• "The White Lotus" star Patrick Schwarzenegger says he sometimes wishes he didn't have a famous last name.
• He says people who criticize him for being a nepo baby don't see the work he puts into his career.
• But nepotism isn't only in Hollywood; the business and tech worlds have their fair share of nepo babies, too.

Patrick Schwarzenegger, 31, says a famous last name like his can sometimes be a burden — especially since he's also trying to break into Hollywood.

In an interview with The Times published on Sunday,"The White Lotus" star pushed back against nepotism claims from people who say that he only landed the role on the award-winning HBO show because of his familial ties.

"I know there are people who'll say I only got this role because of who my dad is," Schwarzenegger told The Times. "They're not seeing that I've had 10 years of acting classes, put on school plays every week, worked on my characters for hours on end or the hundreds of rejected auditions I've been on."

Schwarzenegger is the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a bodybuilder, actor, and former governor of California, and Maria Shriver, a journalist and niece of former US President John F. Kennedy.

"Of course, it's frustrating and you can get boxed in and you think at that moment, I wish I didn't have my last name. But that's a small moment. I would never trade my life with anyone," Schwarzenegger said.

At the end of the day, he is "very fortunate" to have the life and family that he has, including "the lessons and values" that his famous parents have instilled in him.

Nepotism is everywhere

Nepo babies, or "nepotism babies" have been a hot topic since New York Magazine published a story in 2022 about the famous kids of Hollywood celebrities.

Many nepo babies have criticized the label, saying that it diminishes the work that they put into their careers.

In June, Emma Roberts — Julia Robert's niece — called out the use of the label, saying that people who criticize nepo babies "don't see all the rejection along the way."

Some parents of nepo babies have weighed in on the discourse, too.

In 2023, Tom Hanks — whose son was cast to play his younger self in the film "A Man Called Otto" — said it's no surprise that all four of his kids are in the industry since it's "the family business." He added that if he had been in a different field, "the whole family would be putting in time at some point."

But nepo babies aren't just in Hollywood; The business and tech worlds have their fair share, too.

All five of LVMH chairman and billionaire Bernard Arnault's children work at the company and its brands.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the eldest sons of US President Donald Trump, manage the Trump Organization together.

Even regular people who aren't rich or famous use their connections to gain an advantage in the workplace.

A 2023 survey of 2,000 workers conducted by Applied, a recruitment company, showed that 68% of Gen Z workers have used nepotism to land a job offer.

Career coaches previously told Business Insider that it's fine to use your network sometimes.

"Using your network and personal connection to learn information and gain introductions is generally seen as acceptable, even sensible. However, using your network to get unfairly hired into a role you may not be deserving of is generally seen as unacceptable," Hannah Salton, a UK-based career coach and author, said.

Although most reputable companies tend to have fair recruitment processes that don't allow nepotism, in practice, it's often hard to ensure impartial hiring always happens, she said.

A representative for Schwarzenegger did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

• More than one million federal employees replied to DOGE's productivity email.
• That is less than half of the federal government, which employs over 2.4 million people.
• The initial email request was met with confusion, with some agencies telling staff not to respond.

The White House said on Tuesday that less than half of all federal employees responded to an email from the Office of Personnel Management asking them to send in a list of their accomplishments.

"I can announce that we have had more than one million workers who have chosen to participate in this very simple task of, again, sending five bullet points to your direct supervisor or manager, cc'ing OPM," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

"All federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving," Leavitt added.

The federal government employs more than 2.4 million people.

The Department of Government Efficiency's first deadline for workers to send in bullet-point summaries passed at 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday.

The initial request for responses from all federal workers came via a memo from the OPM on Saturday. DOGE leader Elon Musk said on the same day that failure to respond by the deadline "will be taken as a resignation."

Musk appeared to walk back this ultimatum on Monday. He wrote in an X post that federal workers will be given "another chance" if they have not emailed in their list of accomplishments yet.

"Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," Musk wrote.

The DOGE email request was met with confusion and conflicting guidance across the government.

At least eight agencies, including the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services, said their workers didn't have to respond to OPM's email.

President Donald Trump has publicly backed Musk and DOGE's move, and on Monday told reporters that he thinks the OPM email request is a "pretty ingenious idea."

"So by asking the question, 'Tell us what you did this week,' what he's doing is saying, 'Are you actually working?'" Trump told reporters. "And then, if you don't answer, you are sort of semi-fired, or you're fired."

Musk first pitched the idea of having a government-efficiency commission to Trump during a livestreamed conversation on X in August. Musk told Trump then that he'd be "happy to help out" with such an effort.

Musk was formally announced as the leader of DOGE in November after Trump won the election.

Last month, the Trump administration gave federal employees from January 28 to February 6 to accept a buyout offer and leave their jobs. A spokesperson for OPM told BI on February 6 that over 40,000 workers have taken the buyout.

Representatives for the White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• The White House released the name of the DOGE office's acting administrator.
• It is Amy Gleason, a former nurse who has spent decades in the medical records space.
• For weeks, it was unclear who, if anyone, occupied the position.

The White House on Tuesday named Amy Gleason as the acting administrator of the White House DOGE office following weeks of confusion over who was leading the agency.

A White House official confirmed Gleason's role to Business Insider. As of early Tuesday evening, Gleason hadn't publicly commented on the appointment, and her account on X was private. In her bio, she identified herself as a "former COVID response with US Digital Service."

Representatives for the White House, Musk, DOGE, and Gleason did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Gleason worked in multiple roles at the United States Digital Service, the Obama-era agency that President Donald Trump rebranded as the US DOGE Service, according to her LinkedIn. She served as a Digital Services Expert at the agency from October 2018 to December 2021 and as a Senior Advisor starting in January 2025, according to the LinkedIn page.

Jonathan Kamens, a former USDS engineer who was fired on February 14, and a current USDS employee both told Business Insider that Gleason rejoined the agency between the election and the inauguration.

"From our view, she has been as surprised by things coming out of DOGE as the rest of us," the current employee said. They said that they do not see her as "part of Musk's crew."

Kamens said he was told Gleason was there to help with the transition to the second Trump administration.

Gleason's background stretches into the private sector, too, and even bumps up against the profiles of other White House DOGE Office staffers, per her LinkedIn profile. The page indicates that Gleason worked as the chief product officer at Russell Street Ventures between November 2021 and December 2024, a health industry investment firm founded by Brad Smith, whom BI previously identified as a DOGE employee. Kendall Lindemann, whom BI also identified as working for the DOGE effort, also worked at Russell Street Ventures.

Gleason's path has differed from some of the private sector titans and young engineers involved in the White House DOGE Office. She started out as a nurse, according to a 2022 podcast appearance with the company Syllable. Gleason also said on the podcast she previously cofounded a company to help patients with a chronic disease, sparked by the experience of coordinating care after her daughter was diagnosed with a rare illness.

"The rest of my career is mainly electronic medical records starting as a ER nurse," Gleason said on the podcast.

According to her LinkedIn, Gleason has worked in senior positions at a variety of healthcare companies since the late 1990s.

The Obama White House honored Gleason as a "Champion of Change" for her work in the medical records space.

Though Elon Musk is closely associated with the DOGE office, the White House previously said in a court filing that he is not the group's leader and instead serves as a senior advisor to Trump. BI previously reported that Musk's title was written as "unlisted" in a White House record.

For weeks, the White House had declined to say whether there was a DOGE administrator — let alone name one. Trump created the position on Inauguration Day. He had previously said Elon Musk would lead the DOGE office, though Musk was never named to the position.

On Tuesday, reporters repeatedly pressed White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on who was the DOGE administrator. After her briefing concluded, Semafor first reported Gleason's role.

Trump is set to hold his first formal cabinet meeting on Wednesday, where Leavitt said he'll be discussing the DOGE office's work.

Musk is expected to be in attendance. It's unclear if Gleason will be too.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Jack Newsham contributed to this report.

