🗞️U.S. may abandon Ukraine peace efforts

...also U.S. airstrikes in Yemen and Ford halts shipments to China

April 18th, 2025

What happened today 🇺🇸,

  • President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio both said separately today that the U.S. may abandon their peace efforts in Ukraine if progress is not made soon

  • The U.S. targeted a major oil port in Yemen that was held by the Houthis (the Iran-backed group) with airstrikes that killed over 70 people

  • The Trump administration will announce a new rule, previously known as ‘Schedule F’, that will make it easier to fire federal employees who are believed to be undermining the President’s agenda

  • A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has halted the planned firings of nearly 1,500 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that were announced Thursday

  • Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was indicted by a New York grand jury on four federal charges including murder through the use of a firearm, which could make him eligible for the death penalty…Mangione will appear in court next Friday

  • The Trump administration is replacing acting IRS commissioner Gary Shapley and Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender will become the next acting heading of the IRS

  • Ford has announced they will stop shipments of their F-150s and their other models to China due to tariffs, per WSJ

  • Y Combinator’s CEO, Garry Tan, has said that for about a quarter of the current YC startups 95% of the code was written by AI

  • The number of Americans working multiple jobs rose by 76,000 in March, to a record 8.94 million

  • The stock market was closed today for Good Friday

  • VP Vance met with Italian PM Meloni in Rome for a second day of talks on tariffs and then attended Good Friday services at the Vatican

  • President Zelenskyy has said that Ukrainian intelligence found evidence that China is supplying weapons to Russia, Ukraine has therefore sanctioned three Chinese companies in response…China has denied these accusations

Plus: A look at beer production by state

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