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Artemis II, the first crewed mission under the Artemis program, is scheduled to launch today, April 1. NASA is opening a two-hour window for its lift off, starting at 6:24 PM Eastern time, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The agency said the forecast for launch day “shows an 80 percent chance of favorable weather conditions” and that, on March 31, its engineers had finished critical health checks on the Space Launch System rocket that the mission will use.

On the evening of March 31, the engineers shifted the launch system into its final configuration. In the early hours of April 1, they will activate the ground launch sequencer. You can start watching Artemis II’s launch event at 7:45AM ET when the Artemis team will load propellant into the SLS rocket. Full launch coverage begins at 12:50 PM ET on NASA+, Amazon Prime or the YouTube video embedded below.

The Artemis II mission will take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day trip around the moon. It will be NASA’s first flight with a crew onboard the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft system, and it will be humanity’s first foray into deep space since the Apollo program. During their 10-day mission, the astronauts will observe how journeys beyond Earth’s orbit affect human health. Artemis II was supposed to launch in February, but the attempt had failed due to a hydrogen leak. Another attempt in March was delayed yet again due a helium issue. If the launch doesn’t take place today as planned, NASA’s next launch opportunity is on April 6.

If you're an immigrant worker in the U.S. right now, you've got a better shot landing a visa as a farmer than a tech worker, researcher, doctor or nurse.

Why it matters: The Trump administration's crackdown on H-1B visas is crushing sectors that rely on high-skilled immigrant workers, while seasonal programs for farm workers have gotten a pass.

• "There was all of this hype that Trump would be friendly toward high-skilled immigration and harder on low-skilled immigration," said Sam Peak, an immigration expert at the Economic Innovation Group.
• The opposite has been true, including an admission from the administration that seasonal farm labor jobs can't be filled with Americans.

The big picture: Huge new fees ($100k a pop for H-1B visas) are combining with higher salary rules to make importing high-skilled workers less attractive for American employers.

• At the same time, the administration is lowering the wage requirements for farm workers and helping streamline their visas.
• "The $100,000 H-1B fee sends a clear message: we must prioritize hiring American talent before hiring foreign labor," USCIS Spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser told Axios in a statement.

Zoom in: Most H-1B visas go to IT work and Big Tech companies, a perennial villain for the MAGA populists. But smaller businesses, research institutes (like universities or teaching hospitals), nonprofits and hospitals are bearing the brunt of the visa fee change.

• Rural hospitals are some of the hardest hit outside of tech work by the new fee.
• "The issue right now for rural patients isn't: do I want a foreign nurse or do I want an American nurse? The issue is: do I want foreigners or is my facility going to slow down patient care?" said immigration attorney Chris Musillo.
• Trump allies in Texas and Florida are trying to implement state government freezes on sponsoring H-1B visas, which will inevitably impact public universities and medical centers.

By the numbers: Just 85 applicants have paid the $100,000 visa fee as of Feb. 15, according to an agency declaration in a lawsuit.

• In fiscal year 2024, more than 65,000 approved H-1B recipients would have been subject to the fee.
• Additionally, the Department of Labor is preparing to implement a new salary formula that increases the labor costs for H-1B visa workers.
• "The previous methodology implicitly allowed employers to hire experienced foreign workers and pay them as an entry-level U.S. worker. It created perverse incentives to avoid hiring entry-level U.S. workers," a DOL spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Between the lines: Farmers struggling to fill their ranks are finding relief from the Trump administration.

• DOL has cut the hourly rates for these seasonal workers — ranging from $1 to $3 an hour decreases depending on the state — and created a new "one-stop shop" to streamline these visas.
• "The farming community has fairly deep roots in the GOP," Peak said. "I really think it comes down to farmers being in a lot of red districts and having close ties with the administration and members of Congress."

The bottom line: These changes enraged the United Farm Workers, a union that's long struggled against migrant labor undercutting its members. The UFW is suing the Trump administration over the changes.

• "There is nothing "America First" about expanding exploitative guest worker programs that undercut and displace American workers," Teresa Romero, UFW president, said in a statement on the lawsuit, adding that the changes allow "big agricultural corporations to exploit cheap foreign labor."

