hospital show, there is one element of Pulse that hits different, and doesn’t always land well: its inclusion of a #MeToo storyline that manages to be incisive, as a damning statement on how institutions fail those who come forward, and simultaneously a woefully underdeveloped exercise in schlock. Let’s try and figure it out.

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In the first episode of Pulse, all anyone can talk about is the scandal of Dr. Xander Phillips’ (Colin Woodell) suspension and the temporary promotion of Dr. Danny Simms (Willa Fitzgerald) to Chief Resident Phillips’ old job. It’s a hell of a first day in this new role for Simms—the school bus incident brings an influx of patients in urgent need, and a hurricane is on the way. Because they’re short-staffed and Phillips just finished a shift, he’s asked to stay on for the next shift, even though he’s suspended. Here’s the rub: it was Simms who reported Phillips for what’s implied to be sexual harassment, and everyone at the hospital knows it.

Phillips is far from a seedy creep who draws the ire of everyone around him. In fact, the show presents him as quite the opposite. “The guy’s a saint,” surgical resident Tom Cole (Jack Bannon) says of Phillips, and that’s a sentiment shared by most of the staff at Maguire Medical Center. He’s warm, helpful, a strong leader, and an excellent doctor.  

Read more: Netflix’s First Big Medical Procedural, Pulse, Is DOA

Throughout Pulse, flashbacks shed light on Simms and Phillips’ relationship before the complaint was filed. Given that Phillips is Simms’ superior, there’s a clear power dynamic at play. We see how Phillips is flirtatious with Simms, trying to kiss her in the hospital, which she swiftly rejects. But a first-episode cliffhanger reveals that the reason Simms rejected his advances was not because she didn’t want him, but because it happened at work—the pair are actually in a relationship, and even living together now. To turn this reveal into a twisty shock throws everything we’ve seen about Simms into question: If she’s lying about her relationship with Phillips, her entire character is called into question.

Over the season’s 10 episodes, it becomes increasingly clear that she’s not lying: Phillips used his power to pressure her into a relationship. Even though she eventually fell for him, he coerced her into something she didn’t want. While falling in love with him makes things appear like they may be improved now, it doesn’t excuse the way he abused his power at the outset. We see that he purposefully pushed against having their relationship reported to HR so he could ultimately protect himself professionally and secure what he wanted personally without consideration for her career or how she’d be perceived. The problem with this is that slyly revealing that they’re sleeping together consensually frames Simms as a villain who’s out to take down a more powerful man, which is deeply dishonest. And even if she were lying, telling a story about sexual misconduct for pure shock value is distasteful at best.

The storyline’s most effective moments come when Simms is roaming through the hallways of the hospital, only to hear people talking about her, calling her manipulative, a liar, someone willing to throw good people under the bus for her own gain. Simms never interrupts these conversations with the kind of quippy retort you’d typically hear on television. Instead, she just keeps going. If there’s one thing that’s abundantly clear about Simms, it’s that she’s extremely dedicated to her work. It’s everything to her. And she won’t waste a second admonishing people for gossiping when there’s work to do and lives to be saved. Simms has to absorb the vitriol and move on.

Read more: This Is Going to Hurt Is the Best Medical Drama in Years

There are a few people in Simms’ corner. In an Episode 7 flashback, Cass (Jessica Rothe), a senior ER nurse, finds the pair kissing, and Simms begs her not to tell anyone. Simms expresses her fears that she may be perceived as someone using a relationship to get ahead at work. But Cass sees things as they are: “Maybe I think he’s using chief to get you,” she responds, referring to Phillips’ position of power. The show understands that all women aren’t a monolith. 

At the end of the same episode, Chair of Surgery and Emergency Medicine Natalie Cruz (Justina Machado), who’s been supportive of Simms, warns her that what she’s up against will be difficult to overcome. Referring to her upcoming HR meeting, Cruz says, “I know you want it to make everything better. And I hope it does for you. But it’s complicated. And you need to know that this could also make everything a whole lot worse.” It’s not exactly the kind of pep talk you want to hear from a superior, and especially the person who’s had your back. 

