Amid Hantavirus Panic, the Ivermectin Super Fans Are Back
Within days of reports of a rare Andes hantavirus outbreak, political figures and prominent Covid-era ivermectin advocates once again began promoting the drug as a potential treatment — even as infectious disease experts say there is no clinical evidence supporting its use against hantaviruses.
Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X on Wednesday suggesting vitamin D, zinc, and ivermectin could prevent the rodent-borne disease. Ivermectin, an antiparasitic medication, surged in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic as vaccine skepticism rose. In another post, Greene shared a 2024 article about mRNA hantavirus vaccine research while claiming pharmaceutical companies “manipulate the virus (bioweapon)” and “make the vaccine (poison).”
Other high-profile ivermectin advocates also circulated claims online, including physician and activist Mary Talley Bowden, whose post about ivermectin and hantavirus was viewed millions of times on X, and commentator Josh Walkos, known online as “Champagne Joshi,” who shared posts questioning hantavirus vaccine development.
“There is zero evidence indicating that ivermectin would be a treatment for any hantavirus.”
Primarily found in South America, the Andes hantavirus can cause severe respiratory illness and, unlike most hantaviruses, has demonstrated limited ability for person-to-person transmission in previous outbreaks. Health authorities are now investigating a recent cluster linked to international travelers aboard an expedition cruise ship traveling between Argentina, Antarctica, and South Africa, with several cases identified beyond the vessel.
The strain can be deadly, with mortality rates in some outbreaks estimated at as high as 50 percent. But experts say it typically requires close contact to spread, making it significantly less transmissible than Covid-19.
The resurgence of ivermectin claims comes as some Republican-led states continue efforts to expand access to the drug years after it became a flashpoint during the Covid-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, the South Carolina House passed legislation that would allow ivermectin to be sold without a prescription.
“There is no meaningful clinical evidence for ivermectin against hantavirus, full stop,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security whose work focuses on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity.
Adalja said the only antiviral formally evaluated in clinical trials for hantavirus is ribavirin, and even those results showed limited benefit.
Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, said the Andes virus remains the only hantavirus known to spread person to person.
“There is zero evidence indicating that ivermectin would be a treatment for any hantavirus,” Racaniello said.
While ivermectin is approved to treat certain parasitic infections in humans, including river blindness and intestinal strongyloidiasis, the FDA warns that improper use or high doses can cause serious side effects, including seizures and neurological complications.
Racaniello warned that unsupported medical claims circulating on social media can create public confusion during disease outbreaks.
Health communication experts say distrust that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic continues to shape how some Americans respond to new disease outbreaks. Evolving public health recommendations during the pandemic, including former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s acknowledgment that the widely used 6-foot social distancing rule was not firmly grounded in data, contributed to enduring skepticism toward public health institutions.
Even as his administration rushed vaccine development, President Donald Trump publicly promoted unproven Covid-19 treatments including hydroxychloroquine, further politicizing debates around experimental therapies and public health guidance.
The president has so far offered scant remarks on the outbreak. Asked about the virus on Thursday, he told reporters “it should be fine.”
“People’s experience with Covid-19 permanently changed how many view public health guidance,” said Rebecca Fish, a health communications professor at the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media who previously worked in senior health policy and pharmaceutical industry roles. “There is now a much higher level of skepticism toward institutions like the CDC and official public health messaging.”
The Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to questions from The Intercept about whether federal health agencies have evaluated ivermectin for Andes hantavirus or plan to address unsupported treatment claims circulating online.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has publicly defended the off-label use of ivermectin and criticized clinically informed public health policies for Covid-19, now oversees HHS and the CDC. Last year, CBS News reported that layoffs tied to Kennedy’s restructuring of federal health agencies eliminated all full-time employees in the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program, which investigates outbreaks aboard cruise ships. Amid the news of the hantavirus outbreak, the administration confirmed to STAT that the cuts had been reversed. The chief of the Vessel Sanitation Program, however, announced his retirement on Wednesday.
“When someone feels ridiculed for asking a reasonable question, they don’t defer to authority, they route around it.”
People in a health crisis often look for reassurance and a sense of control, not just facts, Fish said, adding that unsupported treatment claims can spread quickly online when distrust in institutions is already high.
“When someone feels ridiculed for asking a reasonable question, they don’t defer to authority, they route around it,” she said. “The question is not whether that vacuum will be filled, but by whom and with what.”
Fish said public health officials and journalists should distinguish carefully between what is false, what remains unproven, and what is still unknown as evidence develops.
But experts said distrust in public institutions does not eliminate the need for clinical evidence when evaluating medical treatments.
“Clinical claims require real evidence that goes beyond anecdotal evidence,” Adalja, the Johns Hopkins scholar, said.
Racaniello, the microbiologist, warned that unsupported medical claims circulating on social media can still carry real public health risks.
“The problem arises when people inject their opinions on social media when they have no expertise in the matter,” Racaniello said. “Ivermectin at high doses can be damaging, so encouraging its use in this outbreak is irresponsible.”
Trump Exempted Some of the Nation’s Biggest Polluters From Air Quality Rules. All It Took Was an Email.
Reporting Highlights
Taken for Granted: The Trump administration has granted more than 180 polluting facilities nationwide a two-year pause on compliance with Clean Air Act rules.
Deregulating by Email: The administration set up an email address through the Environmental Protection Agency where companies simply had to send an email to make their request.
Silenced Science: The EPA’s air quality experts played no meaningful role in determining whether a facility should be handed an exemption to the rules, according to the agency.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
In March 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration made a tantalizing offer to coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturing facilities and other factories: Their operations could be exempted from key provisions under the Clean Air Act, the bedrock environmental law estimated to have prevented thousands of premature deaths. All they had to do was ask.
No rigorous application was needed. An email, which they had until the end of the month to send, would suffice.
Within two weeks, executives across major industries began flooding an inbox set up to receive and funnel requests from the Environmental Protection Agency to the White House. They asked that their facilities be excused from expensive Clean Air Act requirements, relief that would save their companies money but pollute the air breathed by millions of Americans.
At least 3,000 pages of emails were sent to and from this inbox in the weeks that followed. ProPublica obtained them via public records requests, giving the most complete look to date at a key aspect of what Trump’s EPA calls the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
Richard Shaffer, asset manager at Scrubgrass Reclamation Company, emailed asking for an exemption covering a western Pennsylvania power plant that burns coal waste. A significant portion of the electricity it generates is used to mine bitcoin. Keeping the cost of environmental compliance low was important “for the security of the United States,” Shaffer wrote.
