• Meta will be one of the co-sponsors of the 2025 White House Easter Egg roll.
• Corporate sponsorships are expected to be a larger part of the 2025 event than past editions.
• Meta is facing an ongoing antitrust trial just blocks away from the White House.

First Lady Melania Trump on Friday announced that Meta will co-sponsor the 2025 White House east egg roll blocks away from a courthouse where the company's future continues to hang in the balance.

According to Trump's office, Meta will sponsor an "AI-Powered Experience and Photo Opportunity." Other tech companies, including YouTube, which is owned by Google, and Amazon, will also sponsor parts of the event that dates back to the 1870s.

A spokesperson for the first lady deferred comment to the White House Historical Association. CNN reported in March that all funds raised by sponsorships would go to the private nonprofit that helps preserve and educate the public on the White House's history.

The White House previously expressed interest in having more explicit corporate sponsorships, leading to the possible conflicts of interest that Meta's presence will underline.

The Federal Trade Commission is currently prosecuting an antitrust case that alleges that Meta "cemented" its monopoly after acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014. If the FTC wins, they could ask that the social media giant be forced to sell two of its biggest acquisitions.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified over 10 hours in DC Circuit court this week. He has repeatedly tried to curry favor with Trump and his orbit. The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg has visited Mar-a-Lago and the White House multiple times. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Meta CEO held multiple meetings with top White House officials, including chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Meta donated $1 million ahead of Trump's inauguration amid a rush by companies to get closer to the incoming administration. Separately, Meta settled a lawsuit with Trump for $25 million.

In a statement before the antitrust trial began, Meta expressed confidence that it would prevail. Legal experts have said the FTC has a high bar to reach, especially since federal officials previously OKed Meta's acquisitions when they occurred.

Meta and the White House Historical Association did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• I was excited and terrified about becoming a father.
• My wife told me that we were raising an adult since we were not going to be there with him forever.
• Now, he is an adult, and like me, he is prioritizing his family.

When I got the news that I was going to be a father, a lot went through my mind. First, there was excitement and happiness. We weren't trying to have a baby, but we were also not trying not to. Then came fear and even doubt.

My wife once told me that we were raising an adult, not a child and that we wouldn't always be there for him.

So, from a young age, we raised our son to be his own person, to think for himself and make decisions. We taught him critical thinking, time management, and making choices with money. He didn't like team sports, so he chose taekwondo. He learned discipline, and it provided him with a personal challenge, which was in keeping with his personality.

He now has a daughter

He's grown up now. After graduating from a magnet high school technology program, he joined the Army, was awarded an ROTC scholarship, and was commissioned as an officer. He's now a construction manager, married, has bought his first house, and is a father to a little girl.

My son's job is just a 10-minute commute. He has the flexibility to come home for lunch or work from home sometimes. When he comes home, Jena runs to the door and calls to her daddy. No matter how long he's worked or how tired he is, he picks her up and excitedly says, "Hello, beautiful."

From my point of view, we have a lot to be proud of. But there are some who would say that I failed as a father. That I didn't raise my son to be a "man" because I didn't make him play football or because I interceded when there were issues in Scouts with bullies. I actually had a scoutmaster tell me that "boys will be boys," believing that fighting would somehow make them men.

Many in society will often look down on men who do not hold to their masculine ideals. A television host criticized a husband recently for grocery shopping with his wife. Some believe firmly in having only traditional gender roles. Where men are providers and women the caregivers.

I set the example that family came first

When my son was born, I decided that my family would come first. That meant prioritizing family time, being home for dinner, school events, after-school and weekend activities, and vacations.

There were times when I made career choices that weren't the best for me but were the best for my family. It meant taking jobs that weren't the highest salary but were stable, a short commute and prevented us from having to move to pursue a career. Turns out I was leading by example.

Like me, my son prioritizes family time, goes shopping with them, and pushes strollers. He goes on vacations, camping trips, and picnics in the park. He parents his daughter when his wife goes to yoga. And has even gone to work with nail polish after Jena decided to give him a manicure.

