Three days a week, Annie spends two hours commuting to her public relations job outside Denver. Her company changed its office policy last year from remote to hybrid, leading her to lease a car and get back on the road. So on Fridays — without telling her coworkers — Annie typically doesn't work.

On the final day of the workweek, Annie watches TV, goes to the gym, takes a walk, or sometimes goes skiing. She keeps her phone or computer nearby to be available for messages in case something unexpected happens, but pushes her easiest work to Fridays, wraps it up quickly, and starts her weekly long weekend as early as possible.

When Annie is on the mountain instead of at her desk, she has "zero remorse," she tells me — on a phone call she scheduled on a Friday afternoon — even if she's a little worried about getting caught. (She asked that I change her name for this story for fear of retribution from her employer.)

Annie says the return-to-office mandate has worn down her social battery and made her less productive than when she worked from home full time. She was recently diagnosed as autistic, she says, and working from home has allowed her to focus better without coworkers interrupting. "If they expect me to come into the office and be fully present and sacrifice a lot of really important things that have improved my quality of life," she says, "then Fridays are the very least that I can do for myself to get through it."

What was once the final push to the weekend is becoming a sneaky personal day for some remote workers. The trend has been called "quiet Fridays" or "gentle Fridays" — a clandestine progression of casual Fridays or summer Fridays from the prepandemic era.

Some companies are instituting policies to ban meetings from being scheduled on Fridays and discourage sending emails. Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation last year calling to shorten the workweek to 32 hours. In Tokyo, government workers will soon have the option of four-day workweeks, a move meant to give people more time to prioritize family as fertility rates in Japan have fallen and some have overworked themselves to the point of death.

But the dream of an official four-day workweek stays largely out of reach from many. Greece last year enacted a law enabling a six-day workweek in certain industries, a move to combat a shrinking population and lack of skilled workers. Workers are revolting against unpopular RTO mandates. Now, fed-up remote workers are sometimes taking back the day for themselves, particularly as the rise-and-grind girlboss mindset of the 2010s has been eclipsed by the ascent of the anti-work movement. Since the pandemic, burnout is up, workplace loyalty is shrinking as companies conduct mass layoffs, and people are prioritizing self-care over impressing the boss with long hours. Office attendance may be creeping back up, but Friday remains the least popular day to commute, by far. And as I found, for many workers at the end of the week, the W in WFH is in scare quotes.

A search through Reddit and TikTok will reveals number of viral hacks to trick your boss into thinking you're actively online. There are mouse jigglers and apps that keep screens on but also tips like turning off your phone's auto-caps settings so Slack messages look like they're sent from a computer and not a phone. More rogue hacks include putting PowerPoint into presenting mode to keep a screen on, entering into a Zoom meeting with yourself, or tying a mouse to an oscillating fan.

While workers may appear to their employers to be online and grinding away, evidence suggests that many have shut their laptops and gone out into the world. In 2024, for example, OpenTable saw 44% more diners book reservations between noon and 5 p.m. on Fridays than on other weekdays. "Shifts in work culture are definitely impacting dining habits," Debby Soo, OpenTable's CEO, told me over email. Similarly, on Resy, 28% of weekday-afternoon reservations were on Fridays, more than on any other weekday. Zocdoc shared booking data with me that shows that booking appointments on Fridays have crept up slightly since 2021, and that several types of appointments are more common on Fridays, including acupuncture, IUD procedures, and annual physicals.

ActivTrak, a workforce-analytics and productivity-software company, has found that people are in fact calling it quits earlier on Fridays. In an analysis of 71,000 workers at more than 800 companies that are ActivTrak customers, the company found that in late 2024 workers clocked out about an hour earlier on every day of the week than they did in early 2021. The steepest drop was on Fridays, with workers leaving at 3:42 p.m., some 80 minutes earlier than they did four years ago.

Some people may be out and about more on Fridays because their companies encourage them to log off. Buffer, a social media management software company, moved to a four-day workweek in 2020. It started as an experiment but proved so positive for morale that the company has kept it in place, says Hailley Griffis, its head of communications and content. After the initial adjustment of cramming more meetings into the first four days of the week, the schedule now "really helps reduce the amount of stress and anxiety," she says. "It would be very difficult for me to go back to working five days a week, in terms of energy management."

Stok, a sustainability consulting company, started offering "quiet Fridays" every other week in 2020. The goal is to have no emails or meetings that day, and instead allow employees to put their heads down on projects or take the day for themselves, says Madeleine Drake, Stok's director of people and culture. "Each of us has the awareness and autonomy and collaborative spirit to understand what's best each day," she says, adding that some 90% of the company's employees typically participate.