A response came 11 days later in a presidential proclamation. Approved.
A Citgo Petroleum Corporation lawyer, Ann Al-Bahish, sought exemptions for petroleum refineries in Illinois, Louisiana and Texas, which had all been hit with Clean Air Act violations in recent years. The rule at issue, the agency had previously concluded, would “provide critical health protections to hundreds of thousands of people living near chemical plants.” (The company agreed to install new pollution controls to resolve some of its violations.)
Kevin Wagner, vice president of the medical sterilizer company Sterigenics, messaged asking that nine facilities emitting the carcinogenic gas ethylene oxide, including near Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Charlotte and Atlanta, be exempted. More than 45,000 people, most of them not white, live within a mile of these facilities, according to federal data.
Both companies got their response in July proclamations. Approved and approved.
The companies did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.
In requesting an exemption to a Clean Air Act rule, Richard Shaffer, with Scrubgrass Reclamation Company, told the EPA that his company’s power plant, which uses much of its electricity to mine bitcoin, is key to national security.Obtained and highlighted by ProPublica
More approvals followed. All told, more than 180 facilities in 38 states and Puerto Rico have, by Trump’s unilateral decision, been given a two-year reprieve from following the latest Clean Air Act rules. About 250,000 people live within a mile of these facilities, according to EPA and U.S. Census Bureau data collected by the Environmental Defense Fund.
A majority are coal power plants and medical sterilizers. And more than 70 had faced formal enforcement action in the past five years by the EPA for violations such as emitting contaminants above regulatory limits and failing to properly track facilities’ pollution.
Few requests appear to have been denied. The administration hasn’t made public its decisions on requests from three classes of plants that it said it would consider exempting: manufacturers of rubber tires, iron and steel, and lime, which is used in products ranging from metals to concrete. About 55 facilities are covered by those rules, although Republicans in Congress have already repealed the rubber tire updated rule.
In response to ProPublica’s questions, an EPA spokesperson said in a statement: “EPA played no role in the determinations set out in the statute and specifically vested in the President. Any requests sent to the EPA’s electronic mailbox were forwarded to the White House.”
In defending the exemptions, the administration cited two standards in the Clean Air Act that a president must invoke to exercise such powers: The industry must be integral to national security, and the technology needed to meet the EPA requirements must be unavailable. Sticking with Biden-era requirements could shut down businesses, Trump argued.
“The President has provided regulatory relief from certain burdensome Clean Air Act requirements due to national security concerns that critical industries would no longer be able to operate under such stringent standards,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “Exemptions were issued due to crushing Biden-era regulations that required large swaths of our industrial base to adopt technologies that don’t exist outside the imagination of Biden’s EPA bureaucrats.”
Numerous policy experts told ProPublica that they do not believe the White House’s justifications for the use of the exemptions.
“It’s being absolutely abused now, and it couldn’t be more obvious,” said one EPA staffer who asked not to be named because they currently work for the agency.
Indeed, multiple utilities have publicly said that they were already implementing pollution controls to comply with the more stringent rules, undercutting the administration’s claim that the technologies necessary to do so don’t exist.
Watch the Gray TV Report
Community groups and environmental nonprofits have sued the administration five times to halt the exemptions. A coalition of 12 organizations labeled the action an “illegal scheme.” (Four of the cases have been consolidated and are ongoing. In a motion to dismiss them, the administration argued that the groups did not have legal standing to sue and reiterated its stance that the law gives the president the authority to grant such exemptions.)
“The cancer risk presented by these facilities is huge,” said Sarah Buckley, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, adding that years of scientific study and public input informed the rules. “With a stroke of a pen, President Trump thinks he can just brush all that away.”
A mural in Miami, Arizona, proclaims the importance of the copper industry to the state’s economy.Roberto “Bear” Guerra for ProPublica
“He Disregards the Checks-and-Balances System”
Freeport-McMoRan’s massive copper mining and smelting operation sits on the hills above the towns of Miami, Claypool and Globe in eastern Arizona. A Clean Air Act rule that was updated in 2024 regulates the smelter’s emissions and, by extension, the air breathed by the 10,000 people who live in these towns.
Nearly two and a half years of fine-tuning passed between publication of a draft rule and the final product. Some of it was spent gathering input from residents, public health groups, Native American governments and companies — feedback the agency addressed in subsequent rewrites. Years of air monitoring data also informed the process. Implementing the updated rule would “reduce emissions of toxic metals, primarily lead and arsenic, by nearly 50 percent” at the country’s several copper smelters, the EPA concluded.
Trump undid that work when he signed a proclamation in October pausing implementation and approving Freeport’s request that its Arizona copper smelter be given a pass on “all the deadlines promulgated under” the rule.
On a sunny morning a few weeks after Freeport received the exemption, white smoke poured from its smelter above a Baptist church and residential neighborhood. The plant’s low rumble reverberated across the surrounding desert, unusually green from a recent rain.
Trina Bunger has lived her life next to this smelter. Decades ago, the air was so polluted that her children wore handkerchiefs over their mouths when they went to school. So many of the family’s cattle fell ill that she no longer believed the sicknesses were a coincidence.
Years ago, on particularly bad days, when the air around the smelter was hazy, “it would choke you out. It was like walking in a cloud,” Bunger said. “If you read the obituaries, ‘Died of cancer. Died of cancer,’” she said of her neighbors. “Well, that’s our destination, so I better get done what I’m gonna get done.”
Trina Bunger remembers the time before updated air quality regulations required stricter pollution controls. In those days, pollution in Globe, Arizona, would get so bad that it “would choke you out.”Roberto “Bear” Guerra for ProPublica
But she’s seen air quality steadily improve as regulations tightened, following advances in emissions control technology. Freeport spent $250 million on improvements completed in 2017 to better control sulfur dioxide emissions.
“It’s better than in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s,” Bunger said.
Trump paused the requirement that Freeport follow the latest rule, including by installing additional pollution control equipment.
William Cobb and Todd Weaver, Freeport’s vice president and senior counsel, respectively, emailed the EPA in March 2025 to request a reprieve from the Clean Air Act. They argued that complying with the rule governing copper smelters would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, while bringing minimal emissions reductions.