One month in, President Trump's Iran war has fractured into three competing realities:

1. A military campaign that has largely delivered.
2. A strategic vision that hasn't.
3. A political and economic disaster getting worse by the day.

Why it matters: The Trump administration has declared Operation Epic Fury an overwhelming success. But the trajectory of the war — from shifting goalposts to mounting costs — points to a potential stalemate.

Zoom in: By conventional military measures, the U.S. and Israel are dominating Iran at sea, in the air and on land.

• In its first 29 days, Operation Epic Fury struck 11,000+ targets, flew 11,000+ combat sorties, and damaged or destroyed 150+ Iranian vessels, according to the Pentagon.
• The opening phase of the war decapitated much of Iran's senior military leadership and inflicted significant damage on its ballistic missile program.

Yes, but: Sustaining the military campaign has come at a cost — including at least 13 U.S. deaths, hundreds of injuries, billions of dollars in damaged or destroyed equipment, and about $1 billion a day in estimated operational expenditures.

• The U.S. has burned through more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in four weeks, according to The Washington Post, at a time when stockpiles were already well below target levels.
• Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said: "The Department of War has everything it needs to execute any mission at the time and place of the President's choosing and on any timeline."
• But the Pentagon is seeking a roughly $200 billion cash infusion for the war, largely to replenish munitions. Its passage is no guarantee in a closely divided Congress.

In the meantime, Iran's missiles continue to pummel the region — and U.S. forces have not been spared.

• One day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared Iran's military "neutralized," Iranian missiles struck a base in Saudi Arabia, injuring 29 American soldiers and damaging U.S. refueling and surveillance aircraft.
• The New York Times reports that many of the 13 U.S. military bases in the region are "all but uninhabitable" due to Iranian strikes. The Pentagon declined to comment on the report, citing operational security.

Zoom out: The strategic picture is hard to square with the administration's triumphalism.

• The decapitation of Iran's senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has not destabilized the regime, softened its anti-American posture or brought freedom to the Iranian people.
• The war's central justification — eliminating Iran's nuclear threat — remains unresolved: Trump is now weighing a high-risk ground operation to seize Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
• Iran's stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz has become the war's most damaging unintended consequence — triggering a historic energy shock, straining relations with allies and threatening to metastasize into a long-term strategic crisis.

What they're saying: A White House official pushed back on the strategic assessment, saying Trump outlined four distinct goals for Operation Epic Fury — destroying Iran's ballistic missile capacity, annihilating its navy, eliminating terrorist proxies, and guaranteeing Iran never possesses a nuclear weapon — and that "the United States Military is meeting or surpassing all of its benchmarks on these defined objectives."

• The official added that Iran's "navy is combat ineffective, their drone attacks have dropped 90%, and two-thirds of their production facilities are damaged or destroyed."

State of play: Back home, the war is exacting a steep political toll by nearly every available measure.

• For the first time in his second term, Trump's average approval rating has sunk below 40% — with $4 a gallon gas further damaging his economic standing.
• The Iran war is the most unpopular major military action in modern American history: More than 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the conflict, according to Pew Research.
• The erosion is reaching into the president's own coalition — his approval among 2024 Trump voters has fallen from 93% at the start of his term to 76%, according to a YouGov/Economist poll conducted March 27-30.

On the economic toll, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump "has always been clear about short-term disruptions" from the war, and pointed to executive orders on housing affordability, prescription drug pricing, and tax cuts as evidence the administration "has had a plan in place to mitigate these disruptions."

• Asked about high gasoline prices Tuesday, Trump told reporters: "All I have to do is leave Iran, and we'll be doing that very soon, and they'll come tumbling down."

The bottom line: The U.S. military has done what it was asked to do. The harder question — what winning actually looks like — is one the administration has yet to answer.

Axios' Marc Caputo contributed reporting.

Oil prices could surge to an unprecedented $200 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, analysts warn.

Why it matters: President Trump is weighing ending the U.S. war on Iran without reopening the strait — raising the once-unthinkable prospect that this key energy artery could stay shut indefinitely.

• If that happens, oil's recent rise — briefly nearing $120 a barrel — could look modest.