• OpenAI's former CTO, Mira Murati, debuted her new startup, Thinking Machine Labs, last week.
• The startup is aiming to raise $1 billion at a roughly $9 billion valuation, according to sources familiar with the matter.
• A spokesperson for Murati declined to comment.

Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machine Labs, is aiming to raise a $1 billion funding round at a roughly $9 billion valuation, sources familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The round is still in progress, and details could change. A spokesperson for Murati declined to comment.

A $9 billion valuation is unusually high for a startup less than a year old, but investors have been eager to back AI startups, especially those founded by former OpenAI employees.

Murati previously spent six and a half years at OpenAI, where she served as CTO, working on the development of ChatGPT and other AI research initiatives. She was briefly appointed interim CEO in November 2023 after OpenAI's board abruptly fired Sam Altman, a move that sparked turmoil within the company. After Altman's reinstatement as CEO, Murati resumed her role as CTO.v

What exactly Murati would do after leaving OpenAI last year has been a favorite Silicon Valley parlor game in recent months, with few details until the company emerged from stealth last week.

In a blog post, Murati positioned the startup as an artificial intelligence research and product lab focused on making AI more accessible.

"To bridge the gaps, we're building Thinking Machines Lab to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable," Murati wrote.

Murati has recruited a long list of engineers and AI researchers from her former employer, OpenAI, and Meta and Anthropic. Several of Murati's former coworkers, including John Schulman, who co-led the creation of ChatGPT; Jonathan Lachman, formerly the head of special projects at OpenAI; Barret Zoph, co-creator of ChatGPT; and Alexander Kirillov, who worked closely with Murati on ChatGPT's voice mode, are also working at Thinking Machines Lab.

Murati is one of a handful of former OpenAI executives who have gone on to launch their own companies. Former OpenAI chief scientist and cofounder Ilya Sutskever left the company in May 2024 and started Safe Superintelligence Inc. soon after leaving. Dario and Daniela Amodei also worked at OpenAI and founded Anthropic in 2021.

• Amazon is set to unveil an AI-enhanced Alexa upgrade that could boost publisher exposure.
• Amazon is negotiating licensing deals with publishers for the new feature, people familiar told BI.
• Some publishers are banking on exposure via Alexa as traffic from other tech platforms has declined.

Amazon is expected to unveil an AI-enhanced upgrade to its Alexa voice tech at an event in New York on Wednesday, and some publishers hope it will lead to broader exposure for their outlets.

As part of the work behind the scenes, Amazon is hammering out licensing deals with publishers to showcase their news and information in the feature, two people familiar with the talks told Business Insider. They asked for anonymity to discuss private deals; their identities are known to BI. Axios previously reported that Amazon had been reaching out to publishers.

Amazon has also held talks with companies such as Uber, Instacart, and Ticketmaster for the feature, BI previously reported.

Under the proposed terms of these new media deals, users of Amazon devices could hear content from a publisher read aloud when they ask Alexa for information on an Echo smart speaker, or see publisher citations with links on the Echo Show, the version with a screen.

Some publishers told BI they hoped the upgrade would be a big improvement over their earlier experience with Amazon's voice assistant. Alexa, which launched in 2014, hasn't lived up to expectations in recent years, as BI has previously reported. Publishers and other companies were encouraged to create Alexa skills, or shortcuts that let users perform tasks like shopping or getting news, but engagement with them was generally poor.

Publishers see an opportunity here, even if smart speakers have underwhelmed as a category. Facebook and Google search have deprioritized news, and publishers are looking for traffic anywhere they can get it. According to Amazon, Alexa is installed on more than 100 million devices, a sizable audience for publishers to get in front of.

One publishing exec told BI that Amazon was paying "good" but not significant money to feature publisher content, but stressed that the biggest benefit was the ability to up their exposure in Amazon's sprawling ecosystem.

AI deals have been a way for publishers to offset declines in audience and advertising while letting AI companies use their content to answer queries and train their tech. OpenAI, for example, has signed deals with companies like News Corp. and Business Insider parent Axel Springer.

• Tracy Block thought that she would own a home and be married by 40.
• Last year, still single, she decided that she wanted to celebrate her 40th birthday with her parents.
• The three of them traveled to Greece and boarded an adults-only Virgin Voyages cruise.

I'm one of those people who prefers to escape on her birthday. I like to take a trip and get out of Dodge. After spending my 30th sipping bubbly at the Veuve Clicquot Champagne house in Reims, France, I knew I had to plan something epic for my 40th.

But my road to 40 was not easy. I spent most of my 30s feeling lost. I'd moved to Colorado from Miami and back, which left me searching for answers. I thought that by this point in my life, I would have a husband and own a home.

During the year leading up, jealousy got the best of me. My social media feeds were plastered with highlights of how others were celebrating their 40th birthdays — spouses throwing fabulous soirees and whisking their partners away to exotic destinations.

After a vent sesh with a close friend, I was reminded not to harp on what I don't have but to focus on what I do: my parents.

So, I went over to their house for dinner and told them that since I didn't have that special someone to share my 40th with, I wanted to spend it with them. Like always, they understood and answered my call with open arms.

When I suggested going to Greece, my dad recommended a cruise because he couldn't imagine lugging bags while island hopping. When I mentioned an adults-only Virgin Voyages, he wasn't convinced, assuming it would be too young for two baby boomers. But despite my parents being in their late 60s, I knew they could still hang with the best of them.

We compared six different cruises — including options from Seabourn and Princess — but Virgin's "Greek Island Glow" seemed like the best fit. My dad did a bit more research and found positive reviews by older adults who'd traveled on the ship and finally caved. I paid $4,400 for an XL Sea Terrace cabin, which included $400 credit on the cruise.

Three days in Athens

Last June, after a champagne toast in the airport lounge, we boarded our flight and awoke in Athens. We immediately hit a walking foodie tour for our first bite of authentic spanakopita and sip of Greek wine. We strolled the Plaka and shopped for olive oil and honey and then toasted to sunset from the rooftop of the Hotel Grande Bretagne with the Acropolis illuminated nearby.

We spent the second day sightseeing in Athens, dropping by the Panathenaic Stadium, watching the changing of the guard at the Presidential Mansion, and enjoying panoramic views from atop Lycabettus Hill.

At dinner, we enjoyed Greek tapas — gigante beans and fava purée became quick favorites — and were served our first taste of sweet, piney Mastiha, a native digestif. There was lots of laughter and many inside jokes were born.

On our final day in Athens, we were ferried to Aegina, part of the Saronic Islands. We explored narrow alleys offering peekaboo marina views. Home to the PDO red pistachio, we went nuts shopping and enjoyed pistachio gelato.

Cruising with my parents

On day four, it was time to greet our home for the next seven nights: The Resilient Lady — quite apropos, all things considered. Once we were checked into our cabins, I surprised my parents with custom-made insulated wine tumblers sporting my birthday theme. At sail away, we clinked some more, and before long, it was party time along the Aegean Sea.

We all made the most of our time on the cruise. I worked out each morning while my parents enjoyed breakfast on their terrace. We sunbathed together. My mom and I got salon blowouts. I splurged on a spa visit. We played trivia and then blackjack in the casino. I made friends over nightcaps and posed at Instagrammable photo spots.

On our first morning, I woke up to a stunning at-sea sunrise just outside Santorini. After we tendered, our private driver took us on a scenic tour of the spectacular cliff-carved homes from atop Oia and whitewashed churches with blue-domed roofing abound.

We also made stops in Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese islands, to tour the ruins and windmills, and Bodrum, a town in Turkey, where we strolled the bazaar in the morning and spent the afternoon at the Bodrum EDITION near the Yalikavak Marina.

The big 4-0

On the morning of my 40th birthday in Mykonos, I treated myself to something memorable. Since friends had professional photos of their engagements and newborns, I booked a $250 photo shoot to commemorate the day.

My parents went off to explore Old Town while I strutted in a louder-than-life fuschia dress that stopped multiple tour groups in their tracks — certainly not for the modest.