But Pulse’s problem is that these words ring hollow. The entire harassment subplot is underdeveloped, taking a back seat to typical medical drama. When this pivotal moment arrives for Simms, there’s little for audiences to grasp onto. The dialogue is overly general to the point that we don’t really understand the complications Cruz is referring to. Is Simms’ job at risk? Or her reputation? Her chances of victory? There’s an earlier scene in the same episode where Phillips’ wealthy and influential mother comes to Cruz about the complaint, but even she doesn’t lay out what she wants. Everything’s only implied or suggested, as if the show is unwilling to make a direct statement regarding Simms and Phillips’ relationship. It sure seems like Phillips’ mother is suggesting Simms be fired, but we never come to understand just how powerful their family is, or how exactly they can manipulate things. The next day, Simms goes to HR ahead of the meeting and drops her complaint.

One of Simms’ justifications for her complaint against Phillips is rumors of previous sexual impropriety at his old hospital, and that those problems led him to transfer hospitals. It’s regularly teased through the season that the truth will be revealed. That mystery is solved in the final episode, wherein it’s revealed that Phillips had no claims of sexual misconduct against him. Instead, he signed an NDA because a mistake he made resulted in the death of a patient. Once again, this reads as a sensitive subject being used as a cheap plot device rather than giving it proper attention.

Perhaps the most damning aspect of the plotline is the way it handles the outcomes for each character. Its ultimate message—that even if you do the right thing and come forward, there’s nothing close to a guarantee that that choice will have a positive impact—is unfortunately often true to life. But Pulse is so unwilling to take sides, keen to instead observe that people are complex and capable of flaws. This upends the power imbalance the show is trying to critique. It purports that Simms and Phillips are equally flawed when Phillips is clearly, to this viewer at least, in the wrong.

The end of Season 1 is surprisingly upbeat, despite Phillips getting what he wants, while Simms faces a major setback in what matters most to her. Yet it’s played off as some sort of victory for Simms, as she floats in the ocean, happy and free. Free from the relationship that brought her so much unpleasantness—and yes, so much love—for the last year. But her career, her number one focus, has taken a hit, and it’s all because she tried to advocate for herself in a system designed to maintain the status quo at all costs, even the human ones.

The first season of Pulse is interested in the ways lies can spread and how rumors percolate throughout a work environment. Once they are thrown into the world, they linger and fester in ways impossible to predict. It’s not inherently problematic to be invested in the gray areas of workplace relationships; not everything in life is black and white, and the show is true to that. But Pulse is so stuck in the gray that it’s unwilling to make definitive statements about its characters’ behavior. Pulse spends so much time in the gray that it ends up entirely lacking in color.

source https://time.com/7274510/pulse-netflix-danny-simms-xander-phillips-metoo/

Here Are the REAL ID Requirements You Need to Meet Before the Deadline in May

Following years of extensions, the REAL ID deadline is now fast approaching, leaving many U.S. citizens and residents rushing to book appointments to update their state identification cards.

The REAL ID Act, passed in 2005, places new regulations on the type of identification cards that will be accepted if a person wants to board a domestic flight or enter certain federal buildings. REAL ID cards are marked with a star to show compliance with the law.

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The Department of Homeland Security last extended the REAL ID deadline in December 2022, pushing back the full enforcement date and giving people two more years to obtain this type of identification card. But prior to then, the deadline had also been extended during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many times over.

Here’s what to know about the REAL ID requirements to make sure you are prepared.

When is the REAL ID deadline?

Beginning May 7, U.S. residents will need to present a REAL ID to board any domestic flight, or access a federal facility. Travelers can also present a valid passport, passport card, or Enhanced Driver’s License. Other forms of valid identification are listed on the TSA site.

Ahead of the looming deadline, some states have introduced efforts to meet the rush in demand of people attempting to obtain their REAL IDs. On March 4, New Jersey announced the start of REAL ID Thursday,” which added thousands of appointment slots for REAL ID upgrades.

“Over the last few months, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in demand for REAL ID from our customers, and we’ve repeatedly added and reallocated appointments to better meet that demand,” the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (NJMVC) acting chief administrator Latrecia Littles-Floyd said in a press release. “The new initiative announced today will expand access further, helping to service more customers who need or want to get a REAL ID. If you have a passport or another federally accepted ID, you may continue to use it to meet federal REAL ID requirements, or until you are able to obtain a REAL ID driver license or ID at a convenient time.”

What are the REAL ID requirements?

In order to obtain a REAL ID, applicants must visit their local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office and present a number of valid documents that verify their address and full legal name. The documents will also help officials verify a person’s lawful status in the U.S.

The eligible documents may change on a state-by-state basis, so residents should verify their REAL ID requirements on their state’s DMV site.