But flexible gigs are getting harder to come by. Job posts offering four-day workweeks have dropped 42% since late 2022, according to data from Indeed, and those offering flexible Fridays are down 18.5%. Employees are likely "more interested than they've ever been" in flexible Fridays and shorter workweeks, Kyle M.K., Indeed's talent-strategy advisor, says. "But the implementation is probably slowing down," in part due to economic pressures and labor market uncertainty, he adds. There's a disconnect between what employees want and what employers are offering, despite growing evidence that shorter workweeks improve productivity and employee satisfaction and that workers are getting fewer things done on Fridays anyway. "I think employers will start to see a decline in the ability to attract top talent and see their turnover grow if they're not focusing on the work-life balance, the burnout, and the stress level of their employees," he says.

Some workers feel there's no reason to hang around on Fridays if they can get all their work done by Thursday. Jenna, who works in sales in Philadelphia and whose name has also been changed, says she felt burnout in 2020 and would have to log off midday because of exhaustion. Nearly five years later, she's taking nearly all of Friday off and expects her clients or coworkers to be doing little on the last day of the workweek, too. Like Annie, she chats with me on a Friday afternoon — between hanging out at a neighborhood brewery and running an errand. It's a typical Friday for her, which can include vet appointments for her dog, trips to the gym, or boozy lunches with a friend. "A Friday-morning Costco run is magical," Jenna tells me.

The trust gap between bosses and workers is widening. A 2024 survey from PwC found that 86% of business executives believe employee trust to be high, but just 67% of employees say they have high trust in their employer. About half of business executives say they have a great extent of trust for senior leadership, while just 38% say the same of entry-level workers.

Employment is a contract, where both parties should have clear communication to maintain trust, says Shaun Hansen, a professor of management at Western Oregon University. If you're instructed or it's implied that you should be working Fridays, then that's the agreement. But employers can build trust by better communicating their expectations and shifting to more flexible arrangements, Hansen says. That might mean analyzing roles and admitting that not every white collar job has to fit a 40-hour, 9-to-5 schedule to be done well. "If you have a job that you can finish on a Thursday night, but your employer is insisting that you're there on Friday, it not only puts you in an ethical pickle, but it also will cause you to probably look for a better job where you have more flexibility," he tells me.

Of course, no-work Fridays are a privilege reserved for white-collar remote or hybrid workers. The more room they have to slack off, the greater a divide we might see in work-life balance across industries. "I feel guilty about it from the level of: What a privilege I have that I have a job that I can even do this," Jenna tells me. But guilt about not being fully honest with her employer as she fields occasional Microsoft Teams pings from the bar? Not so much.

On a Friday afternoon last summer, a friend and I packed up the car to head away for the weekend. I, taking advantage of my then-employer's summer Fridays, left my laptop at home. But I watched as my friend connected her laptop to a hot spot, opened it on the back seat, and began playing a lengthy fireplace video on YouTube that would keep the green circle next to her face on Slack aglow for the ride. I was given her phone to act not just as a road-trip DJ but also as her secretary, responding to any messages from her boss. It took some teamwork, but where there's a will to work less, there's a way.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Trump's mass deportation plans could hinder LA wildfire rebuilding efforts.
• Immigrants form a large part of California's construction workforce, already facing shortages.
• Deportations could worsen housing shortages and increase costs in the construction industry.

Housing policy and immigration researchers say President-elect Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations could hamper efforts to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed by the wildfires in Los Angeles and intensify the region's housing shortage.

Data from the National Association of Home Builders shows immigrants, including those living in the US illegally, make up a significant portion of California's construction workforce, which is already suffering from a shortage of workers.

The extent and scope of possible deportations after Trump takes office on January 20 is still unclear. However, researchers expect even the threat of immigration crackdowns to shrink the available construction workforce.

"When Trump is sworn in, there will be a chilling effect," Ben Metcalf, a housing policy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider. "We don't know how big it will be, but it is 100% certain that there will be fewer undocumented folks showing up at the job lines to try and get on construction jobs."

As of January 15, at least 25 people had been killed by the wildfires in LA County, and the Palisades and Eaton fires — the two largest — were still only partly contained. Over 12,000 structures have been destroyed, while over 40,000 acres have been burned. Nearly 90,000 people are still under evacuation orders.

Housing policy researchers and economists warned that the wildfire destruction will deepen California's already acute housing shortage. LA County was short about 337,000 homes as of 2022, per a report published last year from Zillow.

Any immigration restrictions will hurt labor availability for developers, contractors, and others involved in LA's future rebuilding effort, Eric Finnigan, vice president of demographics research at John Burns Research and Consulting, told Business Insider.

"Everyone in and around Southern California that's in the housing market is going to feel this in some way or another," he said.

An industry built on immigrant labor

The exact number of immigrants who work in the country's construction industry varies among researchers, but foreign-born workers — particularly those living in the country illegally — make up a disproportionate share of the workforce. An estimated 15 to 23% of that overall construction workforce live in the country illegally.