We spent the afternoon at a posh beach club, lazing in a cabana before heading back to the boat. To my surprise, my parents had worked with the cabin stewards to outfit mine with 40th birthday decorations.

The evening felt special. While the 30-year-old me visiting Mykonos would've planned for an all-nighter at the clubs, we instead ushered in my new decade at an intimate al fresco dinner savoring an incredible sunset. We feasted on the fat of the land, finally tried loukoumades for dessert, and belted "Ya Mas!" over more local vino and Mastiha.

At dinner, it was as if time stood still. In that moment, I was able to set aside what I felt were my personal failures. Instead, I was able to focus on what was right in front of me: the two selfless humans who brought me into this world, out of pure love, and I held on tightly to that feeling.

While our Greek getaway didn't send me Prince Charming or the keys to my dream home, it offered a priceless perspective. It strengthened my ties with my aging parents and gave me gratitude for them in a life where nothing is promised.

• Last week's Pentagon leadership purge included firing top JAG officers, raising alarm.
• JAGs are crucial legal advisors, ensuring military actions comply with the law.
• "I do see this as one of the bigger threats to the rule of law," an expert in military law told BI.

When President Donald Trump's Pentagon chief sacked top military officers last week, the most startling firings were the lawyers, legal experts told Business Insider.

The abrupt firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., drew condemnation and spurred headlines. But it was the dismissal of top JAG officers — a single line of text at the end of the Friday night announcement — that had those aware of the potential deep impacts on military legal affairs more concerned.

"These firings with the JAGs are more concerning than the firings of the four stars that accompany them," Franklin D. Rosenblatt, a retired US Army JAG officer and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told Business Insider in a phone interview on Monday.

"I don't want to engage in hyperbole, but I do see this as one of the bigger threats to the rule of law that the Pentagon has faced in a long time."

In the same memo in which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that he was removing Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and Air Force Vice Chief General James Slife, he also announced a solicitation for "nominations for the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy and Air Force," effectively removing these three senior JAG officers.

The move deepened a sense of upheaval as the administration shifts departmental funding priorities and invites DOGE cost-cutters fresh from gutting USAID.

Speaking to reporters on Monday about the recent developments, Hegseth called the JAGs potential "roadblocks" to the president's orders.

"We are looking for the best" to replace the fired officers, he said, suggesting that those career officers were not well suited to the task of providing the best recommendations to commanders.

When reached for comment, the Office of the Secretary of Defense directed BI to the transcript of the engagement between Hegseth and reporters in which he characterized the dismissed officers as potential hindrances.

The commander's 'right hand'

Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, was one of the first to raise concerns about the firing of the JAG officers, writing on X last Friday that purging JAG officers worries him the most.

Judge advocates general, or JAGs, are military lawyers and part of the niche and often complex realm of military justice and oversight. Legal experts say that the decision to kneecap these apolitical roles and replace them with a fresh lot could cause harmful ripple effects.

JAG officers serve as legal advisors to commanders at all levels, from battalion leadership directing gunfights and interrogations during the Global War on Terror to the quiet corridors of the Pentagon, where top JAGs can advise commanders spread out across the globe. They don't set rules for commanders to follow, Rosenblatt said, but instead advise leaders on the legality of their desired employment of US forces.

Mark Nevitt, a former Navy JAG, said in a Just Security post that "summary removals" of these lawyers are "unprecedented in modern times." He said the "firing without apparent cause of the service JAGs is particularly disturbing."

These officers practice a wide range of law, supporting not just the military force employment decisions but also endeavors associated with contract and fiscal law through litigation of disputes and advising contracting boards.

JAGs are the military equivalent to general counsels at large companies that advise CEOs on the legality of policies and practices, often recommending courses of action to avoid unnecessary liabilities.

"JAGs are instrumental in that they're the right hand of commanders and helping commanders affect their command vision and their goals," said Rachel VanLandingham, a law professor at Southwestern Law School and former Air Force JAG, in a phone call with BI on Monday.

"We have the Constitution, and flowing from that, a plethora of federal laws and federal regulations that apply to the military," she said.

JAGs are guardrails for commanders, VanLandingham said. This role is particularly important should a military leader, or even the commander-in-chief, consider wading into the gray areas of military law, like Trump's previous musings about deploying active-duty troops to American cities.

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week that Trump is a rogue president, said that he was deeply troubled by the JAG departures.

"One has to ask why JAG leadership was singled out for replacement," Kendall wrote, highlighting the authority JAGs have to advise commanders on whether an order from a president or the secretary of defense is lawful.

'A chilling message'

Prior to Hegseth's Friday memo on the big shake-ups at DoD, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Berger, and Navy Rear Adm. Lia Reynolds were the top uniformed military lawyers for each of their armed services.

Rosenblatt said that it was surprising to see Berger's relief, given that he had advocated for less restrictive legal procedures on the battlefield.

The lack of pre-identified JAG replacements in Hegseth's Friday memo seems to undermine any assumptions that political leadership has specific, sufficiently "loyal" options in mind, Rosenblatt said. Rather, he said, "it just really seemed to give more credence to the view that Hegseth just doesn't like military lawyers."

Hegseth has criticized JAGs in the past as unnecessary and self-serving and has referred to them disparagingly as "JAG-offs" because of their often methodical processes, which Hegseth views as unnecessarily burdensome and harmful to units across the board.

Hegseth is an infantry veteran who served in the Army National Guard and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I have a lot of confidence in the people who may come next," Rosenblatt said, referring to other high-ranking JAGs who could hold the job. "But there is no doubt that this is sending a chilling message to all of those who may follow the advice of JAGs," he said.

"This is very much, I think, a message that they want legal advice that's going to be more politically-minded," he concluded.

• "The Monkey" is about a cursed wind-up monkey toy that causes someone to die whenever it's played.
• The movie from filmmaker Osgood Perkins is based on a Stephen King story of the same name.
• It's markedly different from the original story, with a much larger scale and more chaotic ending.

If you read Stephen King's 1980 short story "The Monkey" and went into Osgood Perkins' new movie "The Monkey" expecting basically the same thing, I have some bad news for you.

Perkins' absurdist horror-comedy actually takes very little from King's original work, beyond the lead characters' names and the conceit of a cursed monkey toy reappearing in two adult brothers' lives to once again cause chaos decades after they threw it into a dry well.

The thin connection makes sense: The filmmaker, who also wrote and directed 2024 breakout horror hit "Longlegs," told Business Insider that he read the story a few times before setting out to write his script and then didn't refer back to it again.

Instead, Perkins has made the story his own, adding multiple thematic layers to tell a story about fatherhood and generational trauma.

That ethos is laid out from the very first moments of the movie, when our hero Hal says in a voiceover: "I don't know if every father passes some secret horror to his kids, but mine did."

Here's what happens in "The Monkey," including how it ends, how it's different from the original story, and what that pale horseman represents.

'The Monkey' is part 'Final Destination,' part parable about fatherhood

"The Monkey" is jam-packed with gory (and increasingly outlandish) death scenes, as every time the monkey is wound up and bangs its drum, another person dies.

The catch, in the lore of both the short story and the film, is that the person who winds up the monkey can't be its victim. But that person also can't control the monkey and instruct it on who to kill. It's completely random — "like life," as the inscription on the monkey's box reads when Hal and Bill Shelburn (both played here by "The White Lotus" star Theo James) find it.

The monkey once belonged to the twins' absent father (Adam Scott in a very brief, funny cameo), a pilot who brought it home from his travels before ditching his family for good. In short order, we see the monkey kill the shopkeeper their dad desperately tried to return the toy to, Bill and Hal's babysitter, and their mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany).

Hal is secretly responsible for their mother's death, having wound up the monkey once he had a sense of its power in an attempt to have it kill Bill, who had been bullying him at school.