“Significant investments have been made over the smelter’s long history to manage sulfur dioxide, lead and other regulated emissions in accordance with applicable standards, contributing to sustained improvements in local air quality,” Linda Hayes, Freeport’s spokesperson, said in a statement. The company has increased monitoring around the smelter and asked for the additional time to work with the EPA on evaluating “flaws” in the updated rule, she said.
For this conservative county, where more than two-thirds of voters went for Trump, the smelter is an economic blessing. Freeport’s broader copper operation here employs nearly 950 people, according to the company. A brightly painted mural down the road from the smelter reads: “If it can’t be grown, it must be mined.”
Eduardo Sanchez lauds the company’s economic impact and is hesitant to criticize the smelter. But, he said, Trump has no right to unilaterally decide when laws do and do not apply.
“In order to help the rich get richer, he’s deregulating everything,” Sanchez said. “He’s a tyrant. He disregards the checks-and-balances system. He overreaches through executive dictates.”
Freeport-McMoRan’s copper smelter sits on a bluff above three Arizona towns that are home to about 10,000 people.Roberto “Bear” Guerra for ProPublicaEduardo Sanchez, a retiree who moved to Globe to be closer to his family, believes President Donald Trump is rolling back air quality regulations to further enrich executives.Roberto “Bear” Guerra for ProPublica
An Error-Ridden Process
While Trump’s exemptions will affect millions of Americans like those in Miami, Claypool and Globe, the process for granting themhas been sloppy.
Because presidents have never previously used this authority to circumvent the Clean Air Act, industries were left guessing how to make the request, experts said.
“Hello, I am a gas company looking for an exemption. How do I start?” one businessman wrote in an email to the EPA.
Others appeared to mock the administration’s regulatory rollback, with one email calling for a coal power plant to be built on a 300-foot-wide mangrove island just offshore of the president’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. “It will produce power so strongly that jobs and power will be the best that people have ever seen,” the email stated.
The American Chemistry Council and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, two trade groups representing chemical manufacturers, sent a letter requesting a blanket exemption for their roughly 640 member companies. “Without immediate intervention, such as a Presidential exemption,” the groups wrote, referencing the section of law Trump was using to hit pause on Clean Air Act rules, “companies will evaluate whether to shut down units or offshore their operations to prevent the application of an imprudent and unlawful rule.”
It emerged later that the administration had decided that companies must submit requests on their own behalf.
Rank-and-file agency staff also had little understanding of how the process would run, according to hundreds of pages of internal EPA communications obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund. Instead, a political appointee who had previously worked for a utility and a petrochemicals trade group played a key role in creating the inbox where companies sent their requests for exemptions, the records showed.
“There’s certainly no input from experts in EPA,” the EPA employee told ProPublica.
Most of the emails in the EPA’s inbox set up to receive Clean Air Act exemption requests came from large companies, but others appeared to mock the administration or expressed confusion over the process.Obtained and highlighted by ProPublica
The administration gave notice of approved exemptions by publishing presidential proclamations listing the factories’ locations on the White House’s website. “It is in the national security interests of the United States to issue this Exemption,” Trump wrote when exempting Freeport’s smelter.
These proclamations at times added to the confusion. In a July proclamation, Trump appears to have granted an exemption to a plant south of Baton Rouge, although he listed it as being located in Alabama, not Louisiana, and to another in Alabama that may not exist at all.
Spelling mistakes and formatting errors throughout the proclamations have made identifying exempted plants a guessing game. The name of an Arkansas coal plant receiving an exemption was misspelled, for instance, as was the name of the company Phillips 66, which was granted exemptions at its oil refineries in Illinois and Texas.
Phillips 66 declined to comment.
In April, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Adam Schiff, both Democrats, introduced a bill to amend the process by requiring the president to obtain Congress’ consent before granting pauses to Clean Air Act compliance. The exemptions, Whitehouse said in a statement, show a willingness to “abuse every loophole available to pollute for free, damn the health consequences for Americans.”
Ameren Corp.’s Labadie Energy Center, a coal power plant on the banks of the Missouri River, rises behind the new Lake Labadie Estates subdivision in Labadie, Missouri.Robert Cohen for ProPublica
A Sweeping Deregulatory Agenda
Trump’s exemptions give companies an extra two years to comply with updates to nine sets of regulations written under the law’s authority that mandate lower emissions or better monitoring around facilities in specific industries. The rules were slated to take effect this year and next.
This pause is part of a much larger strategy to unwind the Clean Air Act, buying time for the administration to deconstruct large portions of the legislative framework regulating the nation’s air quality — weakening regulations on everything from ethylene oxide emissions to plastics pyrolysis plants. And while the law largely governs toxins, the rollback has also undermined action on climate change, including repealing the legal theory used to classify greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide as regulated pollutants.
The White House has focused these efforts most intently on one industry: coal. Trump has so far granted 71 coal power plants — more than any other category — two-year exemptions to the Clean Air Act rule governing them, called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. Then, in February, the administration formalized the rollback of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, in effect making the exemptions permanent.
Among the beneficiaries of these moves is Ameren Corp.’s Labadie Energy Center west of St. Louis. The coal-fired power station is massive — 2.4 gigawatts, enough to power roughly 2 million homes — as are its emissions. It’s one of the nation’s largest sources of sulfur dioxide, which forms haze and harms the respiratory system, and the second-largest source of carbon dioxide, according to EPA data. But due to its age, the plant isn’t equipped with most modern pollution controls and can be linked to more than 300 premature deaths per year, according to a recent Sierra Club and Clean Air Task Force analysis of EPA data.
Patricia Schuba’s family has lived in Franklin County, Missouri, for five generations. From her home, she can see the plant and, emanating from it, “black clouds on an otherwise normal day.” Schuba keeps a mental list of the friends and family members who suffer from cancer, respiratory issues and other diseases and wonders if these health problems are linked to the emissions.
“I’m hopeful that the American public will wake up and elect people who actually put the American public first. And if we can do that, we can unwind some of this and clean up these sites,” said Schuba, who has served as the president of the Labadie Environmental Organization, a nonprofit community group, for about 15 years.
Patricia Schuba can see the Labadie coal-fired power station and its emissions from her home in Franklin County, Missouri.Robert Cohen for ProPublica
Sunil Bector, an attorney with the Sierra Club, said that heavily polluting facilities will reap overlapping benefits from the assault on the Clean Air Act. Research by his organization suggests that the Labadie power station stands to gain from every major action rolling back coal plant regulations.
