April 21 2025

Sound and Fury: Trump’s Policies Roar, but Economic Data Stays Silent

Conservatives Push Baby Bonuses, Cultural Shift to Boost Birthrates

Supreme Court Weighs Parental Rights over LGBTQ+ Books in Schools

Trump’s War on Paper Checks Aims to Modernize U.S. Financial System

U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks Near Conclusion, Restrictions Likely Softer than Trump’s Rhetoric

April 21, 753 B.C.: Rome Founded

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1. Sound and Fury: Trump’s Policies Roar, but Economic Data Stays Silent

Imagine you didn’t follow the news or social media and watched the world only through economic data. You would not have guessed the White House changed hands in January. President Trump’s deportations, tariffs, federal layoffs and funding suspensions have generated nonstop headlines and frayed confidence, yet left surprisingly little trace on the economy. Hiring, spending and inflation look a lot like they did under Joe Biden. The disconnect is deeply disorienting. United Airlines, calling the economic environment “impossible to predict,” this past week issued two outlooks for earnings: one with recession, and one without. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal think that hiring will slow sharply this year and that inflation will shoot up. So far, there’s little evidence of either. Job growth has averaged 173,000 over the past two months combined, almost the same as that of the prior six months. The unemployment rate has averaged 4.2%, a tenth of a point higher than the prior six months. Both overall inflation and the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of underlying price pressures have averaged a tenth of a point less. Elon Musk once said he could slash federal spending by $2 trillion. His Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, now claims a more modest $155 billion in savings. Yet in the first 80 days of Trump’s administration, federal spending was $154 billion higher than in the equivalent period a year earlier, a Journal analysis found. DOGE aimed to get rid of up to 10% of federal employees—about 240,000. Through February and March, though, federal employment excluding the post office is down just 10,100. Claims for unemployment insurance by former federal employees spiked in late February and early March but recently have averaged just a few hundred more per week than a year earlier. Meanwhile, despite a border crackdown and deportation push, the number of foreign-born workers continued to grow in recent months, though the data, based on a monthly Labor Department sample, might not be fully reliable. Trump’s tariffs seem to have led to higher wholesale prices of steel, aluminum and related products. But not much is happening at the consumer level. Gross domestic product, after growing 2.5% over 2024, is likely to be flat in the first quarter or even contract. But that seems to reflect unusual import behavior and the effect of weather on consumption.

Editors note: all this data is lagging, but so far at least, the ‘sound and fury’ of Trump is not borne out in the data
Source: WSJ

2. Conservatives Push Baby Bonuses, Cultural Shift to Boost Birthrates

The White House has been hearing out a chorus of ideas in recent weeks for persuading Americans to get married and have more children, an early sign that the Trump administration will embrace a new cultural agenda pushed by many of its allies on the right to reverse declining birthrates and push conservative family values. One proposal shared with aides would reserve 30 percent of scholarships for the Fulbright program, the prestigious, government-backed international fellowship, for applicants who are married or have children. Another would give a $5,000 cash “baby bonus” to every American mother after delivery. A third calls on the government to fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles — in part so they can better understand when they are ovulating and able to conceive. Those ideas, and others, are emerging from a movement concerned with declining birthrates that has been gaining steam for years and now finally has allies in the U.S. administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk. Policy experts and advocates of boosting the birthrate have been meeting with White House aides, sometimes handing over written proposals on ways to help or convince women to have more babies, according to four people who have been part of the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Editors note: after Roe v Wade, much of the ‘pro-life’ movement has refocused on this
Source: NYT

3. Supreme Court Weighs Parental Rights over LGBTQ+ Books in Schools

The debate over parental rights and religious freedom returns to the Supreme Court this week in a case testing whether families have a right to pull their kids from public school lessons featuring LGBTQ+-themed books at odds with their religious beliefs. The lawsuit over story time and books with titles such as “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Love, Violet” touches on the type of diversity and inclusion efforts the Trump administration has targeted on college campuses, and in government and private businesses. It is one of three major religious Rights cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term.
Source: Washington Post

4. Trump’s War on Paper Checks Aims to Modernize U.S. Financial System

The Trump administration wants to stamp out one of Americans’ enduring financial pastimes: writing cheques. Americans are the global leaders in cheques, writing 10 times that of Britain, Australia, Italy, Germany and France combined, according to estimates by McKinsey. But now, years after the likes of Finland and Denmark abolished them, the US is stepping up efforts to wean the country off of paper cheques. In an executive order last month, the White House mandated the federal government to cease issuing or accepting cheques where it is legal to do so starting from the end of September. The motives behind President Donald Trump’s administration’s war on cheques are clear. Cheques are more expensive to print and post than electronic transfers, more susceptible to fraud and less likely to make it to the intended recipient. “It’s 2025, we shouldn’t be mailing paper checks, at a cost that’s basically 10 times that of an electronic payment,” said Joe Fielding, a partner in Bain & Co’s financial services practice. “The push to modernise US government payments is a no brainer.”
Source: FT

5. U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks Near Conclusion, Restrictions Likely Softer than Trump’s Rhetoric

Iran and the United States wrapped up a second round of diplomatic talks over Tehran’s nuclear activities on Saturday, setting an agenda for rapid-paced negotiations that, according to Iranian officials, would not require the dismantlement of the country’s extensive nuclear infrastructure. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said after meeting Steve Witkoff, Ascertain compliance with any agreement could be monitored and verified. But implicit in that description of the future negotiations was an assumption that President Trump would be willing to back down from the administration’s original insistence that all of Iran’s major nuclear sites and long-range missile arsenals must be subject to what Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, recently called “full dismantlement.” The question of whether to allow Iran to retain the ability to produce nuclear fuel — with the risk that it could use it to create a bomb — has sharply divided Mr. Trump’s advisers. Those divisions have broken out in public in recent days, even as Mr. Witkoff, a real estate developer and friend of the president, was preparing for the talks that took place on Saturday at the residence of the Omani ambassador in Rome. Oman is acting as mediator in the talks.
Source: NYT

April 21, 753 B.C.: Rome Founded

According to tradition, on April 21, 753 B.C., Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants.

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Sources

1. https://www.wsj.com/economy/trump-is-everywhere-except-in-the-economic-data-ae9dbea8?mod=hp_lead_pos6
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/us/politics/baby-bonuses-fertility-planning-trump-aides-assess-ideas-to-boost-birthrate.html
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/20/supreme-court-religious-rights-lgbtq-books/
4. https://www.ft.com/content/b4ec8298-6977-498a-bec5-5db63a4f8850
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/world/middleeast/us-iran-nuclear-talks.html?campaign_id=7&emc=edit_mbae_20250420&instance_id=152962&nl=morning-briefing:-asia-pacific-edition®i_id=279126082&segment_id=196391&user_id=2c1c6898d4514014305be9647762af86