Author: News Room

Frank Bisignano, the Wall Street veteran being considered to lead the Social Security Administration, will go before the Senate on Tuesday morning, where lawmakers will demand answers about his plans for an agency recently thrown into tumult.The plans being laid by the Trump administration for the typically staid agency — long viewed as a third rail of government — have prompted widespread outcry given its crucial work: It delivers billions of dollars in retirement, survivor and disability payments to 73 million people each month. The agency typically evolves slowly, aware that missteps could potentially cut off cash to people who…

Jeffrey Goldberg may be one of the last journalists the Trump administration would want to inadvertently include on a private text thread discussing war plans. But according to Mr. Goldberg’s stunning revelation on Monday, that is exactly what happened. Mr. Goldberg, 59, was a well-known national security reporter before he took over as editor in chief of The Atlantic in 2016. He was born in Brooklyn and studied at the University of Pennsylvania before dropping out and to moving to Israel to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. He wrote about his time as a prison guard in 1990, during…

In an emotional advertisement running on Facebook and Instagram over the past month, a young woman, Katie, talks about being diagnosed with an illness that resulted in kidney failure at age 19. But she was able to find a transplant match “because a stranger was scrolling on TikTok.”Thanks to that stranger’s kidney, she continued, she was here today. “For some people, having TikTok has literally been life saving,” the company wrote in a caption punctuated by a tearful smiling emoji.The messages are part of a new ad blitz from TikTok, the popular social media app owned by the Chinese internet…

World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company started by Donald J. Trump and his sons, announced on Tuesday that it was planning to sell a digital currency called a stablecoin, deepening the president’s financial ties to crypto as his administration relaxes enforcement of the industry.The stablecoin would be known as USD1, the company wrote in a social media post, without revealing when it would go on sale. Stablecoins, a popular form of cryptocurrency, are designed to maintain a constant value of $1, making them useful for many types of crypto transactions.“No games. No gimmicks. Just real stability,” World Liberty Financial posted…

Chaos surrounded us. Informal porters rolling luggage carts zigzagged between cars. Commuters spilled from the bus terminal onto the sidewalk, where they sat on suitcases and duffel bags. Minibus taxis zoomed through the congestion, pedestrians be damned.Our car crawled past a barbed-wire fence and reached a sliding gate, where all that separated my wife and me from the empty lot on the other side was a security guard. “Blue Train,” I said, and the guard waved us through.We pulled up to a blue carpet next to Cape Town’s central train station, where two butlers in blue vests and white gloves…

A Signal leakBy far the biggest story of the day is The Atlantic’s stunning revelation that Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, discussed sensitive Yemen bombing plans with other senior Trump administration officials on a messaging app — in a group text that mistakenly included that publication’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.The incident has raised serious questions about whether the group chat violated laws including the Espionage Act and endangered troops. But it’s also reminiscent of how Wall Street firms got into hot water for similar reasons. They had to pay more than $2 billion for doing the kind of off-channel…

There are few customers Conor Proft appreciates more than people who eat alone.A bartender at the Italian restaurant Fausto, in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, he said the solo diners he serves tend to be more engaged and willing to chat. They are self-aware and more attuned to the restaurant’s rhythms.But does Mr. Proft dine alone? Rarely.“I love the romantic ideal of going into a restaurant and sitting at the bar and striking up a conversation with a bartender,” he said. “But oftentimes in practice, I am just consumed with anxiety” about standing out.This is part of the paradox of solo dining.…

When Starbucks announced last month that it was laying off more than 1,000 corporate employees, it highlighted a disturbing trend for white-collar workers: Over the past few years, they have seen a steeper rise in unemployment than other groups, and slower wage growth.It also added fuel to a debate that has preoccupied economists for much of that time: Are the recent job losses merely a temporary development? Or do they signal something more ominous and irreversible?After sitting below 4 percent for more than two years, the overall unemployment rate has topped that threshold since May.Economists say that the job market…

PBS is practicing answers with lawyers. NPR executives are preparing to monitor the fallout. Members of Congress are promoting the star witnesses — the leaders of the two public media networks — as if they were combatants in a prizefight.They’re all getting ready for a hearing on Wednesday — ominously titled “Anti-American Airwaves” — organized by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who leads a House subcommittee tied to Elon Musk’s efforts to cut federal spending.Ms. Greene said in an interview that she planned to call on the two top witnesses, Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS, and…

Increased federal spending in recent years has helped to improve U.S. ports, roads, parks, public transit and levees, according to a report released on Tuesday by the American Society of Civil Engineers.But that progress could stagnate if those investments, some of which were put on hold after President Trump took office in January, aren’t sustained.Overall, the group gave the nation’s infrastructure a C grade, a mediocre rating but the best the country has received since the group’s first report card in 1998. Most infrastructure, including aviation, waterways and schools, earned a C or D grade; ports and rail did better.…