Generally, in order to meet said requirements, applicants must present a primary document, which includes: a valid U.S. passport, U.S. birth certificate, U.S. Consular Report of Birth Abroad, American Indian card, or Permanent resident card. Certain states, such as New Jersey, also allow people to present alternative documents including their current photo employment authorization card, un-expired foreign passport with a valid visa, and certificate of naturalization. 

Applicants need to verify their Social Security number. The REAL ID Modernization Act and DMV policy says that individuals do not have to provide their Social Security card to verify their number, but it can still be presented as part of their identity verification. A W-2 tax form or pay stub that lists the Social Security number may be presented at some state DMVs.

Residents must also bring two proofs of address. Applicants can usually comply with this requirement by bringing a credit or debit card statement and a utility bill.

States may have additional requirements on the documents residents need to provide.

Residents should ensure that they book appointments directly on their DMV site or by calling the DMV offices directly, and avoid using any third-party means amid reports of DMV scalpers. To book an appointment at your local DMV online, you can visit the path to REAL ID readiness map on the Department of Homeland Security site, and click on the state you reside in for contact details and further information.

source https://time.com/7274450/real-id-requirements-what-to-do-deadline-may/

Val Kilmer Made It Look Easy, Even When It Wasn’t

The key to Val Kilmer’s appeal may lie in the performance he gave in a film many think of as a throwaway, Joel Schumacher’s shiny, intentionally kitschy, and absurdly entertaining Batman Forever, from 1995. Kilmer was inheriting the Batman mask from Michael Keaton, who’d worn it, beautifully, in a duo of earlier films. This new Batman movie didn’t have the gravitas of the earlier ones. But behind that mask, which obscures roughly half of any face that’s behind it, Kilmer had turned up the wattage on his sense of humor, and irony, to supersonic levels. He was both laid-back and wound up. Kilmer later said he hated making the movie, but good performances generally have little to do with the experience an actor had in shaping them. In playing Batman, and Bruce Wayne, Kilmer committed to self-serious ridiculousness with understated gusto. You might think the role would be beneath a Juilliard-trained actor—admitted at 17, he was at the time one of the youngest students accepted to the school’s acting program. But Kilmer, who died at 65 on April 1, was wholly comfortable in that sweet spot where ego and commitment intertwine. He made even lowly or silly roles worthy of him.

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Kilmer had a reputation for being difficult, or at least just eccentric, but his quirks were enmeshed with his talent. He cared about his craft, but never to the point of overacting; he could be intense, but also intensely poetic, which is why moviegoers who grew up with him might feel his loss keenly, even if, for much of the 2000s, he’d played only supporting or less-flashy roles. In 2014, he was treated for throat cancer; he recovered, and could still speak, but needed to re-learn how to shape words. But even during stretches where he was more or less absent from the scene, he wasn’t the kind of performer who’d completely drop out of cultural consciousness. Every once in a while you’d come across a great Kilmer performance from the ’90s and be reminded how easy he always made it look, as if his carefully honed gifts were a thing he could toss away with a laugh.

Read more: Friends and Admirers Pay Tribute to Hollywood ‘Icon’ Val Kilmer

In 1986, in only his fourth movie role, Kilmer played a cocky pilot who easily intimidated even Tom Cruise’s smirky-confident hotshot Maverick, but even then, his macho swagger was roguish and playful. As Iceman in Top Gun, he bragged about being the best, but you couldn’t hate him for it. His superiority was self-evident, like the rays of the sun. He made an equally luminous Doc Holliday in 1993’s Tombstone, possessed of a bullfighter’s grace in the scene where he appears out of nowhere to get the drunk, ranting criminal Johnny Ringo to stand down. “I’m your huckleberry,” he announces, in his character’s liquid-smoke Southern drawl. That line brought down the house at the time of the movie’s release, and movie fans still love it today. Kilmer, too, knew it was great: he made it the title of this 2020 memoir.

