The U.S.-Israeli war in Iran has had a tangible effect on the economy in the Middle East, and the conflict is also making things more expensive for Americans at home. Increasing oil prices resulting from the war have cascading consequences, and while things like gasoline are most obviously affected, other products are also getting pricier.

Clothes
Supply chain issues are raising the cost of oil’s building blocks called petrochemicals. Six of these petrochemicals are the “major foundations of plastics and synthetic materials like nylon and polyesters,” said The Associated Press. And when petrochemicals become more expensive, it is often accompanied by a spike in clothing prices.

To make a button-down shirt, materials “account for 27% to 30% of the cost a manufacturer incurs,” said Andrew Walberer, a partner at the global management consultancy Kearney, to the AP. Experts are “warning consumers to budget for price increases of 10% to 15%” in clothing, said the South China Morning Post.

Cosmetics
The war in Iran is “seeping into the cosmetics supply chain, pushing up the cost of everything from plastic jars to ​lipstick tubes to transport,” said Reuters.  It’s “reminding the beauty industry that even a tub of face cream depends on fragile ‌global trade routes.” 

The most notable sector affected is the Korean beauty industry, which has a large following in the U.S. Due to the unstable cost and raw material prices of petrochemicals, the unit prices of most products will “inevitably be increased,” said cosmetics company Luxepack Korea in a press release, per The Washington Post. 

Toys
Like clothes, many stuffed plush toys are made with “polyester and acrylic, synthetic fibers derived from petroleum,” said the AP, so rising prices could similarly impact the toy industry. Suppliers in China have notified Aleni Brands, the company behind popular plush lines like Bizzikins, that “getting the materials already was costing them 10% to 15% more.” 

Notable production hurdles are also being experienced by a “cluster of manufacturers in Shantou, a city located 190 miles northeast of Hong Kong, which produces a third of the world’s toys,” said The New York Times. Other child-adjacent products, including crayons, are additionally facing shortages due to petrochemical supply chain issues.

Facing decades of discrimination and exclusion, women have created networking events to help each other get a fair shake at climbing the ladder of success. But in an era that’s actively against diversity, equity and inclusion, these women-only spaces have become new targets of the Trump administration.

Why are the clubs being targeted?
The president’s crackdown on DEI has had a “chilling effect on women’s initiatives across the business world,” said USA Today. President Donald Trump arrived in office on campaign promises to “restore fairness in the workplace” by eradicating “woke” DEI policies he thinks “harm men and white Americans.” The fear of lawsuits and pressure to align with the administration has led “dozens of the nation’s largest companies, from McDonald’s to Facebook owner Meta,” to roll back diversity programs.

An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit against a Coca-Cola distributor for hosting a women’s retreat in 2024 could jeopardize the woman-centric network as an antithesis to old-boys’ clubs. It’s the first lawsuit “related to workplace diversity, equity and inclusion in the second Trump administration,” said The Independent. The EEOC accuses the company of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act with “malice or reckless indifference to the federally protected rights of male employees,” said the agency in its complaint.

Are women’s networks exclusionary?
Women’s networks “don’t exclude men; they help women catch up,” gender equity researcher Amy Diehl said to USA Today. And the new girls’ clubs are “widely credited with helping women splinter the glass ceiling.”

Still, organizations have disbanded gender-based mentorship and coaching programs and employee resource groups since those programs were labeled exclusionary. Regardless of how these lawsuits are resolved, the effect is “already being felt,” said USA Today. 

It’s “really striking” that the EEOC has decided women’s networking is “so problematic that they have to go out against it,” said Chai Feldblum, the president of EEO Leaders, a group she co-founded last year to challenge the Trump administration’s attacks on employment civil rights. Our country is “not well served by frightening employers away from doing positive actions to ensure a fair and equal workplace.”

American artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, poses alongside his installation titled “Regular Animals,” of robots with the likeness of Kim Jong Un, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany.
Markus Schreiber / AP Photo

The 1970s, when the post-WWII consensus finally fell apart in the U.S., are remembered as a decade of groundbreaking movies with breathtakingly disillusioned themes. The ideas were embodied in the “New Hollywood” movement and the birth of the summer blockbuster. There are more classics than could be named here, but these masterpieces epitomize the decade’s social and political trajectory like no others.

‘The Last Picture Show’ (1971)
A quiet and devastating character study, “The Last Picture Show” (pictured above) is set in a dying North Texas town in 1951. The “beauty and brilliance” of director Peter Bogdanovich’s second feature is “found in its attentiveness to the lived detail of the recent past,” said Adrian Danks at Sense of Cinema. (Prime Video)

‘Jaws’ (1975)
Director Steven Spielberg’s first massive box-office hit, “Jaws” maintains its ability to shock and terrify audiences and turn shark attacks into widespread fear. The film remains, “simply put, one of the absolute masterpieces of populist cinema.” Its “vivid character details” are one of the reasons it’s “still better than any other monster movie or summer blockbuster ever made,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Netflix)

‘Network’ (1976)
Network anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) unravels on air after he’s fired, promising to kill himself on live television, and turns himself into a kind of prophet of capitalist anomie and populist frustration. This “terrifically well-made, well-written” film begins as a “five-seconds-into-the-future satire” and eventually “becomes an anatomy of American discontent,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Prime Video)