American flyers still smarting from interminable airport security lines are about to get another shock.

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A looming global jet fuel shortage is expected to hike the cost of air travel and reduce flight schedules, as airlines look to offset rising prices.

On Monday, JetBlue announced it was raising baggage fees, citing “rising operating costs.”

“While we recognize that fee increases are never ideal, we take careful consideration to ensure these changes are implemented only when necessary,” the carrier said.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said costs to passengers have already been increasing. Data from flight information group OAG shows average airfares in the past week reached $465, the highest price point for the same period since at least 2019.

“We have to raise prices to deal with higher fuel prices,” Kirby acknowledged at a company event last week in Los Angeles. In a subsequent memo, he added: “It may be a challenge to continue passing through much of the increased fuel price if oil stays higher for longer.”

The rising prices are the latest example of the economic fallout from the war with Iran. Analysts have started warning that the full toll has only begun to be accounted for as the global economy absorbs the loss of critical energy exports out of the region due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and damage to other key energy infrastructure sites in the region. On Tuesday, U.S. gasoline prices hit $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 amid surging oil prices. Major stock indexes, meanwhile, have fallen by nearly 10% since the start of the war.

In the case of air travel, the industry is facing jet fuel prices that have surged 85% in the U.S. since the day before the war began in February, according to data from Argus published by the industry group Airlines for America. On Monday, they hit a record $4.62 a gallon.

Most U.S. carriers no longer hedge fuel costs, said Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group. So they are forced to pass on some costs to passengers.

While U.S. carriers largely source jet fuel domestically, countries in Asia and Europe that are more reliant on Middle East stocks have begun signaling they are taking unprecedented measures to conserve jet fuel. In South Korea, carriers have requested that the government help redirect fuel stocks bound for export back to local markets.

The Financial Times reported Monday that the U.K. was also facing an acute shortage, with no Britain-bound cargoes visible on the water as transit through the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked. Some foreign carriers have begun charging fuel surcharges of as much as $150.

As overseas carriers begin looking to alternative supply bases, the cost for a global commodity like jet fuel rises across the board.

“It shocks the entire mechanism,” said Jaime Brito, an executive director at Oil Price Information Service consultancy.

President Donald Trump commented on the jet fuel shortages Tuesday morning, though he did not mention their impact on U.S. travelers.

“All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you: Number 1, buy from the U.S., we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Airlines are also signaling capacity cuts to cope with rising costs. United will drop about 5% of planned flights in mostly “off-peak periods” — like red-eye and midweek routes — during the second and third quarters of 2026 to further mitigate the cost increases.

“We’re certainly going to be nimble in terms of capacity to make sure that supply and demand stay in balance,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said at a JPMorgan conference earlier this month.

Kyle Potter, executive editor of the Thrifty Traveler, said most carriers have quietly been raising airfares since the Iran war began. He said airlines typically move in droves when making pricing decisions, so it is likely that other carriers may also soon begin raising baggage fees or seek other forms of ancillary revenue. Potter noted that unlike airfares, revenues from these fees are not subject to federal excise taxes.

As a result, the fees — unlike airfares — are unlikely to come back down assuming jet fuel prices recover.

Representatives for five other major U.S. carriers did not respond to a request for comment.

The acute fuel price increase comes as air travel demand has remained steady, with January and February ticket sales at or near records. While investors have taken airline stocks down some 25% since the start of the Iran war, Kirby said that customers appear willing to keep booking thanks to healthy demand even if airfare rises.

“The number of wealthy Americans who are traveling is bigger and wealthier than ever, and that is what much of the airline industry is relying on right now,” Potter said. “And that means they’re more immune to higher fees, higher fares and just getting turned off by negative news about travel.”

The average price of a gallon of gasoline hit $4 Tuesday for the first time since mid-2022, as the cost of oil surges due to the Iran war.

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In the month since the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the average price of unleaded gas has spiked more than a dollar a gallon. On Tuesday morning, the average price nationwide was $4.02 per gallon, motor club AAA said.

It’s not just retail gasoline. The diesel fuel used to power trucks delivering goods to stores, farm equipment and public transit has risen to $5.45 per gallon, more than $1.80 higher than it was a year ago.

