Author: News Room
An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting.As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against “wasteful” spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.After Inauguration Day, the group of Silicon Valley-inflected, wide-eyed recruits will be deployed to Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE…
About a decade ago, Mike Smith tried to capture the sour mood of the patrons in his neighborhood bar, Joe Kool’s. For years, their favorite sports teams endured winless seasons, playoff droughts and epic collapses, so he designed a T-shirt that included a map of southern Ontario with London in the middle and lines connecting to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Toronto. Above it were the words “The Epicentre of Losing” and a red arrow pointing at London.Since then, London has morphed into an epicenter of winning, sort of. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, but…
Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager whom President-elect Donald J. Trump picked to be his Treasury secretary, plans to divest from dozens of funds, trusts and investments in preparation to become the nation’s top economic policymaker.Those plans were released on Saturday along with the publication of an ethics agreement and financial disclosures that Mr. Bessent submitted ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing next Thursday.The documents show the extent of the wealth of Mr. Bessent, whose assets and investments appear to be worth in excess of $700 million. Mr. Bessent was formerly the top investor for the billionaire liberal philanthropist…
As he waited for a call from his agent in September, Isaac Rochell, a professional football player looking for a team, watched the National Football League’s opening weekend games on television with his infant daughter. His wife needed a baby sitter.Allison Kucharczyk, Rochell’s wife and an online influencer with more than three million TikTok followers, was closer to the field than he was thanks to a partnership with NBC Sports. She was crisscrossing continents on a private jet with other content creators to document a weekend of rowdy tailgates, concession food and stadium environments at N.F.L. games in Kansas City,…
It’s hard to pinpoint when things began to change around here but you might start with the arrival of Yolanda Hadid in 2017.Ms. Hadid, a onetime regular on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” bought a farm just outside New Hope, Pa., to be closer to her daughters, the models Gigi and Bella Hadid, who were then living in New York City.The 32-acre property, with its stone farmhouse, horse barn and formal garden, became a family retreat, and the Hadids’ social media feeds filled with pastoral images: Gigi in a two-piece bathing suit, posing with a bowl of newly picked…
Getting a Name RightI have a co-worker whose name is frequently mispronounced by others. This co-worker has included the correct pronunciation in their Slack bio, and I’ve heard them say their name, so I’m confident I know how it should be pronounced. Despite this, people across various teams — and even on our own team — often get it wrong. What troubles me is that my co-worker never corrects anyone during meetings or calls, and I can’t help but feel upset on their behalf. I want to address the issue because I believe we should strive to call everyone by…
To a large extent, the electric vehicle market in the United States runs on Democratic policies. There are federal tax credits for car buyers. Subsidies for battery manufacturing. Cheap loans to build electric car factories. Grants for chargers. Regulations that push automakers to sell more vehicles with no tailpipe emissions.All of that support — amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars — could go away soon after the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, despite his close association with Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric car maker Tesla.Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress say they plan to eliminate most…
The foundational building block for Jeff Bezos’ space dreams is finally ready to launch.A New Glenn rocket — built by Blue Origin, the rocket company that Mr. Bezos started nearly a quarter century ago — is sitting on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It is as tall as a 32-story building, and its voluminous nose cone can carry larger satellites and other payloads than other rockets in operation today.In the predawn darkness on Sunday, it may head to space for the first time.“This has been very long awaited,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at…
This year just got started, but it is already shaping up nicely for U.S. airlines.After several setbacks, the industry ended 2024 in a fairly strong position because of healthy demand for tickets and the ability of several airlines to control costs and raise fares, experts said. Barring any big problems, airlines — especially the largest ones — should enjoy a great year, analysts said.“I think it’s going to be pretty blue skies,” said Tom Fitzgerald, an airline industry analyst for the investment bank TD Cowen.In recent weeks, many major airlines upgraded forecasts for the all-important last three months of the…
Donald Trump, who has long loved big real estate deals, has made it clear that he’s serious about striking one for Greenland. Never mind that Denmark, which controls the island, says the territory isn’t for sale.But if a negotiation were to materialize, what would, or should, the United States offer?David Barker, a real estate developer and former economist at the New York, helped us with the thought experiment. (Barker made waves in 2009 when he argued that the American purchase of Alaska in 1867, for less than 2 cents per acre, was a bad deal from a purely financial investment…