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Here’s how the Economy Crashes By War
Whirlpool, the iconic American appliance maker, just dropped a bombshell on Wall Street. The company says Trump’s war with Iran caused what it calls a recession-level industry decline. CEO Marc Bitzer told investors the only comparable downturn in living memory was the 2008 financial crisis. Appliance demand dropped seven point four percent in the first quarter. In March alone, demand cratered ten percent. Consumer confidence has collapsed. Whirlpool slashed its profit forecast in half, suspended its dividend, and hiked prices ten percent in April. Shares dropped twenty percent in premarket trading. And Whirlpool isn’t some scrappy startup. They make eighty percent of their appliances right here in America. If a domestic giant with the political wind at its back is getting clobbered, what’s coming for everyone else? When working families can’t afford a new washer, that’s not a market correction. That’s an economy buckling under the weight of a war nobody asked for.
Who’s Getting Rich on Trump’s Iran War?
Now here’s where the story gets sickening. On Wednesday at three forty in the morning, somebody placed nearly one billion dollars in crude oil short bets. Ten thousand contracts. No news, no announcement, just a massive bet that oil prices were about to crash. Seventy minutes later, Axios broke the story that the U.S. and Iran were close to a peace deal. Oil prices tanked. The mystery trader walked away with a fortune. The Kobeissi Letter called it a deliberate, high-conviction directional bet. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, is calling foul. She said the on-again, off-again war and peace rhetoric is just insider trading with a body count. Senator Chris Murphy is demanding the SEC investigate what he calls mind-blowing corruption. And this isn’t the first time. There’s been pattern after pattern. Wars now make the rich richer in real time, while working people pay at the pump and on the supermarket shelf.
“This Is How We Cement President Trump’s Agenda” Jim Crow is Back.
Tennessee just put gerrymandering on steroids. Republican leadership unveiled a new congressional map that would split Memphis, a majority-Black city of over a million people, into three different districts. The lone Democratic seat in the state, held by Steve Cohen, would simply vanish. The new ninth district would stretch nearly three hundred miles from Memphis up toward Nashville. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who’s running for governor, said it’s “essential to cement President Trump’s agenda and the Golden Age of America.” Trump himself personally pressured state leaders to draw the new maps after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act last week. The Tennessee House passed it Thursday afternoon as protesters shouted “No Jim Crow” outside the chamber. Sekou Franklin of the NAACP called the move Black vote dilution at an industrial scale. This is what happens when the high court rolls back civil rights. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness anymore. They’re killing it in broad daylight.
Why Are They Banning Books About Activism?
A new PEN America report just dropped, and it’s a gut punch. Bans on non-fiction books in American schools doubled over the last academic year. Of the three thousand seven hundred forty-three unique titles pulled from libraries and classrooms, fifty-two percent of the non-fiction targeted dealt with activism and social movements. Books about the Stonewall riots. Books about women’s marches. Books about Black history and civil rights. They’re being yanked off shelves at industrial pace. PEN’s research director said the trend mirrors a broader political attack on facts and knowledge itself. Sexual education books also doubled as a category. The report points out the obvious. This crackdown lines up perfectly with the federal government’s escalating war on free speech. When you tell kids they can’t read about people who fought for justice, you’re trying to raise a generation that doesn’t even know justice is possible. That’s not parenting. That’s authoritarianism with a library card.
Europe Runs Dry on Jet Fuel as the War Drags On
Europe is sleepwalking into a summer travel disaster. The International Energy Agency says jet fuel inventories at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerp have crashed fifty percent since the war began in February. Goldman Sachs estimates Europe will fall below the critical twenty-three day shortage threshold by June. Middle East refineries used to supply seventy-five percent of Europe’s jet fuel. Now production is, in the IEA chief’s words, basically zero. Transavia, Ryanair, and Volotea have already started canceling flights. Kerosene prices have more than doubled. And here’s the global ripple effect that matters most. American carriers just hiked baggage fees because their fuel costs jumped billions. Delta says it’s eating a two billion dollar fuel hit just for this quarter. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. So when politicians shrug off Trump’s war as something happening over there, remember that your summer vacation, your airfare, and your everyday prices are all paying the bill.
Is a Super El Nino About to Cook the Planet?
And finally, just when you thought we needed more bad news, the climate has something to say. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts both warn that the odds of a so-called super El Nino forming this year are climbing fast. We’re talking Pacific Ocean temperatures spiking three degrees Celsius above average by fall. Layer that on top of human-caused warming, and global temperatures in 2027 could shatter every record we’ve got. The last super El Nino back in 2015 caused brutal drought in Ethiopia and forced water rationing in Puerto Rico. This time, we’re starting from a hotter baseline. Hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, floods. The whole menu is on the table. The science is screaming. Whether anyone in power is listening is another question entirely. Take care of each other out there, because nobody’s coming to save us but us.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, May 7, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