“Ameren may expect that these rules are going away,” Bector said, “which means the levers that would force Ameren to internalize the cost of pollution are going away, which means the people who breathe air in St. Louis are internalizing the cost of pollution through their lungs.”
Craig Giesmann, the company’s director of environmental services, said in a statement, “Ameren Missouri’s Labadie Energy Center provides electricity to our customers in a cost-effective manner, operates in compliance with all applicable environmental regulations designed to protect public health and is supported by decades of investment in emissions controls.” Additionally, Giesmann said, the power plant is “critical infrastructure.”
The law requires the president to tie such exemptions to national security, and Trump has declared a national energy emergency over fears that emerging industries, like artificial intelligence, will not have access to the massive amounts of electricity they need. Data center proposals have come to Franklin County, and the county recently voted to recommend one despite the opposition of hundreds of locals. As the Trump administration speaks of an artificial intelligence arms race, Schuba fears Labadie will remain open for years to power data centers.
“There are real human consequences,” Schuba said, “lives that we sacrifice for whatever we think our future should be.”
Tonga Nolan grew up in a region of Louisiana nicknamed “Cancer Alley,” close to various chemical plants, including Formosa Plastics’ facility. She said that many neighbors in her predominantly Black community have cancer, and she moved away after suffering from the illness as well.Annie Flanagan for ProPublica
“Death Started to Come”
Amid the rush to give out passes to the Clean Air Act, communities already saddled with air pollution find themselves affected once more.
An 85-mile stretch of Louisiana, running southeast from Baton Rouge, hosts such a concentration of heavy industry that it long ago garnered the nickname “Cancer Alley.” Studies have shown elevated cancer rates in the region, home to tens of thousands of people, and local chemical plants received passes on Clean Air Act rules. Louisiana hosts 20 of the facilities Trump has exempted. (Texas and Pennsylvania, two other states with histories of heavy industry, rank first and third, respectively, for the number of exempted facilities.)
Tonga Nolan grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood on the north side of Baton Rouge and remembers it fondly as a tight-knit community. She also remembers when “death started to come.” Years later, she can recite the names of more than a dozen neighbors and family members who lived within a few blocks and died of cancer.
Nolan also had cancer. Wondering about a link between emissions from nearby facilities and her own health woes, Nolan moved away after undergoing a hysterectomy, she said. She is now in remission.
Chemical plants mark the western edge of the neighborhood, including a Formosa Plastics facility, which produces the plastic commonly called PVC.
The plant, owned by a Taiwanese chemicals company worth about $300 billion, has a history of violations. In 2003, the company accidentally released 8,000 pounds of carcinogenic vinyl chloride into Baton Rouge, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. And EPA data shows that its pattern of reported infractions has continued in recent years. (A company spokesperson told ProPublica in a statement that “significant improvements have been implemented” relating to “process safety, monitoring, and operational controls” since the 2003 incident.)
A white cloud of emissions rises from the Formosa Plastics facility near homes in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.Annie Flanagan for ProPublica
Formosa Plastics’ Baton Rouge plant applied for an exemption to a Clean Air Act rule. Jay Su and Tamara Lasater Wacker, executive vice president and corporate environmental director of Formosa Plastics, respectively, wrote to the EPA in March 2025 to make their case for it. They said that the company needed more time to design and install technology to comply with the rule and that the plastic synthesized at the plant was important to national security because it’s used in products such as blood bags.
“Due to the complexities and challenges that the rule currently presents, we request that the President grant a 2-year compliance date exemption for related emission limits and standards, performance testing, monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting requirements,” Su wrote.
The rule would have mandated better monitoring at the fence lines of Formosa Plastics and other plants. Such facilities can leak toxic gases from pipelines, valves and tanks, and they often vastly underestimate local emissions. But monitoring for leaks has proved effective in other industries; fence-line emissions of benzene, a carcinogen, fell 30% at petroleum refineries after implementation of a similar monitoring program, according to the EPA.
The administration granted Formosa Plastics’ request in July.
“We take our environmental responsibilities seriously and remain committed to safe, compliant, and transparent operations,” Formosa Plastics’ spokesperson said.
Exacerbating historical disparities, about 54% of people who live close to the facilities Trump exempted are not white, according to the federal data the Environmental Defense Fund collected. By comparison, only about 43% of the country is not white.
Polluting facilities “seem to be in the backyards of a lot of African American families,” Nolan said, adding that it’s hard to cope with the reality that many family members and neighbors are lost forever.
“You are hurting,” she said. “It’s like a hole that can never be filled.”
No promised US manufacturing boom as Trump tariffs ruled illegal
President Donald Trump signs an Executive Order on the Administration’s tariff plans at a “Make America Wealthy Again” event, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in the White House Rose Garden. Photo: White House / Daniel Torok / Wikimedia Commons
A panel of federal judges ruled Thursday that US President Donald Trump’s sweeping 10% tariffs on most imports are unlawful, another major legal blow to the centerpiece of the Republican president’s economic agenda – which has failed to produce the manufacturing boom he repeatedly promised on the campaign trail.
The Court of International Trade (CIT) found in a 2-to-1 ruling that Trump violated the law when he unilaterally enacted the 10% import taxes following a February decision by the US Supreme Court, which struck down tariffs the president imposed using emergency powers. But the CIT’s ruling, which the Trump administration is expected to appeal, only barred collection of the tariffs from some of the plaintiffs in the case – including a pair of businesses and Washington state – an thus limited the ruling’s immediate impact.
Representative John Larson (D-Conn.), a member of the House Trade Subcommittee, applauded the new ruling in a statement, saying that “Trump must comply with the law by ending his illegal tax on the American people and getting families and small businesses the refunds they are owed.”
“The Supreme Court already rebuked the president’s costly tariffs, but Donald Trump sees our Constitution as a mere suggestion to follow, and not the law of the land,” said Larson. “As families are squeezed by sky-high grocery bills and gas prices, his latest round of tariffs is only pouring salt in the wound. The average household has already had nearly $2,000 stolen from them by this administration, and they should not have to pay a penny more.”
The decision came as a new analysis of trade and manufacturing data from the first quarter of 2026 found that the president’s “actions on trade have not delivered on his promises to quickly balance trade and revitalize US manufacturing.” Since Trump’s return to the White House last year, US manufacturing employment has declined by 82,000 jobs, according to the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Additionally, the nation’s trade deficit was higher during the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2024, Rethink Trade found.
