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Round-trip train tickets brought down to $98 from $150, and bus fares to cost $20 instead of $80, state officials say.

Local governments in New Jersey and New York have reduced the cost of train and bus tickets for commuters travelling to the states’ joint World Cup venue during the tournament.

New Jersey Transit train tickets to the MetLife Stadium, renamed New Jersey New York Stadium for the FIFA World Cup, will now cost $98 as opposed to the earlier price set at $150 for a return fare, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced on Wednesday.

“Ahead of NJ Transit World Cup train tickets going on sale tonight, NJTRANSIT is lowering ticket prices to $98 without New Jersey taxpayer money,” Sherrill wrote in a social media post.

The move followed intense backlash from local and international football fans planning to attend World Cup games at the stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where the tournament’s final will be held on July 19.

The $98 fare, which will be charged during the World Cup matches hosted in New Jersey, is still significantly higher than the regular fare of $13 for the 29km (18-mile) round trip from New York City’s Penn Station.

When the $150 fare was announced, Sherrill defended it by suggesting the upcharge was necessary to ensure that her state’s commuters were not stuck with a “tab for years to come” for hosting the World Cup on its return to the United States for the first time since 1994.

NJ Transit officials said it would cost $62m to transport fans to and from the stadium over the duration of the tournament and outside grants had defrayed only $14m of those anticipated expenses.

“This isn’t price gouging,” NJ Transit President and CEO Kris Kolluri said last month. “We’re literally trying to recoup our costs.”

Meanwhile, the cost of taking a shuttle bus from New York City to the World Cup venue has also been reduced.

“The cost of shuttle bus tickets to and from matches will be reduced from the initial $80 round-trip price to $20,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on the same Wednesday.

The move from the NYNJ Host Committee offers some respite for fans who would have already spent thousands of dollars on attending a World Cup game, largely due to the exorbitant match ticket prices, international and local airfares, and visa costs.

The host city officials said 20 percent of bus tickets for each match will be reserved exclusively for New York state residents. The remaining tickets will be available for all match-going fans.

The US is cohosting the tournament with Mexico and Canada. It begins on June 11.

You won’t even see the fees being added

Most holidaymakers assume using their normal bank card abroad is fine. But Martin Lewis says a simple switch to a specialist card could save you from paying an extra 2.75% to 3% on every single purchase – a hidden fee that quietly adds to your bill without you even noticing.

In a clip shared on This Morning’s official TikTok, the MoneySavingExpert founder explained how most high street banks add a “non-sterling exchange rate fee” when you spend abroad. Ignore it and a £100 purchase effectively costs you £103. Switch to one of the specialist cards he recommends, and you get the same near-perfect exchange rates the banks use – without the markup.

Martin started by explaining what happens when you spend on plastic overseas. “Your bank gets a near perfect exchange rate on the day – the same as what’s called the spot rate, the city market rates. When you spend on your card abroad though, normally the card company adds what’s called a non-Sterling exchange rate fee of between 2.75 or 3%,” he said. “So your hundred pounds worth of euros cost you £103.”

The solution, he explained, is using specialist cards. “With the specialist cards, they don’t have that. So you get the same near perfect exchange rates that the banks or the card firms do.”

As for which cards to choose, Martin noted there are quite a lot available now. He judges them on the cashback they give you. The Barclaycard Rewards credit card is currently giving 0.25% cash back on spending in the UK and abroad. “So you get perfect exchange rate and cashback,” he said.

He added a crucial warning for anyone using a credit card: “Only do this if you’ll pay it off in full at the end of every month, or there is interest. That will credit score you to get it.”

For those who prefer a debit card or don’t want to undergo a hard credit check, Martin offered two alternatives. “The easiest one to get is the Chase card, which you can apply for without switching banks and only does a soft credit check, so it doesn’t mark your credit file, and virtually everybody can get it,” he said. It offers near-perfect exchange rates, no ATM withdrawal fees, and some cashback on UK spending.

Alternatively, for those willing to switch banks: “First Direct, if you’re willing to switch bank to it, will give you a near perfect exchange rate fee debit card and pay you £175 quid if you switch bank to it.”

A spokesperson for travel experts Lapland Famille said: “When spending abroad, choosing the right payment method makes a real difference. Specialist cards often work out far cheaper than standard bank cards. And if you’re ever asked to pay in pounds or the local currency, always choose the local currency – paying in cash locally is another good way to avoid hidden conversion fees.”

With no need to switch your main bank account for the easiest option, Martin’s advice shows that cutting the cost of spending abroad may be simpler than many travellers think – as long as you pick the right card before you go.

