Today’s Big Story

Tariffs Fuel Recession Fears

The markets plunged and wiped out more than $3.1 trillion in value from U.S. stocks

Well, that was ugly. If you checked your 401k in a panic, just know that you’re not alone. President Donald Trump’s intensifying trade war on Thursday drove financial markets into their steepest one-day declines since the early days of the global Covid pandemic as investors, companies and ordinary Americans fretted about rising costs from the onslaught of new tariffs. Or as Rep. Eric Swalwell of California posted on X, “Your 401k just became a 201k. And the f—king moron who did that to you is golfing the rest of the weekend in Miami. Let that sink in.” Well, that’s one way to put it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Thursday's plunge slashed $3.1 trillion from the market value of U.S. stocks, the largest one-day drop since March 2020, with big tech stocks sinking. The dollar fell to its lowest since October, oil dropped more than 6%, and gold pulled back. But Trump took the selloff in stride. “I think it’s going very well,” he said about tariffs Thursday afternoon. “The markets are going to boom.” He left the door open to making deals to lower tariffs, while also promising new ones on drugs and microchips.

The wave of new import taxes, which are expected to cost U.S. consumers and businesses hundreds of billions of dollars this year, threatens to radically alter the economic outlook. Analysts at J.P. Morgan described the tariffs as the largest U.S. tax hike since 1968, while the nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculated that the average American household will pay at least $2,100 more for goods this year because of the slew of new tariffs.

“The level of new tariffs is just absolutely massive,” said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust, which now puts the odds of a recession at 50%, up from 40% just days ago. “There is still so much uncertainty, but if these tariffs stay on for three months, there’ll be a recession—and that will be one of the easier calls I’ve had to make in my 25 years of being an economist.”

Meanwhile, tariff-related layoffs have already hit five American auto plants that supply factories in Canada and Mexico. Nearly 1,000 U.S. workers have been temporarily laid off, due to immediately reduced production. According to CNN, most of these workers will not immediately lose pay due to the terms of their union contract. But there would be a risk of lost pay, even with union protections, if the shutdowns at the Mexican and Canadian plants become prolonged.

Obviously, people are getting upset (while others are happy to “wait and see”), but this ire shouldn’t all be directed at Trump, argues Josh Marshall of the Talking Points Memo. He reminds us, “Presidents have no power over tariffs. Full stop. It’s not like war powers or pardons. Trump can only do this because Congress gave Presidents this power …. and Congress can take it back at any moment.” Will they? No, not likely.

Government Cuts Go Deeper

The Trump administration laid off thousands of federal health workers and fires director of National Security Agency

The Trump administration laid off thousands of federal health workers, dismissing senior leaders and top scientists in a purge that outside experts and former officials said would cause an immeasurable loss of expertise. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suggested the layoffs could tame his department’s $1.8 trillion budget, but less than 1% of its spending goes to staffing.

Workers were stunned by the sheer scope and scale of the layoffs, which HHS has billed as mostly impacting administrative positions, such as those working in human resources and information technology. But among those laid off were employees in a center that has played a key role in the response to the bird flu outbreak and improving pet food safety, according to three FDA staffers who spoke to the Washington Post. At the CDC, the Division of HIV Prevention unit lost about half its staff, and nearly all of the agency’s involvement with tobacco and smoking cessation was shut down and all its associated contracts with vendors and contractors were canceled.

Also on Thursday, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, Gen. Timothy Haugh, was removed from his job. The move caught many officials off guard—especially since Wendy Noble, Haugh’s deputy at NSA, was also removed. The news of the dismissals came on the heels of the firing of multiple staff members on the National Security Council, after Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who once claimed 9/11 was an inside job, urged President Donald Trump during a Wednesday meeting to do so, arguing that they were disloyal. But it’s not clear whether the firings were connected.

Are Password Managers Under Threat?

Experts worry that hackers know to target password managers now

Take a moment to list all the digital accounts you've signed up for, and it's probably more than you realized … because, well, it adds up. But using the same login credentials for every service is a bad idea, and if you reuse passwords across accounts, let me summarize the simplest advice you should take away from this article: You shouldn't.

According to Consumer Reports, password managers are the easiest way to make all of your accounts more secure, and yet only around a third of Americans use them. The managers themselves are all slightly different, but you’ll find many of the same features across brands. However, even these are not always secure from hackers.

Mashable reports that over the past few months, there have been a number of reports detailing how a 2022 breach of password manager LastPass appears to be linked to cryptocurrency-related heists. Hundreds of millions of dollars have allegedly been stolen as a result of the LastPass breach. And it appears that the worst is yet to come. “Thanks to the hackers' success with the LastPass intrusion, password managers are now under attack. Hackers have realized that instead of wasting time breaking into one platform at a time when targeting a user, they can gain access to all of their login credentials if they can break into their target's password manager.” So what can we do? Experts now say that your best bet is to look into password managers that also prioritize encryption.

A Weekend Pairing

‘Black Bag’ + a Gimlet Cocktail

The prolific director Steven Soderbergh delivered his second excellent film of 2025 (after January’s Presence) with Black Bag. A stylish, sexy thriller starring Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Naomie Harris, and Pierce Brosnan, it’s the story of a spy who discovers his next target may be his wife.

Sleek in design and spiked with dry wit, critics loved the gripping film. And while it did well for this kind of mid-budget film at the theaters, it’s now streamable in 4K Ultra HD on all the major video-on-demand platforms and seems more likely to really find its audience at home.

Walk, talk and feel like you’ve already arrived.