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The director, confirmed less than a month ago, has issued 12 orders via the social media platform that reverse Biden-era initiatives. View the full article

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of cities, towns, and villages across the country on Saturday. They were protesting the Trump administration’s deep budget and staffing cuts, funding freezes, tariffs, and other actions that they believe threaten democracy, economic stability, and the fabric of American life. The national day of action to “stop the most brazen power grab in modern history” was organized by the nonprofits MoveOn, Third Act, Indivisible, and nearly 200 other groups working on behalf of climate action, civil rights, seniors, workers, veterans, corporate accountability, and many more issues. Opponents of the Trump administration flocked to “Hands Off!” protests around the San Francisco Bay Area. People voiced their concerns about the breakneck pace at which Trump officials are dismantling the machinery of government and firing the public servants who make it run. More than 1,500 people crowded the streets around a BART station in North Berkeley, chanting “Not my president!” and “People over profit.” A steady stream of cars honked in support. As drummers infused energy into the crowd, a woman shouted through a bullhorn, “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at IKEA.” Lisa Oglesby Berkeley resident Lisa Oglesby, 70, organized the protest even though she’s “never been a big protester.” Oglesby, a retired information security consultant, said she couldn’t stand by and do nothing.“ I am appalled at what’s going on in the country, and I know everyone else is too, but we need to know we’re all in this together.” Laurie Baumgarten, who has worked on climate issues for the last 20 years, said she’s “against the entire Trump agenda” but focuses primarily on climate. Baumgarten said she has joined 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations, an organization of “elder women and allies” from Berkeley and Oakland raising awareness about the urgency of the climate crisis. Baumgarten has been working to support California legislation to “make polluters pay.” This could shift the massive financial burden of the climate crisis from taxpayers—who face ever-rising insurance rates, health care costs, and devastation from extreme weather disasters—to the fossil fuel companies that are driving climate change. Oil and gas companies have been covering up what they knew about fossil fuel pollution since the 1970s, Baumgarten said, including the fact that burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming. “And here we are now facing these disasters, and they have the money to pay for it out of their profits,” she said. “Particularly since the L.A. fires, it’s important that we the taxpayers get help paying for all of this cleanup,” she said. Some people at the protests—including teachers, Defense Department employees, and other federal workers—were willing to speak their minds but said they did not want to be quoted. These people said they were worried about experiencing backlash from the government or at their workplaces. Asked for comment about the demonstrations, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston did not address the tariffs or research cuts that many protesters referenced. “President Trump’s position is clear: He will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries,” Huston said in a statement. “Meanwhile, the Democrats’ stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors. Devastated Infrastructure Demonstrations in major cities in Massachusetts, Illinois, and New York drew huge crowds, and organizers said there were plans for protests in all 50 states. In Pennsylvania, a key battleground state during the presidential election, crowds in Pittsburgh filled the city blocks and parking lots leading to the City-County building before noon. Steve Plant drove from the suburb of Wexford to protest the Trump administration’s canceling of federal science grants and efforts. His wife, the director of quality control for a private company based in Madrid, lost her job this week because of the cuts. An audit that the company expected from the Food and Drug Administration was derailed by budget slashing, he said, and now his wife was unexpectedly out of a job. The private company where she worked for 35 years “said ‘to hell with the U.S.,’” Plant said. “We were planning to retire and now she’s job hunting,” he said. Plant worked as a contractor and he and his wife had a retirement nest egg. “Right now, I don’t want to look at how it.” It has been affected by the stock market plunge that followed tariffs announced by President Donald Trump, he said. “His people don’t care if people like us have enough to retire.” Natalie WilliamsLailaCathy BrunnerChelsea Brunner Chelsea Brunner drove with her two daughters and her mother from Ross Township, north of Pittsburgh. Brunner, 33, works as a pharmacy benefits manager. Her mother, Cathy, is a legal assistant who at age 69 is still working. Chelsea, a 10-month-old orphan in Guatemala when Cathy adopted her and her sister, was near tears as she described why her family was protesting. “She’s worked so hard her whole life,” Chelsea said of her mother. Cathy said she has had sleepless nights watching her 401(k) dwindle from stock market losses under Trump. “I’m losing $8,000 a day,” Cathy said. “I wanted to throw up.” Her granddaughters, Natalie, 7, and Laila, 9, were there with hand-written signs demanding “hands off” their grandmother’s retirement savings. Subha Das spoke to the crowd from the steps of the City-County building about his love for and work in scientific research. That is what propelled him to move from India to America decades ago. Now an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he appealed to people to keep vigilant about the cuts that are gutting research and ambitions. “We can’t do this on our own,” he said about how scientists are coping with the losses. “I’m speaking out because I’m concerned about the future of America.” Later, in an interview about medical research in the United States, he said: “America has set the standard all over the world. That infrastructure has just been devastated.” Subha Das “Stop Stealing Our Data!” At the main rally in Washington, D.C., people held mass-produced signs reading “Some cuts don’t heal,” referring to the inability to repair gutted government infrastructure and expertise that took decades to build. U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) gave a shout out to the people of Wisconsin, who voted against a state supreme court judge backed by Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump donor whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency has driven the federal cuts. “They showed America that organized people who want nothing but freedom can defeat organized billionaires who want nothing but power,” Raskin said. “Here in America, Mr. Musk, justice is not for sale,” Raskin said. “And we don’t raffle off state supreme court judgeships for million-dollar prizes. Stop trying to buy our votes, stop ripping off our government and stop stealing our data,” he yelled, referring to the thousands of web pages and datasets scrubbed from federal agency websites. Cathy Kennedy, a registered nurse and president of National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of registered nurses, said she and her colleagues have long fought for Medicare for all because they believe health care is a human right. ”Health care is not just about medical treatment, it’s also about the world we live in and the support systems we all rely on,” said Kennedy, naming as examples Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs. “This current administration wants to weaken and privatize those programs that have helped millions of people stay alive, housed and cared for.” Without these programs, she added, vulnerable seniors, low-income families, people with disabilities, and veterans will suffer. “The current administration wants a society where the wealthy and powerful get richer while the rest of us struggle,” Kennedy said. “They say people should be responsible for themselves while they’re handing out billions in tax breaks, subsidies, and bailouts to giant corporations. No way!” she yelled, as the crowd cheered. — Liza Gross and Christine Spolar, Inside Climate News This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. View the full article

If mortgage rates drop into the low 6% range, there will be a retention opportunity on 5.4 million loans that have interest rates starting at 6.5%. View the full article