Michael Mann’s 1995 crime epic Heat has so many fine performances, including those given by stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, that you might worry some of the supporting actors could slip through the cracks. Not Kilmer, as Chris, the right-hand man of De Niro’s master criminal Neil McCauley. In a pivotal scene, there’s a chance that Chris’ adored wife, Charlene, played by Ashley Judd, might be ready to give him up to the cops. He’s on the run, but he’s come back to find Charlene—as she looks down at him from a motel balcony, she discreetly signals to him that he’s got to cut loose. His face, previously radiant in her grace, falls. It’s one of the movie’s most crushing moments, an example of how one small gesture from an actor can linger in memory forever. But Kilmer could anchor a film on his own, too. He pulled off something nearly impossible in his portrayal of sultry rock shaman Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991). Kilmer’s performance is like a perfume, a conjuring of unnamable moods: muskiness on the rumpled sheets of a hotel bed, the welcoming heat of late-afternoon sunlight, the whorls of dusky paint on an 18th century masterpiece in a gilt frame. The spirit of Morrison was all of those things; Kilmer brought it to life onscreen. He also did his own singing for the role, not so much mimicking Morrison’s velvety tone and snaky phrasing as pouring it, like a sorcerer’s elixir, from his soul.

Leo Scott and Ting Poo’s fine 2021 documentary Val found Kilmer in a much different place. For one thing, his voice had been ravaged by cancer. And no one can remain beautiful, in the same way, forever, though Kilmer’s mischievous, take-no-prisoners smile hadn’t changed much. Much of the film is pieced together from video footage Kilmer shot himself in the 1980s and ’90s. We see him horsing around with his contemporaries Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon around the time the three were appearing in Slab Boys, in 1983, Kilmer’s first Broadway role after graduating from Juilliard. We see him talking back to director John Frankenheimer during the filmmaking of the weird and not-very-good 1996 fantasy adventure The Island of Dr. Moreau—Kilmer wasn’t always easy to work with. But then we see the early-2020s version of Kilmer, signing autographs for fans at Comic-Con. They still think of him as Batman—maybe not their favorite Batman, but Batman nonetheless. Kilmer, speaking in his ravaged voice, says he doesn’t mind. He may have hated making the film, but he’s grateful that people still care about it, and about him. It’s a badge of honor to have been, if not the best Batman, at least the driest, most self-deprecating one. He owns that Batman, forever.

source https://time.com/7273883/val-kilmer-remembrance/

Trump Administration Freezes Critical Title X Funding for 16 Organizations

The Trump Administration is withholding millions of dollars allocated for family planning services from more than a dozen organizations.

Enacted in 1970, the federal family planning program known as Title X makes millions of dollars available to clinics that provide health care services like birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing for people from low-income households. On March 31, Planned Parenthood—one of the largest Title X providers—said in a press release that nine of its affiliates received notices from the federal government that their Title X funding would be withheld starting April 1.

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According to Planned Parenthood, more than three-quarters of its affiliates receive Title X funding, and in 2023, there were more than 1.5 million visits to Planned Parenthood health centers that received Title X funding.

One of the nine affiliates affected is Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky (PPGNHAIK), which serves those four states as well as Idaho and western Washington. Its CEO, Rebecca Gibron, estimates that, as a result of the freeze, about $3 million a year will now be withheld from five of the six states PPGNHAIK serves: Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Alaska, and Hawaii. Gibron says that over half of PPGNHAIK’s health centers across six states serve more than 40,000 patients a year through Title X.

“In our states, we are a safety net provider providing affordable birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and treatment,” Gibron says. “These patients rely on Title X for their health care, and without this program, patients may have no access to this care at all.” Planned Parenthood Action Fund President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a press release that if people aren’t able to access this care, cancers could go undetected, access to birth control could be reduced, and sexually transmitted infections could increase.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told TIME in an email that the department is withholding Title X funds from 16 organizations “pending an evaluation of possible violations of their grant terms, including based on Federal civil rights laws and the President’s Executive Order 14218, ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,’” which Trump signed on Feb. 19. The Executive Order declares that undocumented immigrants are prohibited “from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.”

“HHS is conducting this evaluation to ensure these entities are in full compliance with Federal law and applicable grant terms, and to ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” the spokesperson said. They did not respond to questions about the details of the “possible violations,” how much money was being withheld from the affected organizations, and which organizations were being impacted by the funding freeze.

On March 25, the Wall Street Journal reported that HHS was considering freezing $27.5 million out of the more than $200 million allocated for Title X’s annual budget.

Gibron calls the withholding of funds “politically motivated.” She accuses the Trump Administration of wanting to “shut down Planned Parenthood health centers to appease their anti-abortion backers,” saying that the Title X freeze is the “latest attempt” by the Administration to defund Planned Parenthood.

“The fact is that Planned Parenthood health centers across the country serve millions of patients every year, regardless of their immigration status, political affiliation, race, or gender—everyone is welcome in a Planned Parenthood health center,” Gibron says. “Access to fundamental reproductive and sexual health services is health care that everyone needs.”