May 5 (UPI) — Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, announced the company is downsizing about 14% of its workforce.

Armstrong posted a memo to employees on X saying he had made “the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase” by approximately 14%, explaining it is the result of “two forces” that “are converging at the same time.”

The first of the “forces” at play is the current downturn in the crypto market, leading to a “need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster and more efficient for our next phase of growth.”

The second reason cited by Armstrong is the rise of AI “changing how we work.”

“All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core,” Armstrong wrote.

Coinbase is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings on Saturday, with shares up nearly 4% in premarket trading.

The announcement follows other companies including Block, Pinterest, CrowdStrike and Chegg making the decision to cut jobs as a result of AI integration.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge told the U.S. government Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid a legal dispute at a historic Washington golf course that President Trump plans to renovate.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet in the case brought by the DC Preservation League. She also told the National Park Service that it should first discuss any plans with government lawyers if it was going to cut down more than 10 trees.

Monday’s hearing came after the plaintiff’s emergency petition seeking to stop work at the course, citing news reports that major renovations were to begin Monday.

Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the Park Service, said during the hearing there was no plan to begin such work Monday but added that a safety assessment was underway.

Reyes told the parties she didn’t want to play the role of the “Parks and Rec” department, an allusion to the sitcom, but said she also didn’t want trees being bulldozed.

“I’m no Amy Poehler,” she said referring to the show’s star.

At one point during Monday’s hearing, the judge said she was made aware that closure signs had been put up at the site, which led to Griess’ asking someone to check. He later reported that there were no such signs. Reyes asked that if any such signs were found that the government’s attorney be told.

The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior argues that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park, including the East Potomac Golf Course, would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.” The course itself opened in 1919.

Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.

SACRAMENTO — One of Gavin Newsom’s top goals as he winds down his final year as California governor is to leave the state with a balanced budget.

After years of the state spending more money than it brings in, it’s Newsom’s last opportunity to fix a chronic deficit or dump the problem on the next governor.

How far he goes to solve the state’s structural spending imbalance will define his legacy as a steward of trillions in taxpayer dollars. As a potential candidate for president in 2028, he could also have a political incentive to do as little as possible.

“Any cuts you make are going to cause people to scream,” said Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist. “Any increases in taxes are going to cause people to scream and in terms of what’s best for a presidential run, it would be nice if people weren’t screaming.”

As California’s 40th governor, Newsom expanded publicly funded healthcare to income-eligible undocumented immigrants, increased state-subsidized child-care slots and provided free meals for schoolchildren among a wishlist of progressive wins since he took office in 2019.

His achievements have helped struggling Californians live in an increasingly unaffordable state and given him bona fides to tout to voters if he launches a bid for the White House.

But the state could never afford to pay for existing services and the new programs that Newsom and Democratic lawmakers enacted, according to an analysis of ongoing state spending since before the pandemic released by the Legislative Analyst’s Office last week.

Spending from the state’s principal operating fund has grown about $100 billion since Newsom’s first full fiscal year in office in 2019-20, mostly due to the growing cost of existing programs that he inherited. State spending has outpaced California’s strong revenue growth by about 10%, creating a perennial budget shortfall — a structural deficit — that Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature solve with largely temporary fixes each year.

Instead of making across-the-board program cuts or raising taxes to align spending with revenue, Democrats have tapped into reserves designed to preserve social services for the state’s most disadvantaged communities during economic downturns.

While the California economy remains stable and state revenue has increased, Newsom and lawmakers have taken $12.2 billion from the rainy day fund. Democrats have borrowed $28 billion more from other state funds to cover their spending in recent years, according to the LAO.

“Taken together, these trends raise serious concerns about the state’s fiscal sustainability,” Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek wrote in a review of Newsom’s January budget proposal.

Fiscal watchdogs have warned that the spending trends will leave California in a precarious position if the stock market tanks and tax receipts bottom out.

Personal income taxes are driving higher-than-expected revenue now, which analysts attribute to an artificial intelligence boom on Wall Street, and suggest the state could have no deficit in the upcoming year. In January, the Newsom administration anticipated significant operating deficits in the years ahead: $27 billion in 2027-28, $22 billion in 2028-29 and $23 billion in 2029-30.

The LAO, the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal advisor, said the state has already solved $125 billion in budget problems over the last three years with mostly short-term solutions.