The first third of the movie focuses on Bill and Hal's upbringing and early traumas, including the death of their Uncle Chip (played by Perkins himself) in a freak wild-horse stampede on a camping trip after he and their aunt Ida have taken custody of the orphaned boys. Chip's death finally prompts the brothers to drop the monkey down into a dry well to escape it — a gambit that seemingly works, at least until the point where the film picks up 25 years later.

In the present, an adult Hal works at a grocery store and has no relationship with Bill. Hal also has no relationship with his son Petey, opting to stay far away from the teenager, seeing him only once a year, in order to spare him the same type of trauma he experienced.

Just in time for Hal and Petey's annual visit, Bill calls Hal to inform him that Aunt Ida died in a freak accident (it involves fire, a bucket, and a mailbox), which means the monkey has finally returned. Hal road-trips to Ida's house with a clueless Petey, convinced by Bill to find the monkey to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. All the while, the monkey continues to kill; a realtor selling Ida's house informs Hal that another local in town has died every day since Ida's death in a variety of ridiculous manners, including a lawnmower accident and a cobra attack on a golf course. (The realtor herself promptly gets killed by shotgun blast after one falls from the closet in Ida's house and discharges.)

Hal soon discovers the monkey's current handler is none other than Bill, who secretly knew Hal was responsible for their mom's death and had plotted for years to find the monkey again and use it to take revenge on his brother. The film then switches to Bill's point of view, rewinding back to the moment the boys threw the monkey down the well. Bill started getting signs of the monkey's reemergence in 2016 — the year of the monkey — and employed a local kid named Ricky to find it for him.

Ricky found it at Ida's estate sale after her death and brought it to Bill, who wound it up repeatedly to lure Hal to him. Bill's goal is to get Petey to keep turning the key until the monkey kills Hal, so that Petey will be responsible for Hal's death the way Hal was responsible for their mother's.

'The Monkey' ending (and the Pale Rider), explained

The original Stephen King tale ends with Hal and his young son, Petey (who's only 9, not a teenager, in the story), narrowly surviving their mission to sink the cursed monkey in a lake. There's far less bloodshed (except for the hundreds of dead fish the waterlogged monkey claims as its victims), and it ends on a relatively happy note. The monkey is defeated! They're rid of it! Not too many people died!

The ending of the movie is in some ways similar — Hal and Petey both still live — but focuses more on the adversarial dynamic between Hal and Bill. One of the key changes Perkins made to the story was making Hal and Bill twins, and not just brothers as they were in the story, and also making Bill the villain who's coming after Hal for revenge.

In the movie, Ricky, who brought Bill the monkey, wears his own deadbeat dad's police uniform to take Hal and Petey at gunpoint to Bill's hideout, an abandoned hotel he's fitted with more deadly "Home Alone"-style booby traps. Ricky, who's become obsessed with the monkey because it reminds him of his absent father, forces Petey to go into the hotel to find the monkey and bring it back to him.

Unfortunately for Ricky, Bill finds Petey first and prompts him to wind up the monkey, which kills Ricky (via a swarm of wasps down the throat) next. Hal then enters the hotel and Bill becomes furious when he realizes the monkey once again didn't kill his brother. He attempts to force the monkey to drum without winding the key, which causes the monkey to go berserk, drumming uncontrollably and setting off a series of disasters around town — a plane with skydivers crashes into a nearby church, with skydiving newlyweds falling through the ceiling of Bill's hideout.

Inside Bill's hotel, he, Hal, and Petey are still unharmed. Hal and Bill finally hash out their differences and reconcile — only for the monkey to suddenly drum once more and set off a chain reaction that ends up cannonballing Lois' bowling ball into Bill's head, crushing his skull.

With Bill now dead, a not-overly-perturbed Hal and Petey leave town in their car, passing by all of the dead or dying people affected by the monkey's rampage. They resolve to keep the monkey with them, to ensure the key isn't turned again by anyone: "We keep it close. We accept that it's ours and hold on tight," Hal tells Petey.

As they wait at an intersection, a ghostly man on a pale horse passes by and gives them a knowing nod. Perkins confirmed to BI that the Pale Rider is a representation of death and how death is depicted as the fourth and final of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the bible's Book of Revelation.

Perkins expected the studio and producers to push back on his inclusion of the Pale Rider, thinking that the general audience wouldn't get such a literary reference. But instead, he was pleasantly surprised.

"Conversely, everybody was like, that's a weird thing we got to put in that people are going to either get or not get," Perkins said.

"And in any case, it's visual and it's sort of poetic and magical," he added. "And I just kind of felt like by the time we got to that point in the movie, it's so patently kind of surreal and absurd, I might as well really press the button."

The ending of "The Monkey" is surprisingly hopeful, with Hal suggesting to Petey that they go dancing — something that his mother Lois loved to do with Bill and Hall when they were kids. It's a far cry from the far more bleak ending of "Longlegs," but Perkins knows exactly what he wants audiences to feel when the credits roll on "The Monkey."

"I think it's the same thing that everybody's supposed to feel when they walk away from any horror movie," he says, "which is, 'Look at me, I'm still alive!'"

"The Monkey" is in theaters now.

• Billionaire Ken Griffin bought a duplex in Manhattan for $45 million.
• Griffin owns over a quarter billion of real estate in New York City alone.
• The seller, Julia Koch, had been trying to sell the condo for three years.

Hedgefund manager and billionaire Ken Griffin continues his real-estate conquest after buying a historically significant duplex in Manhattan for $45 million.

The Wall Street Journal reported Griffin bought the approximately 8,500-square-foot condo from Julia Koch, the widow of late billionaire David Koch, for $15 million under its original asking price.

The Kochs purchased the condo in 2004 for around $17 million, according to the Journal, and first listed it in 2022 with a starting price of $60 million. In 2023, it was listed for $48 million.

Griffin is the CEO of the highly profitable hedge fund Citadel and famously ditched Illinois for Florida in 2022. He owns multiple properties in NYC.

The history of 740 Park Ave.

Griffin's latest Manhattan purchase is a five-bedroom duplex at 740 Park Avenue

The condominium was built in 1930 by American lawyer, banker, and real estate investor James T. Lee, who was grandfather to former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She lived in the condominium as a child.

The building has been home to other notable tenants like John D. Rockefeller Jr. and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The Citadel CEO also owns a penthouse about a mile and a half away from 740 Park Avenue, which he bought in 2019 for a record-setting $238 million.

Griffin, who has a net worth of $43.4 billion, according to Forbes as of February, has spent more than $280 million on real estate in New York City alone. His real-estate footprint has also traveled south recently.

Griffin's recent real-estate deals

Between 2020 and 2023, he spent close to $169 million on properties on Star Island, an exclusive neighborhood in Miami Beach.

In 2022, he purchased two bayfront houses in Coconut Grove, a neighborhood in Miami, for over $100 million.

And over the last decade, he accumulated 27 acres for about $450 million in Palm Beach.

He's also offloaded a few properties.

In late 2024, Griffin sold the top two floors of a Chicago condo building for $19 million — taking a 44% loss after buying them for a combined $34 million in 2017.

Julia Koch is also investing in NYC real-estate

The seller of the Manhattan condo, Julia Koch, is worth $74.2 billion, according to Forbes, and has been on her own real-estate-transaction spree in the last few years.

According to Mansion Global, she bought two Manhattan co-ops for $101 million in 2022.

The next year, she sold a townhouse in Manhattan for $41 million in an off-market deal after buying it for $40.25 million in 2018.

• BI readers told us how they'd answer the DOGE email asking for a list of work accomplishments.
• Nearly half of you said you'd be happy to send a list of five things you got done last week.
• "I submitted and for 30+ years had my staff submit a weekly activity report every Friday," one person said.

On Monday, Business Insider asked readers to weigh in on what they'd do if they were suddenly asked to make a list of five things they'd accomplished at work last week — like DOGE asked federal workers to do.

Nearly 120 readers responded, with a wide range of opinions. Only 18% of people said they wouldn't do the list at all. They'd accept that they might lose their job over their refusal. Some said they'd do the list — but begrudgingly.

