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For Immediate Release
April, 12 2023, 12:29pm EDT
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Groundwork's Chief Economist Reacts to March CPI Report
Today's Consumer Price Index (CPI) report shows inflation at 5.0% year-over-year in March – down from 6.0% in February. Lower prices for food and energy pulled inflation down to its lowest level since May 2021. Groundwork's Chief Economist Dr. Rakeen Mabud reacted to today’s inflation report with the following statement:
“Today’s inflation report is a clear repudiation of what the Fed has been telling us for the past two years: We don’t have to ramp up unemployment to bring inflation down. Inflation has fallen for nine straight months, all while Black workers, led by Black women, are experiencing the lowest unemployment rate since 1972.
“We are seeing the benefits of a tight labor market in action. It will be a real failure of leadership if the Fed throws away all these important gains in the labor market by pursuing additional rate hikes.”
The Groundwork Collaborative is dedicated to advancing a coherent and persuasive progressive economic worldview and narrative capable of delivering meaningful opportunity and prosperity for everyone. Our work is driven by a core guiding principle: We are the economy. Groundwork Collaborative envisions an economic system that produces strong, broadly shared prosperity and power for all people, not just a wealthy few.
LATEST NEWS
New Research Details 'Human and Economic Toll' of US Abortion Bans
"Abortion bans don't stay in exam rooms," said the Center for Reproductive Rights president. "They reshape communities, workplaces, and state economies."
Mar 09, 2026
With attention directed at President Donald Trump's war on immigrants across the United States and various international conflicts, including the assault on Iran, there hasn't been much prominent news coverage in recent weeks about a key issue of the 2024 campaign—GOP abortion bans—but people nationwide continue to endure the impacts of such policies, as revealed in a Monday report from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The Price of Safety: Stories of Abortions Denied, Careers Disrupted, and States Left Behind features various profiles demonstrating "the human and economic toll" of abortion bans, which right-wing policymakers have enacted or intensified since the US Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade with its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in 2022.
The anthology uses stories from patients, doctors, business leaders, and others to "show the real-world consequences of laws that criminalize standard medical care," said Nancy Northup, the center's president, in a statement. "Abortion bans don't stay in exam rooms. They reshape communities, workplaces, and state economies. As long as politicians keep restricting care, families will keep moving, clinicians will keep leaving, and states will keep watching their competitive edge slip away."
"Our daughter's spine was severely abnormal, her brain hadn't formed correctly, and she only had one kidney... I did everything by the book medically, but the experience still made me feel like a criminal for seeking evidence-based care for a lethal fetal diagnosis."
Dani Mathisen, "a Fort Worth native from a family of physicians," discovered during a routine anatomy scan with her OB-GYN, who is also her aunt, that she needed an abortion, 18 weeks into a planned pregnancy. As she explained, "Our daughter's spine was severely abnormal, her brain hadn't formed correctly, and she only had one kidney."
Texas had banned abortions after six weeks and allowed private citizens to sue anyone who helped a pregnant person access care. According to Mathisen: "My mom, also a doctor, stepped in anyway. She found a clinic in New Mexico, booked the flights and hotel, called the staff, and handed us an envelope of cash. We paid for the abortion with cash out of fear of leaving a paper trail tying Texas credit cards to out-of-state abortion care. I did everything by the book medically, but the experience still made me feel like a criminal for seeking evidence-based care for a lethal fetal diagnosis."
"I had always imagined building my career in Texas," she added. "After this, I chose an OB-GYN residency in Hawaii because I needed full-spectrum training—including abortion care—and I couldn't get that in Texas."
Mathisen wasn't alone in fleeing that state. Amanda Ducach, CEO and co-founder of an artificial intelligence startup focused on women's health, shared how she "built Ema in Houston, and Texas shaped our earliest users and our mission," but when Roe fell, she "was seven and a half months into a high-risk pregnancy."