“This issue is really whether they’re going to take seriously the structural deficit that is several years in the making now, where the spending has outpaced revenue, and to address that, they’re going to either have to make some fairly deep cuts or raise revenue and or both,” said former state Controller Betty Yee, who worked as a budget aide under Gov. Gray Davis and recently dropped her own campaign for governor. “But they have to be real. I think resorting to these one-time solutions has really exacerbated the problem.”

How Newsom wants to address the state’s financial challenges will be revealed on May 14 when he is expected to present his revised budget plan in Sacramento. His January budget proposal did not include any significant reductions or cuts to programs.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, said the governor is looking to solve the budget problem with more than a temporary fix.

“Although he is still finalizing his proposal that he’ll put forth to the Legislature, as he has said, he wants those solutions to be durable, and he wants them to have an impact beyond a single fiscal year,” Palmer said.

To stabilize California’s budget, Democrats will probably have to raise taxes or fees to generate new revenue and cut programs, according to the LAO. At least 40 cents for every dollar in revenue is dedicated to education under the state Constitution, requiring policymakers to find between $30 billion and $60 billion annually in additional revenue to cover projected shortfalls in 2027-28 and beyond if relying on new taxes alone.

President Trump’s cuts to healthcare are adding to the problem.

HR 1 will add $1.4 billion in state costs to the general fund. Newsom’s January budget proposal did not include a plan to help millions of low-income Californians who are expected to lose access to healthcare under the federal cuts.

To temper those cuts in California, other groups proposed a new tax on billionaires that appears poised to qualify for the November ballot.

Spearheaded by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the initiative would apply a one-time 5% tax on taxpayers with assets exceeding $1 billion. If approved by voters, the tax would generate roughly $100 billion, which would fund healthcare programs.

The measure has divided unions and Democrats at the state Capitol.

Newsom has criticized the initiative, citing concerns that increasing taxes on the wealthy will have the opposite intended effect and drive the highest earners out of California. Under a progressive tax structure, the state budget is dependent on income taxes paid by the ultra-rich on earnings largely from capital gains.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, have already purchased residences in Florida, along with others looking to escape the tax if it goes through in November. Billionaires launched their own ballot measure campaign to undercut the tax proposal.

State lawmakers are also considering avenues to raise revenue, which include repealing a “water’s edge” tax break. Under the change, multinational companies would no longer be allowed to shield the income of their foreign subsidiaries from state taxes. California loses about $3 billion in revenue from the tax break each year.

In its budget plan released in April, the state Senate proposed a new fee on the largest corporations in the state to provide $5 billion to $8 billion annually for Medi-Cal.

The upper house said 42% of Medi-Cal enrollees are full-time workers who are not enrolled in their company’s healthcare plan because their wages are low enough to qualify for state-subsidized healthcare. As a result, corporations aren’t paying for healthcare for many of their employees and instead taxpayers are picking up the bill through Medi-Cal.

SEIU California, the powerful state union council representing over 700,000 workers, endorsed the plan. The union said Trump’s tax policy will reduce corporate taxes by $900 billion, while 3 million Californians lose healthcare.

“In this urgent moment, California’s workers need to see our leaders show us what they’re made of,” said Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California. “The Senate is showing the courage to demand corporations pay their fair share, rather than making working people pay with their lives.”

The change is being described as a more politically palatable “fee” and not a tax.

“We explored multiple revenue options, and this was the one that felt more narrow, it felt more focused, and it also felt like it was directly going for the subsidy that’s being lost because of the Trump HR 1 cuts,” said Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón (D-Goleta), who leads the upper house of the Legislature.

Limón said her caucus believes it’s important to address potential revenue streams because of the depth of federal healthcare reductions.

“If we don’t address the structural deficit, we are looking at severe cuts,” she said. “You are looking at people without health insurance. You are looking at hospitals closing down. You are looking at medical providers not being able to take more patients. You are looking at our emergency rooms over capacity, with not enough medical providers. I mean, you’re looking at a place that’s really, really, really difficult, and we feel like we have to, at least, look at what are viable options that are conditional on these cuts coming.”

Newsom has not commented publicly on the Senate’s plan. As governor, he’s been reluctant to embrace new taxes and fees.

Newsom could reject all the proposals for new taxes or fees and continue what he’s done before: take advantage of higher-than-expected tax collections, shift funds around, delay program implementation and borrow money to knock the deficit down to zero, or forecast a surplus, for his last budget year that begins July 1.

If he doesn’t take on California’s larger budget imbalance, then the problem would be the next governor’s to solve. A stock market crash, or economic recession, could force his successor to make drastic cuts across the board with limited reserves to support programs.

