Trump says announcement expected today on Spirit Airlines deal
Workers at Spirit Airlines wait for passengers to arrive for their flights at O’Hare Airport on March 10, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said an announcement was expected Friday on Spirit Airlines, amid a report that the airline was preparing to cease operations after a $500 million rescue deal fell apart.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the airline is preparing to shut down operations.
When asked if the administration had decided against bailing out Spirit Airlines, Trump told reporters on Friday, “I guess we’re looking at it. If we could do it, we do it, but only if it’s a good deal.”
“No institution’s been able to do it,” he continued. “I said ‘I’d like to save the jobs,’ but we’ll have an announcement sometime today. We gave them, we gave them a final proposal.”
This is a developing story, check back for updates.
Cargo vessel, Ali 25, in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz on March 22, 2026 in northern Ras al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates.
(NEW YORK) — Gas prices in the United States topped $4 per gallon on average Tuesday, crossing the milestone for the first time in nearly four years, just weeks after the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran set off a global oil shock and spiked fuel costs.
Prices at the pump have soared more than 30% since the war began on Feb. 28., AAA data showed. Fuel costs last exceeded $4 a gallon in August 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Middle East conflict prompted Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime trading route that facilitates the transport of about one-fifth of global oil supply. The risk of a prolonged oil shortage triggered a surge in crude prices.
The U.S. is a net exporter of petroleum, meaning the country produces more oil than it consumes. But since oil prices are set on a global market, U.S. prices move in response to swings in worldwide supply and demand.
Global oil prices hovered around $104 a barrel on Tuesday, which amounted to a nearly 50% price leap from pre-war levels.
Crude oil is the main ingredient in auto fuel, accounting for more than half of the price paid at the pump, according to the federal U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), earlier this week said the current oil crisis had surpassed the combined effect of worldwide energy shocks in the 1970s.
The global economy faces a “major, major threat,” Birol said at an event in Canberra, Australia, noting that no country would be “immune to the effects of this crisis if it continues to go in this direction.”
Member nations of the IEA announced two weeks ago that they plan to release 400 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserve, marking the largest oil release in the 32-nation group’s history.
The Trump administration is set to carry out the second-largest-ever delivery from the nation’s emergency reserve, which will make up nearly half of the IEA’s planned release. Trump also eased sanctions on Russian oil and suspended a key regulation of domestic oil transport. The president has also sought to restore tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
Kevin Warsh, former governor of the US Federal Reserve, during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Spring meetings on Friday, April 25, 2025. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s selection to chair the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, will testify in a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday as his nomination faces bipartisan opposition centered on a federal criminal investigation into the central bank’s current leader.
The probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, which focuses on alleged false testimony to Congress about an office renovation, threatens to derail or delay Warsh’s nomination.
Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, has rebuked the probe as a politically motivated effort to influence interest-rate policy.
Warsh, a former Fed official, will likely face scrutiny from some lawmakers eager for assurance that he will set interest rates based on economic conditions, even if it puts him out of step with Trump’s preference for low interest rates.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a potentially decisive vote on the committee, says he will not move to advance the nomination until the Department of Justice resolves its unprecedented investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
Powell’s term as Fed chair ends on May 15, but he said last month he would stay in the position until Warsh is confirmed. For his part, Trump told Fox Business last week he would fire Powell if the current Fed chair attempts to remain in office past the end of his term.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the committee, voiced concern in a statement last week about what she considers Warsh’s perceived lack of independence, saying he may end up being “Donald Trump’s sock puppet.”
By contrast, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has dismissed such worries in a post on X last week.
Under Warsh, Scott said, the Fed will “be focused solely on strengthening the American economy.”
Warsh, who previously worked on Wall Street and in the George W. Bush administration, brings experience in finance and policymaking.
He is currently a fellow at a conservative think tank called the Hoover Institution, which is based at Stanford University. He also works as a partner at the Duquesne Family Office, an investment firm founded by billionaire and former hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller.
In 2006, Bush appointed Warsh to serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors, a top policymaking body that helps set the level of interest rates, where he served until 2011. His tenure overlapped with the 2008 financial crisis, during which he helped manage the central bank’s response under then-Chair Ben Bernanke.
The nomination of Warsh arrives at a delicate moment for the Fed, as it grapples with a challenging combination of elevated inflation and sluggish hiring. An interest-rate hike could help ease inflation but risks a further cooldown of the labor market, while a rate cut may boost hiring but threatens higher inflation.
During his term as a Fed governor in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Warsh gained a reputation as an interest-rate “hawk,” meaning he generally preferred higher interest rates as a means of ensuring low and stable inflation.
In recent months, however, Warsh has voiced support for lower interest rates, rebuking the Fed’s concern about inflation risk posed by a flurry of new tariffs issued last year.