Maybe being a man means more than being physically tough and emotionally vacant. Maybe being masculine can mean making tough choices and not being defined by others.

The other night, my wife and I were at our son's house; it was nearly dinner time. A car backed into the driveway. Our granddaughter, now 3, ran through the kitchen, threw open the door, and shouted, "Daddy!" From outside, we heard a man say, "Hello, beautiful."

Several days before President Trump and members of his administration said publicly that they were prepared to wash their hands of Russia-Ukraine diplomacy, Trump ranted in private about his frustrations that the negotiations were going nowhere.

Why it matters: After promising a deal within 24 hours of taking office, then kicking off weeks of negotiations, Trump said Friday that he was about ready to give up. He hasn't set a deadline or said whether he would take any further action beyond walking away.

• If either side continues to block a deal, "we're just going to say, 'You're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people,' and we're going to just take a pass," Trump said Friday.

Behind the scenes: Trump made his frustrations clear a few days earlier in an impromptu conversation about the ceasefire push with several of his top advisers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff.

• That's where Trump raised the idea that if a deal isn't reached soon he could simply move on to other foreign policy issues, a U.S. official briefed on the issue said.

Driving the news: By Friday, Trump's rant had turned into a public policy statement.

• Rubio said Trump had decided "he has dedicated a lot of time and energy to this, and there are a lot of things going on in the world right now that we need to be focused on."
• "We need to figure out ... within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term.  If it's not, then I think we're just going to move on," Rubio said.
• Later on Friday Rubio held a phone call with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and reiterated that "if a clear path to peace does not emerge soon, the United States will step back from efforts to broker peace," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

Zoom in: Rubio also shared Trump's frustrations with the French, British, German and Ukrainian officials gathered in Paris for a marathon of meetings on Thursday to discuss the path to peace.

• "Rubio was not specific about what such a step would look like but only stressed that the U.S. wants fast progress," one European diplomat told Axios.
• Two European diplomats confirmed Rubio said Trump was losing his patience and might withdraw from the process if a deal wasn't reached soon.

Between the lines: Three European diplomats felt Rubio's comments were mostly aimed at the Ukrainians.

• A source close to the Ukrainian government also said it seemed Rubio's comments were aimed at pressing Ukraine. The source was also concerned that a Trump withdrawal from the negotiations could lead to suspension of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
• The European diplomats said Rubio didn't speak about increasing the pressure on Russia during the Paris meetings.
• "The impression was that Rubio and Witkoff are under a lot of pressure from Trump and they are channeling it to the other players," a European diplomat said.

Reality check: Ukraine swiftly agreed to Trump's plans for a 30-day ceasefire, but Russia has slow-walked that proposal and argued they are winning on the battlefield and thus have a number of conditions for any peace agreement.

• As a result, it's unlikely the Kremlin would have particular concerns about Trump giving up on diplomacy.

State of play: The U.S. isn't out of the game yet.

• Rubio and Witkoff also presented a framework for a potential peace deal to end the war during Thursday's meetings in Paris, the State Department said.
• Rubio said he's now awaiting the responses from Kyiv and Moscow.

David Hogg's organization gave $100,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after angering House Democrats with plans to back primary challengers against their older incumbents, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The donation addresses one of the central complaints of Hogg's detractors, particularly battleground district Democrats — that his efforts will draw resources away from the fight to retake the House.

• Hogg told the New York Times his group, Leaders We Deserve, will spend $20 million going after older House Democrats in solidly blue districts.
• Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) previously told Axios: "I can think of a million better things to do with twenty million dollars right now."

Driving the news: Leaders We Deserve made the donation on Thursday, two days after its primary efforts were first reported, a source familiar with the matter told Axios.

• The gift was first reported by Politico, though Hogg disputed the notion that he is "trying to make nice" with House Democratic leaders.
• "This is not me playing nice. It is demonstrating my commitment to winning back the house and making Hakeem Jeffries the Speaker," the 25-year-old Democratic National Committee vice chair posted on X.