Kicking the can again would cement Newsom’s fiscal legacy as a governor who championed bold headline-making policies that bolstered the safety net for low-income Californians, but who failed to provide a solution to pay for his agenda.

“Not only has he not come up with a plan, he has pretended we don’t need one,” said Patrick Murphy, a professor of public affairs at the University of San Francisco.

Newsom’s interest in running for president could seemingly discourage him from slashing the budget and raising attention to the state’s financial woes, Sragow said. Newsom is setting himself up as a potential front-runner for his party. He has said he remains undecided about officially launching a 2028 campaign.

As a Democrat from California, his opponents would automatically label him as financially irresponsible and tax-happy. Calling out the massive budget problem on the horizon, raising taxes and making painful cuts will give them ammunition.

“There’s a long list of things that he’s going to be charged with, and this is likely to be one more,” Sragow said. “But I guess the question is, is he going to be charged with a political misdemeanor or a political felony?”

Former state Sen. Steve Glazer said Newsom is standing on political quicksand either way. State budget projections are based on assumptions about the future that often don’t bear out, leaving his choices exposed to criticism that he went too far, didn’t do enough, and everything in between.

“Whatever the governor decides to do in his May revise and in his final budget, it’s fraught with political risks, because it can be manipulated so easily by all sides,” Glazer said.

If Newsom ignores the spending problem, his successor could blame him for California’s financial woes when they take office in January and provide their own outlook of the state’s fiscal future. At the time, Newsom could be trying to convince America to make him the nation’s next president.

Murphy said Newsom has championed major policies and been reluctant to back off them later when revenue doesn’t pencil out.

In terms of spending, he’s governed similarly to the men who led California before him, with the exception of Jerry Brown, who cut programs to reduce a deficit he inherited in his second stint in the governor’s office and left Newsom with a surplus.

“It’s not all that different than most of the governors have done, which is finding it very hard to say no and finding it very hard to take on a tough choice of going to the ballot to ask for more money or raise taxes,” Murphy said.

On taxation, Newsom is perhaps most similar to former Gov. George Deukmejian, who opposed general tax increases for most of his administration.

Deukmejian left a budget disaster for his successor, Gov. Pete Wilson. Deukmejian publicly claimed he passed a balanced budget in his final year and blamed an economic downturn for the problems Wilson encountered.

When Wilson announced a record $13-billion budget deficit early in his first year in office in 1991, he said the Persian Gulf War, an economic downturn and natural disasters added to a structural deficit in the budget.

The Legislature and Deukmejian, Wilson said, had “papered over” the problem.

April 30 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans that could see cuts to the tens of thousands of U.S. forces stationed across 20 bases in Germany.

Writing on his Truth Social platform Wednesday night, Trump said the process of scaling back the United States’ eight-decade-long military presence was already underway.

“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time,” Trump wrote.

The announcement came two days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Iran was running circles around the United States in ongoing peace negotiations to end the military conflict, saying “the Americans clearly have no strategy.”

Lack of support for the war from European NATO allies has seen Trump and other senior U.S. officials repeatedly threaten to pull out of the 32-country defensive alliance, complaining that Europe was “freeriding” and never there for the United States when it needed it.

On Friday, a Pentagon leak suggested that Spain could face being suspended from NATO in retaliation for not supporting the United States in its war with Iran.

U.S. troop strength in Germany stood at 36,436, mainly army and air force personnel, stationed at 20 bases across the country in December, the latest month for which U.S. Department of Defense data is available.

That compares with around 28,000 across the rest of Europe, with the bulk of those deployed in Italy, Britain and Spain.

Active-duty personnel numbers in Germany were cut from more than 50,000 from 2013 to 2017 during President Barack Obama‘s second term, in line with a strategic shift in the United States’ defense priorities involving pivoting to the Asia-Pacific and reducing the focus on Europe.

Before that, numbers had fallen to 94,000 in the first half of the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and then down to 71,000.

The United States currently has more than 54,000 troops in Japan, another 23,500 in South Korea and 7,000 in Guam.

There has been a continuous significant U.S. military presence in Germany since the end of World War II, initially as an army of occupation and then as the front-line of NATO deterrence during the Cold War and more recently as a bulwark against a resurgent threat to Europe from Russia.

The US naval blockade of Iranian ports and the Strait of Hormuz, in place since April 13, has raised concerns that Iran could run out of crude oil storage capacity and be forced to curb production.

Bloomberg reported analysis on Tuesday from the data and analytics company Kpler suggesting Iran could run out of crude storage in 12 to 22 days if the blockade persists.

