Author: News Room

A contracting firm called Leidos took in more than $16 billion in revenue last year, most of it through contracts with federal agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs.So when the Trump administration’s budget cutters took aim at the V.A. last month, it seemed like bad news not just for the department’s employees but also for Leidos and dozens of other private-sector firms.“No more paying consultants to do things like make Power Point slides and write meeting minutes!” the department’s secretary, Doug Collins, wrote on X. Overall, the department indicated that it was canceling more than 850 contracts worth nearly…

In a hearing on Friday, senators pressed Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity nominated to head Medicare and Medicaid, on Republican-led proposals that would significantly affect the health care coverage for nearly half of all Americans.At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Dr. Oz bantered with senators in a friendly atmosphere, joking about basketball and allegiances to college teams. He largely escaped tough questions from either side of the aisle, displaying his on-air charm as he deflected Democrats’ most pointed concerns about potentially radical changes in health coverage for not only those 65 and older but also for…

Carl Lundstrom, the heir to a Swedish crisp bread fortune who financed the Pirate Bay, a notorious file-sharing service that was popular in the mid-2000s, was killed on Monday in a small plane crash in Slovenia, according to Alternative for Sweden, the far-right party that he supported.Mr. Lundstrom, 64, was the pilot and sole occupant of the plane, a Mooney M20, which had taken off from Zagreb, the Croatian capital, and was en route to Zurich, the party said in a statement.Air traffic controllers reported that they had lost contact with the plane in the mountainous Velika Planina area of…

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.From the time Beulah Henry was a child in the late 19th century, she dreamed of ways to make life easier. That impulse would eventually drive her to secure dozens of patents and would earn her a nickname: Lady Edison.When she died in the early 1970s, she held far more patents than any other woman, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and in 2006 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for…

Policy uncertainty and tariff whiplash are making consumers less confident about the economic outlook and more worried about inflation, new data from the University of Michigan showed on Friday, the latest evidence that Americans are bracing for pain in President Trump’s second term.A new survey released on Friday showed consumer sentiment plummeting 11 percent in March as Americans of all ages, income groups and political affiliations turned even more downbeat about the trajectory for the economy. Consumer confidence has fallen for the third consecutive month, not only about personal finances, but also the job market and stock markets. Since December,…

A private equity investor who is one of Elon Musk’s closest confidants has taken a new role in the Social Security Administration, a development that could be politically combustible given the program’s popularity with voters and Mr. Musk’s apparent intent to make major changes at the agency.The investor, Antonio Gracias, who has served on the boards of Mr. Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, has started a job at the administration as part of the Musk-led cost-cutting effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency, according to documents seen by The New York Times and two people informed about his appointment.Of…

Herman Graf, a major and intrepid figure in independent publishing who sold copies of Henry Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer” to bookstores after it was embroiled in a legal fight over whether it was obscene, died on Feb. 27 at his home in Flushing, Queens. He was 91.His nephew Paul Lichter said the cause was Parkinson’s disease.Among Mr. Graf’s many other accomplishments in publishing, he helped turn John Kennedy Toole’s satirical novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces,” into a best seller long after the author’s death.A raconteur with a booming voice, Mr. Graf was a bibliophile who loved the works of…

Tariff threats. Growing uncertainty about the economy. And a push for much lower oil prices.For all of their bravado about U.S. energy dominance and enthusiasm for deregulation, American energy executives are beginning to worry about President Trump’s agenda.Their concerns crept into conversations in hotel meeting rooms and over private meals this week in Houston, where industry magnates gathered for their most important annual conference.Surely, some hoped, the president would cut oil and gas companies a break on tariffs. Surely, the administration was not serious about pushing oil prices down another 25 percent. Surely, the turmoil of the last two months…

Investors watching the S&P 500’s plunge this week are processing a mix of signals. Will the threat of tariffs push the economy into a recession or is this simply a retrenchment from the highly valued technology companies that some analysts and investors argued were due for a pullback?There is a different stock index that is flashing a clearer warning sign.The Russell 2000 includes smaller companies that are more sensitive to the whims of the economy. These companies tend to run thinner profit margins that can be more easily eroded in a downturn, and they have fewer levers to pull than…

The impact of the tariffs would vary by car model, since some rely more on imported parts than others. But rather than vastly increasing the price of specific vehicles, the industry is likely to spread increases across all types — “like peanut butter” — to smooth out the price increases, said Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at the market research firm J.D. Power. Mr. Anderson said manufacturers would “almost certainly cut back” on models that became significantly more expensive.What if I want to buy a car this year?Much remains uncertain, including whether the delayed tariffs will actually…