"Suddenly, even if I were to face a life-threatening emergency, I wasn't sure I'd receive timely care. My doctors weren't sure either," Ducach detailed. "It also changed how I thought about my company, and our responsibility to the people who rely on us through our partner platforms."
"After months of legal review and deep conversations with my team, I decided to relocate both my family and Ema's headquarters to Massachusetts where abortion access is protected under state law," she continued. "I also gave employees the option to work from any location, which brought immediate relief."
"Suddenly, even if I were to face a life-threatening emergency, I wasn't sure I'd receive timely care. My doctors weren't sure either."
Elizabeth Weller also left Texas. She said that "the decision cost us $25,000+ in income, distanced us from our community, and upended the future we had envisioned. But after the pregnancy complications I faced, it was painfully clear: Texas no longer provided the basic medical care necessary to have a child."
So did Dr. Judy Levison, who spent over two decades practicing and teaching obstetrics and gynecology in the state. After "watching abortion bans turn routine medical care into a legal minefield," she retired, moved to Colorado, and "began volunteering with an abortion support group."
It's not just Texas. Kayla Smith said that she left Idaho—"where I'd lived for 13 years, gone to college, met my husband, built our careers, and wanted to grow our family"—for Washington state. She explained that just 48 hours after Idaho's ban took effect and "19 weeks into my pregnancy with my second child, we discovered that our baby had a severe, inoperable heart defect."
Tracy Young, "a first-generation American, a mother of four, and the co-founder of two technology companies," highlighted how abortion bans also outlaw proper treatment for people experiencing miscarriages. While she is based in San Francisco, California, Young began "losing a pregnancy I had deeply wanted" while traveling for work in Louisiana.
"Back home in California, my doctors told me that my body had not completed the miscarriage naturally. They prescribed misoprostol, and when that wasn't enough, performed a surgical procedure to prevent infection and complications," she said. "Today, abortion bans have made that same care illegal or heavily restricted in many states, including Louisiana where I miscarried."
Another business leader, Chris Webb, CEO and co-founder of ChowNow—an online ordering platform with offices in California and Missouri—publicly supported abortion access in 2019 by signing on to a coalition's "Don't Ban Equality" letter. After Roe's reversal, he sent out a company-wide email disclosing a girlfriend's abortion and offering to personally cover the travel costs of any employee who needed such care.
"Leaders owe employees honesty about where they stand—and action when basic rights are on the line," he said. "Abortion policies aren't just about healthcare. They're good for employers and good for people. When more companies speak up, there is safety in numbers. And in the long run, protecting your team protects your business—and is just the right thing to do."
"Reproductive rights are so crucial that Americans are uprooting their lives to ensure they have access to care."
The report's release coincided with the publication of a paper adapted from one prepared for the center by researchers who estimated "the market value of reproductive rights as capitalized into US housing markets."
The paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that "total abortion bans reduced rents by an average of 2.2% from July 2022 through June 2025, with the effect reaching 4.0% in the most recent year. Over the same horizon, bans increased rental vacancy rates by an average of 1.1 percentage points, with the effect reaching 1.8 percentage points in the most recent year. Estimates for home values and homeowner vacancy rates are similar in magnitude but less precise."
The center's senior director, Julia Taylor Kennedy, said that "the economic data and the firsthand accounts are telling the same story... Reproductive rights are so crucial that Americans are uprooting their lives to ensure they have access to care. That means that, for employers and policymakers, abortion bans carry measurable workforce and competitiveness implications."
Despite such findings, Republican state and federal policymakers continue to restrict reproductive freedom. In recent months, the Trump administration quietly imposed an abortion ban at the US Department of Veterans Affairs and expanded the global gag rule.
Meanwhile, at the state level last month, Tennessee Republicans introduced legislation to make abortion a capital offense, and a sheriff's office in South Carolina launched an investigation into a fetus, estimated to be just 13-15 weeks, found at a water treatment plant, highlighting the rising criminalization of pregnancy loss.
Last week, the Marion County Superior Court granted a permanent injunction preventing enforcement of Indiana's near-total abortion ban, and Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita swiftly appealed.
