Author: News Room

The initial plan for retooling the federal government under President Trump started with three loyal billionaires: the banker Howard Lutnick, the tech leader Elon Musk and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.Now, it’s down to one.Mr. Lutnick emerged as Mr. Trump’s pick to run the Commerce Department. Mr. Ramaswamy decided to step aside from the project just before Mr. Trump assumed office on Monday.As a result, Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, now has full command of the federal cost-cutting effort, which Mr. Trump has hailed as “potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.” How exactly Mr. Musk wields his consolidated power…

President Trump mused on Friday about shutting down the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that states could do a better job at responding to disasters.“When you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it,” Mr. Trump said in Asheville, N.C., which was devastated by the remnants of Hurricane Helene last year.“I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly — we pay a percentage to the state,” Mr. Trump added. “The state should fix it.”Mr. Trump…

Reports that Fitbit’s Ionic smartwatch was overheating began in 2018 and continued into 2020. But according to U.S. officials, the company did not quickly report, as the law requires, that the battery inside the watch was creating an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death to consumers.On Thursday, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that Fitbit had agreed to pay a $12.25 million civil penalty over its delay in reporting that the lithium-ion battery in the watch can overheat, creating a burn hazard.The commission noted that in early 2020, Fitbit had issued a firmware update to reduce the potential…

High interest rates kept U.S. home sales in a deep freeze for much of last year. It could be a while before the market experiences much of a thaw.Americans bought just over four million previously owned homes last year, the National Association of Realtors said on Friday. That was the fewest since 1995 and far below the annual pace of roughly five million that was typical before the coronavirus pandemic.Sales picked up a bit toward the end of the year, rising 9.3 percent in December from a year earlier. That increase probably reflected the dip in mortgage rates in the…

If you’re flying Spirit Airlines, wearing a crop top that reveals your torso or having certain tattoos could now be enough to get you kicked off a flight.The airline recently updated its policies to explicitly outline unacceptable passenger attire and appearance, going beyond the vague policies held by most other airlines . In its contract of carriage, which is a legal document outlining airline and passenger responsibilities, Spirit says “a guest shall not be permitted to board the aircraft or may be required to leave an aircraft” if the passenger is “inadequately clothed” or “whose clothing or article, including body…

“The chief business of the American people is business.” That declaration by Calvin Coolidge has been shortened and simplified since that Republican president uttered it before an assembly of newspaper editors a century ago.But the notion that the business of America is business was on conspicuous display at President Trump’s inauguration. It may be the chief reason for heightened optimism about the stock and bond markets.Plenty of worried readers have been writing in — asking how, in broad strokes, they ought to deploy their money during the second Trump presidency. It is both a pressing problem and an eternal quandary,…

As President Trump embarked on a sweeping crackdown on immigration upon his return to office this week, he left unresolved a rift that surfaced last month among some of his most influential supporters about the role of skilled foreign workers in the U.S. labor market.The split over the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States, has pitted hard-line immigration opponents against some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent backers in the tech industry, who say they rely on the program because they can’t find enough qualified American workers.It’s unclear where Mr. Trump…

Days after President Trump ordered federal agencies to investigate private sector entities for “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Target has become the latest major company to retreat on D.E.I.Target announced on Friday that it will conclude its D.E.I. goals and will no longer participate in external diversity-focused surveys, including sharing data with the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit group that tracks corporate L.G.B.T.Q. policies.“As a retailer that serves millions of consumers every day, we understand the importance of staying in step with the evolving external landscape,” wrote Kiera Fernandez, chief community impact and equity officer for Target, in a…

Howard Lutnick, the wealthy Wall Street executive whom President Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Commerce, detailed a complex network of financial holdings on Friday as he prepared to face scrutiny from lawmakers during a confirmation hearing next week.The financial disclosures showed that Mr. Lutnick, who has built a fortune in brokerages, real estate and financial services, holds at least $800 million in assets, though he is likely wealthier than the disclosures reveal. They also laid out executive positions he has held or holds in more than 800 individual firms, and showed that he received in excess of…

For more than six years, Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud computing company, provided technical support to deliver TikTok videos to tens of millions of Americans.But over the weekend, Amazon faced a dilemma. A new law was taking effect banning TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, in the United States. Tech companies were barred from distributing and updating it or they would face financial penalties. At the same time, President-elect Donald J. Trump was telling tech companies he planned to pause enforcement of the law with an executive order.Just hours before the ban took effect, Amazon appeared to…