And nearly half of the people who replied said that not only would they willingly fill out the list of five accomplishments, but they'd also do it with a smile and relish the chance to brag about their work.

Clearly, the political tenor of the DOGE office and feelings about Elon Musk factored in. Quite a lot of the people who weren't his biggest fans had some colorful insults and invectives about the moonlighting Tesla CEO. "Stupidly childish and toxic" was one of the more safe-for-work critiques of DOGE's actions.

There were also some people who seemed excited by the idea that the "list-five-things" email could lead to cutting government waste.

A reoccurring theme was that while they didn't like the way DOGE was going about its work — which many said seemed insulting and threatening to workers — the idea of being expected to list out your weekly accomplishments is, indeed, a good idea.

"I really don't hate it in theory as much as I distrust the people enacting this strategy," wrote one reader.

Anthea Rowe, a communication coach who works with mid-career professionals, thought there was something good in the exercise.

"We should all be prepared, at any time, to answer the question, 'What did you do last week?' And our answer shouldn't simply include a list of activities: 'I worked on search engine optimization for our website.'" Rowe wrote. "Instead, we should ideally report the outcomes we created last week: 'I increased visitors to the web pages of our priority products.'"

(Rowe told me over email that she doesn't endorse what DOGE is doing, and is Canadian, so this isn't really her purview anyway.)

Other people pointed out that a regular listing of duties and accomplishments is common for some in the private sector. For professionals like lawyers or consultants who track billable hours for their clients, they're probably already doing this. As are some workers in industries like tech, where "stack ranking" for sorting people for layoffs is common.

"I don't see what is wrong about your boss asking what did you do last week," one person said. "Federal employees are cuddled all their working career. They don't live in a real world where people get fired or laid off all the time. Why isn't the media acting the same way when Amazon or Microsoft laid off people this year? Wake up people, you need to work," the person said.

Another also supported the request for an email list: "I submitted, and for 30+ years had my staff submit, a weekly activity report every Friday. It created high-performing organizations. Staff actually embraced it," the person said. "It was broadly viewed as management support and engagement. You never heard anyone say, 'My boss doesn't know what I do or doesn't help.' I cannot understand the resistance unless someone is trying to hide out somewhere."

Chatting about this with my coworkers, my boss's boss said she always encourages people to keep a running "Hype List" of their accomplishments so they can whip it out at review time.

But, of course, that's under very different circumstances than what's happening right now with federal workers. As long-term career advice, keeping track of your accomplishments — in writing — and making sure your boss knows about them is probably a great thing. That's not what's happening right now at DOGE, where many workers find the gesture undermining and insulting instead of empowering.

"Unfortunately, this isn't too different from what a lot of teachers are currently having to deal with," said Rachel Shearer, a middle school teacher. "We're constantly asked to show proof of what we are doing (both regarding our lessons and what we do outside our lessons, like contacting parents, documenting student behaviors). I think that this kind of micromanaging is extremely demoralizing and counterproductive; I do my best work when I know that I'm not constantly being watched and scrutinized," she said.

Ellen Predham, a former HR professional with more than 40 years of experience, said the issue was in the messaging.

"I think the intent is fine, but the communication of this request was all wrong," she said. "Email should have come from cabinet heads, not Musk, and definitely should not have said if you don't, you're resigning — a terrible way to communicate with folks."

Still, if federal workers don't respond — and some departments have exempted their employees, even as Musk has extended the deadline — they could lose their jobs. Or at least that's the threat that's on the table.

But that's partly the point, one reader said.

"How can a manager provide a meaningful performance review if they don't know what an employee is doing and their productivity?" asked the reader, a management consultant. "How would an organization determine sufficient staffing?"

We might soon find out.

• The pages for some "Call of Duty" titles on PC games store Steam now include disclosures of AI content.
• Publisher Activision included the statements after Steam implemented a policy requiring disclosure of AI.
• Some players suspected the use of AI in "CoD" games before it was confirmed.

New disclosures splashed across the Steam pages for certain "Call of Duty" titles confirm what some players have long suspected — the developers are dabbling in AI.

Activision, the publisher of the popular "Call of Duty" games, issued the disclosures — found on the Steam pages for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 6" and "Call of Duty: Warzone" — in compliance with Steam's policy requiring developers to disclose the use of AI. It reads: "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in-game assets."

Player reactions on X were mixed — but many reflected prior suspicions that "CoD" was making use of AI-generated content.

One user posted a GIF of a puppet making a shocked face, labeled "acting surprised." Another called the use of artificial intelligence "lazy," while a different player criticized the company for putting out what they described as "rushed, unpolished, and imbalanced works," even with the help of AI.

However, another user said they didn't see it as a "problem," particularly if AI was used on "mundane busy repetitive work," like "1000 versions of shrubs."

"The 'mundane busy work' is actually peoples' jobs btw," a different user responded.

It's not clear to what extent artificial intelligence was used in the making of the games. Activision did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

AI is only continuing to improve in terms of sophistication and adoption — and the gaming industry isn't exempted from its growing reach. Microsoft, the owner of Activision, recently unveiled its Muse model, capable of generating "game visuals and controller actions."

Creatives have expressed concerns about being replaced by AI — particularly in the wake of mass layoffs that swept the gaming industry in 2024. That was the same year that SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America went on strike, in part, while seeking improved AI protections for their members. Microsoft cut jobs in its gaming arm at the start of this year, without specifying an exact number.

Artists have also expressed worries that artificial intelligence models could be trained off their artwork without their consent, leading to AI being able to perfectly replicate their unique art styles.

Activision hasn't confirmed exactly which assets are AI-generated, or to what extent AI was used, but players have previously used certain graphics as examples that they may be using the tech.

For instance, the "Necroclaus" loading screen featured in Black Ops 6's "Zombies" mode in December of 2024 depicted what some thought was a six-fingered hand. Other players suggested it was just flesh falling off the zombie's pinky.

Another image, this time used to promote a "Zombies" community event in 2024, appeared to depict a gloved hand with six fingers but no on-screen thumb — implying a total of seven fingers on one hand. A hallmark of AI-generated art can be an excess number of fingers, toes, and teeth.

• A Southwest Airlines flight narrowly avoided a collision with a private jet in Chicago on Tuesday.
• The private jet entered the runway "without authorization," the FAA said.
• The incident adds to the string of recent safety concerns in aviation.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a near-miss incident between a Southwest Airlines jet and a private jet at Chicago's Midway Airport on Tuesday.

The moment was captured on video, appearing to show the Southwest plane just feet from above the runway before aborting the landing as the smaller jet crosses ahead of it.

A Southwest spokesperson told Business Insider that the passenger airliner performed a "go-around" to avoid a collision, circling to attempt another landing.

"The crew followed safety procedures, and the flight landed without incident," the airline said. "Nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of our Customers and Employees."

Data from the flight-tracking website Flightradar24 shows the flight originated in Omaha, Nebraska, and safely landed in Chicago about 15 minutes after the go-around at 9:02 a.m. local time.

"Tower, Southwest 2504, how'd that happen?" the Southwest pilot asked air traffic controllers after the go-around, according to radio recordings reviewed by BI.

The FAA told BI that the private Bombardier plane "entered the runway without authorization" and is investigating the incident.

Another safety incident in the US

The near-miss is the latest in a string of recent safety-related events across North America. On Monday, a Delta plane had to return to Atlanta after takeoff due to a reported smoke in the cabin.

Before that, a Delta flight crash-landed in Toronto a week earlier and flipped upside down. In January, an American Airlines plane collided midair with an Army helicopter over Washington, DC, killing 67.

None of the accidents or incidents appear related at this time, though an uptick in near-misses is among the risks worrying aviation industry insiders — especially after the American midair collision.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has vowed to improve the national ATC systems.

• A TD Cowen analyst said that Microsoft had canceled plans for new data center developments.
• The news suggested that the staggering forecasts for data center growth could be overblown.
• Experts say the industry's growth will still be enormous but is now undergoing a reality check.