In 2019, during the first Trump Administration, the federal government implemented a new restriction on Title X recipients, barring them from providing abortion referrals (Title X dollars don’t fund abortion services). The Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health and rights, found that that the restriction—often referred to as the“domestic gag rule”—combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, led to the loss of 981 health care centers from the Title X program and resulted in about 2.4 million fewer patients receiving care through the federal program in 2020 compared with 2018. The Biden Administration rescinded the domestic gag rule in 2021.

Read More: South Carolina Wants to End Medicaid for Planned Parenthood

Essential Access Health, which distributes Title X funds to clinics in California and Hawaii, said in a press release shared with TIME that it also received a notice that its Title X funds were being temporarily withheld while the group responds to “an inquiry regarding compliance with federal policy and practices related to civil rights and Executive Orders focused on DEI activities within 10 days.” The day he took office, Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

“This unprecedented, arbitrary, and immediate pause in distribution of critical resources is harmful to patients and providers,” Essential Access Health said in a press release shared with TIME. “Any funding delay is detrimental, and an extended delay would devastate our family planning safety net.”

Reproductive rights experts have condemned the Trump Administration’s move to freeze Title X funds. Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, says she wasn’t shocked by the move, but that it is “absolutely devastating.” According to Friedrich-Karnik, early estimates from Guttmacher Institute experts indicate that between 600,000 and 1.25 million people could be impacted by this funding freeze annually, based on the most recently available data on Title X from 2023.

“The impact of that program on people’s access to needed reproductive health care services is so clear—how people have benefitted from that access and how it is a program that fills a very important gap for folks who can’t get health care elsewhere,” Friedrich-Karnik says. “Not only are reproductive health care services like contraception, STI testing, cancer screenings at risk, [but] for many people, this is their only touchpoint with the health care system at all.”

According to data from the HHS Office of Population Affairs, about 83% of patients who received care from clinics that received Title X funding in 2023 had family incomes at or below 250% of the federal poverty level. Friedrich-Karnik says data also shows that people of color are disproportionately likely to access Title X services. She calls the freeze “a direct attack on health equity,” adding that Title X was established “to ensure that historically underserved communities were able to access health care and reproductive health care,” and the Trump Administration’s actions are penalizing Title X recipients “for doing exactly what the program is set up to do.”

Friedrich-Karnik says that the freeze is “definitely an attack” on people from low-income households, “who already have the most barriers to accessing health care services.”

source https://time.com/7273838/trump-administration-freezes-title-x-funding-impact/

Inside Amazon’s Race to Build the AI Industry’s Biggest Datacenters

Rami Sinno is crouched beside a filing cabinet, wrestling a beach-ball sized disc out of a box, when a dull thump echoes around his laboratory.

“I just dropped tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of material,” he says with a laugh.

Straightening up, Sinno reveals the goods: a golden silicon wafer, which glitters in the fluorescent light of the lab. This circular platter is divided into some 100 rectangular tiles, each of which contains billions of microscopic electrical switches. These are the brains of Amazon’s most advanced chip yet: the Trainium 2, announced in December. 

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For years, artificial intelligence firms have been dependent on one company, Nvidia, to design the cutting-edge chips required to train the world’s most powerful AI models. But as the AI race heats up, cloud giants like Amazon and Google have accelerated their in-house efforts to design their own chips, in pursuit of market share in the rapidly-growing cloud computing industry, which was valued at $900 billion at the beginning of 2025.

This unassuming Austin, Texas, laboratory is where Amazon is mounting its bid for semiconductor supremacy. Sinno is a key player. He’s the director of engineering at Annapurna Labs, the chip design subsidiary of Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS). After donning ear protection and swiping his card to enter a secure room, Sinno proudly displays a set of finished Trainium 2s, which he helped design, operating the way they normally would in a datacenter. He must shout to be heard over the cacophony of whirring fans that whisk hot air, warmed by these chips’ insatiable demand for energy, into the building’s air conditioning system. Each chip can fit easily into the palm of Sinno’s hand, but the computational infrastructure that surrounds them—motherboards, memory, data cables, fans, heatsinks, transistors, power-supplies—means this rack of just 64 chips towers over him, drowning out his voice.