In California, immigrants made up 41% of the construction workforce in 2023, the National Association of Home Builders found. It's unclear what share of LA's construction workforce is in the country illegally.

The construction industry is already facing a significant nationwide labor shortage — estimated at about 500,000 workers last year — that has also increased building costs. The shortage has slowed the pace of new home construction, repairs, and renovations and driven up labor costs.

Some economists and homebuilders have previously told BI that Trump's plans to curtail legal and illegal immigration could further restrict the construction workforce, slow the rate of building, and inflate prices. Many immigrants working in the industry are protected under certain special legal programs, like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status, which were bolstered under President Joe Biden but may be cut by Trump.

Deportations would mean "fewer workers to build the housing that we need, and to some extent, some homes would become vacant because members in their home got deported," said Shane Phillips, housing initiative project manager at UCLA's Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

Sixty-one percent of home builders surveyed by John Burns Research and Consulting in December said they expect potential deportations under Trump to hurt their operations. At the same time, 87% of home builders said they're concerned about Trump's plans to raise tariffs, which economists expect would inflate the costs of building materials imported abroad.

Immigrants who live in the US illegally are also more likely to work in single-family home construction than in larger apartment buildings, multiple experts told BI. This is in part because small, custom home construction projects tend to employ smaller contractors better able to skirt regulations, Metcalf said. Most of the homes that have been destroyed or damaged by the fires are single-family.

"Particularly in the renovation and rebuilding kind of space, where you're just doing a one-off home, that is exactly where the construction industry is particularly reliant on those undocumented workers," Metcalf said.

Chloe East, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies topics like immigration, said slowing the pace of construction by shrinking the immigrant workforce would also hurt the US-born construction workforce.

"When companies cannot find laborers for a building contract, they will also not hire architects and managers for the contract either," she said.

There is precedent for deportations negatively impacting the construction industry. During President Barack Obama's first term, about 400,000 people were deported through the Secure Communities program, a Department of Homeland Security program that identified deportable immigrants in US jails. Research on its impacts found deportations had negative impacts on new home builds. East added the threat of mass deportations causes people who are living in the country illegally to work less to avoid deportation risks.

"Three years after the start of mass deportations, the average county has about 2,000 fewer new housing units built than it would have if mass deportations had not occurred," East told BI, citing an October 2024 paper. "Because there are fewer new homes built, the price of the average new home also goes up."

An unpredictable future with immigration

While Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have pledged to deport millions of immigrants as part of a broader crackdown, it's not clear that their ambitious plans are feasible. Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, told The Wall Street Journal he doesn't know how many people may be deported in the first 100 days and said the administration will likely first go after immigrants who are living in the country illegally and with criminal records rather than broad sweeps of immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

During his first term, Trump oversaw an initial uptick in removals. Still, his administration deported about 1.5 million people — significantly fewer than the 2.9 million people Obama deported during his first term.

On the campaign trail, Vance argued that deportations would lower housing costs, and American-born workers not in the workforce could take on construction jobs.

However, some economists and homebuilders told BI that these conclusions may not hold up. During the pandemic, many older, experienced workers retired, and the pipeline of younger US-born workers isn't sufficient, homebuilders have told BI.

"The only way that we as a country are going to get through our issues with homelessness, the housing price bubble, and the housing crunch issue is to construct more housing," Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the immigrant advocacy nonprofit group National Immigration Forum, told BI. "If we're actually thinking about removing so many of those workers and decimating that industry, it would have a domino effect on our housing shortage issues."

Chad Blocker, a Los Angeles-based immigration attorney, said his firm's clients in the construction industry are attempting to reassure their immigrant workers even as they anticipate a major federal immigration crackdown.

"The immigration enforcement environment is going to change dramatically," Blocker told Business Insider. "There's just a lot of general anxiety among the immigrant communities, including those who are here with lawful status."

Are you a home builder or immigrant construction worker concerned about the impacts of shifting immigration policy? Share your story with these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].

• Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank founded Home Depot in 1978 after they were fired from retailer Handy Dan.
• FBI records show the pair were investigated over claims they tried to bribe Handy Dan workers to decertify their union.
• The investigation ended in 1983 when a prosecutor determined the case was too old and the evidence was "insufficient."

The Home Depot cofounders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank were investigated by the FBI in the 1970s and '80s over claims they used a $140,000 "slush fund" to try to bribe employees at a California home-improvement retailer to decertify their union, newly public records show.

The investigation spanned from 1978 to 1983 and focused on their time as executives at Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers. Marcus, who died at 95 in 2024 with a net worth of more than $10 billion, served as Handy Dan's president. Blank, now 82 and worth over $9 billion, was the company's treasurer.

Marcus and Blank were fired in 1978 after Handy Dan's corporate parent said in securities filings that it found "unauthorized and unacceptable business practices" at the company, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Handy Dan's corporate parent later said the two men used company funds to pay employees to favor union decertification, the Journal reported.