Zoom has officially launched Zoom Tasks, a new AI-powered task management product built directly into Zoom Workplace. This release marks a significant addition to Zoom’s AI-first open work platform, enabling users to track, manage, and complete tasks through its AI Companion assistant. Zoom Tasks is now generally available, allowing users to consolidate to-dos from meetings, Zoom Team Chat, emails, and more into a single streamlined interface. According to Zoom, the new tool enables users to manage tasks more efficiently by leveraging agentic AI capabilities that can surface, organize, and prompt task completion. AI-Driven Task Management Built on Zoom AI Companion’s federated AI architecture—which utilizes both proprietary and third-party models—Zoom Tasks introduces autonomous task handling features aimed at reducing time spent on follow-ups. “Zoom Tasks is our AI-first task management solution built right into Zoom Workplace, with AI Companion helping you identify, manage, and complete your to-do list faster,” the company stated. Zoom says the agentic AI system can detect action items from meeting summaries and chat conversations, consolidate them into a single dashboard, and even suggest next steps such as scheduling meetings or drafting messages. Zoom highlighted the productivity gains with this integration, explaining that one-third of leaders spend at least an hour weekly following up with teammates about project status—a loss that can amount to $16,000 per year per manager in productivity. Zoom Tasks aims to close that gap. Centralized and Intuitive User Experience With Zoom Tasks, users can review and accept AI-generated task recommendations, assign action items, and track progress all from within the Zoom interface. “At the end of the day, just go to your Tasks tab to see all the action items that have been assigned to you,” Zoom explained. Users returning from vacations or overwhelmed by information can also ask AI Companion to summarize chat threads and extract tasks from messages. Zoom noted that the assistant can then recommend how to proceed—such as scheduling meetings, creating drafts, or writing messages—based on context. Getting Started with Zoom Tasks Zoom Tasks is included with eligible paid Zoom Workplace plans. To use it, users must update their Zoom Workplace app to version 6.4.3 or higher and enable AI Companion task settings in their account. Once enabled, the Tasks tab becomes accessible from the top navigation bar. Zoom also offers tips for users to fully leverage the platform: Check the “Recommended tasks” section to review suggested actions. Use the AI Companion icon for suggested task completions. Add tasks manually or directly from chats and emails. Edit tasks to include notes or source links for better context. While Zoom Tasks is optimized for use with AI Companion, users without the assistant can still benefit from the task management features, using it as a central hub for all their to-do items. With Zoom Tasks now integrated across its workplace platform, Zoom continues to position itself as a productivity-focused solution provider, embedding AI capabilities to simplify work and empower collaboration across teams. Image: Zoom This article, "Zoom Introduces Zoom Tasks to Streamline Workflows with AI Companion" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Business owners around the world are still reeling from the sky-high, globe-spanning tariffs President Donald Trump has announced since taking office. Last week, Emily Ley became the first to take her concerns to court. In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Florida last Thursday, lawyers representing Ley, a small business owner in Pensacola, argued that Trump’s tariffs on China are “unlawful,” “unconstitutional,” and risk having devastating consequences on businesses like Simplified, the 10-employee stationery company Ley founded in 2008. The suit, which is the first known case to challenge Trump’s tariffs, has, almost overnight, turned Ley into the very public face of a high stakes legal battle that could have sweeping consequences for the global economy. “My company is like my fourth child,” Ley tells Fast Company. “I’m going to go down swinging if this is the end of it.” It was never Ley’s intention to file a suit. A few weeks ago, as Trump’s tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada went into effect, and the White House warned of more to come, Ley simply wanted to give people a better understanding of the tangible impact that rising tariffs would have on a small business like hers, which sells, among other things, day planners that are made in China. “I was seeing so much misinformation and misunderstanding about who pays the tariffs, and what they’re for,” Ley says. “I just felt like I needed to share a small business perspective that came from a real person, a real human.” Emily Ley So she wrote about her experience on Instagram: How since 2017, her company has paid $1.17 million in tariffs on imports from China, how this year, under Trump’s increased tariffs, it could be on the hook for $350,000 more, and how those costs have driven prices up for customers and salaries down for employees. “I cannot be quiet about this anymore,” Ley wrote. “Tariffs are killing businesses.” The post, which quickly went viral, caught the attention of lawyers at the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a legal group that fights what it views as government overreach. Ley’s first conversation with the firm led to “a zillion” more, she says, until finally, last week—just a day after Trump unveiled a new slew of global tariffs, sending the world economy into freefall—NCLA filed the suit on Ley’s behalf, asking the court to block Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. Ley’s case focuses specifically on two executive orders Trump signed in February and March, both of which imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in the name of stopping the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. In the orders, Trump declared the fentanyl crisis a national emergency and cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as his authority to enact the tariffs. But according to the lawsuit, IEEPA doesn’t give the president that power—or even mention tariffs at all. Only Congress, NCLA argues, can grant permission to impose tariffs. The president could implement trade embargoes or sanctions under the law, but only if they’re “necessary” to address the emergency, and Trump’s executive orders “show no connection between the opioid problem and the tariff he ordered,” the complaint reads. While Simplified’s case is focused specifically on the Chinese tariffs, NCLA says a ruling could impact the full scope of global tariffs Trump imposed last week on most countries around the world. “We are saying that the statute doesn’t allow the President to impose tariffs no matter what kind of emergency is declared or exists,” NCLA’s Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione tells Fast Company. In a statement to Fast Company, White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said, “President Trump has broad authority to impose tariffs to address issues of national emergency, such as the opioid [epidemic]. The Trump Administration looks forward to victory in court.” That NCLA is the group bringing the case forward is itself significant. Though the organization describes itself as nonpartisan, it has frequently fought for causes championed by conservatives, including chipping away at the regulatory powers of government agencies, and has in the past received financial support from right-wing financiers, including billionaire Charles Koch’s foundation. NCLA’s involvement reflects the extent to which opposition to Trump’s tariffs cuts across party lines. Ley, for one, who is a registered Democrat, founded Simplified after designing the stationery for her own wedding invitations. What started as a side hustle evolved over the years until, in 2011, she began branching out into designing other merchandise like day planners and calendars. Initially, she manufactured those planners in the U.S. for $38 a unit and sold them on Etsy for $50 each. “It wasn’t sustainable,” Ley says. So she turned to Chinese manufacturers to build the company. By 2017, business was booming, but the tariffs Trump slapped on Chinese goods in his first term were a blow to the bottom line. “It meant that I had to earmark dollars that would have gone to hiring, that would have gone to employee bonuses that could have gone to philanthropic efforts or growth,” she says. “We absorbed it as much as we could,” including by raising prices. But she’s not sure the business could sustain another increase—particularly not one as stark as what Trump’s proposing. Simplified is set to receive a new shipment of inventory within weeks, but she has no idea what the tariff bill will look like when it arrives. In the suit, NCLA argues that Trump’s actions have “inflicted economic and competitive harm” on Simplified. Ley may be scared about what lies ahead, but she’s hopeful her case inspires other business owners to stand up too. “This is the reality of what’s happening,” she says. “I have written the checks. It is a fact, who’s paying for this. It’s not a political belief.” View the full article