“The first-quarter 2026 data show President Trump’s promises to prioritize speedily cutting the trade deficit and create more American manufacturing jobs are getting undermined by his chaotic and often mistargeted use of tariffs and squandering of leverage to demand other countries gut their Big Tech anti-monopoly and other policies instead of mercantilist abuses fueling the trade deficit,” said Lori Wallach, Rethink Trade’s director.
Climate change is contributing to longer and more severe pollen seasons across the Northern Hemisphere. Dr. Neelima Tummala, an ear, nose, and throat doctor at NYU Langone Health, said her patients tell her every year that their allergies are the worst they’ve ever been—and they might be right.
About a quarter of US adults and 1 in 5 children have seasonal allergies. For those millions of Americans, spring weather brings sniffles, itchy eyes, asthma exacerbation, and other miseries, with effects ranging from mild symptoms to serious medical emergencies.
Now, rising temperatures and carbon dioxide pollution are contributing to worsened pollen seasons across the country. Climate-change-driven heat waves, air pollution, and natural disasters can exacerbate allergy symptoms, too.
Although experts say it’s too early to fully tell how the 2026 pollen season will compare to past years, the trend over recent decades is clear, and evidence so far points to another tough year for the allergy-prone.
According to the USA National Phenology Network—a group focused on data and research concerning the seasonal patterns of plants and animals—spring bloom arrived early across much of the country.
AccuWeather meteorologists say this year’s trends fit into the overall pattern of an extending allergy season due to climate change.
They predict high tree pollen levels in the Ohio River Valley and parts of the Pacific Northwest this spring and say the Northern Plains and the Great Lakes could see early spikes in grass pollen in June and July, due to a combination of high rainfall and warmer weather. The Rockies can expect an intense weed pollen season, while New England and parts of the Gulf South might see lower than usual tree pollen levels, due to a cooler spring and less rain, they said.
Climate change and pollen
As global warming brings shorter winters and earlier thaws, trees start flowering—and therefore producing pollen—earlier in the spring.
A 2021 study found that human-caused climate change is worsening North American pollen seasons. And Climate Central found that between 1970 and 2025, the “freeze-free growing season” lengthened in the lion’s share of 198 US cities the group analyzed, with an average increase of 21 days. The Northwest and Southwest saw the largest average increases.
High levels of carbon dioxide also boost pollen production directly, and could amp it up as much as 200 percent by the end of the century, according to a 2022 study published in Nature Communications.
Pollen counts are rising globally, but they are particularly well studied across North America and northern Europe, said Moshe Ben-Shoshan, a pediatric allergist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
Some of Ben-Shoshan’s patients are experiencing stronger symptoms than they have in the past, and they can’t control them with treatments like antihistamines or nasal sprays that used to work.
“It’s the same symptoms, just more intense,” he said.
As climate change delays the first winter frosts across much of North America, summer ragweed also keeps flowering longer, extending the latter part of pollen season into the fall, said David Wees, a faculty lecturer in horticulture at McGill University in Montreal.
Wees himself suffers from seasonal allergies, and he’s noticed them starting earlier and lasting longer.
“There’s a couple birch trees outside my office,” he said. “I know it because my nose feels stuffy and my eyes feel itchy.”
Pollen isn’t the only allergen impacted by climate change. Increased humidity, heat, and flooding also create ideal conditions for mold to flourish in places where it was previously rare.
That can cause mold allergies to flare up, especially in the aftermath of climate-driven disasters like hurricanes, or for patients living in older buildings, basement units, or other homes without proper ventilation, Tummala said.
Pollen piles on
For many people, seasonal allergies are mainly a nuisance: itchy eyes, runny noses, and a seemingly never-ending cold. But pollen also messes with sleep, ups the risk of sinus infections, causes people to miss school and work, and can pose more serious dangers. A 2024 study based in Texas found that allergies can account for a significant portion of emergency department visits for asthma attacks during periods of high pollen counts.
People with allergies are also sensitive to other respiratory triggers, such as heat waves and increased air pollution, Tummala said.
On days with heavy wildfire smoke from Canada, Tummala said her patients experience the miserable effects of multiple respiratory stressors. During one such period last summer, a patient told her they were afraid to go outside.
“That’s just really sad,” Tummala said. “That’s not how you should live your life.”
Drought is another climate-intensified problem. Rain typically washes pollen out of the air. Without it, the fine powder can blow around for weeks without relief, Wees said.
For Tummala, the connection between seasonal allergies and growing climate hazards further illustrates the already pressing need for action to mitigate global warming.
“It’s a modifiable risk factor,” she said. “Climate change is something we can do something about.”
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
Africa-EU Parliamentary Assembly to hold inaugural plenary session in Eswatini
The inaugural plenary session of the Africa-EU Parliamentary Assembly will take place in Eswatini from 12 to 14 May, bringing together African and European parliamentarians to discuss cooperation on security, youth policy and critical raw materials.
The opening ceremony is scheduled for 12 May at the Ezulwini Palazzo International Convention and Conference Centre and will be attended by Russell Mmiso Dlamini, His Royal Highness Prince Lindani, and the co-presidents of the assembly, Hilde Vautmans (Renew Europe Group,BE) and David Houinsa.
Over the course of three days, lawmakers are expected to discuss several shared priorities between Africa and the European Union.
Topics on the agenda include the role of regional organisations and parliaments in promoting peace and security, the future of multilateralism and parliamentary diplomacy, youth mobility within the Africa-EU partnership, women in agriculture, and parliamentary perspectives on the global competition for critical raw materials.
The session will conclude with the adoption of recommendations that will be submitted to the Africa-EU Council of Ministers.
Israeli fundraising platform ‘rebranding as American’ to dodge boycotts over genocide
Israeli companies are pretending to be American to escape the shame of the Israel brand, Paul Biggar, founder of Tech for Palestine, has uncovered. GivingTech — a “global” philanthropy fintech marketed in the US and Europe is in fact the Tel Aviv-based IsraelGives, Biggar reported. The organisation is reported to have channelled donations to Israeli military units and illegal West Bank settlements.
Biggar, the Irish founder of the developer-tools firm CircleCI, laid out his findings in a thread posted on X on 7 May. The two organisations, he wrote, were tied together by a shared chief executive, an identical logo, near-identical websites and a string of technical fingerprints, including the same Google Analytics codes and an identically-hashed stylesheet that he said could not have come about by coincidence.