Large as this unit may be, it’s only a miniaturized simulacrum of the chips’ natural habitat. Soon thousands of these fridge-sized supercomputers will be wheeled into several undisclosed locations in the U.S. and connected together to form “Project Rainier”—one of the largest datacenter clusters ever built anywhere in the world, named after the giant mountain that looms over Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. 

Project Rainier is Amazon’s answer to OpenAI and Microsoft’s $100 billion “Stargate” project, announced by President Trump at the White House in January. Meta and Google are also currently building similar so-called “hyperscaler” datacenters, costing tens of billions of dollars apiece, to train their next generation of powerful AI models. Big tech companies have spent the last decade amassing huge piles of cash; now they’re all spending it in a race to build the gargantuan physical infrastructure necessary to create AI systems that, they believe, will fundamentally change the world. Computational infrastructure of this scale has never been seen before in human history.

The precise number of chips involved in Project Rainier, the total cost of its datacenters, and their locations are all closely-held secrets. (Although Amazon won’t comment on the cost of Rainier by itself, the company has indicated it expects to invest some $100 billion in 2025, with the majority going toward AWS.) The sense of competition is fierce. Amazon claims the finished Project Rainier will be “the world’s largest AI compute cluster”—bigger, the implication is, than even Stargate. Employees here resort to fighting talk in response to questions about the challenge from the likes of OpenAI. “Stargate is easy to announce,” says Gadi Hutt, Annapurna’s director of product. “Let’s see it implemented first.”

Amazon is building Project Rainier specifically for one client: the AI company Anthropic, which has agreed to a long lease on the massive datacenters. (How long? That’s classified, too.) There, on hundreds of thousands of Trainium 2 chips, Anthropic plans to train the successors to its popular Claude family of AI models. The chips inside Rainier will collectively be five times more powerful than the systems that were used to the best of those models. “It’s way, way, way bigger,” Tom Brown, an Anthropic co-founder, tells TIME.

Nobody knows what the results of that huge jump in computational firepower will be. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has publicly predicted that “powerful AI” (the term he prefers over Artificial General Intelligence—a technology that can perform most tasks better and more quickly than human experts) could arrive as early as 2026. That means Anthropic believes there’s a strong possibility that Project Rainier, or one of its competitors, will be the place where AGI is birthed. 

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The flywheel effect

Anthropic isn’t just a customer of Amazon; it’s also partially owned by the tech giant. Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic for a minority stake in the company. Much of that money, in a weirdly circular way, will end up being spent on AWS datacenter rental costs. This strange relationship reveals an interesting facet of the forces driving the AI industry: Amazon is essentially using Anthropic as a proof-of-concept for its AI datacenter business.

It’s a similar dynamic to Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI and Google’s relationship with its DeepMind subsidiary. “Having a frontier lab on your cloud is a way to make your cloud better,” says Brown, the Anthropic co-founder who manages the company’s relationship with Amazon. He compares it to AWS’s partnership with Netflix: in the early 2010s, the streamer was one of the first big AWS customers. Because of the huge infrastructural challenge of delivering fast video to users all over the world, “it meant that AWS got all the feedback that they needed in order to make all of the different systems work at that scale,” Brown says. “They paved the way for the whole cloud industry.” 

All cloud providers are now trying to replicate that pattern in the AI era, Brown says. “They want someone who will go through the jungle and use a machete to chop a path, because nobody has been down that path before. But once you do it, there’s a nice path, and everyone can follow you.” By investing in Anthropic, which then spends most of that money on AWS, Amazon creates what it likes to call a flywheel: a self-reinforcing process that helps it build more advanced chips and datacenters, drives down the cost of the “compute” required to run AI systems, and shows other companies the benefits of AI, which in turn results in more customers for AWS in the long run. Startups like OpenAI and Anthropic get the glory, but the real winners are the big tech companies who run the world’s major cloud platforms.

To be sure, Amazon is still heavily reliant on Nvidia chips. Meanwhile, Google’s custom chips, known as TPUs, are considered by many in the industry to be superior to Amazon’s. And Amazon isn’t the only big tech company with a stake in Anthropic. Google has also invested some $3 billion for a 14% stake. Anthropic uses both Google and Amazon clouds in a bid to be reliant on neither. Despite all this, Project Rainier and the Trainium 2 chips that will fill its datacenters are the culmination of Amazon’s effort to accelerate its flywheel into pole position. 