Wilmer Escaray left Venezuela in 2007 and enrolled at Miami Dade College, opening his first restaurant six years later. Today, he has a dozen businesses that hire Venezuelan migrants like he once was, workers who are now terrified by what could be the end of their legal shield from deportation. Since the start of February, the Trump administration has ended two federal programs that together allowed more 700,000 Venezuelans to live and work legally in the U.S. along with hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. In the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people dread what could face them if lawsuits that aim to stop the government fail. It’s all anyone discusses in “Little Venezuela” or “Doralzuela,” a city of 80,000 people surrounded by Miami sprawl, freeways, and the Florida Everglades. Deportation fears in Doralzuela People who lose their protections would have to remain illegally at the risk of being deported or return home, an unlikely route given the political and economic turmoil in Venezuela. “It’s really quite unfortunate to lose that human capital because there are people who do work here that other people won’t do,” Escaray, 37, said at one of his “Sabor Venezolano” restaurants. Spanish is more common than English in shopping centers along Doral’s wide avenues, and Venezuelans feel like they’re back home but with more security and comfort. A sweet scent wafts from round, flat cornmeal arepas sold at many establishments. Stores at gas stations sell flour and white cheese used to make arepas and T-shirts and hats with the yellow, blue, and red stripes of the Venezuelan flag. New lives at risk John came from Venezuela nine years ago and bought a growing construction company with a partner. He and his wife are on Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which Congress created in 1990 for people in the United States whose homelands are considered unsafe to return to due to natural disaster or civil strife. Beneficiaries can live and work while it lasts, but TPS carries no path to citizenship. Born in the U.S., their 5-year-old daughter is a citizen. John, 37, asked to be identified by first name only for fear of being deported. His wife helps with administration at their construction business while working as a real-estate broker. The couple told their daughter that they may have to leave the United States. Venezuela is not an option. “It hurts us that the government is turning its back on us,” John said. “We aren’t people who came to commit crimes; we came to work, to build.” A federal judge ordered on March 31 that temporary protected status would stand until a legal challenge’s next stage in court and at least 350,000 Venezuelans were temporarily spared becoming illegal. Escaray, the owner of the restaurants, said nearly all of his 150 employees are Venezuelan and more than 100 are on TPS. The federal immigration program that allowed more than 500,000 Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans to work and live legally in the U.S. — humanitarian parole — expires April 24 absent court intervention. Politics of migration Venezuelans were one of the main beneficiaries when former President Joe Biden sharply expanded TPS and other temporary protections. Trump tried to end them in his first term and now his second. The end of the temporary protections has generated little political reaction among Republicans except for three Cuban-American representatives from Florida who called for avoiding the deportations of affected Venezuelans. Mario Díaz Ballart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar have urged the government to spare Venezuelans without criminal records from deportation and review TPS beneficiaries on a case-by-case basis. The mayor of Doral, home to a Trump golf club since 2012, wrote a letter to the president asking him to find a legal pathway for Venezuelans who haven’t committed crimes. “These families do not want handouts,” said Christi Fraga, a daughter of Cuban exiles. “They want an opportunity to continue working, building, and investing in the United States.” A country’s elite, followed by the working class About 8 million people have fled Venezuela since 2014, settling first in neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. After the COVID-19 pandemic, they increasingly set their sights on the United States, walking through the notorious jungle in Colombia and Panama or flying to the United States on humanitarian parole with a financial sponsor. In Doral, upper-middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs came to invest in property and businesses when socialist Hugo Chávez won the presidency in the late 1990s. They were followed by political opponents and entrepreneurs who set up small businesses. In recent years, more lower-income Venezuelans have come for work in service industries. They are doctors, lawyers, beauticians, construction workers and house cleaners. Some are naturalized U.S. citizens or live in the country illegally with U.S.-born children. Others overstay tourist visas, seek asylum or have some form of temporary status. Thousands went to Doral as Miami International Airport facilitated decades of growth. Frank Carreño, president of the Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce and a Doral resident for 18 years, said there is an air of uncertainty. “What is going to happen? People don’t want to return or can’t return to Venezuela,” he said. —Gisela Salomon, Associated Press View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While homebuyers and home sellers still see headlines about the housing market being a seller’s market and national home prices reaching all-time highs, a deeper look reveals that several regional housing markets have shifted, giving homebuyers some power. During the pandemic housing boom, from summer 2020 to spring 2022, the number of active homes for sale in most housing markets plummeted as homebuyer demand quickly absorbed almost everything that came up for sale. Fast-forward to the current housing market, and the places where active inventory has rebounded to 2019 levels (due to strained affordability suppressing buyer demand) are now the very places where homebuyers hold the most power. At the end of March 2025, national active housing inventory for sale was still 20% below March 2019 levels. However, more and more regional markets are surpassing that threshold. This list is growing. In January 2025, 41 of these 200 major markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels. In February 2025, 44 of these markets hit that milestone. Now, 58 of the 200 markets are above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels and ResiClub expects that count will continue to rise this year. Many of the softest housing markets, where homebuyers have gained leverage, are located in Gulf Coast and Mountain West regions. These areas were among the nation’s top pandemic boomtowns, having experienced significant home price growth during the pandemic housing boom, which stretched housing fundamentals far beyond local income levels. When pandemic-fueled migration slowed and mortgage rates spiked, markets like Cape Coral, Florida, and San Antonio, Texas, faced challenges as they had to rely on local incomes to sustain frothy home prices. The housing market softening in these areas was further accelerated by the abundance of new home supply in the pipeline across the Sun Belt. Builders in these regions are often willing to reduce prices or make other affordability adjustments to maintain sales. These adjustments in the new construction market also create a cooling effect on the resale market, as some buyers who might have opted for an existing home shift their focus to new homes where deals are still available. In contrast, many Northeast and Midwest markets were less reliant on pandemic migration and have less new home construction in progress. With lower exposure to that demand shock, active inventory in these Midwest and Northeast regions has remained relatively tight, keeping the advantage in the hands of home sellers. Generally speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has returned to pre-pandemic levels have experienced weaker home price growth (or outright declines) over the past 24 months. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below pre-pandemic levels have, generally speaking, experienced stronger home price growth over the past 24 months. View the full article

A Minecraft Movie just beat Captain America and Mario at the box office. The new film, inspired by the beloved brick-based video game and starring Jack Black and Jason Mamoa, pulled in $157 million at its domestic box office opening this weekend. That’s more than double analysts’ early prediction that the film would gross $60 million. It’s also well past the record of the previous top opener of 2025, Disney’s Captain America: Brave New World, which netted $88.5 million at its opening weekend—meaning A Minecraft Movie has now enjoyed the most successful opening weekend of the year. By video game-to-movie adaptation standards, the Minecraft film is also playing in a league of its own. In 2019, for example, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu opened with a $58 million weekend, and, last year, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 opened with $60 million at the box office (considered a strong start at the time). The Super Mario Bros. Movie, released in 2023, was the previous record holder for the largest video game adaptation opening weekend of all time, raking in $145 million. By all accounts, A Minecraft Movie’s debut has been a smashing success. Rocky Horror for Gen Alpha? To some extent, it makes sense that A Minecraft Movie might appeal to wide audiences, given that, as of 2023, it had sold over 300 million copies, making it the second most-sold video game behind only Tetris. Still, even the most optimistic industry analysts capped the film’s potential box office open earnings at $90 million, and it had a so-so rating of 48% on Rotten Tomatoes before this weekend. One explanation for the film’s success could be its memeability. Over the weekend, many viewers took to social media to share that younger audiences—particularly Gen Alpha—seemed to be turning the Minecraft movie-viewing experience into an interactive event. Videos of audiences clapping every few minutes, reciting lines aloud, and even throwing popcorn in the air have all gone viral on TikTok, with some viewers even reporting that the police had to be called to their screenings to settle audiences down. “I saw Minecraft in the theater with my kids last night and am still processing what I saw,” one tweet with 46,000 likes reads. “The only cinematic experience I can compare the audience participation to is Rocky Horror, except it’s with teenagers and their phones and the movie is not even a weekend old.” Audiences have particularly taken to one scene in which a baby zombie (one of Minecraft’s main monsters) rides a cuboid chicken, causing Black’s character to exclaim, “Chicken jockey!” Clips of audiences reacting rowdily to the scene made the rounds over the weekend, which, in turn, only attracted more viewers eager to join the trend to theaters. “the minecraft movie is truly one of the worst movies i’ve ever seen but the universal reaction to ‘chicken jockey’ im seeing made it all worth it,” one X user wrote. Another added, “The Minecraft Movie is a must watch cultural experience,” over a video of audience members giving the “chicken jockey” scene a standing ovation. Considering that the film has been in theaters for just four days, only time will tell whether A Minecraft Movie becomes the next Rocky Horror Picture Show, or if (in a much more likely scenario) young fans’ outsized reactions are only a passing fad. View the full article

JPMorgan chief’s letter to shareholders is an exercise in blending in with the political wallpaperView the full article