Microsoft recently appeared to scale back its data center development pipeline, which would be an extraordinary step back after a period of furious growth by the tech giant. But did it really?

The concerns about whether air was coming out of a data center bubble were raised by a TD Cowen analyst, Michael Elias, in a report dated February 21. Elias wrote that Microsoft, one of the largest data center operators in the country, had recently torn up leases for "multiple +100 megawatt deals in multiple markets that were in early/mid-stages of negotiations."

Elias also said the company had let go of more than a gigawatt of preliminary data center commitments it had made and also five longer-term development deals in prime data center markets. The company's decision-making was "tied to Microsoft potentially being in an oversupply position."

Microsoft's pullback sent a shudder through the data center market, which has seen staggering forecasts for growth in the coming years.

For some, however, the news simply reflected a more modest revision of the sector's extraordinary recent projections for growth.

"I can't think of the big five that haven't done this every 12 or 18 months," said one data center development executive, referring to the industry's largest users: Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. The executive did not want to be identified by name because major customers in the industry prize confidentiality.

"This is not new and definitely not the biggest one we've had in the last three years," the executive said, saying that Meta had canceled major data center commitments it had in recent years in order to reset its strategy, including its data center business's customer and technology focus.

After that reevaluation, Meta rebooted its torrid growth, including the recent announcement of a $10 billion data center campus in Louisiana.

A spokeswoman for Meta declined to comment.

Microsoft still has plans for robust growth

Dan Thompson, an analyst at S&P Global who covers the data center industry, said that the magnitude of the data center boom was bound to modulate because the projections included speculative projects and, potentially, the double counting of tenants who may have expressed interest in multiple projects and/or regions for the same requirement.

"Some of these announcements are not going to get built," Thompson said. "I don't see it as a reflection on the data center industry."

Thompson said that there was a need to differentiate between credible growth and the frothiest forecasts for the industry's expansion. He said that S&P plans to reorganize its data center projections this year into buckets that group projects based on their likelihood of coming to fruition.

"We are modifying our reports this year, for every market, basically draw the line in the sand and say, OK, this is the part where we think: that is real," Thompson said.

What is clear, nonetheless, is that a data center boom is afoot across the nation.

S&P Global projects that the industry will grow from about 35.4 gigawatts of capacity today to almost 82 gigawatts by the end of the decade, an 131% increase. There have been even more ambitious projections that more than 90 gigawatts of data centers could be online by 2029.

The development is being undertaken to commercialize and develop artificial intelligence and also cater to society's yawning digital footprint. Data centers provide the computing and storage that power the internet and a host of increasingly vital functions, such as autonomous vehicles, Zoom meetings, and cloud computing.

A spokeswoman for Microsoft suggested in a statement that the company had pumped the brakes on development, while also highlighting the enormous scale of its data center expansion.

"Thanks to the significant investments we have made up to this point, we are well positioned to meet our current and increasing customer demand," the spokeswoman stated. "Last year alone, we added more capacity than any prior year in history."

Microsoft "will continue to grow strongly in all regions," she said, and that the company's plans to "spend over $80B on infrastructure this FY remains on track as we continue to grow at a record pace to meet customer demand."

Elias's report didn't cite specific examples of Microsoft's retrenchment, except for the recent news of its decision to reevaluate a large data center campus it is building in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, outside of Milwaukee.

Reached by phone, Elias declined to comment further.

Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the Village of Mount Pleasant, said that Microsoft had "paused in some of its construction work in order to incorporate new data center designs" and that "Village officials have no reason to believe this will affect the overall scope or nature" of the project.

• A federal judge indefinitely blocked the Trump administration's attempt to freeze federal funding.
• The Trump administration's actions were "irrational" and "precipitated a nationwide crisis," a judge said.
• The funding freeze prompted lawsuits from nonprofits and state attorneys general.

A Washington, DC, federal judge on Tuesday sided with a band of nonprofit groups and issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration's attempt to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants and loans.

In her written opinion indefinitely blocking the administration's move to freeze federal funding, US District Judge Loren AliKhan wrote that the freeze "was ill-conceived from the beginning."

"Defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight, or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than twenty-four hours. The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable," the judge wrote.

She said the Trump administration's actions were "irrational, imprudent, and precipitated a nationwide crisis."

The judge said that the groups that brought the lawsuit "have marshaled significant evidence indicating that the funding freeze would be economically catastrophic — and in some circumstances, fatal — to their members."

"The pause placed critical programs for children, the elderly, and everyone in between in serious jeopardy," AliKhan wrote. "Because the public's interest in not having trillions of dollars arbitrarily frozen cannot be overstated, Plaintiffs have more than met their burden here."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, the group that's representing the nonprofits, said in a statement that the preliminary injunction "will allow our clients to continue to provide services to people across this country."

"We are pleased that the court issued this ruling, halting the Trump administration's lawless attempt to harm everyday Americans in service of a political goal," Perryman said.

AliKhan and another federal judge in Rhode Island previously issued a temporary restraining order against the administration's federal funds freeze after a group of nonprofits and Democratic state attorneys general filed separate lawsuits last month, arguing that the freeze was unlawful.

US District Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island, who is overseeing the lawsuit brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia, found earlier this month that the Trump administration was violating his court order by continuing to freeze funding for federal programs.

McConnell had ordered the administration to immediately restore and resume the funding. The White House appealed that order to the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals but was denied.

The case in DC was brought by the advocacy groups the National Council of Nonprofits, American Public Health Association, Main Street Alliance, and SAGE.

At a court hearing last week, Kevin Friedl, an attorney with Democracy Forward who is representing the nonprofits, said that AliKhan's temporary restraining order has "shown value" even though the administration's unfreezing of funds "in response to that order has not always been smooth."

Friedl said the temporary restraining order has had "a real effect" and helped his clients, but added that continued relief remained "necessary."

Department of Justice attorney Daniel Schwei argued that the plaintiffs' claims were moot since President Donald Trump's budget office had already rescinded the memo ordering the freeze on federal spending.

"Plaintiffs now agree that the funding that they would receive under their grant awards is available to them, and they say that there's still a need for continued preliminary relief from this court," Schwei said. "That is an inherently speculative proposition."

Schwei said that it was "speculative" to assume that the Office of Management and Budget "might reimplement some pause in the future."

"Certainly we don't think there's a need for emergency preliminary relief from this court to enjoin such hypothetical future pauses," Schwei said.

The Trump administration set off a wave of mass confusion after the Office of Management and Budget dropped a memo on January 27 ordering the temporary freezing of "all federal financial assistance" beginning 5 p.m. the following day, so that the spending could be reviewed.

"The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve," the acting OMB director, Matthew Vaeth, wrote in the memo.

OMB rescinded the memo on January 29.

• YouTube plans to change the way mid-roll ads appear in videos.
• Starting May 12, the company said it will automate ad placement to improve the viewer experience.
• The update could boost creator revenue by weaving ads into "natural break points."

YouTube says changing the way ads appear in videos could help creators earn more money.

In a recent blog post, YouTube announced plans to automate the placement of ads that appear in the middle of videos.

Starting on May 12, the platform said it will show more mid-roll ads at "natural break points," like pauses and transitions. It will also remove ads from "interruptive" places, like in the middle of a sentence or action sequence, that could cause viewers to close the video.

The company said the change is meant to improve viewers' experiences and potentially earn creators more money.

YouTube tested this ad change in July. It said channels that enabled both auto and manual mid-roll ads saw an average of over 5% increase in YouTube ad revenue compared to channels with only the manual ads.

YouTube plans to update older videos with manual mid-rolls to include "additional, automatic ad slots." Videos without ads and those that already have automatic ads enabled will not be impacted.

Creators can opt out of the update and continue placing their ads manually. However, the company said those who do may see a decrease in revenue.

YouTube creator Amanda Golka, who runs the commentary channel Swell Entertainment with 495,000 subscribers, said she wants to test the feature on her older videos before allowing it in her new content. She wants to make sure that the automation won't overload her videos with ads. Overall, she doesn't expect it to be a huge revenue boost for her.