Last week, United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that storage capacity at Kharg Island, where most of Iran’s oil is exported, would be full “in a matter of days”.

So how quickly could Iran run out of oil storage, and why does it matter?

What is happening in the Strait of Hormuz?

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow channel that connects the Gulf to the open ocean. It spans the territorial waters of Iran on its northern side and Oman on its southern side. It is not in international waters.

During peacetime, 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies are shipped through the corridor.

Two days after the US and Israel launched their first air strikes in their war on Iran on February 28, Ebrahim Jabari, a senior adviser to the commander in chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), announced that the strait was “closed”. If any vessels tried to pass through, he said, the IRGC and the navy would “set those ships ablaze”.

As the war has dragged on and negotiations have failed to achieve a settlement, Iran has at times in the past two months allowed some “friendly” ships and those that pay tolls to pass. It is currently refusing to allow any foreign-flagged ships, including those previously deemed friendly, to pass until the US lifts its own naval blockade.

Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said on April 19 that the “security of the Strait of Hormuz is not free”.

“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others,” he wrote in a post on X.

“The choice is clear: either a free oil market for all, or the risk of significant costs for everyone,” he added. “Stability in global fuel prices depends on a guaranteed and lasting end to the economic and military pressure against Iran and its allies.”

Since the US naval blockade on the strait began, the US has opened fire on and taken control of an Iranian-flagged tanker near the Strait of Hormuz while also redirecting vessels on the high seas transporting cargo to or from Iran. Iran’s armed forces have denounced these actions as “an illegal act” that “amounts to piracy”.

The US naval blockade of the strait means that Iran might have to store the oil it produces.

Iran is the third largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) after Saudi Arabia and Iraq and exports 90 percent of its crude oil via Kharg Island in the Gulf for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

What has the US claimed?

The US is eager to curb Iran’s oil revenues, which have risen since Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz to other shipping. This is the primary motive behind Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran exported 1.84 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in March and shipped 1.71 million bpd in April, compared with an average of 1.68 million bpd in 2025, according to Kpler.

However, the US naval blockade since mid-April now means that most of its exports are having to be stored instead.

Bessent wrote in an X post on April 22: “In a matter of days, Kharg Island storage will be full and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be shut in.”

“Constraining Iran’s maritime trade directly targets the regime’s primary revenue lifelines.”

How much oil can Iran store?

Iran’s domestic refineries have a production capacity of 2.6 million bpd, according to the energy consultancy Facts Global Energy.

Satellite data show the amount of oil Iran has in storage has risen sharply since the US blockade began, and in the days after the US tightened it, stocks were rising so fast that it appeared Iran had been barely able to export any oil at all.

From April 13 to April 21, data showed that stocks rose by more than 6 million barrels, according to the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP). From April 17 to April 21, the stock increased very rapidly, growing by 1.7 bpd.

As of April 20, the storage tanks at Kharg were about 74 percent full after the island alone had taken on about 3 million extra barrels of oil, the CGEP reported.

Generally, oil companies avoid filling their storage beyond 80 percent capacity to balance safety, emissions control and flexibility.

However, Iran and other oil producing countries have exceeded this limit before, for instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, Kharg island’s stocks reached close to 90 percent capacity, an all-time high.

Iran also has some crude oil storage capacity in the form of “floating tanks”, or parked ships. About 127 million barrels can be stored in this way, Frederic Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera in an interview on April 14.

Will Iran need to cut oil production?

Muyu Xu, a senior crude oil analyst at Kpler, told Al Jazeera that the blockade could eventually force Iran to cut production.

“However, given there is still available storage capacity onshore (roughly covering 20 days of Iran’s current production), we expect any production reduction to be gradual over the coming week with a higher likelihood of acceleration into May,” she said.

Analysis by CGEP nonresident fellow Antoine Halff echoed this. Halff wrote in an article published by CGEP on Tuesday that it may be some time before the US blockade causes Iran to shut off its production “in a big way”.

However, Halff added, Iran may still choose to halt production “fairly aggressively” but this “would be more by choice than by necessity”.

He explained: “Doing so would have the advantage of providing Iran with relatively ample spare storage capacity after the shutdown and would allow for a smoother restart of operations once conditions permit, and the constraint is relaxed, thus minimising adverse impacts from the blockade on longer-term supply.”

Why does this matter?

Halting oil production risks damaging underground reservoirs by reducing reservoir pressure, allowing water or gas to encroach into producing layers and changing patterns of oil flow. This can make some oil harder or more expensive to recover later, experts said.