Driving that is the soaring cost of crude oil worldwide. U.S West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude has risen more than 50% since the war began Feb. 28, while Brent, the international benchmark, has seen a jump of nearly 60%.

On Monday, U.S. crude oil settled above $100 per barrel for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Brent crude oil is poised to see its largest one-month increase on record.

Oil prices had already started rising before the Iran war began, fueled by fears that a conflict was imminent. Since the start of the year, the cost of U.S. crude oil is up more than 80% and Brent has skyrocketed almost 90%.

In response to strikes by the U.S. and Israel, Iran has effectively blocked shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical channel off its southern coast. Tehran has also attacked its Gulf Arab neighbors, who are major oil producers.

Typically, more than 20% of the world’s oil supply moves through the waterway. But Iran has repeatedly threatened to attack ships if they move through the strait without permission or if they’re associated with the U.S. or Israel. Several tankers have been hit.

As a result, many tankers are stranded in the Persian Gulf, unable to deliver their products to markets.

Some tankers have been allowed to pass through the strait, including one associated with India and three associated with China. But overall traffic through the waterway is down more than 90% in March.

During the first 28 days of the war, a total of only 55 to 60 tankers have cleared the Strait of Hormuz, according to the ship tracking website TankerTrackers.

Before the war, more than 100 ships per day made the passage, it said.

“This rise in gasoline spending could potentially dampen consumers’ ability to spend on ‘nice-to-have’ or discretionary categories,” Bank of America economists recently wrote.

This year, the average U.S. household will spend an additional $740 on gas because of the jump in oil prices, according to economists from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

“The consumer has already seen the sticker shock from rising gasoline prices and increased airline ticket prices from the rising cost of jet fuel,” longtime industry analyst Andy Lipow said. “However, the full effects of the higher diesel prices has yet to be felt and that will flow through the economy over the next few months.”

As American consumers adjust to higher gas prices, oil dependent nations in Europe and Asia are already facing much more severe energy shocks. Inflation, oil and gas rationing and sharp pullbacks in economic growth estimates are impacting billions of people worldwide.

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he would like to “take the oil in Iran” and is considering seizing the export hub of Kharg Island, which is responsible for more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports.

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In an interview with the Financial Times, Trump said his “preference would be to take the oil.”

“To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the U.S. say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” he said.

The interview marks some of Trump’s most direct comments about his thinking on what to do with Iran’s oil.

In an interview with NBC News this month, Trump sidestepped answering whether he had plans to try to take Iran’s oil.

“You look at Venezuela,” he said. “People have thought about it, but it’s too soon to talk about that.”

In January, the U.S. captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and proceeded to take more control over the country’s oil industry.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.

Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday that the U.S. has “a lot of options,” including potentially taking Kharg Island, a rare island made of hard coral off Iran.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”

Oil prices have skyrocketed around the globe as the war continues, with U.S. crude oil costing over $100 a barrel Sunday.

Thousands more U.S. troops are heading to the Middle East, with the USS Tripoli arriving on Saturday as part of a complement of 3,500 troops. But Trump and his administration continue to signal that they are working to negotiate a 15-point proposal to end the war.

Trump declined Sunday to offer specific details about whether a ceasefire deal could be reached in the coming days to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway used to move about 20% of the world’s oil exports.

“We’ve got about 3,000 targets left — we’ve bombed 13,000 targets — and another couple of thousand targets to go,” Trump said in the Financial Times interview. “A deal could be made fairly quickly.”

Colombian officials discovered a body Friday amid the search for a U.S. flight attendant who went missing in the country last weekend.

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Medellin Mayor Federico Gutiérrez announced the discovery in a post on X, saying that “a lifeless body has just been found between the municipality of Jericó and Puente Iglesias,” in the northeast region of the South American country.

The mayor said the body was likely that of Eric Fernando Gutierrez Molina, a 32-year-old American Airlines flight attendant from Texas who vanished while out with colleagues in Medellín, Colombia, during a layover.

“There is a very high probability that it is this person. The lifeless body is being transported to legal medicine in Medellín for identification and recognition,” Gutiérrez wrote on X. “We express our solidarity to his family and friends. I have just personally delivered the painful news to his father, who is in Medellín.”