Economy Candy’s shelves brim with sweets from around the world—gummies from Germany, lollipops from Spain, chocolates from Japan, and a panoply of candies from across the U.S. Standing amid it all, columns of bright jellybeans to his left and exotic Kit Kats to his right, owner Mitchell Cohen is quick with his assessment of how many of this shop’s 2,000-plus items are affected by the historic round of tariffs announced by President Donald Trump. “I think all of them,” Cohen says at his store on New York’s Lower East Side. Few corners of the American economy are untouched, directly or indirectly, by the sweeping tariffs being imposed by Trump—even a little store like Economy Candy. Cohen had just begun to feel a barrage of inflation-driven price increases from suppliers ease when the tariff threats arrived. For a business with a name like Economy Candy, he wants to remain affordable but fears how high some prices may have to climb in the coming months. “I think it’s gonna be another round of this hyperinflation on some items,” says 39-year-old Cohen. “If we’re putting tariffs everywhere, it is going to go up.” Stepping into Economy Candy feels like a time warp. Its name is emblazoned on a sign in a vintage, blaring red script, and crossing below its green-and-white striped awning, past the bins of Smarties, butterscotches and Lemonheads in the front window, an indecipherable sweetness fills the air, oldies music sounds overhead, and customers mill around stacks of candy bars they forgot still existed. It represents just a blip in the country’s $54 billion candy industry. But it was already feeling the weight of surges in prices of cocoa and other ingredients before tariffs were layered on. Candy and gum prices are up about 34% from five years ago and 89% from 2005, according to Consumer Price Index data. Price, according to the National Confectioners Association, has become the top factor in consumers’ candy purchase decisions, outweighing a buyer’s mood. About a third of Economy Candy’s products are imported, crowded on shelves and tables near the store’s rear. There aren’t just “more German Haribo varieties than the Haribo store in Germany,” as Cohen claims, but gummies the brand makes in France, Austria, and Britain. They have every Milka bar they can find in Switzerland, every type of Leone hard candies that Italy churns out and as many exotic Kit Kats from Japan as they can fit. On products like these, the tariffs’ toll is obvious. Pistachio Snickers bars are from India, now subject to 26% tariffs, while passion fruit mousse Snickers are from Portugal, now under the 20% European Union levies. But even an American-made Snickers isn’t immune. While the bars may roll off conveyors in Texas, they rely on ingredients from around the globe. Sourcemap, which tracks supply chains, says Snickers bars include chocolate from Guyana and sugar from Brazil and are wrapped in packaging from Canada. All are now subjected to varying levels of tariffs. “There’s a lot of ingredients in there that have to come from other countries,” says Andreas Waldkirch, an economics professor at Colby College who teaches a class on international trade. “Unless you’re talking about something very simple from your local farmers market, almost every product relies on ingredients from elsewhere. Those indirect costs are really what’s going to drive up prices.” The story repeats with American candies across the store—the boxes of Nerds and bags of Sugar Babies and rolls of Smarties are all inextricably tied to the global supply chain. A table teeming with those domestic delicacies takes center stage near Economy Candy’s entrance. Cohen took over the store from his parents, who took it over from their parents before. He got his first haircut in the store. He was behind the register as a child. He took his wife by on their first date. As a kid, everything on the store’s centerpiece table of American treats cost 59 cents. By 2020, the price was $1.29, but customers who bought a whole box paid a discounted rate of $1 per piece. Now, Cohen can’t even get them wholesale at that price. Today, he sells the items on the table for $1.59. Cohen calls the selection a “loss leader” but thinks it’s important to showcase his store’s affordability. Once the tariffs are fully implemented, he’s not sure he’ll be able to put off price increases. “When your margins are coming down and your dollar doesn’t go as far at the end of the day, you really start to feel it,” he says. “But I don’t want anyone to come into Economy Candy and not think that it’s economical.” The biggest-ticket implications of the tariff blitz understandably gain the most attention—the thousands of dollars a car’s price tag may grow, the tens of thousands that disappear from a retirement account in a single day. But here among the root beer barrels and licorice strands, you’re reminded that small-dollar items are affected too, and so are the families selling them. At its birth, the business Cohen’s grandfather started focused on shoe and hat repairs. But in the wake of the Great Depression, when few in a neighborhood of crowded tenements had money for such fixes, the business pivoted. Candy, once relegated to a cart out front, took over the store. In the 88 years since, business hasn’t always been Chuckles and Zagnuts. The Sept. 11 attacks kept tourists away and had sales sagging and the pandemic closed the store and forced it to pivot to online sales. If tariffs upend things, Cohen isn’t sure how he might adapt again. He sells products that aren’t made in America and he sells American products made with ingredients from across the globe. He had just been making headway on beginning international sales, but the web of tariff rules may make it impossible. The average U.S. tariff could rise to nearly 25% if the import taxes Trump put on goods from dozens of countries are fully implemented Wednesday. That would be the highest rate in more than a century, including tariffs widely blamed for worsening the Great Depression. Trump said imposing the tariffs amounted to a “liberation day” for a country that has been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by friend and foe alike, insisting it was “very, very good news” for the U.S. Cohen isn’t sure how that can be true for a business like his. “I can understand bringing manufacturing and bringing things back to America, but you know, we rely on raw materials that just aren’t native to our country,” he says. “And it’s not like I can get a green tea Japanese Kit Kat from an American company.” As Cohen stood before mounds of strawberry candies in shiny wrappers and little cubes of caramel in cellophane, the first word of the tariff’s concrete impact on him arrived. A French supplier emailed saying it was immediately imposing a 5% surcharge due to the tariffs, expressing regret for the move and hope that “the situation will be resolved swiftly.” Cohen wore a smile anyway. He wants this to be a happy place for visitors. “You travel back to a time when nothing mattered,” Cohen says, “when you didn’t worry about anything.” —Matt Sedensky, AP national writer View the full article

Like the Nintendo Switch before it, the Switch 2 supports both physical and digital games. It offers some flexibility no matter how players enjoy to collect their games, unlike other game companies that offer digital-only versions of their consoles. It's important to note, however, that just because you buy a physical Switch 2 game, that doesn't mean you've actually purchased the game itself. In fact, for some games, there are few differences between buying the game physically or digitally—and unless you really appreciate the box art and the cartridge itself, you shouldn't make your buying decision with the wrong idea in mind. Switch 2 Game-Key cardsOnce the Switch 2 does go on sale, and games start to release in tandem, check the game boxes carefully: On select titles, you will notice a white strip along the bottom of the cover art, notably sporting a "GAME-KEY CARD" branding. Credit: Nintendo Game-key cards are new to this Nintendo generation, and separate themselves from traditional physical games in one major way: They do not contain the full game on the card itself. What you're buying instead is the key to download the full game onto your console. (Hence, game-key card.) Once you pop the game cartridge into your Switch 2, the console will present you with steps to download the full game locally. However, you'll need an internet connection for the download to actually begin, so you won't be able to play your new Switch 2 game until you've returned somewhere with a stable and relatively fast network. (Long gone are the days of buying a Nintendo cartridge and playing it then and there.) Additionally, you'll need to make sure you have enough space on your Switch 2 for that download to take place. Nintendo says you'll see the amount of space necessary on the game box itself. This is another bummer: One of the perks of physical games on Switch is preserving the limited storage space you have to work with. True, the Switch 2 quadruples the internal storage of the Switch 1, but buy enough of these games, and you'll need to invest in some expanded storage, as well. (Remember: You cannot use your Switch 1 microSD cards here, either). Once the game is downloaded, you'll need to keep that internet connection active in order to launch the game. After this, however, you can choose to play the game offline as well. You'll just need to ensure you're playing with the cartridge, as you would a physical game. We don't know which games in particular will use this system yet, or how game-key cards affect pricing. (Mario Kart World, for example, is $80.) Why is Nintendo doing this?My first reaction to this new type of game cart is, simply, confusion. What's the point of this? If you aren't going to put the full game on the cartridge itself, why not just offer the title digitally? It's not like it's benefitting users who don't have a stable internet connection: You still need to download the title to your Switch 2 via the net. So, again, why bother with the game-key card system at all? Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser (no relation) has the company's answer. In an interview with The Verge, Bowser said the game key is basically a "digital game on a card," and offers developers the opportunity to create games that are too large to fit on a typical cartridge while still selling those games in retail stores. That does track from a business perspective. Nintendo doesn't publish its sales stats, but according to Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief of The Game Business, the company can expect to sell 80% of the copies for any given game physically. That number sounds a bit extreme to me, but I don't doubt Nintendo still sells a lot of games in stores, even as other sectors in the gaming industry swing heavily towards digital sales. Plus, Switch 2 is much more powerful than Switch 1, so it makes sense that large AAA games would take up a lot more space than OG Switch titles. But from a consumer point of view, none of us wins here. The main perk of buying physical games is longevity: When you buy physical media (at least, a traditional piece of physical media) it can't be taken away from you. Digital media, on the other land, is largely a license-based system: You pay for the privilege of accessing that software as long as the distributor says so. If that distributor loses the rights to that media, or decides they no longer want to offer it, you're largely out of luck. So, when you make physical carts that are digital games, it defeats the purpose of the physical media entirely. In fact, it's just a headache, since you have the downsides of needing the cart to play the game, with the other downsides of digital media. Eventually, Nintendo will stop supporting that game. Maybe you'll be able to play it as long as it's saved to your Switch 2, but if you need to download it to another console in the future, oops: That physical game is really a digital one that simply doesn't exist anymore. The good news is this won't be every Switch 2 game. There will still be titles you can buy that contain the entire game on the cart. But it's good to know going into this new Nintendo era: Unless you're the kind of person that require all of your purchases to be tangible, you might just be better off buying these game-key card games digitally. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I am going to be leaving my company soon and starting my own business, and will need to hire support staff. One of the employees at my current company (Taylor) has told me she is looking for a new job. I find Taylor to be an excellent employee and I would be happy to have her working for me. I believe that she enjoys working with me as well. The catch is that Taylor primarily works with Leslie, one of my colleagues here, and has done so for several years. Leslie has been a mentor to me since I started working in this city. She is well liked and well connected in our field, while I’m pretty new to it. I do not plan on asking Taylor to come work for me. However, this would not prevent her from submitting a resume if I post a job ad, particularly if she knows that I will be hiring. I am worried that if Taylor left her job to come work for me, Leslie would see this as employee poaching and would perceive this as betrayal of a mentor, even if I didn’t actively solicit Taylor to work for me. It would impact Leslie’s work because she would need to hire a new support staffer and train them to her specifications, which takes time and effort. Primarily I want to preserve my good relationship with Leslie, but I also don’t want to become known in my relatively small professional circle as the one who left Leslie in the lurch by poaching her support staff. I also recognize that Taylor is not an indentured servant to Leslie and does have the choice of leaving whenever she wants. If she were to submit a resume, I’m not sure that “you work for Leslie so I can’t hire you” is a good enough reason to strike her off of my list, particularly when she has worked for me before and we have a good relationship. What are your thoughts? Could I hire Taylor if she submitted a resume to work for me, or is the risk of torpedoing a good personal relationship and a professional reputation too high? I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here. View the full article