Zoom in: Hogg suggested he will continue to go full bore with his efforts to drive out House Democrats' oldest members.

• "We absolutely cannot wait for people to retire at their own leisure or to let them sit there and do nothing while the country is burning," he said in his social media post.
• Leaders We Deserve did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the donation.

Zoom out: The DCCC announced Friday that it raised $36.9 million in the first three months of 2025.

• That figure put them narrowly ahead of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which brought in $36.7 million during the same period.

• Honeywell developed two new systems designed to make takeoffs and landings safer.
• Surf-A alerts pilots about potential runway collisions.
• Smart-X lets pilots know if they are taking off or landing on a taxiway instead of a runway.

Honeywell Aerospace Technologies has developed a series of new systems that alert pilots to impending danger during takeoffs and landings. They say the technology could help make aircraft collisions and near-misses a thing of the past

I recently took a demonstration flight aboard Honeywell's Boeing 757 test plane, showcasing its new Surface Alert, or SURF-A, and existing Smart-X systems.

Both systems are built into the plane's avionics software and warn pilots directly, giving them precious extra seconds to react.

"Pilots are our last line of defense. They are the ones who can help mitigate a disaster. These are tools, a third set of eyes to help increase their situational awareness," Thea Feyereisen, a human factors expert who helps lead research and development at Honeywell Aerospace, told Business Insider in an interview.

According to a recent study by Boeing, the minutes surrounding an aircraft's takeoff and landing account for nearly two-thirds of all deadly aviation accidents, but only 6% of a flight's total time.

Here's a closer look at my test flight.

The test flight started with an early morning briefing at the Signature Aviation private jet terminal on the northern edge of Atlanta's international airport.

The Honeywell team gave us an overview of its new SURF-A tech, which is expected to receive FAA certification next year. The system warns pilots if a plane is already on or about to cross the runway they are approaching.

The flight would also demonstrate their existing Smart-X technology that lets pilots know if they are about to take off or land on a taxiway or if there won't be enough runway to land safely.

Both systems are available as software upgrades on aircraft equipped with Honeywell's popular enhanced ground proximity warning systems, or EGPWS.

After the briefing, we boarded Honeywell's Boeing 757-200 test plane.

The Honeywell jet was the fifth 757 ever to roll off Boeing's assembly line. It entered service with Eastern Airlines in 1983 and was acquired by Honeywell in 2005.

Since joining the Honeywell fleet, the jet has clocked over 4,000 flight hours on more than 1,000 test flights.

It's set up to test everything from weather radars and in-flight WiFi to sustainable aviation fuel. The jet has also been fitted with an extra engine pylon on the starboard side of its fuselage to test turbofan and turboprop engines.

After boarding, the Honeywell team gave the passengers a pre-flight safety briefing.

Unlike most Boeing 757s, the aircraft features built-in air stairs that can be deployed at airports without the capability of supporting a jetliner of its size.

Here is my seat for the demo flight.

Seat 1B is an old-school domestic first-class seat immediately in front of the bulkhead.

In front of the seat is a large LCD screen connected to four cameras in the flight deck.

The four cameras let the passengers see the cockpit displays and gave us a pilot's eye view of the flight.

Soon, we were off the ground and en route to an airport in Albany, Georgia, about 180 miles south of Atlanta.

The test flight consisted of half a dozen simulated test scenarios, with a Honeywell-owned King Air turboprop test plane serving as the offending aircraft that triggered the safety alerts.

During the short 20-minute flight south, I had the chance to stroll around the cabin.

Here's one of the plane's two Rolls-Royce RB211 turbofan engines, each producing a whopping 40,000 lbs of thrust. The 757 has a reputation among pilots for being an absolute hotrod, even when loaded with passengers and cargo.

Further back in the cabin, a group of Honeywell engineers monitored the plane's systems.

Even though this was a demo flight with media, there was still precious data that could be collected.