Firstly, we found this because we were evaluating a partner and they used a site called https://t.co/DVAgI8yHGP. After we put a small donation through it, the new website’s title became “IsraelGives”.
But actually we had a clue before: the donation form had the IsraelGives logo… pic.twitter.com/rUqaJNKyZx
— Paul Biggar 🇵🇸🇮🇪 (@paulbiggar) May 7, 2026
“This is part of a trend of Israeli companies trying to rebrand their way out of genocide, occupation and boycotts,” Biggar wrote in the closing post of the thread.
IsraelGives, founded in 2009, is an Israeli charitable platform that allows donors abroad to give to Israeli causes and to receive tax receipts in 35 countries. The Israeli platform has been documented before as having processed donations from US-based donors to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, to paramilitary groups, and to Israeli military units.
READ: Google and Amazon struck secret deal to shield Israel from legal scrutiny, leak reveals
Subsequent reporting found that Google employees have been able to direct donations including company-matched ones to the platform via the corporate giving platform Benevity.
By contrast, GivingTech looks like an American firm. Its website presents the company as a global provider of fundraising software for charities, pitching its services to financial advisers, wealth managers and non-profits in the United States. Nowhere on the homepage is there any reference to Israel. According to Biggar, that is precisely the point.
“Once we started probing, the commonalities were everywhere,” he wrote. The same individual, he said, has served as chief executive of both companies concurrently for the past four years. On LinkedIn, the company is listed as headquartered in Tel Aviv. The IsraelGives website, the GivingTech website, and a third sister product, DAFtech, all share the same logo — and the same favicon.
The technical evidence, Biggar argued, was harder still to dismiss. The IsraelGives website, he wrote, loads a stylesheet named givingtech.css whose cryptographic hash is identical to the one used on the GivingTech site — meaning the two pages are, at the code level, the same file. Both sites, he added, also share the same Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity tracking identifiers, the unique codes used to monitor visitor traffic. “Another smoking gun,” he called it. “If all of that somehow doesn’t convince you, check the websites. They are nigh identical!”
READ: Apple under fire for matching employee donations to IDF and illegal settlements
Medspa Owner Charged with Murder After ‘IV Cocktail’ Causes Patient to Suffer Fatal Cardiac Arrest
A Texas medspa owner and a doctor are now facing serious criminal charges after a woman allegedly died from a dangerously administered IV treatment that investigators say was given far too quickly.
Jenifer Cleveland, 47, died on July 10, 2023, after visiting a medspa in Wortham for what should have been a routine wellness treatment. Instead, authorities say the IV infusion triggered a deadly medical emergency that sent her into cardiac arrest within minutes.
According to indictments obtained by PEOPLE, Cleveland received an “IV cocktail” at Amber Johnson’s Luxe Medspa that contained multiple vitamins and electrolytes, including potassium chloride — a substance that can become deadly if administered improperly.
Investigators claim the infusion was delivered at an unsafe speed.
Johnson turned herself in to authorities on April 28 and was booked into the Freestone County Jail. She now faces a long list of charges, including felony murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, practicing medicine without a license, tampering with physical evidence, and multiple counts related to the delivery of dangerous drugs.
Jail officials confirmed she was later released on a $69,000 bond.
Authorities say Cleveland’s IV treatment began shortly after 11 a.m. on July 10, 2023. Just 27 minutes later, she reportedly lost consciousness, collapsed, and had no pulse.
She was rushed to a local hospital but was pronounced dead shortly afterward.
Medical experts say potassium chloride must be administered slowly and carefully monitored because too much potassium entering the body too quickly can trigger catastrophic complications, including irregular heart rhythms, organ failure, and sudden death.
The Texas Medical Board later launched an investigation into the shocking death.
Following a months-long review, investigators concluded Cleveland died from cardiac arrest caused by the “improper administration” of the IV therapy, according to an August 2024 order suspending the license of Dr. Michael Gallagher, the physician accused of overseeing the medspa.
Authorities allege Johnson did not hold a medical license but still operated the medspa despite Texas laws restricting non-physicians from owning medical practices.
Investigators also accused Gallagher of failing to properly supervise Johnson and allegedly allowing her to use his medical license to obtain dangerous medical substances.
Gallagher was arrested on April 29 and hit with multiple charges of his own, including felony murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and numerous counts tied to dangerous drug distribution and illegal medical practices.
He was released on a $96,500 bond.
In the wake of Jenifer’s death, her husband Brian Cleveland filed a civil lawsuit against Luxe Medspa and later pushed for stricter regulations surrounding elective IV therapy clinics.
His efforts eventually led to the passing of “Jenifer’s Law,” which was signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in June 2025. The law created tighter oversight rules for nontraditional healthcare facilities that offer elective IV treatments.
Before the legislation passed, Brian spoke emotionally about the wife he lost.
“She loved life. She loved her people,” he said. “She just wanted to love.”
He added that having the legislation named after Jenifer felt like a way for her legacy to continue helping others long after her death.
You are here: Home/Desserts/ Easy One-Bowl Carrot Oatmeal Muffins
Healthy, moist, and perfect for busy mornings!
Starting your day with something wholesome doesn’t have to be complicated. These Easy One-Bowl Carrot Oatmeal Muffins are the perfect solution for a quick, nutritious, and delicious breakfast. Made with simple ingredients and minimal cleanup, they’re soft, flavorful, and naturally satisfying.
With the natural sweetness of carrots, the heartiness of oats, and warm hints of cinnamon, these muffins feel comforting—almost like a healthier version of carrot cake you can enjoy any day of the week.
Why You’ll Love These Muffins
🥣 One-bowl recipe = easy cleanup
⏱️ Ready in under 30 minutes
🥕 Naturally sweet & moist
💪 Packed with fiber and nutrients
🍽️ Perfect for breakfast, snacks, or meal prep
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar (or coconut sugar)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
Wet Ingredients:
1 cup grated carrots (about 2 medium)
1/2 cup applesauce or yogurt
1/4 cup vegetable oil or melted coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
Optional Add-ins:
1/4 cup walnuts or raisins
Instructions
Preheat Oven Set oven to 350°F (175°C) and line or grease a muffin tin.
Mix Dry Ingredients In a large bowl, combine oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
Add Wet Ingredients Stir in grated carrots, applesauce (or yogurt), oil, and vanilla. Mix gently until combined.
Add Extras (Optional) Fold in walnuts or raisins if using.