Gutiérrez also said authorities suspect foul play, adding that officials “have very clear leads on those responsible” and calling for those individuals to be sought through extradition.

The mayor said he informed the U.S. ambassador to Colombia of the discovery. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Gutierrez Molina’s family.

In a news briefing, Medellín Security Secretary Manuel Villa said Gutierrez Molina was in Colombia on business and was out in the city of Itagüí with two co-workers that he identified as a man and a woman. Gutierrez Molina and the man then left the first establishment to go to a second location with others, also in Itagüí.

“And from there, once they left, there has been no further information on the whereabouts of Eric,” Villa said. “The woman arrived at the hotel where she was staying. However, she arrived somewhat disoriented.”

Villa said law enforcement have determined through their investigation that Gutierrez Molina and the woman encountered individuals “with a history of committing theft under the influence of scopolamine.”

The investigation remains under investigation and national police are still deployed throughout the area, Villa said.

Gutierrez Molina’s sister, Mayra Gutierrez, said in a phone call earlier this week that her brother had been out with another crew member over the weekend. She said the family last heard from him in the early hours of Sunday and confirmed that he worked for American Airlines.

American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement earlier this week, the airline said it is “actively engaged with local law enforcement officials in their investigation and doing all we can to support our team member’s family during this time,” but did not mention Gutierrez Molina by name.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans voted Friday evening to pass a short-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security that has no viable path in the Senate and is likely to extend the shutdown stalemate on Capitol Hill.

The vote of 213-203 came after Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., rejected the Senate-passed bill, which would fund all of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Funding for DHS lapsed in mid-February.

He called the Senate measure “a joke,” placing full blame for it on Democrats, even though Republicans control the Senate and the bill passed by unanimous consent early Friday morning.

“They have taken hostage the funding processes of government so that they can impose their radical agenda on the American people,” Johnson told reporters before the House vote.

His remarks came around the same time President Donald Trump signed an order directing the Department of Homeland Security to pay Transportation Security Administration employees who have missed paychecks during the DHS shutdown, leading to high TSA callout rates that have created long lines for passengers at U.S. airports. The dollar amount and authority for tapping the funds was not immediately clear, but a DHS spokesperson said paychecks should start arriving as early as Monday.

We’d like to hear from you about how you’re experiencing the partial government shutdown, whether you’re a TSA agent who can’t work right now or a federal employee who is feeling the effects at your agency. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.

The House-passed bill, which would fund DHS through May 22, is not expected to become law. The Senate left town Friday for a two-week recess, and Democratic senators have consistently vowed to block funding for ICE and CBP without constraints on immigration enforcement operations.

Asked if Trump has endorsed his plan, Johnson told reporters on Friday afternoon: “I spoke to the president a few moments ago; he understands exactly what we’re doing and why, and he supports it.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has no plans to bring back the Senate because there is no realistic path to passing the House bill, a GOP aide told NBC News.

The belief among Senate Republican leadership is that it does not make sense to pursue a path other than the bipartisan bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, minus ICE and CBP, that the Senate passed early Friday morning, according to a senior GOP aide.

The Senate over the past six weeks has attempted to pass numerous measures identical to the one passed by the House on Friday night, and all have failed in the face of Democratic opposition.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned that a House bill that funds ICE and CBP without guardrails would go nowhere in the Senate, where it would require 60 votes to advance. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.

“We’ve been clear from day one: Democrats will fund critical homeland security functions — but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms,” Schumer said, adding that the House GOP’s short-term funding bill would be “dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., sided with Schumer in favor of the Senate-passed bill.

“We have this bipartisan bill sent over by the Senate that House Democrats are prepared to support,” he told reporters Friday. “If that bill is brought to the floor today it will pass. The Trump-Republican DHS shutdown will be over. Unfortunately, MAGA extremists in the House of Representatives continue to inflict pain on the American people.”

Johnson put forward the short-term funding bill after a bloc of House conservatives expressed outrage over the Senate-passed measure and vowed to vote against it, complicating any move toward swift passage in the House.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., called the Senate bill “irresponsible” and added that voter identification provisions and parts of ICE funding must be included.

“Those two things will have to be in,” he said.

Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., said Democrats won’t support a bill to fund ICE without constraints after immigration enforcement agents killed two Americans in Minneapolis.