The first scenario involves a plane on the landing runway.

SURF-A warned the pilots repeatedly with aural and visual signals about "Traffic on Runway" when it detected the King Air sitting at the end of the runway.

The scenario simulates how the system might have provided additional reaction time in situations like the February 2023 incident, in which a FedEx Boeing 767 cargo plane nearly landed on top of a Southwest Boeing 737 attempting to take off from the same runway in Austin.

The test flight also showed SURF-A alerting when a plane crosses the runway during takeoff.

This scenario is much like the incident from January 2023 when a Delta 737 had to slam on its brakes after an American Airlines jet crossed the runway from which it was trying to take off.

SURF-A is also designed to alert a landing plane if an aircraft is crossing the runway.

It could help prevent incidents like the Southwest Airlines flight that narrowly avoided colliding with a private jet crossing the runway as it descended to land at Midway Airport in Chicago in February.

Honeywell also showed off its Smart-X runway awareness and alerting system, or RAAS.

The system, already on the market, alerted pilots when they tried to take off from and land on a taxiway.

In March, a Southwest Airlines jet mistook a taxiway at Orlando International Airport for a runway and attempted to take off from it. The Boeing 737 accelerated to 70 knots before being ordered by air traffic control to stop.

Smart-X also alerts pilots when their landing approach is at too high an altitude or they've gone too far down the runway to stop safely.

After landing, the system will also call out the maximum distance the pilots have left to stop before the runway ends.

After completing the test scenarios, I had the chance to ride in the cockpit jumpseat for the short flight back.

We touched down safely back in Atlanta on Runway 28, concluding our two-hour-long test flight.

After our flight, the Boeing 757 was refueled and prepped for more demonstrations.

The aircraft spent a few days in Atlanta before returning to its base in Phoenix.

• AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps are bracing for cuts, throwing members' career planning into doubt.
• Young members told BI they thought their services would be a launching pad for future opportunities.
• Many said they don't have clear back-up plans, especially with the difficult job market.

Javon Walker-Price was squished in a van on Wednesday afternoon, driving from Nebraska to Iowa when the news came: His group of AmeriCorps members was being sent home.

By Thursday, Walker-Price's whole crew had to be on planes. They were only three months into a ten-month service contract and had been preparing to go out to Minnesota to fix up cabins and trails at a campground.

"It happened so fast," Walker-Price, 20, said. "One minute we were working, and the next minute we were told to pack our bags and come back to Iowa as soon as possible to get on the flight. It took everybody by surprise."

Walker-Price is just one of the thousands of AmeriCorps volunteers who are dealing with — or bracing for — the firings that have come to many other federal agencies. Members of the White House DOGE Office visited both AmeriCorps and Peace Corps headquarters earlier this month, throwing the agencies' futures into question.

Founded in 1993 and 1961, respectively, AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps annually enroll hundreds of thousands of young adults domestically and abroad. They receive a stipend for living expenses to do a range of service work, from environmental conservation to education, in local communities. Members who complete their service can also get educational grants for graduate school or to pay off student loans. The experience is often a launchpad for a career in public service. Now, members waiting to see if they get the chop are worried their careers will falter.

"They should not be dumped out unceremoniously into a job market that is not prepared to receive them," said Curt Ellis, the CEO and cofounder of FoodCorps, a nonprofit that works with about 150 AmeriCorps members each year. A current AmeriCorps staff member said the competition in the job market "is just going to be insane for everyone."

Business Insider spoke to nine early-career AmeriCorps and Peace Corps members and full-time agency or partner organization staff about what the cuts mean for their futures.

The White House confirmed to BI that roughly 75% of full-time AmeriCorps employees were placed on administrative leave this week. The agency reportedly shut down a program that focuses in part on disaster preparedness, sending home all members and placing them on administrative leave. There's no clear timeline for when employees will return to work or be fired.