"I will probably allow them to auto-place ads on old videos — but I'll continue to manually place ads on future videos," she said. "I limit to about five or six midroll ads on longer videos, and YouTube tends to place eight-plus on those."

• A White House official told Business Insider Amy Gleason is the acting DOGE administrator.
• Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk to lead DOGE.
• White House officials have previously said Musk is not the DOGE administrator.

A White House official on Tuesday said that a former US Digital Service official is serving as the acting head of DOGE.

In a statement to Business Insider, a White House official said that Amy Gleason is the acting DOGE administrator, appearing to put to rest a question that has hung over the White House's DOGE office: Who is in charge?

President Donald Trump's Inauguration Day executive order created a DOGE administrator to lead the rebranded US Digital Service. Under penalty of perjury, a White House official recently said in a court filing that Elon Musk was not the administrator nor a DOGE employee. It remains unclear whether there is a DOGE administrator.

Earlier on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, refused to name the DOGE administrator during a back-and-forth with reporters. She also said Musk wasn't the administrator.

"No, Elon Musk is a special government employee," Leavitt said when pressed on the world's richest man's status.

"There are career officials at DOGE. There are political appointees at DOGE. I'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium," she said. "I'm happy to follow up and provide that to you. But we have been incredibly transparent about the way DOGE has been working."

Leavitt also said Trump had "asked Elon Musk to oversee DOGE."

Business Insider followed up with the White House and a DOGE spokesperson. They did not immediately respond to our questions.

The White House has said Musk is a special government employee, a category of federal worker created to bring officials with expertise into the civil service part time. Musk is also a senior advisor to the president.

Trump and Musk have blurred the extent of Musk's power. BI previously reported that Musk's job title was "unlisted."

Musk recently hosted a DOGE update with members of Congress on X, the social media platform he also owns. Trump has told reporters he asked Musk which type of people DOGE had hired. In an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Musk wielded a chainsaw onstage. His talk was titled "DOGE update."

During the briefing, Leavitt told reporters that Musk would attend Trump's first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

"Elon will be in attendance tomorrow just to talk about DOGE's efforts and how all the Cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud, and abuse at their respective agencies," Leavitt said.

It's not just journalists asking about the position. On Monday, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asked a Justice Department attorney if there was a DOGE administrator.

"I don't know the answer to that," the counsel responded, according to Lawfare.

Trump's executive order dictates that the administrator answers to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Twenty-one civil service employees who resigned en masse on Tuesday addressed their letter to Wiles.

In a footnote, they wrote that they addressed their letter to Wiles because "no one has been identified internally as the official Administrator or leader of the United States DOGE Service."

February 25, 2025: This story has been updated to include Gleason's name.

• 21 employees from the agency rebranded the US DOGE Service resigned on Tuesday.
• The signatories said in a joint letter that they refuse to "jeopardize Americans' sensitive data."
• Elon Musk and a spokeswoman for the White House DOGE Office responded to the resignations on X.

Twenty-one civil service employees resigned from the agency that was rebranded the United States DOGE Service on Tuesday, protesting the White House DOGE office's actions.

"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," the employees wrote in their public resignation letter directed to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."

The letter, dated February 25, was taken down on Tuesday afternoon without an explanation, though the resignations were not publicly rescinded.

On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump formally turned the Obama-era United States Digital Services into the White House DOGE office. Trump previously appointed Elon Musk to co-lead the effort, but a top White House official recently declared in a legal filing that Musk is not leading DOGE and is instead a senior advisor to Trump.

In their letter, the now-former employees had said that DOGE representatives "began integrating us into their efforts," which the signatories believe were inconsistent with their goals as civil servants.

Jonathan Kamens, a former USDS engineer who was fired on February 14, told BI that he thinks more federal employees are beginning to push back against the White House DOGE office's most recent efforts.

"We are seeing more resistance, we are seeing more overt resistance," he said the day before the group resignation.

Musk took notice of the employees' collective actions and responded on X, writing, "These were Dem political holdovers who refused to return to the office. They would have been fired had they not resigned."

Katie Miller, a spokesperson for the White House DOGE office, also took to X to respond: "These were full remote workers who hung Trans flags from their workplaces."

Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, issued a statement to BI.

"DOGE has effectively become part of the USDS as a component of the White House, and any leftover career bureaucrats who don't align with the President or DOGE are neither advised nor welcomed to be a part of this never-before-seen mission to make the government more efficient," he said.

The group resignation comes one day after federal employees faced a deadline to list their productivity from the past week. Agencies offered conflicting guidelines on whether or how to respond to the request, and some employees told BI that the experience bred confusion and stress.

Representatives for Trump, Musk, and the White House DOGE office did not respond to BI's request for comment.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Amazon is testing a program that pays publishers to drive traffic to its platform.
• It could be a welcome new source of revenue for a challenged digital media sector.
• The program's incentives could test publishers' editorial integrity, though.

Amazon is testing a new way to pay publishers for driving traffic to its platform, and it could be a bright spot for the challenged digital media industry.

Under the pilot, called NCA, or native commerce advertising, the publisher earns money when it drives readers to Amazon through product recommendations, regardless of whether they end up buying the product or not, three people familiar with the program told Business Insider. These people requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the program; their identities are known to BI.

CNN, Vox Media, and tech publisher Future are among the publishers participating in the NCA pilot. Amazon plans to roll it out more fully this year.

Amazon is pitching the NCA program to publishers as a way for them to make additional money on top of its Amazon Associates program, which launched back in 1996. That program lets publishers earn a commission by driving sales from recommended products or services. It pays varying commissions by category, from 3% for toys and furniture to 10% for luxury beauty and up to 20% for Amazon video games.

Publishers can enroll in both programs and make money two ways if the reader completes a purchase.

For Amazon, the NCA pilot is a way to expand its advertising inventory without further cluttering the top of its search results, where sponsored ads have become a common source of user complaints.

Amazon declined to comment.

The jury's out on how well the program will deliver

Affiliate revenue has become a sizable business for many publishers at a time when competition for advertising and subscription dollars is tough, and Amazon is often their top revenue source. The New York Times, in the fourth quarter, reported $95 million in "other revenue," which includes its Wirecutter product recommendation business as well as licensing revenue.

One participating publisher said they were seeing a decent uptick in revenue from the NCA program. But they said the program, at least in its test phase, is complicated to implement. They added that the cost per click varied widely, with rates ranging from 20 to 60 cents, and it was hard to know how lucrative the program would be in the long term.

That variability could present some added risk to publishers.

With NCA, there's an incentive to recommend vendors offering a high cost per click, whether or not their product is the best. Amazon teams have even recommended publishers do so, two people familiar with the program said.

Publishers have dealt with a similar dilemma in the affiliate business more generally. Those with commerce businesses usually share a disclosure saying they may earn money from products they recommend, but that their product recommendations are based on independent research and analysis. Reputable publishers work hard to safeguard their product review editorial teams from the revenue side.

Still, the variability between different products in the same category in NCA is beyond the norm, and could tempt some less scrupulous publishers to take advantage.

Some publishers' affiliate businesses have been under attack

While the money from NCA might not be huge, any new source of revenue is welcome to digital publishers. Many publishers have faced business challenges as Facebook has deprioritized news and tech giants have gobbled up the bulk of the digital advertising pie.

Some publishers' affiliate businesses have also come under attack. Google has cracked down on sites that try to rank high in Google searches by publishing material provided by third parties, such as product reviews and coupons. For example, some of CNN's product recommendations, under CNN Underscored, used to be provided by a company called Forbes Marketplace, which is partly owned by Forbes.

Several publishers saw traffic to their product recommendations pages decline as a result of the crackdown, Adweek reported in November. Some publishers, including Gannett's USA Today, have protested the crackdown, saying it hurts publishers and consumers alike.