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Anthropic Sues Trump Pentagon Over 'Supply Chain Risk' Designation
“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” the lawsuit said after the Pentagon punished the AI company for refusing to lift restrictions on using their products for autonomous killer robots or mass surveillance.
Mar 09, 2026
Anthropic is suing the Trump administration over its unprecedented attempt to coerce the company into allowing the military to use its artificial intelligence technology without ethical restrictions.
After the company refused to bend to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's demands that it drop limits on the use of its product for specific purposes—including to create autonomous weapons and for the mass surveillance of Americans—the Pentagon formally designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk" on Thursday.
The designation under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act (FASCSA) imposes a sweeping prohibition on contractors using the company's technology, including its highly advanced language model Claude.
Hegseth said that effective immediately, "no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."
The "supply chain risk" designation has typically only been used against foreign companies with ties to adversaries of the United States. According to the Associated Press, Anthropic is the first American firm to be slapped with the label.
On Monday, the San Francisco-based company filed two lawsuits—one in California federal court and another in the federal appeals court in Washington, DC—each challenging different aspects of the designation.
“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” Anthropic’s lawsuit says. “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech. No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here. Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned about the dangers of "AI-enabled autocracies" that use their technology to more efficiently invade and dominate less powerful countries and stamp out anti-government sentimet.
"Anthropic’s Usage Policy has always conveyed its view that Claude should not be used for two specific applications: (1) lethal autonomous warfare and (2) surveillance of Americans en masse. Anthropic has never tested Claude for those uses. Anthropic currently does not have confidence, for example, that Claude would function reliably or safely if used to support lethal autonomous warfare," the lawsuit continued.
"These usage restrictions," it said, "are therefore rooted in Anthropic’s unique understanding of Claude’s risks and limitations—including Claude’s capacity to make mistakes and its unprecedented ability to accelerate and automate the analysis of massive amounts of data, including data about American citizens."
The Trump administration issued its ultimatum to Anthropic just days before the US and Israel launched a massive war with Iran, which has involved the targeting of thousands of civilian sites, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including schools, hospitals, oil and water facilities, and residential areas.
The war has resulted in the deaths of at least 1,255 Iranians so far as of Monday, according to the country's deputy health minister, Ali Jafarian. Most of those killed have been civilians, Jafarian said, and have included about 200 children and 11 healthcare workers.
Hegseth, who has said the US would follow "no stupid rules of engagement" and boasted that the military was raining down “death and destruction from the sky all day long" upon Iran, has described adopting artificial intelligence as something necessary to make America's military "more lethal."
Last week, the Washington Post reported that in Iran, the US has “leveraged the most advanced artificial intelligence it’s ever used in warfare, a tool that could be difficult for the Pentagon to give up even as it severs ties with the company that created it.”
During the war's first 24 hours, Palantir’s Maven Smart System, which contains Claude, reportedly helped US commanders select 1,000 Iranian targets, according to the Post, which credited the program with "speeding the pace of the campaign."
This is despite the fact that, as SkyNews tech correspondent Rowland Manthorpe recently demonstrated, when presented with "tricky images," AI programs from Claude to ChatGPT to Google's Gemini still "struggle to recognize what is really going on."
"Now," he said, "this very same system is being used for war."
That first day of the war, February 28 saw a massacre in which a Tomahawk missile likely directed by the US obliterated a girls' school in Minab, resulting in at least 175 people killed—mostly children aged 7 to 12—in what was reportedly a "double-tap" strike. Despite video evidence suggesting otherwise, the Trump administration has claimed that Iran was responsible for the massacre.
It is unclear what, if any, role artificial intelligence systems played in the bombing of the Minab school, which was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility. One investigation by Al Jazeera concluded that the bombing of the school was likely "deliberate."
Beyond putting the lives of innocent people at risk through indiscriminate attacks that lack human intervention, media analyst and journalist Adam Johnson has warned that the adoption of AI in warfare will also allow the US, Israel, and other countries to avoid responsibility for atrocities their militaries commit while using the technology.