An administration official said that the staff shake-up comes because "AmeriCorps failed eight consecutive audits and is entrusted with over $1 billion in taxpayer dollars every year." Representatives for AmeriCorps did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A representative for the Peace Corps told BI that the agency is in "full compliance with executive orders and other presidential actions," and that while the agency is subject to the federal hiring freeze, "volunteer recruitment activities continue."

'I don't know what I'm going to do'

Though most of the members BI spoke with had not been cut at the time of writing, all said they're bracing for the possibility

"The writing is on the wall," a 24-year-old Peace Corp member in the South Pacific said.

"The whole AmeriCorps community that I'm involved with is just anxious about if cuts do happen, how do we pay our bills?" a 26-year-old AmeriCorps member working in Texas said. "How do we keep moving forward with our lives?"

For many, AmeriCorps seemed like a reliable doorway to a stable career path — the 26-year-old said it was acting as a "stepping stone" to a permanent job.

Meredith B., a 28-year-old AmeriCorps member in Boston, said she took her job, in part, because of a shaky labor market. "I said, 'Oh, I'll work for the government in an almost unrelated position that still employs my skills. This will be safe.'"

"They're willing to hire people who don't have much experience, and they teach you all the skills you need in a very open environment where it's okay to make mistakes and not know what you're doing," a 22-year-old AmeriCorps member in North Carolina said. "By the end, you have those skills to go into whatever other career you're trying to go into."

Now, members are wondering whether their months, or in some cases years, of service will still set them up for success.

"I wish I knew," the Peace Corps member said about his contingency plan if his job gets cut. "It's rough because a lot of the off-ramps I would've had previously have now either been cut or have been severely negatively affected."

He wanted to work for the federal government or a nonprofit organization that received now-slashed federal funding. He's worried now that the few government jobs that are available will go to older people with more experience and degrees.

"They are being flooded by very, very well-qualified government workers that I cannot compete with. So right now I don't know what I'm going to do."

Meredith B. said that she doesn't have any sort of safety net, like many other people her age. All of her belongings were ruined in Hurricane Helene — what she has left fits in the two suitcases she brought with her to Boston.

"That's all the things I own in this world now, except I bought a pair of pants recently," she said.

A path forward, suddenly blocked

A former worker at the agency who served under Obama, Trump, and Biden also said AmeriCorps set young people up for a career in service.

"I've seen it time and time again," they said. "That service connected them to a lifetime of continued commitment and impact."

It's not just future jobs that hang in the balance — many members of AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps use education grants from the programs to pay off student loans or get another degree. Libby Stegger, the founder and executive director of Civic Bridgers in Minnesota, which partners with AmeriCorps, said she doesn't know what would happen to members' education awards if funding is cut.

"That is something that is very appealing to folks of all ages, and especially to folks who are early career," she said of the education grants. "Particularly for people who might otherwise not have access to those kinds of education funding opportunities, that is a tremendous benefit."

The 26-year-old AmeriCorps member said he "wouldn't even consider" grad school if his education award gets cut, and the Peace Corps member said going to grad school with the money had been key to his long-term goal of working in the federal government.

Cuts are also rippling down to students who are still in high school or college. Elizabeth Baz, 18, applied to AmeriCorps for a gap year.

"I was really hoping that AmeriCorps would kind of help me just get my life together and help me gain some more self-discipline and more life skills," she said. Baz said she still plans to take a gap year, but doesn't know what to do with it now.

The AmeriCorps member in North Carolina said it's more than sad to think about younger people not having the same opportunities she did — it's worrying. For the AmeriCorps member in Texas, his service made him feel more American, and he worries his family won't have that same experience.

"I have here on my desk a picture of my little nephews," he said, choking up. "And I think about all the work that we're doing now is to potentially have that same space for them to also experience whenever they're my age."

By Thursday night, Walker-Price had made it home to Virginia, but he had trouble sleeping in the quiet. He had gotten used to the sounds of his AmeriCorps cohort, who had become more like family.

"We planned on being with AmeriCorps for 10 months," Walker-Price said, "and just being sent home immediately, now it's like, what am I going to do?"

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