Growing concern about growth and deflationary pressure predicted to force central bankers’ hands in Eurozone and UKView the full article

Prime minister says he will ‘seize the opportunity’ to make the economy more secureView the full article

Google AI mode now understands images, allowing you to upload photos and ask questions about them. AI Mode is rolling out to more people. The post Google Adds Image Search To AI Mode, Expands To More Users appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Google has added multimodal capabilities to its new AI Mode feature, letting you ask your questions with the assistance of uploading an image. Plus, Google announced it is rolling out AI Mode to millions of more Labs users in the U.S. AI mode with images. Google AI Mode now lets you upload an image via upload or your camera to ask AI Mode questions with images. Google calls this multimodal capabilities, which is launched years ago in other areas of Search. “With AI Mode’s new multimodal understanding, you can snap a photo or upload an image, ask a question about it and get a rich, comprehensive response with links to dive deeper,” Robby Stein, VP of Product, Google Search wrote. He added: “AI Mode builds on our years of work on visual search and takes it a step further. With Gemini’s multimodal capabilities, AI Mode can understand the entire scene in an image, including the context of how objects relate to one another and their unique materials, colors, shapes and arrangements. Drawing on our deep visual search expertise, Lens precisely identifies each object in the image. Using our query fan-out technique, AI Mode then issues multiple queries about the image as a whole and the objects within the image, accessing more breadth and depth of information than a traditional search on Google. The result is a response that’s incredibly nuanced and contextually relevant, so you take the next step.” What it looks like. Here is what it looks like in action: Millions more gain access to AI Mode. Google said, “we’ve now started to make AI Mode available to millions more Labs users in the U.S.” I mean, I am not sure if this is new. We saw Google expand access to those who do not have Google One AI Premium subscriptions a couple of weeks ago. And then last week, Google invited a third batch of users to AI Mode. So maybe Google is opening up a fourth batch of invites today? Why we care. Google’s new AI Mode does feel like the future of search, in many ways. So it is important that you all try it out as soon as you can, and watch it as it adapts. Soon you may all be looking for ways to get traffic from AI Mode as opposed to just Google Search and AI Overviews. View the full article

John Gutierrez had been thinking about buying a new laptop for the past year. The Austin, Texas, resident needed a computer with faster processing and increased storage for his photography work and had his sights set on a product from a Taiwanese brand. Then President Donald Trump announced expansive new import tariffs Wednesday, including a 32% tax on imports from Taiwan. That same day, Gutierrez ordered the laptop, with a base price of $2,400, from a retailer in New York specializing in photo and video gear. “I thought I’d bite the bullet, buy it now, and then that way I’ll have the latest technology on my laptop and don’t have to worry about the tariffs,” he said. Gutierrez was among the U.S. consumers rushing to buy big-ticket items before the tariffs take effect. Economists say the tariffs are expected to increase prices for everyday items, warning of potentially weakened U.S. economic growth. The White House hopes the tariffs prod countries to open their economies to more American exports, leading to negotiations that could reduce tariffs, or that companies increase their production in the U.S. to avoid higher import taxes. Rob Blackwell and his wife needed a new car that could handle long drives from Arlington, Virginia, to their son’s college. Their current electric vehicle is older with a limited range, and it will soon be used by his daughter, who is on the verge of getting her driver’s license. “I have been telling my wife that for some time we were going to need to do it,” he said, “and I was watching to see what the president did with tariffs.” Blackwell wanted another EV, but said leasing made more economic sense because the technology is ever-changing. He had his eye on the new General Motors Optiq; it’s an American car but made in Mexico, which could be subject to tariffs on supply chains that might increase the cost. After hearing that tariffs would be announced, they made plans the weekend before to lease the car. He said the dealership honored the agreement they worked out before the tariffs were finalized. And although he said the salespeople were a pleasure to deal with, Blackwell sensed a shift in their stance. “They know what we know, which is suddenly it flips from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market very quickly,” Blackwell said, adding that he is happy with his choice. “It was just a simple rational decision,” he said. “If this is what the government’s going to do, I need to get my act together.” Lee Wochner, CEO of the Burbank, California-based Counterintuity marketing and strategy firm, also needed a new vehicle. He wanted a more presentable car for business meetings, but kept putting it off because of his busy work schedule. On March 27, a Thursday, he told his firm’s car broker: “Ed, I need a car pronto and it’s got to happen by Sunday.” The broker gave him some car and pricing options and he leased an Audi Q3, which was delivered Sunday to his house by a nearby dealership. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation showed how much he saved by leasing before the tariffs were implemented. If he had waited, Wochner said, it would have cost about another $4,300. “One of the things my car broker said was that deals that were already written, some of the dealerships were ripping them up already and renegotiating them because they were afraid that they weren’t going to be able to get enough new inventory at a price anybody would buy,” he said. He believes prices will continue to increase because the U.S. has lost the trust of the international trade market. “If you need a new car, if you can get that pre-tariff deal still, you should go get it,” he said, “because who knows what next Wednesday might be like.” —Claire Rush and Mark Thiessen, Associated Press View the full article

Move from quality control to quality assurance. By Alan Anderson, CPA Transforming Audit for the Future Go PRO for members-only access to more Alan Anderson. View the full article

Move from quality control to quality assurance. By Alan Anderson, CPA Transforming Audit for the Future Go PRO for members-only access to more Alan Anderson. View the full article

As of April 4, 2025, President Trump has put a series of tariffs in place that are making it more expensive to import goods into the U.S. These tariffs basically act as extra taxes on products coming from other countries. That means everything from raw materials to finished products is going to cost more, which could have a big impact on your bottom line. For small businesses and independent workers who don’t have the financial cushion of big corporations, you’ve probably already noticed that things are getting even pricier. And unfortunately, this could be just the beginning. What Does This Mean for Small Business Owners and Freelancers?If you run a small business or freelance for a living, you already know how tough it can be to keep your costs low and your profits steady. But with these new tariffs, things are getting even more challenging. Many small businesses rely on imported goods—whether it's raw materials, tech components, or finished products—and these added taxes mean higher prices across the board. For example, some business owners who sell physical products are already seeing their suppliers raise prices. For instance, packages valued at $800 or less from China and Hong Kong that were previously allowed tax-free entry to the U.S. are now subjected to duties of 30% or $25 per item, increasing to $50 after June 1. Shipping fees are also creeping up. And for those who work in industries like e-commerce, design, or tech, the cost of equipment and supplies could increase as well. Some business owners might be able to pass these costs onto customers, but with inflation and consumer sentiment already very low, others might have to absorb them, cutting into their already tight margins. A Tough Time for Creative Freelancers & Crafting BusinessesIf you’re a creative freelancer or craft-based entrepreneur, this news might be hitting especially hard. Many artists, jewelry makers, and crafters rely on specialty materials—fabric, beads, paints, paper, and other supplies—that often come from overseas. With these new tariffs, those materials are getting more expensive. That means if you sell handmade items on Etsy, at craft fairs, or through your own online shop, your costs are rising, but your customers may not be willing to pay higher prices. This puts you in a tough spot: either raise prices and risk losing customers, or keep prices the same and make less money on each sale. It’s frustrating, especially for independent creators who don’t have the massive budgets or buying power of big retailers. How to Adjust and Stay AfloatWhile these changes are challenging, there are a few ways to adapt: Look for Alternative Suppliers – If your usual materials or supplies are getting too expensive, it might be time to research domestic suppliers or find alternative materials that won’t break the bank.Reduce Waste & Streamline Costs – Now is a good time to take a closer look at your business expenses. Are there areas where you can cut costs without sacrificing quality?Be Honest with Your Customers – If you need to raise prices, consider being upfront about why. Many customers will understand that costs are going up and appreciate your transparency.Stay Informed & Advocate for Your Business – Keeping up with policy changes and connecting with others in your industry can help you stay ahead of challenges. Consider joining small business groups or industry associations that advocate for freelancers and small business owners.There’s no sugarcoating it—these tariffs are making things harder for freelancers and small business owners. But as always, small businesses are incredibly resilient. By staying flexible, exploring new options, making smart financial decisions, and utilizing the free resources that we offer our members you can navigate these changes and keep your business moving forward. View the full article