Fill Muffin Tin Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling about 2/3 full.
Bake Bake for 15–20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Cool Let muffins cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.
Tips for Best Results
✔ Grate carrots finely for better texture
✔ Don’t overmix—keeps muffins soft and fluffy
✔ Add spices like nutmeg or ginger for extra flavor
✔ Use coconut sugar for a healthier twist
Storage Tips
Store at room temperature: 2–3 days
Refrigerate: up to 1 week
Freeze: up to 3 months
👉 Reheat in microwave for 15–20 seconds before serving.
Final Thoughts
These Carrot Oatmeal Muffins are proof that healthy can still be delicious. Easy to make, nourishing, and perfect for any time of day, they’re a must-have in your recipe collection.
Make a batch once—and they’ll quickly become part of your weekly routine!
Everyone’s a loser in Strait of Hormuz game that simulates global crisis
It’s no fun living through the global energy shock and growing economic crisis that has ensued since the conflict choked off shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. But it can be enlightening to play through the new game Bottleneck that forces players to choose among the 2,000 ships still stuck in and around the strait—all while actual news reports and real maritime transit data help tell the story of the unfolding events.
The free browser-based game challenges players to act as a fictional maritime coordinator by selecting a handful of ships that get to pass through the strait each day. Most decisions come with serious costs or trade-offs, whether it’s paying the toll imposed by the Iranian government that has claimed authority over the strait or antagonizing Iran or the United States while pushing either side toward widening the war. Failure to push through enough specific shipments can spark individual crises involving the price of oil, food, and water security, and a countdown to famine in many countries.
“The game does not ask whether you are smart enough to solve the crisis,” said Jakub Gornicki, the journalist and artist who developed the game, in a post. “It asks what kind of damage you choose when every option has a cost.”
Players must also manage relations with factions beyond Tehran and Washington, such as the Gulf States, the United Nations World Food Programme, and the shipping industry. Prioritizing shipments of crude oil and liquefied natural gas may satisfy the US’s interest in keeping energy prices in check, but it will erode the trust of the United Nations, which would rather see more ships carrying fertilizer to stave off future famine.
Playing a bad hand well
That may sound like a lot to wrap your head around for a game that is playable in 15 to 20 minutes, but it’s a surprisingly accessible experience for the most part. The game serves up plenty of explanations and news articles that you can click on to better understand the real-world context and in-game consequences.
However, each ship approved for transit tends to carry a greater cost or trade-off as the game progresses over 10 playable days between March 3 and April 13, 2026. You have the choice of not sending any ships through the strait on any given day, but that can quickly lead to dismal endgame results, like “empty shelves” and “desalination collapse” for Gulf States facing food insecurity and a lack of fresh water from energy-starved desalination plants.
A screenshot of the browser-based game Bottleneck based on the real Strait of Hormuz crisis.
If you manage to muddle through and keep all the factions from spiraling, the endgame results still provide plenty of charts and numbers to remind you that the real-life Strait of Hormuz crisis is far from over. Even squeezing through several dozen ships over 10 days—the best-case shipping scenario in the game—remains a far cry from the pre-war average of 130 ships passing through the strait each day. The inadequacy of that shipping rate continues to have daily real-world consequences.
Gornicki designed and built the game by himself over 17 days while executing the game’s underlying code with the help of an AI coding tool, which he described in a press kit as being “audited and corrected at every step.” He also incorporated more than 125 verified and linked news articles, along with shipping data from sources such as Windward Maritime Intelligence and Lloyd’s List.
“The chokepoint is not a story you read once and put down—it returns every week, in fuel prices, in fertilizer shortages, in food security in places far from any tanker,” Gornicki said. “I wanted to give people a form of this reporting they could not skim past.”
Rupiah rout stoking fears of a 1997 repeat in Indonesia
TOKYO – Indonesian officials are working overtime to dismiss any suggestion that Jakarta is catching a whiff of 1997 in the air. But the force of their interventions to steady the rupiah tells a very different story.
Bank Indonesia is hemorrhaging currency reserves to put a floor under the rupiah, which recently fell to an all-time low. This includes levels seen during the Asian financial crisis 29 years ago, as the fallout from the Iran war slams global markets.
Yet Indonesia’s move to impose capital controls suggests Southeast Asia’s biggest economy is going to the mattresses against currency speculators — in ways that could backfire.
Next week, Indonesia will activate a Bond Stabilization Fund to support the rupiah, according to Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa. Yet Jakarta resorting to so-called capital-flow management tools this early in the battle smacks more of panic than strength.
To be sure, the rupiah’s plunge to around 17,400 to the dollar is dramatic and a clear and present threat to the economy. A weaker exchange rate makes it harder to keep up with overseas debt payments.
It ups the odds Indonesia will import inflation. And it complicates the export of coal, nickel, palm oil and other key commodities, all of which are priced on global markets in dollars.
But there’s a throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater dynamic at play in Jakarta. The capital outflows exiting Indonesia reflect investors voting with their feet against the priorities that President Prabowo Subianto has pursued since October 2024.
The twin budget and current-account deficits are surely part of the problem. But the biggest worry is the yawning gap between Prabowo’s reform promises and the actual macroeconomic policies he’s championed.
It’s fine that Prabowo embraced the mega‑infrastructure agenda of his predecessor, Joko Widodo. But global investors have been left wanting for new projects that boost productivity. They also prefer financing arrangements that don’t crowd out private investment while exacerbating the national debt.
Nor is economic nationalism a good look for a government seeking to increase its regional leadership role. This includes export restrictions on nickel and other minerals that unsettle global supply chains and regulatory volatility that raises risk premiums.
Prabowo, meanwhile, has done little, if anything, of note to reduce Indonesia’s reliance on commodities to generate growth. This dynamic exposes the nation’s 287 million people to extreme price swings.
Team Prabowo has done itself no favors by dismissing investors’ concerns. Its heavy foreign-exchange intervention and pressure on state-owned banks are exacerbating these worries. Indications of bigger spending efforts to come aren’t helping.
It seems markets are no longer buying what Team Prabowo is selling. The rupiah’s plunge “is a signal that macroeconomic fundamentals are under pressure,” says Liza Camelia Suryanata, head of research at Kiwoom Sekuritas Indonesia. Also, Suryanata notes, “the target of 8% GDP growth has become highly unrealistic, and even maintaining around 5% is starting to look difficult.”