Those remarks came before the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, however, which sent inflation soaring last month.
The rapid acceleration of price increases could complicate interest rate policy at the Fed, which may be reluctant to lower borrowing costs as inflation climbs.
President Donald Trump attends the signing ceremony of the Peace Charter for Gaza as part of the 56th World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 22, 2026. (Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Mortgage rates whipsawed in recent weeks as markets reacted to a flurry of policies from the Trump administration.
It began with a major milestone. Mortgage rates earlier this month fell below 6% for the first time in nearly three years, according to a data released by Mortgage News Daily.
“The progress stems directly from President Trump’s aggressive agenda to restore the American Dream of homeownership,” the White House touted in a statement on Jan. 12. The Trump administration cited its announcement days earlier, calling on government-sponsored mortgage lenders to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities.
Within little more than a week, however, mortgage rates had climbed to 6.21%, responding to rattled bond markets and erasing the previous reduction. The uptick came as Trump issued a tariff threat to European allies over his demands to acquire Greenland at the time. When Trump backed off of that levy soon afterward, mortgage rates fell but remained above previous lows, Mortgage News Daily data showed.
The volatility in mortgage rates underscored the risks posed by recent trade tensions, which threaten to push up Treasury yields and, in turn, drive mortgage rates higher, some analysts told ABC News.
Still, they added, mortgage rates will likely face downward pressure this year from anticipated interest-rate cuts at the Federal Reserve, and Trump may take further steps of his own to reduce borrowing costs.
“President Trump is certainly not sitting back and doing nothing,” Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, told ABC News.
“Some of it is big things on the international front, which are potentially destabilizing. And there’s an attempt to do anything and everything for the affordability of housing,” Wachter added.
To be sure, average 30-year mortgage rates have dropped from 7.08% to 6.17% since Trump took office, according to Mortgage News Daily. That drop-off owes in part to a post-pandemic cooldown of inflation, which allowed the Federal Reserve to begin lowering interst rates.
In a social media post earlier this month, Trump said lower mortgage rates would “make the cost of owning a home more affordable. It is one of my many steps in restoring Affordability.”
Mortgage rates closely track the yield on a 10-year Treasury bond. Since bonds pay a given investor a fixed amount each year, the specter of inflation risks higher prices that would eat away at those annual payouts. In turn, bonds often become less attractive in response to economic turmoil. When demand falls, bond yields rise.
U.S. Treasury yields jumped last week in the aftermath of Trump’s tariff threat over Greenland, which appeared to presage a possible trade war with several European allies.
The 10-year Treasury yield climbed as high as 4.3% in the aftermath of Trump’s threat, before dropping steadily down to 4.21% as Trump withdrew the levy and backed negotiations over Greenland, MarketWatch data showed.
As tensions rose in response to Trump’s tariff threat, some major U.S. bondholders in Europe appeared poised to sell. A Danish pension fund, AkademikerPension, said last Tuesday it would unload U.S. treasuries by the end of the month. It remains unclear whether other European bondholders will follow suit, especially after Trump’s reversal on tariffs.
If a substantial share of U.S. bondholders were to sell off their assets, it would slash demand and push up bond yields, some analysts said.
Since 30-year mortgage rates and other key interest rates track the yield on 10-year treasury bonds, a selloff of treasuries could bring about higher monthly payments for home loans, Raymond Robertson, a professor of trade, economics and public policy at Texas A&M University, told ABC News.
“It’s a pretty big concern,” Robertson said.
Marc Norman, associate dean at the New York University School of Professional Studies and Schack Institute of Real Estate, said bondholders are evaluating the reliability of U.S. government debt.
“Basically, it’s a bet on the U.S. government,” Norman told ABC News. “If that becomes unstable and people lose trust, it could have a big effect.”
Despite the uptick in mortgage rates in recent weeks, borrowing costs for homebuyers remain markedly lower than where they stood a year ago.
Analysts attributed the drop to a series of interest rate cuts at the Fed, as well as Trump’s order calling on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities. After the order, Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to up their bond investments in an effort to put downward pressure on mortgage rates, the Associated Press reported last week.
By ordering a federal agency to buy up some mortgage-backed securities, the Trump administration helped increased demand for the underlying loans, which pushed bond yields lower, Wachter said.
“This mortgage bond proposal is not a big move but it makes a difference,” Wachter added. Wachter said she expects mortgage rates to fall further over the course of this year, though she acknowledged ongoing risk: “Investors don’t like uncertainty.”
Still, Wachter said, “If you’re looking to buy a home, today is as good a day as any.”
If homebuyers move forward with a purchase but later find that mortgage rates have continued to fall, they can opt to refinance their homes. “The old saying is, ‘You marry the home and you date the mortgage,'” Wachter said.