As of April 4, 2025, President Trump has put a series of tariffs in place that are making it more expensive to import goods into the U.S. These tariffs basically act as extra taxes on products coming from other countries. That means everything from raw materials to finished products is going to cost more, which could have a big impact on your bottom line. For small businesses and independent workers who don’t have the financial cushion of big corporations, you’ve probably already noticed that things are getting even pricier. And unfortunately, this could be just the beginning. What Does This Mean for Small Business Owners and Freelancers?If you run a small business or freelance for a living, you already know how tough it can be to keep your costs low and your profits steady. But with these new tariffs, things are getting even more challenging. Many small businesses rely on imported goods—whether it's raw materials, tech components, or finished products—and these added taxes mean higher prices across the board. For example, some business owners who sell physical products are already seeing their suppliers raise prices. For instance, packages valued at $800 or less from China and Hong Kong that were previously allowed tax-free entry to the U.S. are now subjected to duties of 30% or $25 per item, increasing to $50 after June 1. Shipping fees are also creeping up. And for those who work in industries like e-commerce, design, or tech, the cost of equipment and supplies could increase as well. Some business owners might be able to pass these costs onto customers, but with inflation and consumer sentiment already very low, others might have to absorb them, cutting into their already tight margins. A Tough Time for Creative Freelancers & Crafting BusinessesIf you’re a creative freelancer or craft-based entrepreneur, this news might be hitting especially hard. Many artists, jewelry makers, and crafters rely on specialty materials—fabric, beads, paints, paper, and other supplies—that often come from overseas. With these new tariffs, those materials are getting more expensive. That means if you sell handmade items on Etsy, at craft fairs, or through your own online shop, your costs are rising, but your customers may not be willing to pay higher prices. This puts you in a tough spot: either raise prices and risk losing customers, or keep prices the same and make less money on each sale. It’s frustrating, especially for independent creators who don’t have the massive budgets or buying power of big retailers. How to Adjust and Stay AfloatWhile these changes are challenging, there are a few ways to adapt: Look for Alternative Suppliers – If your usual materials or supplies are getting too expensive, it might be time to research domestic suppliers or find alternative materials that won’t break the bank.Reduce Waste & Streamline Costs – Now is a good time to take a closer look at your business expenses. Are there areas where you can cut costs without sacrificing quality?Be Honest with Your Customers – If you need to raise prices, consider being upfront about why. Many customers will understand that costs are going up and appreciate your transparency.Stay Informed & Advocate for Your Business – Keeping up with policy changes and connecting with others in your industry can help you stay ahead of challenges. Consider joining small business groups or industry associations that advocate for freelancers and small business owners.There’s no sugarcoating it—these tariffs are making things harder for freelancers and small business owners. But as always, small businesses are incredibly resilient. By staying flexible, exploring new options, making smart financial decisions, and utilizing the free resources that we offer our members you can navigate these changes and keep your business moving forward. View the full article