Nor is Suryanata surprised that the Jakarta Composite Index is down nearly 19% year to date. That compares to positive year-to-date returns in Malaysia and Thailand and a Philippine stock market that’s essentially flat.
In late April, index giant MSCI extended its review of Indonesia’s stock market to determine whether it might be downgraded to “frontier” from “emerging” status amid growing concerns about transparency under Prabowo.
Since January, Jakarta has announced steps to increase the amount of shareholder data and doubled the portion of stocks available to the general public to 15%. The exchange also kicked out some tycoon-owned stocks.
Last month, Jeffrey Hendrik, acting CEO of the Jakarta exchange, said his team would “continue to engage with global investors to gather input on strengthening the capital market in the future.”
Indonesia’s troubles are much deeper than that. Nor is it the only Asian economy in harm’s way. The Indian rupee, for example, is down by even more year to date than the rupiah (down 5.1% and 4.1%, respectively).
“Emerging market Asia is in the direct path of the shock with relatively loose policy,” says economist Lucila Bonilla at Oxford Economics, noting that Oxford has added rate hikes to its baseline for India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Thailand, meanwhile, is the “standout risk of patience turning into complacency.”
Indonesia, though, was shaky well before bombs began falling on Iran on February 28. Even before the war began, the rupiah and the stock market were suffering their worst routs since the 1997-98 Asian crisis, flashing warning signs for developing markets across Asia. It was clear in January that markets had grown wary of general-turned-politician Prabowo’s policies.
When Prabowo succeeded the more reform‑minded Widodo, he inherited an economy that had been gathering momentum. Between 2014 and 2024, the widely popular Widodo restored stability to Indonesia’s political landscape and notched several meaningful reforms — most notably a wave of transformational infrastructure projects designed to lift productivity and competitiveness.
In the Widodo era, Indonesia also made headway in tackling corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, pushing government institutions toward greater transparency. These improvements helped raise the quality of growth, ensuring that more Indonesian households shared in the gains from rising output.
And under Widodo’s stewardship, Indonesia navigated the Covid‑19 shock more effectively than many of its emerging‑market peers. Yet for all his achievements, Widodo left important structural issues unresolved.
Critics say he tolerated the rise of dynastic politics and allowed old‑style patronage networks to persist. And by backing a successor from the armed forces, he opened the door to a far less predictable leadership style — a striking shift given that Widodo was Indonesia’s first president from outside the military or political elite.
Global investors felt the jolt almost immediately after Prabowo took office. His pledge to propel Indonesia’s US$1.4 trillion economy toward 8% annual growth initially rekindled foreign enthusiasm.
But that optimism evaporated once it became clear that his strategy relied on aggressive fiscal expansion. Capital outflows surged as investors reassessed the risks behind the new administration’s growth ambitions.
Nine months into his presidency, in September 2025, Prabowo abruptly dismissed the internationally respected Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati. A former World Bank managing director, she had long been viewed as the key guardrail against a return to fiscal overreach.
Once she was out, Prabowo installed loyalist Purbaya, who quickly injected roughly $12 billion into the economy to jump-start lending.
Purbaya then moved swiftly to advance Prabowo’s controversial “burden‑sharing” plan — a push to nudge the central bank toward looser monetary policy just as the government was flooring the fiscal accelerator.
Economists worry BI is becoming a mere extension of the president’s growth strategy. ANZ Banking Group strategist Jennifer Kusuma notes that BI’s growing role in the sovereign debt market “would foster moral hazard risks” going forward.
In late January, as the Indonesian rupiah plunged to a record intraday low, Purbaya issued a statement stressing that BI remains free to make its own calls.
“We will maintain the independence of the central bank and the government as much as possible,” Purbaya said. “I will not squeeze the central bank to finance our development programs.”
The folks at MSCI clearly aren’t persuaded. In January, the index provider warned of “fundamental investability issues” in Indonesia’s stock market — a statement that triggered one of the most dramatic selloffs since the 1990s. It amounted to a stinging rebuke of Prabowo’s hyper-positive economic spin.
Many investors now fear it’s too late to give Prabowo the benefit of the doubt. Instead of taking steps to strengthen Indonesia’s economic foundations and rebuild market confidence, his finance minister has taken to attacking economists in a style reminiscent of Donald Trump, further unsettling global funds.
Just as Trump lashed out at Goldman Sachs’ chief economist for not toeing his administration’s line, Prabowo’s team has publicly chastised Citibank analysts after a report warned that Indonesia’s budget deficit could widen to 3.5% of GDP — well above the legal 3% ceiling.
Purbaya veered into Trump‑style theatrics when he dismissed Citi’s forecaster — who holds two master’s degrees — as “not a real economist.” But you don’t need a PhD to see that investors aren’t brushing off Citi’s warning. Least of all MSCI, which has treated the concerns as anything but trivial.
Yet as MSCI continues to argue months later, only bold and transparent capital-market reforms can achieve that. MSCI raised concern about “ongoing opacity in shareholding structures” and “possible coordinated trading behavior that undermines proper price formation.”
The bigger problem is that by prioritizing political control over creating a more productive economy, Prabowo and his economic team may be dragging the economy back to the days of living dangerously.
The irony, of course, is that Prabowo is a protege of dictator Suharto, who was ousted amid the political chaos of the 1997-1998 financial crisis. Without supply-side reforms, Prabowo’s fiscal priorities will also adversely affect the economy.
The same goes for the president’s assault on the central bank. Indonesia, in many ways, has joined the Fed on the frontlines of the battle for monetary policy autonomy.
The risk, says Wijayanto Samirin, economist at Paramadina University, is that BI officials “get too deep and detailed into fiscal matters and this disrupts our monetary policy ecosystem.”
Prabowo’s push to weaken the central bank’s independence and roll out costly populist programs suggests a shaky grasp of the very forces that fueled Indonesia’s 1997–98 crisis.
And despite the cautionary tale of Malaysia’s 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal, he has pressed ahead with creating a sovereign wealth fund, Danantara — a move that has already raised red flags over governance risks and potential conflicts of interest.
Markets aren’t always right. But chaotic stock losses and rupiah volatility have investors sensing a 1997-like whiff in the Jakarta air. This places the onus on Prabowo to demonstrate that he has a plan to take Indonesia forward.
Current fears about an accelerating backslide are the last thing the nation needs in 2026. And moves to limit capital flows treat the symptoms, not the underlying problems.