The FBI began investigating in late 1978 after a lawyer for a retail workers labor union filed a complaint to federal authorities based on The Wall Street Journal story.

Federal agents said their investigation substantiated the claim, according to the records. No charges were ever brought; the records cited "insufficient" evidence and "statute of limitations problems." The effort to decertify the union was ultimately unsuccessful.

"Investigation revealed that from early 1977 through early 1978 approximately $140,000 in corporate funds" were paid to workers to influence them, an FBI agent wrote in a memo. "Numerous employees have admitted receiving cash (over and above wages) usually received in plain envelopes."

The FBI interviewed at least eight witnesses, whose names were largely redacted in the records. One anti-union employee told investigators that money "was only furnished to those whom the company thought would eventually vote for the decertification." Clinton Doolen, a manager who died in 1992, recalled Marcus saying that "money was no object" when it came to dislodging the union, the records show.

"Marcus was strictly against the unions and highly obsessed with getting the union completely out," another witness told the FBI. The witness said Marcus told them he was willing to use any means to break the union, and the witness "could see that Marcus really meant it."

Marcus offered a different version of events. In the 1999 book "Built From Scratch," he said he learned some Handy Dan employees wanted to disband their union. He said he hired a lawyer and "directed our personnel department to do whatever fell within the legal guidelines" to support them.

He said that the chairman of Handy Dan's parent company twisted the truth and used an internal investigation "as a tool to eliminate me," and that "neither the Justice Department nor the SEC instigated investigations."

FBI records show Marcus testified in a Securities and Exchange Commission proceeding in July 1978, about three months after he was fired. He declined, through a lawyer, to be interviewed by the FBI. It's not clear if Blank was a subject of inquiry by the SEC.

The SEC and two top-ranking officials at the Marcus Foundation didn't reply to comment requests, nor did Marcus' son Frederick Marcus, who is a director of the foundation. Representatives for Blank, Home Depot, the Justice Department, and the FBI declined to comment.

Business Insider obtained the FBI records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Blank's name was redacted, but his job title matched that of the subject in question. A third person whose name was redacted was also a subject of the investigation.

The FBI submitted a "prosecutive report" to the Justice Department in March 1982. A year later, a federal prosecutor decided not to move forward with the case. The prosecutor didn't believe there was enough evidence against Marcus, Blank, and the third person to indict them, and the union election at the center of the investigation was more than five years old, an FBI memo said.

Marcus and Blank founded Home Depot in 1978, eventually transforming it into the world's largest home-improvement retail company. Its stores aren't unionized; in 2022, the last time a petition was filed at a store for a union election, union advocates suffered a resounding defeat.

Marcus' anti-union sentiments were well known. In 2008, he called a bill that would make it easier for employees to form unions "the demise of civilization," and in 2010, he founded the Job Creators Network, which has opposed bills that would increase union power.

Both men have been significant political donors. Blank has primarily supported Democratic candidates, while Marcus gave millions to Republican candidates, and once said that retail executives who weren't helping Republicans "should be shot."

Read the documents here:

We're halfway through the first month of the year, which means that many of us are already on our way to breaking our New Year's resolutions.

The big picture: You can use ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and other generative AI tools to help you keep those promises you made to yourself at least a little bit longer.

Why it matters: In the near term, at least, you're probably less likely to lose your job to AI than to lose it to someone who understands how to use AI, so you might as well experiment with it.

• If you diligently set resolutions to do more of something, you can use ChatGPT to track and remind you to do those things.
• You can ask Google Gemini to create events in your Google Calendar to block off time for your resolutions.
• If you want to do less of something and feel tempted to do it anyway, you can message or use voice chat with any of the big bots for support.
• OpenAI will even let you video chat (sort of) or call ChatGPT for support.

Between the lines: Many psychologists and productivity experts suggest that an effective way to keep resolutions is to make them "SMART": specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

I tried this prompt: "I would like to eat better. Turn this into a SMART goal," and ChatGPT responded:

To turn "I would like to eat better" into a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound), here's a suggestion:

SMART Goal: "I will eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day and replace sugary snacks with healthier options (like nuts or yogurt) at least five days a week for the next three months to improve my overall diet and well-being."

Breakdown:

• Specific: Focuses on fruits, vegetables, and reducing sugary snacks.
• Measurable: Five servings and five days per week are clear targets.
• Achievable: Practical changes rather than an extreme diet.
• Relevant: Tied to your desire to eat better and improve health.
• Time-bound: A three-month timeline sets a clear endpoint for evaluation.

Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini gave similar results, but both suggested a 30-day timeline instead of three months, and Gemini added a warning that it did not provide medical advice.

One of the biggest differences between searching the web and prompting a chatbot is that you can have a conversation with the chatbot.