Driving the news: U.S. gasoline prices have jumped 35% since the war began last month, topping $4 a gallon earlier this week.

• Countries more dependent on Middle East oil are already seeing worse, including fuel shortages.

What they're saying: Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm, puts 55% odds on the war lasting through May. If Iran damages oil infrastructure, prices could spike above $150 a barrel, it said Tuesday.

• Analysts at Macquarie, a financial services company, last week said oil could reach $200 if the war drags into June, assigning a 40% probability.

"There is no policy option to prevent oil prices from marching up toward $200 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed," said Jason Bordoff, founding executive director of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.

• "It's too large of an amount of supply to the global market."

Daniel Yergin, who hosted the world's premier energy conference in Houston last week, declined to give a specific forecast — but noted: "You do hear $200."

Catch up quick: Roughly 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows through the narrow waterway of the Strait of Hormuz.

State of play: Prices have actually been somewhat contained because of short-term buffers — oil already in transit and releases from strategic reserves. But those cushions are fading.

• "Ships that escaped the Strait of Hormuz before [the war] began have reached port," former Secretary of State John Kerry said last week at the Houston conference. "They're empty now."

Flashback: Oil's historic peak was just under $150 a barrel in 2008, in nominal terms, before the Great Recession. That's roughly $230 in today's dollars.

• Brent crude reached $139 in March 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, helping push U.S. gasoline to a record $5.02 a gallon.

How it works: The focus on $200 a barrel "is not an accident," said Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners. It echoes the 2008 record.

• Back then, "economic calamity" ultimately forced demand lower and rebalanced the market, he said.
• If reopening the Strait doesn't rebalance supply and demand, or if the Strait doesn't reopen for a long time, "then economic calamity is likely to follow," Book said.

Zoom out: Dozens of countries — many lower-income — are already taking emergency measures, from closing schools to mandating remote work, according to the International Energy Agency.

• Even wealthier countries are feeling acute strain: The U.K. is facing jet fuel shortages.

What's next: "In the next several weeks, you're going to see the physical reality of oil shortfalls catching up to market trading activity," Bordoff said. "And that's going to cause oil prices to have to rise fast enough to make people use less oil."

What we're watching: Oil spikes don't usually trigger lasting shifts away from fossil fuels.

• But Bordoff says this crisis could resemble the 1970s, which did spur major energy shifts, including a nuclear boom and a move away from oil in power generation in the U.S.
• The price increases in that crisis were so painful that anything on that scale this time might convince more people to steer away from fossil fuels, Bordoff said.

The bottom line: "When it comes to energy crises, our memories are short," Bordoff said. "I think this has more potential than anything since the 1970s to create traumatic experiences that lead to lasting change."

President Trump isn't just befuddling foreign leaders and financial markets with his mixed signals on Iran. Advisers who speak regularly with the president tell Axios they're just as uncertain.

Why it matters: Trump's off-the-cuff musings and Truth Social postings can have life-or-death consequences for the war, and massive implications for the market. Then the cycle restarts without any lasting clarity.

Between the lines: Some Trump aides and allies say he's mostly improvising rather than following any clear plan.

• He likes to keep his options open, spitball with different audiences, then capitalize if he thinks he sees an opportunity, they say.
• Aides have been convinced at various points that Trump was leaning toward a major escalation, and at others that he was eager for a swift resolution. "Nobody knows in the end what he's really thinking," a senior adviser said.
• "They had a plan for the first week and since then, they are making the plan up as they go along," a former U.S. official said.

Others claim it's all by design. "That's the plan — for you to not have a clue," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to Trump on Monday, told Axios.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday, when asked why Trump was dangling a potential ground invasion: "The point is to be unpredictable ... certainly not let anybody know what you're willing to do or not do."
• Another administration official claimed: "This isn't 3D chess — it's 12-dimensional. He contradicts himself regularly, so nobody knows what he's thinking. It's on purpose."

Driving the news: It's becoming clearer, at least for now, that Trump intends to withdraw and declare victory soon — in the next "two-three weeks," as he put it on Tuesday.

• He's mused repeatedly in recent days about how the U.S. has won, and what an exit would look like.