"One reason these systems are attractive to militaries is that they double as moral laundromats. Offsetting responsibility to AI is a feature, not a bug," Johnson said. "If the decision about what to bomb can be pawned off on some over-eager or sloppy 'AI', then no person, or system even, is responsible. That's a primary selling point of off-setting 'target-choosing' responsibilities to a machine. It's not just speed, it's blanket indemnification."
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‘While No One’s Looking,’ Trump DOJ Settles Antitrust Case With Live Nation-Ticketmaster
"This settlement is the clearest sign yet that this administration serves big business, not the people."
Mar 09, 2026
The Trump Justice Department on Monday reportedly reached a tentative deal with Live Nation—the owner of Ticketmaster—to settle a Biden-era antitrust lawsuit that aimed to break up the company, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry.
News of the settlement, which would not require a breakup of Live Nation, came days after the trial began, with a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department's decimated antitrust division saying last week that the company abuses its market power and earns its massive profits "through illegal action." The antitrust division's counsel in the case, David Dahlquist, was apparently not made aware of the settlement until he appeared in court Monday morning.
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said it is "highly unorthodox for the Justice Department’s lead litigator to be left out of the loop on the settlement and highly prejudicial to the jury’s deliberations."
“According to every observer, this trial was already going well for the Justice Department and states," said Hepner. "They had just won summary judgment and a jury had already heard evidence of Live Nation’s longstanding pattern of retaliation against venues who had attempted to open the market to competition. State AGs are once again left to clean up the mess left by this Administration’s incompetence.”
Under the settlement, which must be approved by a judge, Live Nation "would pay a fine of up to $280 million and divest itself of at least 13 amphitheaters across the country as it opens up its ticketing processes so that competitors can share in the sale of tickets," the Associated Press reported.
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a trade group representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, festivals, and promoters, noted in a statement that the reported $280 million settlement amount "is the equivalent of four days of [Live Nation's] 2025 revenue, which means they could potentially make it back by this Friday."
"The reported settlement does not appear to include any specific and explicit protections for fans, artists, or independent venues and festivals," said Stephen Parker, NIVA's executive director. "Reported details also indicate that ticket resale platforms could be further empowered through new requirements for Ticketmaster to host their listings, which would likely exacerbate the price gouging potential for predatory resellers and the platforms that serve them."
"If these facts are true," Parker added, "NIVA views this as a failure of the justice system."
And Trump pardons Ticketmaster while no one’s looking. pic.twitter.com/ZEFcSomb05
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 9, 2026
The antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation was filed in 2024 after a nearly two-year investigation launched amid mounting public outrage aimed at Ticketmaster, spurred in part by its botched presale of Taylor Swift concert tickets in 2022. Then-President Joe Biden's Justice Department filed the complaint in partnership with 30 state attorneys general, most of whom vowed Monday to continue the fight without the Trump administration's support.
"For years, Live Nation has made enormous profits by exploiting its illegal monopoly and raising costs for shows," said New York Attorney General Letitia James. "My office has led a bipartisan group of attorneys general in suing Live Nation for taking advantage of fans, venues, and artists, and we are committed to holding Live Nation accountable."
The settlement deal comes weeks after Gail Slater, the former head of the Justice Department's antitrust arm, was pushed out by DOJ leadership. Prior to Slater's removal, Live Nation executives and lobbyists had reportedly been negotiating the terms of a possible settlement with senior Justice Department officials outside of the antitrust office, heightening corruption concerns.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, policy director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement that "this settlement amounts to a slap on the wrist that tinkers around the edges of the real problem: Live Nation’s monopoly."
"Instead of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, Live Nation will now get to continue forcing the vast majority of live venues to use Ticketmaster," said Peterson-Cassin. "Following the ousting of Gail Slater and the gutting of the government’s antitrust enforcement capabilities, this settlement is the clearest sign yet that this administration serves big business, not the people."
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