Restarting the process of oil production can also be slow and costly, involving repairs of corroded equipment or unclogging pipelines.

Halting production would also cause Iran’s export revenues to drop. However, analysts said that for a few months, Iran can continue to earn revenue from oil that is already in transit at sea.

Kenneth Katzman, former Iran analyst at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, DC, said Iran is not exporting new oil during the US blockade of Iranian ports but Tehran has 160 million to 170 million barrels of oil on ships around the world currently.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve said Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.

“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”

Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”

The comments underscore the challenge faced by Warsh, 56, a financier and former member of the Fed’s board of governors whom Trump named in January to replace the current Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell. Democrats on the committee accused Warsh of flip-flopping on interest rates over the years, supporting higher interest rates under Democratic presidents and advocating rate cuts during Trump’s time in office. Investors are watching the hearing closely to see how Warsh balances Trump’s demands with worsening inflation, as the war in Iran pushes up the price of gasoline.

Higher inflation typically leads the Fed to raise rates, or at least keep them unchanged, rather than cut them. When the Fed changes its key rate, it can affect mortgages, auto loans and business borrowing.

Yet Warsh’s account was challenged by Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, who said that Wall Street Journal reporting last year found that Trump had urged Warsh to reduce borrowing costs.

“Who’s lying here? Is it you or the president?” Gallego asked.

“I think those reporters need better sources,” Warsh responded.

For all the back and forth, the hearing didn’t appear to advance Warsh’s nomination, which has been delayed by a Justice Department investigation into the Fed and Powell, over brief testimony Powell gave last June before the same panel about a building renovation.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the committee, reiterated Tuesday he wouldn’t vote for Warsh until the investigation is dropped. With the committee closely divided and all Democrats opposed to his nomination, Tillis’ opposition is enough to bottle it up in committee.

“We have got to get rid of this investigation,” Tillis said, “so I can support your nomination.”

Tillis has previously said that all seven Republicans on the committee have signed a letter stating that Powell did not commit a crime when he testified before the panel last June. Federal prosecutors, led by U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro, are investigating his testimony for potential perjury, though a judge said last month they offered no evidence to support the charge when he threw out subpoenas Pirro had issued.

Prosecutors from her office as recently as last week sought access to the Fed’s building project but were turned away, revealing that the Trump administration has not reversed course despite opposition from members of his own party that are essential to Warsh’s confirmation.

In his opening remarks, Warsh told the Senate Banking Committee that one of his top goals would be to fight inflation, which remains elevated at 3.3% annually.

“Congress tasked the Fed with the mission to ensure price stability, without excuse or equivocation, argument or anguish,” Warsh said. “Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it.”

Warsh would be in a tough spot if confirmed. Inflation is worsening, making it much harder for the Fed to implement the interest rate cuts Trump so desperately seeks. The conflict could also slow the economy, as well as hiring. And if Warsh ultimately becomes chair, he may very well find his predecessor, Powell, still sitting on the Fed’s governing board, an uncomfortable arrangement that hasn’t occurred since the late 1940s.

Warsh said the Fed’s political independence is “essential,” and that the central bank wasn’t threatened when “elected officials — presidents, senators, or members of the House — state their views on interest rates.” Trump has repeatedly urged Powell to cut the Fed’s key rate from its current level of about 3.6% to as low as 1%, a view almost no economist shares.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that Trump has not just stated his opinions on rates, but has sought to fire a Fed governor and is investigating Powell.

“The Senate should not be aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s illegal takeover of the Fed by installing his chosen sock puppet as chair,” she said Tuesday.

Warren also noted that Warsh has not disclosed all of his financial holdings, which include investments in startups and private companies, or the size of those financial stakes. For example, Warsh has said he has holdings in SpaceX and Polymarket, but has not said how large those investments are.

Warren charged that Warsh is not in compliance with ethics requirements. Warsh argued that the Office of Government Ethics has signed off on his plan to sell all his assets within 90 days of his confirmation.

The turmoil could make a potential transition from Powell to Warsh an unusually turbulent one for the world’s most pivotal central bank, which has historically experienced smooth transfers of power. Should the change in leadership prove particularly bumpy, it could unnerve markets and lift longer-term interest rates.

Powell’s term as chair ends May 15. He said last month that he would remain as chair until a successor is named. Powell also is serving a separate term as a member of the Fed’s governing board that lasts until January 2028. Fed chairs typically leave the board when their terms as chair end, but Powell said last month he would remain on the board, even if a new chair is approved, until the investigation is dropped.