• I prompted ChatGPT to give me a weekly meal plan to help me achieve this goal. I added that I was a pescatarian.
• The pescatarian meal plan it gave me was good, but one recipe contained lentils, and I am not a fan. So I asked for another recipe.
• It offered a replacement and updated its memory so it will (I hope) never suggest another lentil again.

Zoom in: Chatbots are like endlessly patient, eager-to-please personal assistants.

• Once you have a meal plan you can ask most chatbots to alter it for more protein, less fat, more affordable ingredients, and so on.
• Then you can ask the chatbot to give you a grocery list and it will even tell you which aisle to find each item.
• Then you can ask it for 10 or 1000 different meal plans. The chatbot will not get overwhelmed (but you might).

Zoom out: You can use similar prompts to help you exercise more, drink less alcohol, drink more water, spend less time mindlessly scrolling, read more books, or do more or less of just about anything you've resolved to do more or less of.

Most chatbots speak multiple languages so they're ideal if your resolution is to learn a new one.

A spokesperson for OpenAI suggested this prompt: "I want to learn [specific skill or language], and I'd like you to act as my personal coach. Please help me create a structured learning plan with weekly goals and daily exercises tailored to a beginner level. Include explanations, examples, and practice activities for each step. "

• If you're having trouble keeping this goal use this prompt: "Provide tips for staying motivated and recommend external resources or tools that complement your guidance. At the end of each week, assess my progress and adjust the plan as needed. Let's start with an overview of [the skill or language] and the first week's plan."

A spokesperson for Anthropic offered this set of prompts for keeping language learning goals: ""Hi Claude! I want to learn Spanish this year. I can practice for about 30 minutes each day, usually in the evenings. I'm a complete beginner and my goal is to order food in Spanish when I visit Mexico next year. Can you help me make a learning plan?"

• Once a week, tell Claude how you're doing. For example: "Hey Claude! This week I learned the Spanish words for different foods, but I'm having trouble remembering them. Can you suggest some fun ways to practice these words."
• You can also ask Claude to create simple practice dialogues for real situations, 15-minute daily exercises, ways to practice while doing everyday tasks and creative ways to keep at it.

Yes, but: If your resolutions involve spending less time immersed in your digital devices, using AI to keep you on goal could be tricky.

• Also, generative AI is a notorious energy hog, and all of our prompts have a significant impact on the environment.
• You may want to check your chatbot-of-choice's privacy policy and practices.

President-elect Trump is pledging his full support for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, telling organizers in a meeting late Wednesday that he wants to help the area recover from the devastating wildfires.

Why it matters: The fires that have destroyed more than 10,000 homes have left Los Angeles County with a massive rebuild. Trump told the local Olympic organizing committee, LA28, that he wants to ensure the games go on without a hitch, according to a source briefed on his meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Casey Wasserman, LA28's president and chairman.

• "These are America's Olympics," Trump told Wasserman. "These are more important than ever to L.A. and I'm going to be supportive in every way possible and make them the greatest games."

Zoom in: Trump is a huge sports fan. Los Angeles was awarded the 2028 Summer Games during his first term in 2017, and he'll be in the final months of his second term when L.A. will host the Olympics for the first time since 1984.

• Trump plans to visit areas ravaged by the fires soon after he's sworn in on Monday, which Wasserman said he appreciated.

"As a lifelong Angeleno, I shared our sentiments for President-elect Trump's continued support in Los Angeles amid the devastation in our region," Wasserman said in a statement to Axios.

• The L.A. Olympics are scheduled to begin July 14, 2028.
• The Paralympics will follow, starting Aug. 15, 2028.

Between the lines: Joining Trump in his meeting with Wasserman were Melania Trump and film director Brett Ratner, who's shooting an Amazon documentary on the once and future first lady.

President Biden in his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday took aim at Big Tech and warned of "dangerous consequences" if a "concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people" goes unchecked.

Why it matters: Biden's warning that an "oligarchy" was "taking shape in America" comes as the world's richest person, Elon Musk prepares to co-lead the incoming Trump administration's new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as his companies including SpaceX hold government contracts.

• Meanwhile, Big Tech CEOs have recently moveds to embrace President-elect Trump — with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg overhauling longstanding policies and the board of Facebook and Instagram's parent company to be more Trump-friendly.

What he's saying: In his address, Biden pointed to President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address in which he warned of "military-industrial complex" and "'the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power."

• Six decades later, Biden said he's "equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech industrial complex."
• Americans "are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power," Biden said.
• "The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking," added Biden, in reference to Meta's move to replace checking facts with X-style community notes.
• "The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit."

Of note: Biden called artificial intelligence the "most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time."

• He added: "AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation."

Go deeper: Biden jabs at Trump in farewell address, but pledges peaceful transition

• Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, has launched its first orbital rocket, New Glenn.
• New Glenn is one of the largest, most powerful rockets ever built.
• The maiden launch marks a milestone for Blue Origin.

Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin has entered the rocket big leagues.