Trainium 2 chips, Sinno says, were designed with the help of intense feedback from Anthropic, which shared details with AWS about how its software interacted with Trainium 1 hardware, and made suggestions for how the next generation of chips could be improved. Such tight collaboration isn’t typical for AWS clients, Sinno says, but is necessary for Anthropic to compete in the cutthroat world of “frontier” AI. The capabilities of a model are essentially correlated with the amount of compute spent to train and run it, so the more compute you can get for your buck, the better your final AI will be. “At the scale that they’re running, each point of a percent improvement in performance is of huge value,” Sinno says of Anthropic. “The better they can utilize the infrastructure, the better the return on investment for them is, as a customer.”

The more sophisticated Amazon’s in-house chips become, the less it will need to rely on industry leader Nvidia—demand for whose chips far outstrips supply, meaning Nvidia can pick and choose its customers while charging well above production costs. But there’s another dynamic at play, too, that Annapurna employees hope might give Amazon a long-term structural advantage. Nvidia sells physical chips (known as GPUs) directly to customers, meaning that each GPU has to be optimized to run on its own. Amazon, meanwhile, doesn’t sell its Trainium chips. It simply sells access to them, running in AWS-operated datacenters. This means Amazon can find efficiencies that Nvidia would find difficult to replicate. “We have many more degrees of freedom,” Hutt says. 

Back in the lab, Sinno returns the silicon wafer to its box and moves to another part of the room, gesturing at the various stages of the design process for chips that might—potentially very soon—help summon powerful new AIs into existence. He is excitedly reeling off statistics about the Trainium 3, expected later this year, which he says will be twice the speed and 40% more energy-efficient than its predecessor. Neural networks running on Trainium 2s assisted with the team’s design of the upcoming chip, he says. That’s an indication of how AI is already accelerating the speed of its own development, in a process that is getting faster and faster. “It’s a flywheel,” Sinno says. “Absolutely.”

source https://time.com/7273288/amazon-anthropic-openai-microsoft-stargate-datacenters/

‘This is About Children’s Lives’: Gavi’s CEO Makes the Case for Funding the Global Vaccine Alliance

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, supplies vaccines to nearly half of the world’s children. For decades, governments, institutions, and private groups around the world have provided the funding it needs to buy, stockpile and distribute vaccines at reduced cost for lower and middle-resource countries.

But leaked documents, first reported by the New York Times, reveal that the Trump Administration has created lists of funding projects it plans to stop supporting, including Gavi.

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Dr. Sania Nishtar, Gavi’s CEO, talked with TIME about what that could mean for the health of the world.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Have you received any formal notice from the U.S. government about cutting funding?

We have enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress for the last 24 years, ever since Gavi was created. That includes support during the last Trump Administration. We were gearing up to have a discussion with them on how to operationalize the budget. About 10 days ago, Congress approved the continuity bill, and funding Gavi was part of that bill. My colleagues and I were exploring ways of having a discussion with them on how to operationalize that budget. This list, this news—we are really concerned to hear it.

If the U.S. government does stop its funding of Gavi, what will happen?

This is about children’s lives. This is about potentially a million children dying if funding is withdrawn. It’s about compromising global health security if the funding is withdrawn.

The U.S. underwrites about 13% to 14% of our budget. If that budget is cut, that translates to 75 million children not getting vaccinated. And that, in turn, means more than a million lives will not be saved. That’s just one dimension of the fallout.

The other dimension is entirely different, and relates to global security. Gavi vaccines are a pillar in the global health security response. Whenever there is a public health emergency, and whenever there is a question of needing to mobilize vaccines, we maintain stockpiles of vaccines for Ebola, cholera, and meningitis. Going into 2026, we will be maintaining vaccine stockpiles for mpox as well. Whenever there is an outbreak or an emergency, we mobilize the stockpile.

Read More: Dr. Francis Collins Led the NIH. Now, He Fears for the Future of Science

The U.S. does not just bring dollars to the table. They are important technical partners for the entire global health system, and for Gavi. Last year, for example, when the mpox emergency happened, we invoked the emergency response fund. This is a fund created after I joined Gavi—a special $500 million fund whose purpose is to make money available as soon as a health emergency strikes. We set it in place after learnings from COVID-19, because during the pandemic, the money was not available on day one to invest in vaccines.

Last year, with this fund, within three days of the WHO approving a vaccine for mpox, we were able to ship the vaccines to the African countries who needed them to contain the outbreaks there. That was possible because we worked closely with the U.S. government, which wanted to donate the vaccines from its stockpile. We worked closely to coordinate moving the stockpile. So the U.S. is a very important partner in the response system that the world has established to respond to emerging infections. And we really want the system to work and to [continue to] work closely with them.