Trump said he would fire Powell if he attempted to remain at the Fed. Yet Trump’s previous attempt to remove a Fed governor, Lisa Cook, has been tied up in court. During oral arguments in January, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court appeared to lean toward leaving Cook at the Fed.

Rugaber writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — NASA recaptured the world’s attention with Artemis II, which took astronauts to the moon and back for the first time in half a century. But the agency’s scientific projects could again be under threat as the Trump administration makes a renewed push to drastically cut their funding — including at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The cuts, proposed in the Trump administration’s 2027 budget request to Congress, would pose further challenges to the already weakened Caltech-managed lab and could be broadly damaging to American efforts to bring back new discoveries from space. They echo last year’s attempt by the administration to slash NASA funding, which Congress rejected.

Though the Artemis project is billed as laying a foundation for a crewed NASA mission to Mars, exploration of the Red Planet is among the endeavors that could be slashed. The rover currently exploring Mars’ ancient river delta and a mission to orbit Venus are among projects with JPL involvement targeted for spending cuts, according to an analysis of the NASA budget proposal by the nonprofit Planetary Society.

“This isn’t [because] they’re not producing good science anymore. There’s no rhyme or reason to it,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, which led opposition to the administration’s similar effort to cut NASA funding last year.

Storm clouds hang over the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 7, 2024.

(David McNew / Getty Images)

This time, the administration is asking Congress to cut NASA funding by 23% — including a 46% cut to its science programs, which are responsible for developing spacecraft, sending them into outer space to observe and analyzing the data they send back.

The proposal would cancel 53 science missions and reduce funding for others, according to the Planetary Society analysis. The effort to pare down NASA Science comes amid the Trump administration’s broader effort to cut scientific research across federal agencies.

The plan swiftly drew bipartisan criticism from members of Congress, who rejected the administration’s similar 2026 proposal in January. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA, indicated last week that he would work to fund NASA similarly for 2027, saying it would be “a mistake” not to fund science missions.

Moran plans to hold a hearing with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman before the end of April to review the budget request, a spokesperson for his office said. The president’s budget request is an ask to Congress, which ultimately holds the power to allocate funding.

But until Congress creates its own budget, NASA will use the plan as its road map, which could slow grants and contracts. The proposal “still creates enormous chaos and uncertainty in the meantime for critical missions, the scientific workforce, and long-term research planning,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose district includes JPL.

A NASA spokesperson declined to comment Friday. In the budget request, Isaacman wrote that NASA was “pursuing a focused and right-sized portfolio” for its space science missions in order to align with Trump’s federal cost-cutting goals.

The budget “reinforces U.S. leadership in space science through groundbreaking missions, completed research, and next-generation observatories,” Isaacman wrote.

Jared Isaacman testifies during his confirmation hearing to be the NASA administrator in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Dec. 3, 2025.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

At JPL — which has for decades led innovation in space science and technology from its La Cañada Flintridge campus — questions had already swirled about the lab’s role in the future of NASA work.

Multiple rounds of layoffs over the last two years, the defunding of its embattled Mars Sample Return mission and a shift by the Trump administration toward lunar exploration and away from the type of scientific work that JPL executes had pushed the lab into a challenging stretch.

It has had a steady stream of employee departures in recent months, and those left have been scrambling to court outside funding from private investors, sell JPL technology to companies and increase productivity in hopes of keeping the lab afloat, according to two former staffers, who requested anonymity to describe the mood inside the lab.

“If we’re not doing science, then what are we doing?” asked one former employee, who recently left JPL after more than a decade there.

A spokesperson for the lab declined to comment, referring The Times to the budget proposal.

The NASA programs marked for cancellation or cutbacks support thousands of jobs at JPL and other centers, said Chu, who has led a push for increased funding for NASA Science. After last year’s layoffs, JPL “cannot afford to lose more of this expertise,” she said in a statement.

Among the JPL projects that appear to be slated for cancellation are two involving Venus, Dreier said. One, Veritas, is early in development and would give work to the lab for the next several years, he said.

The project would be the first U.S. mission to Venus in more than 30 years, Dreier said, and aims to make a high-resolution mapping of the planet’s surface and observe its atmosphere.

The Perseverance rover, which is on Mars collecting rock and soil samples, could face spending reductions. The budget request proposes pulling some funding from Perseverance to fund other planetary science missions and reducing “the pace of operations” for the rover.

Though how the Mars samples might get back to Earth is uncertain, the rover is still being used to explore the planet and search for evidence of whether it could have ever been habitable to life.