“I think we made it very clear, and the American public is demanding some sort of guardrails on an agency that has basically terrorized communities across this country, resulted in the death of two American citizens,” she said. “We have shone a light on just how rogue ICE was acting.”

Leaving the Capitol on Friday, Johnson told NBC News that he gave Thune a heads up before deciding to reject the Senate-passed measure and its omission of funding for ICE and CBP.

“We talked today, and I told him it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody we would not be able to do that,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to split apart two of the most important agencies in the government and leave them hanging like that. We just couldn’t do it.”

Todd and Janet Gatewood launched their Nashville-based radio show “God, Freedom and Bitcoin” in January, blending their passion for cryptocurrency with their strong faith.

Then the market crashed. At roughly $69,000 on Thursday, the price of the cryptocurrency is down by 45%, struggling to recover and nowhere near the $126,000 high it reached in October.

But the couple sees the slide as a blessing.

Janet, a real estate agent in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, told her husband and a guest appearing on a Feb. 9 show that she hoped to close on more houses, so she could buy bitcoin at a lower price.

“This is what we call ‘on sale,’” she said. “Buy the dip. If you’ve ever heard anything in the bitcoin space, this is when you want to buy.”

The Gatewoods are among a diverse group of Christian financial influencers, entrepreneurs and even pastors working to pitch the faithful on digital currencies. Their positions vary — some are bitcoin hard-liners. Others dabble in meme coins — crypto assets that are quickly spun up and traded around memes and cultural moments.

During this time of volatility, some of the Christian investors who are following them are doubling down.

“It’s not fazing me at all,” said Alicia Tappin, 55, who has purchased bitcoin during the dip. “I’m not emotionally tied to it right now — if I was I would be a wreck.”

Tappin said she follows updates from a Christian businesswoman named Michelle Renee, whose firm charges $499 a year for a VIP membership that provides access to webinars, its “cryptocurrency watchlist” and a Telegram chat.

Travelers frustrated by long security lines may not see immediate relief, even as Transportation Security Administration officers begin receiving pay again on Monday after working without wages for more than a month during the partial government shutdown.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing federal officials to ensure that TSA workers are paid despite the shutdown, breaking a more than 40-day stretch in which officers went without salaries.

But the move is unlikely to bring instant relief at airport checkpoints, according to former TSA Administrator John S. Pistole.

“It’s a temporary fix,” he told NBC News.

The more pertinent question, he said, is how many workers actually return to their posts now that paychecks are set to resume Monday.

More than 500 officers have quit during the shutdown, according to the Department of Homeland Security, while thousands more have called out because they can’t afford basic expenses.

TSA callout rates reached a high of 12.35% of the workforce on Friday, accounting for more than 3,560 employees, a DHS spokesperson said Saturday. The department added that at Trump’s direction and under Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, TSA has “immediately begun the process of paying its workforce” and that officers “should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday, March 30.”

Those shortages have forced travelers to contend with missed and canceled flights, long security lines and growing uncertainty around air travel.

If most officers report back beginning Monday and airports are able to restore staffing, wait times could start to ease within several days to a couple of weeks, Pistole said.

“It really depends on that asterisk of how many people show up,” he said.

Some workers who left may already have other jobs lined up, raising questions about whether some will return at all.

“How many of them come back after they get this paycheck? Or maybe they already have another full-time job lined up, they’re just waiting to inform TSA after they get their check on Monday,” Pistole said. “So there are a number of variables there.”

Pistole said the uncertainty, coupled with TSA’s typical annual attrition rate of about 7%, could mean delays will continue even after pay resumes.

Until then, some travelers may want to consider alternatives such as driving, rail or bus.

“I think many will and are looking at those options to say, ‘Is that more reliable? Because the last thing I want to do is get to Bush International Airport in Houston and have a four-hour wait,’” Pistole said.

A flurry of bets made prior to major announcements about the Iran war has ramped up speculation that individuals or groups with advance knowledge of U.S. military plans are cashing in on insider information.

And while prediction market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi now say they are taking more proactive measures designed to prevent such illicit activity, experts say there have been few signs so far that Trump administration regulators are cracking down.