At 2:03 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Blue Origin's 32-story-tall New Glenn rocket fired its seven engines and climbed atop a cloud of fire and steam for the first time, roaring into the skies above the launch complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"LIFTOFF! New Glenn is beginning its first ever ascent toward the stars," Blue Origin wrote in an X post on Thursday morning.

Bezos, who was present at New Glenn's launch, uploaded a minute-long clip of the launch on X shortly after liftoff.

New Glenn belongs to a new generation of the largest, most powerful rockets ever built, next to Elon Musk's SpaceX's Starship and NASA's new moon rocket, the Space Launch System.

These heavy-lift vehicles have roughly the size and heft of NASA's Saturn V — the rocket that launched Apollo astronauts to the moon — but they're designed for even more ambitious goals.

Musk and Bezos have espoused plans to establish permanent human settlements on Mars and on a giant space station, respectively. NASA aims to build permanent science stations on and around the moon and eventually send astronauts to Mars with SpaceX's and Blue Origins' help.

First, though, Blue Origin needs to strengthen its business. New Glenn's maiden launch positions the company to fly payloads to orbit and challenge SpaceX's dominance.

Blue Origin was originally planning to launch New Glenn on Monday. The launch was repeatedly delayed and eventually postponed after Blue Origin said they had to "troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue."

"I'm incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp on Thursday. "We knew landing our booster, So You're Telling Me There's a Chance, on the first try was an ambitious goal. We'll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone."

Blue Origin loses booster in an otherwise successful launch

In a statement two hours after the launch, Blue Origin confirmed that it had lost its booster after it separated from the rocket

The booster was meant to return to Earth and land on a platform in the ocean, which would have been the company's first step to proving the reusability of its booster.

This makes SpaceX the only company to have recovered and reused a rocket's booster. The Musk-led rocket company has been retrieving its much smaller Falcon 9 first-stage boosters for reuse in this way for years.

SpaceX's Starship booster recently proved a different landing method, lowering itself into the waiting arms of a landing tower in October.

Like Falcon 9, and unlike Starship, New Glenn is only partially reusable — its second stage is not designed for reuse.

Musk congratulated Bezos shortly after New Glenn's successful liftoff.

"Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt! @JeffBezos," Musk wrote on X.

Blue Origin's future depends on New Glenn

Trailing behind SpaceX, Blue Origin is one of the leading companies paving the way for reusable rockets, which can help slash spaceflight costs.

Weeks before New Glenn's debut launch, during the New York Times 2024 DealBook Summit, Bezos said Blue Origin "is not a very good business, yet."

He added, "It's going to be the best business that I've ever been involved in."

New Glenn is Blue Origin's second rocket, but its first designed to insert itself into Earth's orbit.

The company began construction on New Glenn in 2016. Bezos has said he isn't happy with the company's speed of progress.

"Blue Origin needs to be much faster," Bezos told Lex Fridman in December 2023. "And it's one of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago."

For comparison, SpaceX began developing its first orbital rocket, the Falcon 9 v1.0, in 2005. It made its debut launch five years later, in 2010.

That said, New Glenn is more than three times more powerful than SpaceX's first Falcon 9.

Blue Origin's comparatively tiny New Shepard rocket, which carries paying customers and other payloads to suborbital space, has been reused nearly 30 times since its first launch in 2015.

New Glenn's maiden voyage is carrying a test payload

As Blue Origin's barge sails the booster back to the coast, the rocket's second stage is scheduled to remain in space for about six hours while carrying the company's prototype Blue Ring pathfinder spacecraft.

Blue Ring is designed for multiple mission types, including transporting, refueling, and communicating with other craft in space. The pathfinder prototype launched on Thursday is a test launch and is set to remain onboard and not be deployed into space.

"There is a growing demand to quickly move and position equipment and infrastructure in multiple orbits," Limp wrote on X in December. Blue Ring is designed to fulfill that need for both government and commercial customers, the Blue Origin CEO said.

The Federal Aviation Administration has granted Blue Origin a license to launch New Glenn to orbit from Cape Canaveral for the next five years.

Blue Origin's customers include NASA, Amazon, and several telecommunications providers.

President-elect Trump will move to "preserve" TikTok, said his pick for national security adviser, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), on Wednesday — as a potential nationwide ban looms.

The big picture: It's not immediately clear what action Trump could take if the U.S. Supreme Court were to uphold a bipartisan law that would, unless sold to a U.S. firm, ban the popular video app that's owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

• The justices seem inclined to uphold the law, which could take effect as soon as this Sunday.

Driving the news: Fox News' Bret Baier asked Waltz in an interview Wednesday about how true a Washington Post report headlined "Trump considers executive order hoping to 'save TikTok' from ban or sale in U.S. law" was.