Researchers hope the tubes of Martian rock, soil and sediment can eventually be brought back to Earth for study. The team has about a half a dozen more sample tubes to fill and the rover is in good shape, said Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and Arizona State University professor who leads the camera team on Perseverance, which works daily with JPL.

He said NASA’s spending proposal put forth “no plan” for the future of the agency’s work.

“Are people just supposed to walk away from their consoles,” Bell asked, “and let these orbiters around other planets or rovers on other worlds — just let them die?”

The NASA document did not clearly show which programs were targeted for cuts and did not list which projects were targeted for cancellation. The Planetary Society and the American Astronomical Society each analyzed the proposal and found that dozens of projects appeared to be canceled without being named in the document.

Across NASA, other projects slated for cancellation according to the Planetary Society’s analysis include New Horizons, a spacecraft exploring the outer edge of the solar system; the Atmosphere Observing System, a planned project to collect weather, air quality and climate data; and Juno, a spacecraft studying Jupiter.

The administration’s plan also doesn’t prioritize new scientific projects, Bell said, which further jeopardizes long-term job stability and space discovery at centers like JPL.

“We’re going through this long stretch now with very few opportunities to build these spacecrafts,” Bell said. “All of the NASA centers are suffering from the lack of opportunities.”

Last year, the Trump administration proposed to slash NASA’s 2026 funding by nearly half. Instead, Congress approved funding in January that provided $24.4 billion for the agency — a cut of about 29% rather than the proposed 46%. The 2027 budget request asks for $18.8 billion.

Congress kept funding for science missions nearly steady, allocating $7.25 billion for science missions, about a 1% decrease from 2025. The administration had proposed cutting the science investment down to $3.91 billion. This time, the budget requests $3.89 billion.

Under the Trump administration, NASA has put an emphasis on moon exploration, including this month’s successful Artemis II mission. Isaacman, who defended the proposed cuts on CNN last week, touted the agency’s lunar plans, including a project to build a base on the moon.

The agency has indicated commitment to some existing science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the to-be-launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly spacecraft set to launch for Saturn’s moon in 2028, and other projects.

“NASA doesn’t have a topline problem, we just need to focus on executing and delivering world-changing outcomes,” Isaacman said on CNN.

Scientists have urged the government not to choose between funding science and exploration but to keep up investment in both.

“It’s ultimately kind of confusing, especially on the heels of the Artemis II mission,” said Roohi Dalal, deputy director for public policy at the American Astronomical Society. “The scientific community … is providing critical services to ensure that the astronauts are able to carry out their mission safely, and yet at the same time, they’re facing this significant cut.”

Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison made his case directly to theater owners Thursday, pledging to release a minimum of 30 films a year from the combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery company during a speech at the CinemaCon trade convention in Las Vegas.

“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison said in a brief on-stage speech, adding that Paramount has already nearly doubled its film lineup for this year with 15 planned releases, up from 8 in 2025.

He also said all films will remain in theaters exclusively for 45 days, starting Thursday. Films will then go to streaming platforms in 90 days. The amount of time that films stay in theaters — known as windowing — has been a controversial topic for theater owners, as some studios reduced that period during the pandemic. Theater operators have said the shortened window has trained audiences to wait to watch films at home and cuts into theater revenues.

“I have dedicated the last 20 years of my life to elevating and preserving film,” said Ellison, clad in a dark jacket and shirt with blue jeans. “And at Paramount, we want to tell even more great stories on the big screen — stories that make people think, laugh, dream, wonder and feel — and we want to share them with as broad an audience as possible.”

Ellison’s CinemaCon appearance comes as more than 1,000 Hollywood actors and creatives have signed a letter opposing Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner. Supporters of the letter have said the deal would reduce competition in the industry and “further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape.”

Some theater operators have also questioned whether the combined company could achieve its goal of releasing 30 films a year, particularly after the cost cuts that are expected after the merger closes.

“People can speculate all they want — but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment,” Ellison said. “And we’ll show you we mean it.”

The speech came after a star-studded video directed by “Wicked: For Good” director Jon M. Chu that was shot on the Paramount lot on Melrose Avenue and showcased directors and actors including Issa Rae, Will Smith, Chris Pratt, James Cameron and Timothée Chalamet that are working with the company.

The video closed with “Top Gun” actor Tom Cruise perched atop the Paramount water tower.

“As you saw, the Paramount lot is alive again,” Ellison said after the video. “And we could not be more excited.”