“You need the deterrent factor that exists on the government side,” said Chris Ehrman, an attorney who previously served as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s whistleblower office. Without it, he said, simply allowing the platforms to self-regulate often amounts to “whipping them with a wet noddle.”

So far, the suspect bets have been largely concentrated on Polymarket, a platform that allows users to wager on the likelihood of certain events taking place. But in at least one case, speculation about a possible insider trade has migrated to a more traditional market.

The CFTC did not respond to a request for comment. In an interview this week with the Washington Reporter, an online conservative publication, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig pushed back on the idea that his office was not taking on the issue.

“There’s this false media narrative that CFTC-regulated markets are the Wild West and have no regulation and that’s blatantly false,” he said. “The CFTC uses complex surveillance tools and has seasoned career staff that pro-actively monitor these markets for insider trading and fraud.”

The CFTC recently issued guidance that reminded prediction market platforms of their responsibilities to limit insider trading.

Noah Solowiejczyk, a partner at law firm Fenwick & West and a former federal prosecutor, said the agency has recently shown signs it wants to take insider trading cases more seriously.

“I think you’ll see an enforcement action or prosecution happen” in an events-driven insider trading case, Solowiejczyk predicted.

Once relegated to the world of finance, insider has become a major topic in recent years as concerns about everything from politicians’ stock trades to professional athletes’ performances are now widely scrutinized for evidence of manipulation — fueled in part by the ongoing creep of investing and gambling onto smartphones and into everyday life.

Data suggests traders with advanced knowledge of geopolitical events may have collectively pocketed millions from recent bets on Polymarket. Last month, in the run-up to the latest round of American and Israeli attacks on Iran, some $529 million was traded on the platform tied to the timing of the strikes, Bloomberg News reported.

Earlier this week, analytics firm Bubblemaps said a series of connected Polymarket accounts had earned $1 million over the past two years predicting U.S. and Israeli strikes in the Middle East.

On Monday, approximately 15 minutes before President Donald Trump posted that there had been “productive” talks with Iran, stocks and oil futures trades on the main exchange run by longtime markets firm CME Group saw an unusual burst of volume compared to the relatively subdued backdrop seen the rest of that morning.

The bets predicted stocks would rise and oil prices would fall that day — precisely what happened once Trump made his announcement.

Depending on when they closed, the trades could have yielded millions — though shortly after Trump’s post, Iran denied there had been direct talks, and the market moves reversed somewhat.

Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment. A CME spokespersn declined to comment.

Solowiejczyk said the CFTC has likely been hampered by staffing shortages, which may be impacting its ability to take on new cases. Barron’s magazine recently reported that the CFTC has made significant cuts in its enforcement division, including the loss of all enforcement attorneys in its Chicago office.

It is not clear to what extent the anonymity that’s available to traders on Polymarket and Kalshi would hinder a federal investigation into illicit trading.

While part of Polymarket is registered in the U.S., making it subject to federal know-your-customer requirements, another part is registered in Panama — something that could make it harder to trace individuals making insider bets. Experts also say traders can circumvent geographic restrictions by using virtual private networks, or VPNs, that mask which country they are operating in.

So far, no American has faced federal charges in connection with insider trading on event-driven news. In February, Israel charged two of its military service members with using classified information to place bets on Polymarket related to unspecified combat operations.

Polymarket only recently began accepting trades from U.S.-based users, following an effort by the Trump administration to end a Biden-era push to restrict its use here.

Kalshi is fully registered in the U.S., and recently suspended an editor for influencer MrBeast in connection with alleged insider trading.

Many of the suspect bets on Polymarket are placed by accounts that are either new or solely focused on one specific outcome, further suggesting insiders could be behind them.

Even prior to the recent military operations and the accompanying suspicious bets, accusations of insider trading on Polymarket had begun to surface.

In January, a Polymarket user earned some $400,000 betting that then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would soon be out of office. One trader appeared to make approximately $1.2 million forecasting whom Google would announce as the most-searched people of 2025.

In response to a question about insider trading in November, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan told “60 Minutes” that “having an edge” is “a good thing.”

Coplan said that while he was focused on the ethics of insider transactions, it was “sort of an inevitability that this will happen, and there’s a lot of benefits from it.”