• "If the Supreme Court comes out with a ruling in favor of the law, President Trump has been very clear," Waltz said on Fox News' "Special Report."
• "Number one, TikTok is a great platform that many Americans use, and was great for his campaign in getting his message out. But, number two, he is going to protect their data," he said. 
• "We're going to find a way to preserve it but protect people's data. And that's the deal that will be in front of us."

Zoom in: Waltz acknowledged there are "people out there who don't want the U.S. government seeing all their data and passwords" and "we certainly don't want the Chinese government seeing all their data and passwords."

• But he said that Trump "is a dealmaker," adding: "I don't want to get ahead of our executive orders but we're going to create the space to — to put that deal in place."

Between the lines: University of Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein told the Washington Post Wednesday that executive orders were "not magical documents" that would stop a ban from going into effect.

• "TikTok will still be banned, and it will still be illegal for Apple and Google to do business with them," said Rozenshtein, a former national security adviser to the Justice Department.
• "But it will make the president's intention not to enforce the law that much more official."

State of play: President Biden signed into law a bill that passed last year requiring ByteDance to either sell TikTok to an American. company or shut down operations in the U.S. by Jan. 19.

• Trump asked the Supreme Court last month to pause the TikTok ban after previously advocating for one before flip-flopping.
• During oral arguments last week, most of the justices focused on the fact that under the law, TikTok could continue operations if it used an algorithm other than ByteDance's and that as a Chinese company it doesn't have First Amendment rights, per Axios' Sam Baker.

What we're watching: Biden could push the ban's deadline by 90 days if ByteDance makes progress toward divestiture in the U.S. by Sunday, the day before Trump's inauguration.

• Rozenshtein noted on X Wednesday that the Supreme Court's website suggests it will release an order list on Tuesday, two days after the law is due to take effect.
• "So they might let the law go into effect without actually saying anything either way," he added.

More from Axios:

• Who could buy TikTok to avoid a ban
• What will happen to TikTok on Jan. 19
• TikTok ban timeline: Here's where things stand

• A new Pentagon report said its troops earn more than most of their full-time civilian counterparts.
• It said that after one year of service, the top 70th percentile of enlisted earners get about $1,000 a week.
• But that figure includes far more than base pay, which Congress recently voted to raise significantly.

A Pentagon report said its troops often earn more than their civilian counterparts and would stand to lose out if they were to leave the service.

"Our military compensation package is strongly competitive with the civilian labor market," it wrote in its review for military compensation, which is released every four years.

The report comes just a month after Congress voted to raise basic pay for US troops by 4.5% across the board, citing concerns about recruitment difficulties and food insecurity among soldiers. Junior enlisted troops, who hold rank equivalents of E-1 to E-4, received an even bigger raise of 14.5%.

Many of these troops were earning less than $30,000 a year in basic pay, and the bill passed in December aimed to raise their salaries to that level.

However, the Pentagon uses a different metric that extends beyond basic pay, which it calls regular military compensation. This includes benefits such as tax advantages and housing and food allowances.

By that measure, the Defense Department's new report found that "military pay among Junior Enlisted Personnel is higher than 90th percentile of earnings for civilians with similar education and experience."

"Basic pay is a blunt and costly instrument," the report said. "And should be used only when there are system-wide problems, such as widespread retention and recruiting shortfalls, which cannot be solved more efficiently with other policy instruments."

Its findings relied largely on a benchmark that compared two things: the 70th percentile of compensation for enlisted soldiers and the 70th percentile earnings for full-time civilian workers with the same education.

The report said that for enlisted soldiers with one year of service, the top 70th percentile received about $1,000 a week in regular military compensation.

Meanwhile, the report listed the 70th percentile of civilian earners as needing 10 years of work experience to get $1,000 a week.

The Pentagon said that for enlisted soldiers with 10 years of service, the top 70th percentile of earners gets $1,500 a week.

On the other hand, the 70th percentile of officer earnings stands at $1,500 a week for those with one year of service, going up to nearly $2,500 a week for those with 10 years of service.

It compared those earnings to the 70th percentile of civilians with college degrees, whom the report said consistently earn about $200 to $300 less a week.

Overall, the report said that enlisted personnel earn more than 83 out of 100 civilian workers with the same education and experience, and officers earn more than 76 out of 100 civilian workers with the same background.

The Pentagon mostly recommended "quality-of-life" improvements instead of a pay bump. It asked the military to look more into expanding its retirement savings programs, providing better childcare access for serving parents, and asking its personnel to move less often to avoid hurting the careers of soldiers' spouses.

In its budget overview for the 2025 financial year ending September 30, the Defense Department said troop pay and benefits make up about 30% of its total budget request for $850 billion.

In the new report, the Pentagon said its current pay structure is mostly working.

"Recent retention is strong, recruiting has significantly improved, and favorable comparisons between military and civilian pay suggests that levels of basic pay are more than adequate," it said.