President Donald Trump has aggressively targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across a wide swath of American society. So when Trump sent a White House invitation to the 2024 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers—the franchise of Jackie Robinson, a team whose identity is indelibly linked to its role in dismantling racial segregation in sports—it surprised some that the Dodgers accepted. Less than a week before they did so the Defense Department removed a tribute to Robinson on its website, a move apparently linked to its DEI purge. (The page was restored following a public outcry.) Author and retired urban policy professor Peter Dreier is among those who have criticized the Dodgers’ decision to celebrate their World Series victory with Trump. Dreier, who has chronicled the history of baseball and social activism in two books, co-wrote an opinion piece in the L.A. Times making the case for why the Dodgers should decline an invite from Trump—even before one was issued. Capital & Main spoke with Dreier the weekend before the Dodgers were scheduled to visit the Oval Office. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Capital & Main: Dodger manager Dave Roberts says that visiting the White House isn’t about the current president but about the office itself. Why do you disagree with that? Peter Dreier: Every president likes to get his picture taken with famous athletes. This is a photo opportunity for Trump to be seen with popular athletes and to bask in the reflected glory of the Dodgers’ victory. So it’s clearly not just about the office, it’s about the occupant. He’s sliding in the polls right now, and I assume he thinks that being seen with Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani will give him some free publicity that can help his presidency. So I think it’s naive and somewhat disingenuous for Dave Roberts to say that, and I doubt he believes it. Given the Dodgers’ history of breaking the color barrier by making Jackie Robinson the first Black Major League Baseball player, should that history and Trump’s targeting of DEI have been a factor in the Dodgers’ decision about going to the White House? The Dodgers pat themselves on the back all the time for being the first team to integrate, and they’ve ridden the Jackie Robinson reputation for a long time since 1947. So that’s clearly something that they are proud of. Trump has called for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. Los Angeles is a city with a very large number of immigrants and whose economy relies in large part on immigrant labor, including that of undocumented immigrants. Should that have played a role in the team’s decision? There are quite a few players on the Dodgers who are from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. If they have any social conscience or awareness, which I’m sure most of them do, they aren’t happy with the way Trump’s administration is treating immigrants. Will you stop going to Dodger games? If I stopped going to sports events because I didn’t like the politics of the players or organization, I wouldn’t go to sports events. Just like if I only bought clothes made by union labor I’d be naked. It’ll be interesting to see whether Billie Jean King or Magic Johnson [part owners of the Dodgers] go to the White House. They explicitly campaigned for Harris. Are you disappointed that neither Johnson nor King nor any of the more prominent Dodger players have spoken out against the team’s decision to go visit Trump in the White House? Yes. I’m disappointed that they didn’t have the courage to speak out. Maybe Billie Jean King and Magic will speak out at some point, but so far, they haven’t. When it comes to sports and politics, where do you think individual players or teams should draw the line and either take a stand or not? If you’re a big star, you can speak out. You might lose some fans, but you might gain some fans. Trump barely got half of the votes in the United States and got very few in the L.A. area, so it would not be that harmful to the careers of Dodger players for them to speak out against the Dodgers going to meet Trump. And it’s very disappointing that none of them have stepped up to the plate, so to speak. Would Jackie Robinson have gone with the Dodgers to visit Donald Trump and the White House, were he alive today? Jackie Robinson would be outraged by the Dodgers meeting with Trump. Jackie Robinson was a liberal Republican. He went to the Republican convention [in 1964] supporting the liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller when they nominated Barry Goldwater, and he heard people say things in that convention that so angered him that he came out of that event and said I know what it must have felt like to be at a Nazi rally. Donald Trump is a lot worse. Robinson always had the courage of his convictions regardless of what impact it had on him. He was criticized during his playing career for speaking out, and he said I’m always going to speak out against injustice and if you don’t like it, it’s too bad. So I’m 100% sure Jackie Robinson would be upset that the Dodgers are going to the White House, and I think he’d be extremely disappointed in [Black superstar] Mookie Betts in particular. Doesn’t every player and executive on a team have equal responsibility for their decision to go or not to go to visit a controversial president in the White House? Betts was the one that I thought would be most likely to speak out first and then he’d bring other players along with him. He’s sort of the moral leader of the team. After George Floyd was killed he got the team, white and Black, not [to] play for a game. And what they’re all saying is, “I’m doing this for the team,” but there’s a bigger team called America or a bigger team called society. And they’re playing under a fascist president, and I would hope that people that have a public platform like Major League Baseball players would speak out. — Danny Feingold, Capital & Main language at top of story: This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Hulu doesn't always get the recognition of competitors like Netflix and Max, but the streamer has an unfailingly reliable and rotating selection of theatrical films, as well as some impressive original releases. These are some of the best, buzziest, and/or most fun movies currently streaming on the service, across a variety of genres. Anora (2024) Writer/director Sean Baker (Tangerine, Red Rocket) has a long run of impressive film credits to his name, but comedy-drama Anora was the film that put his name firmly on the map, winning him a Best Director Oscar and the film a Best Picture prize. Mikey Madison (who also won Best Actress) plays the title's Anora, an exotic dancer whose life changes when she falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. It's all going very well until his parents show up to get the wedding annulled. You can stream Anora here. Tombstone (1993) This '90s cult classic is a pretty good and stylish take on the events surrounding the famous, and frequently dramatized, gunfight at the O.K. corral involving Wyatt Earp and company—so frequently dramatized, in fact, that a totally different movie about the same events (called Wyatt Earp) came out within six months of this one. Tombstone has something none of those others had, though: the late Val Kilmer as the hard-drinking, idiosyncratic Doc Holliday. It's almost certainly Kilmer's most indelible role, and remains cinema's most memorable take on the tubercular gunfighter. You can stream Tombstone here. The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (2024) One of those great Soul Food/Steel Magnolia-style tearjerkers, The Supremes stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, and Uzo Aduba as three middle-aged friends who've been through the wringer together. Following the three virtually from birth, we find them facing a seemingly endless number of twists and turns (unplanned pregnancy, cancer, alcoholism, and more) with a lot of heart and plenty of humor. You can stream The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat here. Longlegs (2024) Oz Perkins, more recently of The Monkey, directs this horror thriller starring Maika Monroe as a young FBI agent hunting the title's menacing Longlegs (Nicholas Cage). The serial killer's trail has gone cold, but Agent Harker's seeming clairvoyance has put the two on a collision course, even though there's no evidence the suspect was ever even present at the killings for which he's apparently responsible. Stylish and nerve-jangling, with an unhinged (of course) performance from Cage, it's a real killer thriller. You can stream Longlegs here. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) Nia Vardalos and company kicked off an unlikely franchise with this beloved rom-com about a young Greek-American woman (Nia Vardalos) who falls in love with a non-Greek (John Corbett). Shenanigans ensue when she struggles to get her family (including Lainie Kazan, Michael Constantine, Andrea Martin, and Joey Fatone) to accept her husband-to-be, while she also battles her own mixed feelings about her cultural identity. You can stream My Big Fat Greek Wedding here. A Complete Unknown (2024) Another multiple Oscar-nominee (though it didn't take home any prizes), A Complete Unknown comes from director James Mangold, whose resume includes award-season faves like Ford v Ferrari, Wolverine and Indiana Jones franchise movies, and another Oscar-winning musical biopic, Walk the Line. In this one, Timothée Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan alongside Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, with the narrative rotating around the moment in 1965 when Dylan went electric, scandalizing the Newport Folk Festival, and leading fans to question whether the voice of his generation had sold out. You can stream A Complete Unknown here. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) Awkward title notwithstanding, this fourth entry in the modern-day Apes series retains the technical mastery of its predecessors, as well as their revolutionary spirit, while also serving as a soft reboot that doesn't demand an extensive knowledge of what came before. Generations after the death of Andy Serkis' Caesar, human civilization continues to decline; Owen Teague plays Not, a young chimp forced from home when a tyrannical rival ape faction destroys his village over twisted and conflicting interpretations of Caesar's teachings. It's an impressive continuation of our smartest and most consistent modern movie franchise. Hulu has an array of earlier Apes movies, as well. You can stream Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes here. The First Omen (2024) These legacy sequels have been hit or miss—though more the latter than the former. If you had told me that a prequel to this long-defunct franchise would be one of 2024's more effective horror movies, I'd have looked at you the way everybody looked at Gregory Peck when he tried to kill his satanic kid way back in the 1976 original. But here we are! First-time feature director Arkasha Stevenson brings a ton of '70s period style and an appropriately paranoid vibe to the story of future antichrist Damien's birth, blending (extremely timely!) themes of bodily autonomy with genuine horror—and one of the freakiest birth scenes in movie history. You can stream The First Omen here. Fire Island (2022) Or maybe you prefer your gay flicks with more of a warm-weather vibe? A queer, contemporary take on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island also takes aim at the overabundance of fat/femme/Asian stereotypes in the gay community. Social commentary aside, it's also a funny, smart romantic comedy with a great cast that includes Joel Kim Booster (in the Lizzy Bennett role—he also wrote the screenplay), Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, and Margaret Cho as a group of friends who travel each summer to the titular island—but this summer proves more dramatic (and romantic) than most. You can stream Fire Island here. Triangle of Sadness (2022) One of the darkest (and funniest) satires of recent memory, Ruben Östlund's wild film feels like at least three movies in one, with narratives that take sharp right turns at unexpected moments, taking potshots at greed and skewering capitalism all the way. A memorable central section onboard a luxury cruise ship divided between the haves (passengers) and have-nots (the crew) climaxes in literal explosions of vomit and shit. That's before a satisfying role-reversal inspired by Lord of the Flies. Brilliant and hilarious, if you've got the stomach for it. You can stream Triangle of Sadness here. The Worst Person in the World (2021) Renate Reinsve brilliantly plays Julie, a medical student—briefly—who has no idea what she wants to do with her life, and a complete fear of commitment to anything and anyone. She's that most frequently exhausting movie trope: a messy 20-something young woman, in ways that you've seen before in other, lesser movies. The Worst Person in the World, though, plays that for all it's worth, offering up all the joys of cinematic romantic dramas that we've seen before while feeling a bit more like real life. People are messy! It's all surprisingly sweet and life-affirming. You can stream The Worst Person in the World here. Prey (2022) Wild that the best Predator film since the first (and probably better still) was dropped as a streaming-only release on Hulu. Regardless of the movie deserving a theatrical release, Prey is a thrilling action movie that expands the Predator universe while also feeling deeply personal. Set in the Great Plains of 1719, Prey stars Amber Midthunder as Naru, a young Comanche warrior who winds up being the only person who can defend her tribe from the hunter from outer space. You can stream Prey here. The Princess Bride (1987) A flawlessly entertaining fantasy, The Princess Bride works on almost every level: as a quotable comedy, a soaring romance, and a Robin Hood-style action movie that has fun with the tropes of those kinds of movies. It's simply a delight. You can stream The Princess Bride here. The Promised Land (2023) In 18th-century Denmark, down-on-his-luck war hero Capt. Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) hopes to turn his meager retirement pension into some kind of life for himself by cultivating a portion of a vast wilderness that no one else has been able to make anything of. A covetous local magistrate quickly finds himself threatened by Kahlen's reputation, with the intent of spoiling all his plans. The beautiful—but bleak and forbidding—Nordic drama plays out much like an old-school western. You can stream The Promised Land here. Happiest Season (2020) Never too early for the winter holidays! (Say many wonderful people who are definitely not me.) Hulu’s Happiest Season is, perhaps, not on anyone’s list of cinematic masterpieces. Very few (if any) films of the modern, Hallmark-style coming-home-for-Christmas genre would clear that kind of bar. Still, there’s a reason we love these things, and this one adds a bit of prestige to its charms in both cast (Kristen Stewart, Aubrey Plaza, Victor Garber, etc.) and directing (Clea DuVall). What’s more, the movie served as a high-profile torchbearer for queer representation in 2020, the year having kicked off a small but significant wave of LGBTQIA+ holiday films. You can stream Happiest Season here. Deep Water (2022) Adrian Lyne (9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Indecent Proposal) returned to the director’s chair after an absence of two decades for this Hulu original. Ben Affleck is probably a rough equivalent in star power and sex appeal to the male leads of yore, and Ana de Armas is a good choice as a co-lead, even if the casting does remind us that age gaps in these movies will always favor the idea of an older man with a significantly younger woman. Here, Affleck’s Vic agrees to overlook his wife’s string of affairs in order to preserve his marriage, but then becomes the prime suspect when her lovers start turning up dead. It’s a solid setup (taken from a Patricia Highsmith novel) that doesn’t quite connect, but still serves as fun throwback to the golden age of sexy thrillers. You can stream Deep Water here. Die Hard (1988) It’s the Christmas movie that came along and kicked It’s a Wonderful Life right off the 35th floor of Nakatomi Plaza tower. A brilliantly entertaining action classic, and possibly Bruce Willis' crowning achievement. You can stream Die Hard here. Infinity Pool (2023) Writer/director Brandon Cronenberg (son of David) brings a palpable rage and an unmistakable sense of style to this blend of sci-fi and horror, even as it muddies those genre classifications like the best of his famed father's work. A couple vacationing in a strange country leave their resort and run afoul of the law, only to learn that, for a price, they can outsource the punishment to clones of themselves. You can stream Infinity Pool here. 13 Assassins (2010) Near the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the utterly sadistic (not to mention corrupt) Lord Naritsugu is to be offered a seat on the Shogunate Council, a promotion that will not only see the cruel lord’s power increase, but will likely set off a civil war between his supporters and those who hate him. The Shogun’s justice minister decides that assassination is the only way, and so hires a dozen samurai in order to carry out the execution. The kinetic and violent film reminds us that director Takashi Miike made his name in several memorably visceral horror films. You can stream 13 Assassins here. How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) A non-fiction work adapted as an action-thriller, How to Blow Up a Pipeline follows eight individuals committed to bombing an oil pipeline in two separate locations. The movie, like the book on which it's based, makes the case that property damage isn’t the worst thing in the face of environmental catastrophe, but that the level of commitment involved to carry out such an act takes a deeply personal toll. You can stream How to Blow Up a Pipeline here. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) A deeply, deeply stupid premise involving a divorced dad reconnecting with his family by dressing up as an elderly British nanny is elevated by the lead performances from Robin Williams and Sally Field. Williams is at his silly best, but both he and Field play the emotional beats for all they're worth. You can stream Mrs. Doubtfire here. Midnight Kiss (2019) Technically an episode of Hulu's Into the Dark anthology series, the feature-length Midnight Kiss finds a bunch of gay friends (and their straight woman friend) heading out to a gorgeous place in the desert for an annual tradition: They'll each pick someone at random to kiss at midnight. Old resentments bubble to the surface, egged on (unbeknownst to most of them) by a serial killer. It's no spoiler to suggest that they won't all make it to New Year's Day. You can stream Midnight Kiss here. Quiz Lady (2023) Awkwafina and Sandra Oh star as two sisters is this wild road-trip comedy in the best tradition of '90s gems like Romy & Michele's High School Reunion. One is tightly wound, the other a complete mess. They're forced to work together to cover their mother's gambling debts, a problem complicated when the loan shark kidnaps a dog to hold hostage in exchange for the cash. Good thing Awkwafina's character is a quiz-show savant who drowned her childhood sorrows in binge-watching a Jeopardy-esque game show with a big cash prize. You can stream Quiz Lady here. The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) Dev Patel stars as the Dickens hero in this ultra-stylish adaptation from Armando Iannucci (Veep, The Death of Stalin). In one sense it reinvents the novel on which it's based, in that it feels nothing like other, stuffier takes—but mostly it's just bringing the wit and humor of Dickens to the forefront while staying true to Copperfield's themes and characters. Patel is joined by Peter Capaldi, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whislaw, Benedict Wong, and Gwendoline Christie among others. You can stream The Personal History of David Copperfield here. A Real Pain (2024) Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed) and Kieran Culkin (who won an Oscar for the role) play a couple of cousins who reunite for a Jewish heritage tour through Poland as a means of honoring their late grandmother, and have to confront a more immediate family legacy along the way. A tonally deft blend of comedy and drama with a couple of excellent lead performances. You can stream A Real Pain here. View the full article