This week, Polymarket and Kalshi both unveiled measures designed to further crack down on insider trading.

Polymarket announced new rules explicitly stating users cannot act on insider information or trade on events whose outcome they could influence.

Kalshi said it was deploying technology that would “preemptively block politicians, athletes, and other relevant people” from trading in politics and sports markets. It also said it was adding a whistleblower function to its markets homepage that would allow users to flag potential violations.

A representative for Kalshi said the company has not been involved in the recent suspect trades. “We ban insider trading and enforce it,” a spokeswoman said in an email.

Polymarket, recently valued at $9 billion, counts Donald Trump Jr. as an investor. The president’s eldest son is also a strategic adviser to Kalshi, its top competitor.

White House representatives denied any wrongdoing originated from the administration and blasted insinuations that they were.

“All federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for financial benefit,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.

“However, any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”

“The President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” David Warrington, White House counsel, said in a statement. “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”

“Don does not interface with the federal government as part of his role with any company that he invests in or advises and has no influence or involvement with administration policies relating to prediction markets,” a representative for Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.

Members of Congress have taken a more circumspect view of event-market platforms, putting forward legislation that would ban elected officials and government employees from using them and restricting the types of events, such as war or deaths, users can wager on.

The most recent bill, introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, would ban trades on government actions, terrorism, war, assassination and events “where an individual knows or controls the outcome.”

“There’s no getting around the fact that any prediction market where somebody knows or controls the outcome of a bet is ripe for corruption,” Murphy said in a statement.

“Even worse, prediction markets are also an avenue by which government decisions get influenced by who’s making money off them, and that should be unforgivable to the American public,” he said.

President Donald Trump is used to bending financial markets to his will.

But with the war in Iran, he may have reached the limit of his ability to do so.

On Friday, the S&P 500 closed down 1.7% and notched its fifth-straight weekly decline, its worst stretch since 2022 and a sign of rapidly faltering confidence in a swift resolution to the Iran war.

Since the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the S&P 500 has declined about 7%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.7% Friday and has lost nearly 4,000 points since the start of the war. It is now down more than 10% from its most recent high, a correction in technical terms.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell further into correction territory Friday, closing down 2% and off 13% since its record close in October.

Oil prices also rose sharply, with U.S. crude topping $100 a barrel and global Brent crude at approximately $114 at around 4 p.m. ET. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note surged to 4.4%, the highest since last summer. Some energy stocks, like Exxon, traded near all-time highs.

Shortly after stock markets had closed Thursday, Trump announced he was pausing attacks on Iranian energy sites for 10 days. But stocks barely budged.

Just days earlier, they had rocketed higher Monday when the president announced there had been “productive” talks with Iranian representatives, so he would pause strikes on Iranian power facilities for five days.

“The market is looking beyond commentary from the administration,” said Adam Turnquist, chief strategist at LPL Financial investment group, which manages nearly $2 trillion in assets. “They actually want concrete details and a resolution. And actions speak louder than words, that’s really present in [current] price action.”

This new reality stands in contrast to Trump’s ability to move markets throughout his first term and into the outset of his second.

Trump spent the better part of 2025 whipsawing traders via frequent changes regarding tariff levels. Eventually, a pattern emerged: The president would announce a new import duty, markets would fall, and Trump would usually end up reversing himself in some way.

The trend even got a nickname, coined by a columnist for the Financial Times: “TACO” — for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” (Last month, the Supreme Court struck down many of the tariffs.)

This time, the chain of events unleashed by Trump’s decision to attack Iran are such that a return to prewar conditions — and market levels — is virtually impossible in the short or even medium term, experts say.

The disruption to flows of oil and gas has been so substantial that transport costs, and ultimately the price paid per barrel, are likely to stay elevated indefinitely. Even when the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has used as a chokepoint to drive concessions from the West, eventually reopens, the cost of transiting through it has likely gone up for the foreseeable future.

And the broader fallout on the economy and consumer purchases is already being felt.

That, in turn, has made interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve less likely, because the higher oil costs are set to contribute to already sticky inflation. The odds of a rate hike before the end of the year have now outpaced the odds of a cut.