• Sephora is embarking on the largest capital project in its history — a complete redesign of its stores.
• Sephora CEO Artemis Patrick said the redesign would change how its North American shops look.
• She said the refresh aimed to provide a consistent consumer experience across all stores.

Sephora is betting big on its brick-and-mortar strategy by giving its entire fleet of North American stores a facelift.

The LVMH-owned beauty retailer, which operates over 2,700 stores in 35 countries, will revamp the design of all its North American stores in the next five years, CEO Artemis Patrick said at the National Retail Federation's Big Show on Monday.

Patrick said it will be the "largest capital project for Sephora in its history." She added that while some stores will only see minor changes, others can expect "major redesigns."

She said the company talked to "millions of consumers" and used heat maps to understand its customers' shopping habits.

One thing the retailer is rethinking is gondolas — stand-alone islands in its stores that display products from one particular brand. She said that the gondolas are "quite expensive."

"We're not a cheap date," Patrick said. "And we don't want our brands to be spending a ton of money on building these amazing fixtures, and then it's not productive and doesn't work out."

Instead, she said that Sephora was testing out a new layout format focused on Sephora's four key product categories — makeup, skincare, fragrance, and hair care — which would make updating stores easier.

Another change shoppers can expect to see is the location of the beauty studios, which will be moved to the sides of the stores.

"We talked to our millions of consumers, and the reality is, they didn't want their makeup being done in the window," she said. "Not shocking."

Patrick said that Sephora is also rethinking the section near the checkout counters where the mini sizes of products are placed.

She said that with Sephora's staff billing a fourth of customers via mobile devices around the stores, the minis section could be broken up and moved to the front of the stores instead of near the checkout counters.

She added that the redesign, as a whole, aimed to give Sephora customers in different regions a consistent experience.

"One of the things that was really, really important to us was ensuring that no matter what, where you are, whether you are in our Soho store, you're in Boise, Idaho, or you're in Vancouver Island, that experience is the same no matter where you go," she said.

She added, "Because we do believe we have that consistency with our beauty advisors, but maybe not necessarily in all our retail stores."

Sephora contributed heavily to LVMH's "selective retailing" division. In the first half of 2024, ending June 30, the division raked in $8.6 billion in revenues and saw a 7% increase in profits from recurring operations compared to the year before.

Its biggest competitors in the US include the cosmetics store chain Ulta Beauty and department store chains Nordstrom and Macy's. Macy's recently announced that it plans to shutter 150 stores by the end of 2026.

Representatives of Sephora declined to comment in response to a request from Business Insider.

• Cameron Diaz says she spent her 10-year break from acting "trying to stay alive just like every other mother."
• But she's set to make a return to Hollywood in the Netflix movie "Back in Action."
• Diaz joins a long list of celebrities — like Tom Brady — who have unretired.

Cameron Diaz was busy being a mother during her 10-year break from making movies.

In a video uploaded onto the "Still Watching Netflix" channel on YouTube, which goes behind the scenes on Netflix shows, Diaz spoke about what she had been up to during her hiatus.

"I was not keeping up with any kind of training," Diaz, 52, said. "I did nothing public."

The actor — known for films such as "Charlie's Angel" and "Vanilla Sky" — added that she "said no to everything," although she did start a wine company.

"That was what I was putting most of my focus on, if I was doing anything other than just sort of being a mom and living my day-to-day," Diaz said. "And that was pretty much it. I'm just trying to stay alive just like every other mother. I'm just trying to keep it going."

Diaz married Benji Madden of the rock band Good Charlotte in 2015. They welcomed their daughter, Raddix, in 2019 and their son, Cardinal, in 2024.

In an Entertainment Weekly interview in 2018, Diaz said she was "semi-retired" as an actor, before clarifying she was "actually retired." Per her IMDB page, her last role was in 2014's "Annie."

During Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit last year, Diaz shared that her decision to stop acting was something she "had to do."

"It felt like something I had to do to reclaim my own life. And I just really didn't care about anything else. Nobody's opinion, nobody's success, no one's offer, no one's anything could change my mind about my decision of taking care of myself and building the life that I really wanted to have," Diaz said. "It really comes to: What are you passionate about? For me, it was to build my family."

Diaz is set to return to acting in the Netflix movie "Back in Action," which premieres January 17 and also stars Jamie Foxx.

She joins a long list of celebrities who have unretired — most notably, Tom Brady.

Six weeks after retiring from the NFL in 2022, Brady announced he was unretiring in a post on X.

"I'm coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa," Brady wrote. "Unfinished business. LFG."

More recently, in December, Jim Carrey, 62, walked back on his comments about coming out of retirement because he was strapped for cash.

"I said I'd like to retire, but I think I was talking more about power-resting. Because as soon as a good idea comes your way, or a group of people that you really enjoyed working with and stuff, it just — things tend to change," Carrey told Comicbook.com.

A representative for Diaz did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.