Are you looking at alternative sources of funding?

We have 44 sovereign and private entities and foundations. We are reaching out to them, of course, and they are watching. We are widening our donor base. Some countries that were recipients of Gavi assistance are now becoming donors—Indonesia is a case in point. But a 14% contribution in the budget is significant. It is difficult for other donors to bridge that gap.

Public health leaders have talked about how the U.S.’ diminished role in global health will open the door for China to become a leader in health. Would China be a possibility for becoming a donor to Gavi?

We speak to all countries of the world. Currently, China is not a major contributor to Gavi.

Could they be?

Potentially all countries of the world could be donors. We work very apolitically. We are in the business of saving lives. We are in the business of very impartially moving stockpiles to any country of the world when they are needed. We are really looking forward to working with this [U.S.] government and bringing to bear the importance of the need to continue supporting Gavi.

What would you tell the Trump Administration about why it’s so important to continue funding Gavi?

I might talk to them about three things. Firstly, I would explain to them that this is about saving children’s lives. Vaccination is one of the public-health miracles. It’s one of the most important public-health interventions ever created on this planet. I would explain what the implications of their pullout is—one million children dying in countries of world with whom they plan to have foreign policy relationships, 40 of which are in Africa.

Secondly, with humility, I would explain to them that a world without Gavi is a more dangerous world. Because we know that infectious diseases know no borders. The capabilities established by Gavi are unique. No other international body can put money on the table on day zero for financing facilities to order vaccines and mobilize stockpiles. If we are taken out of the equation, there is no way to nip Ebola in the bud in Africa, there is no way to stop mpox from getting on a plane and arriving on your shores.

Number three perhaps is not well understood. Gavi is not a charity. We are a multilateral organization. We transition toward country sustainability.

When we start supporting countries by introducing vaccines, countries start paying a certain percentage of that vaccine. When a country’s economic situation improves, its share of their copayment increases. Ultimately, they take over the entire payment for vaccines themselves. Gavi supports [such] “exits.” Since our creation, of the 78 countries we originally supported, 19 have exited from our support. Indonesia exited and has now become a donor. India exited, and it’s highly likely they will become a donor in 2026. African countries have exited. We create a path toward sustainability. We create a path toward country transition so a country owns its public health agenda.

Last year, countries paid just over $200 million in copayments toward vaccines. Going forward in 2026, countries will be paying 50% of their vaccines. We say we want to run ourselves out of business. That model of development is unique to Gavi.

We don’t have 200 offices in field. I would explain to them that we are exactly the organization you should be working with to demonstrate to the world how an organization that is results-oriented with low operational costs, with an established path for countries to transition and become self-sustaining, is an example.

Read More: The Trump Administration Just Gutted U.S. Health Institutions

This Administration is questioning across the board why U.S. taxpayers should be supporting programs that primarily benefit other countries, and Gavi might fit into that. How do you respond?

Even if you take the lives of children out of the equation—which I think is the most heartless thing anyone could say, but still, let’s take that out of the equation—there are two other reasons why it’s important to support Gavi. One is global health security. Taking us out of the equation would water down and compromise the world’s ability to fight disease, and would be tantamount to compromising yourselves.

Secondly, there is a very important business equation here, because Gavi spent more on vaccines supplied by U.S. companies than any other country in the world. Gavi funded the procurement of $4 billion lifesaving vaccines from U.S. companies from 2012-2023. And that excludes COVID-19 [vaccines]. They actually get back from GAVI more than what they give us. If [the U.S.’] funding decreases, we will buy less vaccines and serve less countries. Their pharma industries also take a hit.

How is Gavi trying to avoid such shortfalls in the future and rely less on donors like the U.S.?

This is another learning from COVID-19. Last year, we put in place an instrument called the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator. We put in $1.2 billion for financing that is meant to catalyze sustainable commercial vaccine development on the African continent. It’s an important part of the equation for African nations to be truly sovereign when it comes to vaccine manufacturing. If a vaccine manufacturer on the continent gets WHO prequalification or WHO approval for one of its vaccines, we will give them a milestone payment. It’s an incentive for local investors so that they know there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and if they invest, they have the potential for gaining back their money and making profits going forward.

source https://time.com/7273414/gavi-vaccine-alliance-sania-nishtar-ceo-funding/