“Let’s say hostilities end tomorrow — the market will rally, but it’s not necessarily ripping back to where it was before because of the disruptions that have occurred,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers financial group. “You’re not going to see oil go back to where it was immediately. You’re not going to see markets price in rate cuts the way they were before.”

White House spokesman Kush Desai said Friday that Trump “continues to be a powerful force driving the market’s confidence in the United States as the most dynamic, pro-business economy in the world.”

“Once the military objectives of Operation Epic Fury have been achieved and the market’s short-term disruptions are behind us, everyday investors are set to reap a windfall in a booming American economy,” Desai said.

A day earlier, the president said he was not concerned about the market’s recent performance.

Oil prices “have not gone up as much as I thought, Scott, to be honest with you,” he said during a Cabinet meeting, addressing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “It’s all going to come back down to where it was and probably lower.”

Markets have not fallen further because the outlook for earnings growth remains bullish, Turnquist said — though that could change the longer the conflict drags on and further impinges on consumer spending and business investment.

And compared to prior oil shocks, the U.S. economy is less oil-intensive, as it has transitioned to one that is largely service-oriented. Global oil markets have also been supported by America’s oil production boom over the past decade — with more supplies online, overall prices are less likely to rise as much.

Yet by some metrics, stocks were already considered expensive prior to the hostilities. Having already contended with stretched valuations, traders may find it much harder to power stock prices back to the record levels seen just prior to the start of the latest conflict.

“The risk-reward is still very heavily weighted toward [the] risk” of further stock-price declines,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak financial group.

Should hostilities persist, Trump’s ability to influence markets will only further erode, Sosnick predicted.

“He now realizes he’d like to jawbone his way out of it, but it’s not that easy at this point because the situation encompasses so many moving parts and difficult variables,” Sosnick said. “It doesn’t lend itself to a quick set of comments mollifying investors.”

A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk to national security and cutting off the AI company’s work with federal agencies.

Anthropic sued the Defense Department and other federal agencies this month after the Pentagon labeled it a “supply-chain risk to national security.” President Donald Trump said he would also ban the use of Anthropic’s products across other federal agencies.

“Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’ is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” U.S. District Judge Rita Lin of Northern California wrote in her order Thursday night. “The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.”

Lin paused her order for a week to allow the administration time to appeal.

The Defense Department and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.

“We’re grateful to the court for moving swiftly, and pleased they agree Anthropic is likely to succeed on the merits,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “While this case was necessary to protect Anthropic, our customers, and our partners, our focus remains on working productively with the government to ensure all Americans benefit from safe, reliable AI.”

The supply chain risk designation requires the Pentagon and its contractors to stop using Anthropic’s commercial AI services for all defense business.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on X in late February that he was issuing a directive to give the company the “supply chain risk” label. Trump also said he was ordering all federal agencies, including the Treasury and State departments, to cease using Anthropic’s AI technology.

“The record reflects that the Challenged Actions were taken without any meaningful notice or pre-deprivation process (and, in the case of the Presidential Directive and the Hegseth Directive, without any post-deprivation process either),” Lin wrote in her order.

The order Thursday also bars other agencies from cutting off their work with Anthropic. Lin wrote that the order restores the status quo.

“This Order does not require the Department of War to use Anthropic’s products or services and does not prevent the Department of War from transitioning to other artificial intelligence providers, so long as those actions are consistent with applicable regulations, statutes, and constitutional provisions,” the order said.

Anthropic filed two lawsuits against the Defense Department — one in U.S. District Court for Northern California and the other in U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. — alleging that the federal government’s moves go beyond a normal contract dispute and instead are an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” that followed months of heated negotiations about how the military should be able to use Anthropic’s AI systems.

Anthropic had sought stronger guarantees that the Pentagon would not use its AI systems for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

Anthropic is the creator of the Claude chatbot system and the only AI company whose services were cleared for use on the Defense Department’s classified networks.

Hours after Hegseth’s announcement last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company had reached an agreement with the Pentagon to use its services in classified settings.

Lin wrote: “Although Anthropic was on notice that the government objected to its contracting terms, it had no notice or opportunity to object before Defendants publicly barred it from all federal government work and blacklisted it with private companies working with the U.S. military. It also had no notice or opportunity to object to the factual basis for its designation as a supply chain risk, which it learned of in this litigation.”