Jobs Report, White House Crypto Summit, Gaza Ceasefire Uncertainty
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We get a picture today of employment, a snapshot slightly out of date. Future job reports will reflect federal job cuts and employers who paused as U.S. trade policy keeps changing. Where's the economy heading? I'm Ian Martinez, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is a first from NPR News. ♪

The president takes an opportunity today to promote cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has set multiple all-time record highs because everyone knows that I'm committed to making America the crypto capital we want to see. Trump himself has invested in crypto, so how does he plan for the government to promote it? Also, why did Israel change its terms for extending a ceasefire in Gaza? With U.S. help, Israelis are pressing Hamas to accept a different deal and withholding food and fuel.

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Today we get a picture of how the job market looked just before the economic chaos of recent weeks. Yeah, the Labor Department will give a report on employment. It's expected to show relatively solid growth, though it will not include many firings in the federal government or the economic disruptions of recent days. Over tariffs, that is. NPR's Scott Horsley is here. Scott, good morning. Good morning, Steve. Why would we not see those developments in this latest employment report?

Well, it's all about timing. You know, a lot of the federal job cuts began around February 14th, the Friday, which some have referred to as St. Valentine's Day massacre. But the jobs report is based on a survey that was done during the week leading up to that.

So if you got your walking papers that Friday, you're still counted as employed in this February jobs report. And the report's actually expected to show somewhat more jobs added in February than in January when cold, snowy weather was blanketing much of the country, keeping a lot of outdoor work in limbo.

Even if the report does look good on the surface, though, there are some warning signs on the horizon. Well, let's talk that through. I mean, I've been following the stock market, but it's been gyrating and you're watching employment. What's going on there? Well, the outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas keeps a running tally of layoff announcements. And its February tally shows the biggest job cut since 2020 in the early months of the pandemic.

Andrew Challenger says there were 172,000 layoffs announced last month, including more than 62,000 in the federal government. This is a really big number in terms of what we've ever recorded. The fact that we've reached that level so quickly this year is surprising to us and certainly something worth taking note of. Now, most of the federal workers who've been laid off so far were new hires who don't have a lot of job protection.

But we know the Trump administration has plans for more widespread layoffs as it seeks to radically downsize the federal workforce. Okay, what would that radical downsizing look like? Well, just for an example, the Trump administration reportedly wants to cut tens of thousands of jobs from both the Veterans Administration and the IRS. The tax collection agencies already cut more than 6,000 workers in February. Eddie Walker represents about 1,500 unionized IRS workers in Austin, Texas.

Of course, there's a lot of crying. I'm looking at some of the emails and stuff I've got, like they are ripping apart my work family. I left a job of 13 years to come here, and what do I get? How am I going to survive? I'm a single mom.

Obviously, this is very painful for the affected workers. For some context, though, the federal government is a fairly small part of the overall job market. There are about 2.4 million federal workers, not counting the military and the post office. That's about 1.5% of the country's overall workforce. Well, what's happening among the many, many more millions who work in the private sector then?

Yeah, here again, there are some signs of weakness. There's been a lot of whiplash around trade policy. Just this week, we've seen tariffs imposed, then relaxed, then mostly suspended on imports from Mexico and Canada. Andy Challenger says a lot of private sector businesses are considering their own job cuts. There's just been this extra uncertainty that's entered into some industries around tariffs, around potential trade wars.

We're seeing big announcements from very large Fortune 500 companies this month that are tuning down their growth forecasts for the next three or four years. It's just not an environment that's conducive to a lot of robust hiring. Scott, thanks so much for the update. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. NPR's Scott Horsley.

When he was campaigning for office, the president promised to make the United States the crypto capital of the planet. And he's taken major steps this week when it comes to digital assets. Yeah, last night, the president signed an executive order creating a strategic Bitcoin program.

reserve. He's expected to speak about it at a summit the White House is hosting today on cryptocurrency. NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivram has more on this. Good morning. Good morning. Would you just explain for me, I mean, I can understand why the U.S. needs a strategic petroleum reserve. If there's a shortage of petroleum, you'll let some out. Supply and demand keeps the price down. But why would Americans need a crypto reserve? Yeah.

Yeah, the argument the White House is making is that the U.S. is losing money by selling the Bitcoin they already have seized from court proceedings. So Trump's crypto czar, David Sachs, said on social media last night that the government has about $200,000 in Bitcoin, which is worth about $17 billion. And the idea is that the reserve will be a, quote, digital Fort Knox. All of that Bitcoin just stays there.

And that was a campaign promise from President Trump. But the idea of having a crypto reserve is pretty controversial, even among those in the crypto space, coming down to details like which cryptocurrencies do you keep in the reserve and why is the president picking some over others? So there's a lot of lingering questions. Yeah. And of course, it's an industry in which he's invested. So this is just one move the president is making. There's this summit coming today. What's going on?

Yeah, the White House hasn't shared a lot of details about who's attending today, who's going to be speaking, though we do expect the president to make remarks. But I will say the big overarching thing that people are expecting from this summit is a pretty wide open question, which is what are the rules when it comes to cryptocurrency? This is a space that involves trillions of dollars, so many players and a lot of opportunity

but also a lot of volatility and risk and bad actors. So there's a desire here to build a regulatory framework. And a lot of folks in the crypto space see this summit as an opportunity to get the ball rolling on those discussions, especially because there are a lot of conversations like this that they feel weren't happening under the Biden administration. Well, what was Biden doing then?