In private, though, Trump is talking more to hawks like Graham and conservative commentator Mark Levin than longtime confidants who oppose escalation.

• Leaders in Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also worried about the idea of Trump wrapping up and leaving the regime in Tehran battered but emboldened.
• "The Saudis sound like Mark Levin," one Trump adviser said. "They want the U.S. to finish the job by wiping Iran off the globe now. We don't want to."

State of play: Trump is discussing exit strategies — including potentially leaving with the Strait of Hormuz closed and without a deal in place — while simultaneously massing additional forces in the region, including the makings of an invasion force.

• "He doesn't want to do boots on the ground," one of his advisers said. "And when he doesn't want to do something, he goes to great lengths not to do it. ... Of course that's the kiss of death, when you think you can predict him."
• Some U.S. officials think that if Trump's April 6 deadline approaches with no deal, Trump will inflict a "final blow" of heavy bombing on Iranian infrastructure and nuclear facilities, then withdraw.

What to watch: With it becoming clear Iran's missile and drone capacity won't be entirely destroyed, one option that has emerged is "mowing the grass" — or conducting strikes as needed after heavy combat dies down.

• "The president said early on we might have to come back," another administration official said. "And we might have to."
• "If we have to mow the lawn again, the grass won't be nearly as tall next time," the official said.

What's next: Trump will address the nation on Iran at 9pm ET on Wednesday — yet another chance to provide clarity.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday over President Trump's executive order restricting birthright citizenship in a case that could decide who gets to be an American.

Why it matters: A ruling in Trump's favor could reshape America's racial makeup and create a caste system that leaves millions without rights.

Threat level: Trump's order — which limits citizenship to children born in the U.S. with at least one parent legally in the country — would bar entire swaths of children from work authorization, certain jobs, Social Security, passports, SNAP, Medicaid, and voting.

• According to a 2025 report by UCLA's Latino Policy and Politics Institute, the order disproportionately affects immigrants of color. About 75% of children born to noncitizens are Latino, 12% are Asian American, 6% are white, and 5% are Black.

Between the lines: Some children could end up stateless, should their parents' home nation(s) refuse to grant them citizenship after a U.S. birth.

• International treaties discourage statelessness because it can leave people without legal rights.
• The policy could also force noncitizens to choose between remaining in the U.S. while risking their children's status or seeking documentation from countries they left.

The intrigue: The order effectively undermines more than a century of legal precedent interpreting the 14th Amendment.

• The amendment, ratified after the Civil War, guarantees citizenship to all people born on U.S. soil, with narrow exceptions. The Supreme Court affirmed that understanding in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, in which a child of Chinese immigrants was ruled to be a citizen even though his parents were not.
• The Supreme Court upholding the policy would also mean children of DACA recipients, H-1B visa holders, people with temporary protected status, and those granted humanitarian parole could lose automatic citizenship.

"It's the irony of it all," Abraham Paulos, deputy director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, tells Axios.

• He said the 14th Amendment aimed to prevent Confederates from stripping Black people of equal protection under the law, and now advocates are fighting off similar attacks from the president.
• "I see the Trump regime attack on the 14th Amendment… as a part of a white supremacist, white nativist messaging and narrative," he said.

What they're saying: "The Supreme Court has the opportunity to review the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause and restore the meaning of citizenship in the United States to its original public meaning," a White House spokesperson told Axios in an emailed statement.

• "This case will have enormous consequences for the security of all Americans. The Trump Administration looks forward to making its case on the issue of birthright citizenship on behalf of the American people."

Zoom out: Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, tells Axios that he thinks the Supreme Court is likely to rule against the president.

• He says a decision to the contrary would be like declaring "open season on questioning the citizenship" of Americans and "suggesting that there are 'real Americans,' and then there are other people who don't belong in this country."
• "That's part and parcel with the broader effort by the Trump administration to use immigration tools to reshape the demographics of this country," he said.

What we're watching: Wofsy said a ruling reaffirming birthright citizenship will "go a long way to diffusing the harm that's done by the executive order and sending the right message to all Americans that we're all of us equal."

Go deeper: How Trump flipped America's race conversation

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