Four space tourists who orbited the north and south poles returned to Earth on Friday, splashing down in the Pacific to end their privately funded polar tour. Bitcoin investor Chun Wang chartered a SpaceX flight for himself and three others in a Dragon capsule that was outfitted with a domed window that provided 360-degree views of the polar caps and everything in between. Wang declined to say how much he paid for the 3 1/2-day trip. The quartet, who rocketed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday night, returned off the Southern California coast. It was the first human spaceflight to circle the globe above the poles and the first Pacific splashdown for a space crew in 50 years. The Chinese-born Wang, now a citizen of Malta, invited Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge and Australian polar guide Eric Philips, all of whom shared stunning vistas during their voyage. “It is so epic because it is another kind of desert, so it just goes on and on and on all the way,” Rogge said in a video posted by Wang on X while gazing down from orbit. Mikkelsen packed the capsule with camera equipment and spent much of her time behind the lens. All four suffered from space motion sickness after reaching orbit, according to Wang. But by the time they woke up on day two, they felt fine and cranked open the window cover right above the South Pole, he said via X. Besides documenting the poles from 270 miles (430 kilometers) up, Wang and his crew took the first medical X-rays in space as part of a test and conducted two dozen other science experiments. They named their trip Fram2 after the Norwegian sailing ship that carried explorers to the poles more than a century ago. A bit of the original ship’s wooden deck accompanied the crew to space. Their medical tests continued at splashdown. All four got out of the capsule on their own, heaving bags of equipment so researchers could see how steady returning space crews are on their feet. They pumped their fists in jubilation. SpaceX said its decision to switch splashdown sites from Florida beginning with this flight was based on safety. The company said Pacific splashdowns will ensure that any surviving pieces of the trunk — jettisoned near flight’s end — falls into the ocean. The last people to return from space to the Pacific were the three NASA astronauts assigned to the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. —Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer View the full article

The Mail app on iPhone got quite a visual overhaul in iOS 18.2. Suddenly, there was a whole AI-powered Priority mailbox, smart Categories up top, and an icon from every sender. For longtime Mail app users on the iPhone, that's a big shift—with seemingly minimal returns. The contact photos feature is perhaps the worst offender here, as most icons are just stock Apple icons. Even if you get an email from Lifehacker, it won't show the Lifehacker website logo, like it does when you visit the website in your browser. And this is the case with the vast majority of email addresses. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Thankfully, Apple seems to have listened to these complaints—in iOS 18.5, they are adding a toggle to remove contact photos altogether. And you don't need to go all the way into Settings to do this, either. As of this writing, iOS 18.5 is only available as a developer beta, though it should be available as a public beta soon enough. Anyone can now sign up and download the iOS developer beta, though I generally don't recommend it. Developer betas are more susceptible to early bugs and issues, since Apple releases these versions of the betas first. These things are usually ironed out by the time the public beta hits. The public beta is also easier to install, and more stable. To access this feature, I would suggest you wait for the 18.5 public beta, or the wider stable release that will be sometime in early-to-mid May. How to disable contact photos in the Mail appTo get rid of the contact photos, open the Mail app and tap the three-dotted Menu button, then uncheck Show Contact Photos. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Instantly, the column of icons on the left edge will disappear, and the email contents will take up all the available space. Ah, the good old days. Alternatively, you can also use the Settings app to disable this feature. This option has existed all the way since iOS 18.2 launched, but it's hidden quite deep in the Settings app. Here, go to Apps > Mail and then disable the Show Contact Photos option. How to remove Categories and other Mail AI featuresBut you might notice you're still not back to how the Mail app used to be. That's because of the Categories View and the Priority Mail section. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Both those features can be disabled from the same Menu popup, and you don't need to be using iOS 18.5 either. Every iPhone running iOS 18.2 or higher will see these options in the menu. Here, switch to List View to get rid of the Categories section, and then uncheck Show Priority to remove Priority Mail. To find out more about removing all the AI features in Mail, check out our detailed guide. View the full article