The Biden administration focused on enforcement in trying to crack down on cryptocurrency rather than coming up with the new rules of the road to help the industry and help consumers. Trump's approach so far has been to undo that. In the last few weeks, his administration has backed away from a lot of the lawsuits and investigations that the SEC, which is the Securities and Exchange Commission, had been doing on crypto businesses. I talked to Campbell Harvey. He's a finance professor at Duke University about the change in approach to crypto.

Over the past four years at least, the regulatory complex has been very combative, almost in a warlike situation against the innovators in the space. So it's time to step back and to look at the possible benefits of this new technology and weigh them against the costs.

And he says the summit happening today is important because it's a first step in making a framework for cryptocurrency that balances that innovation with protection for consumers. I'm just thinking, though, when the government changes the rules, there are winners, there are losers. You may be picking winners and losers. And doesn't the president himself have a financial stake here?

Correct. That's very important to point out. Trump was seen as a very crypto-friendly presidential candidate. He received a lot of financial support from people in the crypto industry who also invested in down-ballot races. And during the campaign, Trump also rolled out his own crypto venture called World Liberty Financial. That's run by Trump's kids, but he has a sizable financial stake in it. And right before inauguration, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump rolled out their own

meme coins. That's a kind of cryptocurrency that the SEC recently said is not subject to oversight, which has raised questions about conflicts of interest. And Piers Deepa Shivaram, who so far as we know, has not yet released the Deepa coin, but we'll look forward to that. Stay tuned. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

President Trump says his own threats forced a ceasefire in the war in Gaza. But that was six weeks ago, and that phase of the ceasefire deal ended with no agreement between Israel and Hamas on what comes next. Now, this week, the president issued what he called the last warning to Hamas after meeting with former Israeli hostages. NPR international correspondent Abba Traui joins us now from Dubai to explain. Hi there.

Hey, Steve. I'm just trying to think this through. There was a ceasefire that lasted six weeks. Hamas released some hostages in exchange for Israel freeing some Palestinians. But why haven't they agreed to the second phase yet?

Well, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he never actually sent negotiators to hammer out the details of a second phase. And he wants a different deal now that does not permanently end the war, but frees more hostages taken in the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023. So instead of proceeding with the original deal, Trump's Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, came up with a different plan in recent days that gives Netanyahu what he wants.

And to pressure Hamas into this new deal, Israel's blocked all food, fuel and aid into Gaza for six days now. Now, countries around the world, aid organizations and several Israeli rights groups say this violates international humanitarian law. So how, again, is this plan, this proposal from the Israelis and from the United States different from what was expected?

So the main difference is the original deal agreed to would have ended the war now, basically an agreement to lasting truce. And then all remaining Israeli hostages still alive would be freed over the next six weeks. And Israeli troops would withdraw from Gaza and more Palestinian prisoners would be freed. In contrast, the Witkoff plan would have Hamas release half the remaining hostages still held in Gaza now with only the promise to negotiate a lasting end to the war after six weeks.

James has not agreed to that. And Netanyahu may decide not to end the war because of pressure from his far right coalition. He's in a bind because he has vowed to return all the hostages and eliminate James. But a return to war doesn't guarantee either. OK, so we're maybe at this moment not getting closer to a permanent end to the war, but people still talk about what that's supposed to look like. What are some of the visions on the table?

Okay, so you may have heard Trump's idea that everyone in Gaza is going to be displaced to other countries like Egypt and Jordan, and then the U.S. takes over the Gaza Strip somehow, turning it into a world-class real estate development without Palestinians who live there now. Now, Israel's government has embraced this plan and is drafting up ways to implement it, but Egypt has been clear it will not be a part of Trump's plan to

permanently expel Palestinians off the land. And Egypt says the plan is destabilizing to the region and would unravel its decades-old peace treaty with Israel. So instead, Egypt drew up a detailed reconstruction plan for Gaza of its own, and it got the backing of all Arab states at a summit in Cairo this week. They also all rejected any displacement of Palestinians. So Israel and the U.S. immediately criticized this lengthy Egyptian plan. But

But then Steve Witkoff said this yesterday. I just finished reading it. There's a lot of compelling features to it. We need more discussion about it. But it's a good faith first step from the Egyptians. Hmm.

So, Steve, the plan doesn't address every single concern that Israel or, you know, Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have about, you know, what would come next. And they'll be needed to help fund the reconstruction. But it would exclude Hamas from any governance. And Hamas says they agree to that. Oh, interesting. Aya, thanks so much. Thank you, Steve. That's NPR correspondent Aya Batraoui in Dubai.

And that's Up First for this Friday, March 7th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Amy Martinez. Now, one of the impending legal battles for the Trump administration is over birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. whose parents are here without legal status. Now, at the center is a question that's centuries old. Who is truly American and who gets to decide? This weekend on the Sunday Story from Up First, we hear the origins of this question through an 1898 court case

that would transform the life of one Chinese immigrant and generations to follow. That's this Sunday right here in the Up First podcast feed. Today's Up First was edited by Raphael Nam, Roberta Rampton, Russell Lewis, Alice Wolfley, and Mohamed El-Bardisi. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.

We get engineering support from Nisha Hynas. Our technical director is Carly Strange. And let me give you one more name. Jay Shaler is the new executive producer of this program. Welcome, Jay. Join us Monday. This message comes from Capital One with the Venture X Card. Earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy. Plus, get premium benefits at a collection of hotels when booking through Capital One Travel. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at CapitalOne.com.

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