• The US Army has long known that it has artillery shortcomings that need to be addressed.
• As it readies for possible future large-scale combat operations, the Army is looking to plug these gaps.
• A general told BI the Army wants new cannons that will increase the range of fire.

Satellite images of eastern Ukraine show pockmarked battlefields left scarred by relentless artillery fire. The craters are a constant reminder that these deadly cannons still play a crucial role in modern warfare.

The US Army is watching this conflict closely as it prepares for potential large-scale combat operations overseas. The importance of artillery isn't new to it, though.

The military knows the value of being able to lob a shell or rocket down range, but it also knows it needs to step up its game. Russia and China are both stepping up theirs.

A general looking into this matter said that there are three areas where Army artillery faces serious capability gaps. He added that the hunt for artillery solutions to bridge these shortcomings is already underway.

"We saw some capability gaps against adversaries in two different theaters as we projected forward into 2030 - 2035," Brig. Gen. Rory Crooks, director of the Army Futures Command long-range precision fires cross-functional team, told Business Insider in a recent interview.

The first deficit is range. Army artillery doesn't have the necessary reach compared to US adversaries. "You provide enemy sanctuary, in some cases, when the enemy has a range overmatch," Crooks explained.

Then there is capacity. The US doesn't have enough artillery systems to match the enemy. Simply put, he said, "we're out-gunned."

And lastly, there are survivability concerns. Although some US rivals are divesting of their towed artillery systems, the US Army isn't.

Typically, when soldiers fire their artillery cannons at enemy positions, they want to disperse immediately before the anticipated counter-battery fire — a tactic known as shoot-and-scoot. Towed artillery pieces like the M777 are slower and more difficult to relocate quickly compared to the self-propelled systems, which are mounted on tracked vehicles. That diminishes survivability.

"Those three problems — range, capacity, and survivability based on mobility — are really hard to overcome individually," Crooks said, adding that "collectively, they're very hard to overcome and put us at risk for mission success moving forward."

In recent years, the Army has sought to extend the reach of its guns. One such effort, the Strategic Long Range Cannon, was intended to fire projectiles some 1,000 nautical miles away, but Congress halted funding for the research in 2022.

Another Army initiative, the 58-caliber Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, began in 2018 with the aim of extending the range of artillery fire from 18 to 43 miles.

The weapon — a 30-foot gun tube mounted on the chassis of an M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer — concluded the prototyping stage but did not end up moving into production due to problems observed during live-fire testing. The Army canceled the ERCA program last year, shifting focus to the new Self-Propelled Howitzer Modernization effort.

A Congressional Research Service report published in early February said a study of new conventional fires concluded last year found the Army should focus its efforts on "more autonomous artillery systems with greater range and improved mobility."

It also noted the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 report that said even though the Army canceled the ERCA program, starting again on its hunt for artillery solutions, "a recently conducted tactical fires study validated the capability gap that the ERCA sought to fill. Observations from Ukraine reinforce the critical role of mobile cannon artillery."

Moving forward, Crooks said that the Army is going to take the success it had with the ammunition work for ERCA and partner that with guns available on the market. He said the service is already looking into allied and partner capabilities.

The Army is specifically eyeing self-propelled howitzers with 52-caliber gun tubes. It is a middle ground between the larger 58-caliber ERCA and the smaller 39-caliber M777 towed howitzer.

"The work that we're doing with introducing, potentially, modernized platforms that are 52-caliber in length, along with the ammunition work that we did that started with ERCA, we think we'll be able to address the requirement that we needed from the ERCA platform and prototyping effort," Crooks said.

Last fall, the Army announced that it had awarded contracts to five vendors for the Self-Propelled Howitzer Modernization effort. The $4 million contracts went to American Rheinmetall Vehicles, BAE BOFORS, Hanwha Defense USA, General Dynamics Land Systems, and Elbit Systems USA.

The next step is getting prototype artillery systems out to Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, where the systems will be put through a series of firing tests. The service could make a decision on its new cannon as early as next year.

But finding a suitable and available 52-caliber gun is just one piece of the puzzle as the Army looks to overcome its range, capacity, and survivability deficits, Crooks said.

The Army also needs to continue the ammunition innovation that was started under the ERCA program, such as the XM1155 sub-caliber projectile developed for the ERCA's 155 mm XM907E2 58-caliber cannon, and scale up its one-way attack drones so these explosive-packed weapons can be used in lieu of traditional artillery rounds.

Artillery is just one element of combined-arms warfare, but as Army leaders continue to closely watch Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it is clear that strong cannons will be needed to achieve success in future large-scale combat operations.

"I think what we're seeing is when you don't have adequate artillery to achieve local fire superiority, then that battle devolves quickly to attritional warfare — static warfare," Crooks said. And that's not the kind of war the US military was built to fight.

• Red Lobster exited bankruptcy in September with new CEO Damola Adamolekun.
• Adamolekun said the brand is improving its menu, service, and music at Red Lobster restaurants.
• He also described value as "an equation" between price and what you get for the cost.

Red Lobster is charting a course for recovery under the leadership of its new millennial CEO.

Damola Adamolekun, 36, was appointed CEO of Red Lobster in August, becoming the company's sixth and youngest chief executive after he was brought on to help revitalize the brand following years of declining sales and a bankruptcy filing.

Before joining Red Lobster, Adamolekun served as CEO of P.F. Chang's and was a partner at Paulson & Co., where he played a key role in acquiring the Asian-American restaurant chain in 2019.

Under Adamolekun's leadership, Red Lobster emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy four months after filing in May 2024.

When the chain exited bankruptcy, Red Lobster was acquired by RL Investor Holdings, which included a plan to invest $60 million into the chain, the Associated Press reported at the time.

"Red Lobster is now a stronger, more resilient company, and today is the start of a new chapter in our history," Adamolekun said in a statement after the chain exited bankruptcy.

Adamolekun discussed his goals for Red Lobster on a recent appearance on "The Breakfast Club" and shared the three main areas he's focusing on after exiting bankruptcy.

Updating the restaurant's menu and refocusing on value

After becoming CEO, Adamolekun revamped the menu, brought back popular items like the chain's hush puppies, and introduced happy-hour specials at many restaurants nationwide.

He told "The Breakfast Club" that part of his mission as CEO has been to offer new menu items at a more affordable price point as people tighten their spending.

"Value is an equation. Part of it is price. And you can get some things on the menu that are lower price," new said, mentioning the chain's new lobster rolls which cost around $20 at some locations.

"At the same time, value is what you get for the price," he said. "So if you improve what you get, then you improve value."

"We have Shrimp Your Way for $16.99 for two types of shrimp," he continued. "There are things you can do that are approachable if you don't want to do the full lobster for a higher price."

Improving the service in restaurants

Adamolekun explained the chain's new "RED Carpet Hospitality" service model, which stands for "recognize," "engage," and "delight."

"When people walk in, you need to recognize them as soon as they walk in. There should be somebody smiling at the post stand to greet them," he said on "The Breakfast Club." "You see somebody — within 10 feet of them, you recognize them. Within 4 feet, you speak to them. We call it the 10-4 rule."

"If we're not going to be priced as Chipotle, then we need to offer something that Chipotle doesn't offer," he said. "And what that is is called service and hospitality."

Elevating the ambiance of Red Lobster restaurants in an affordable way

In bankruptcy filings, Red Lobster said it operated about 570 restaurants, though it had plans to close around 120 underperforming locations.

Many restaurants are locked in by long leases, and Adamolekun said that while a nationwide remodel of Red Lobster restaurants would be expensive and take a long time, the chain is considering it in the future.

He also said that there are smaller ways of improving the dining-in experience that don't require as much funding, such as making the restaurant's music better.

"We fix the things we can fix quickly," he said. "If you go to a Red Lobster now, you'll notice the music is better. And you'll notice there are small things like we put the market prices on the lobster, we put the liners on the tables."

"There are small things you can do now," he said, "but comprehensively, there needs to be a remodel. And that's something that we'll do in the future."