• Rep. Al Green heckled Trump's joint address on Tuesday night.
• The Texas Democrat was eventually booted on the orders of Speaker Mike Johnson.
• Green later told reporters it was "worth it."

For the first time in recent memory, a lawmaker was thrown out of the House chamber during a president's address to a joint session of Congress.

It began mere minutes into President Donald Trump's speech on Tuesday night, when the president spoke about the "mandate" that he'd earned by virtue of his victory in the 2024 election.

Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat known for making theatrical gestures, stood up and began heckling Trump, telling him that he had "no mandate" to make cuts to Medicaid.

Democrats have accused Trump and Republicans of pushing for cuts to the program, which serves lower-income Americans, by virtue of a budget resolution that passed the House last week.

Green's heckling was immediately met with shouting from the Republican side of the aisle, with GOP lawmakers telling the Texas Democrat to sit down and shut up. But Green persisted, eventually leading House Speaker Mike Johnson to direct the House Sergeant at Arms to escort the congressman out of the chamber.

"It's worth it to let people know that there are some people who are going to stand up" to Trump, Green told reporters outside the chamber. He added that he was unsure if he'd face any formal punishment.

The Texas Democrat announced last month that he would introduce articles of impeachment against Trump, despite a lack of support from the recent of his caucus.

He made a similar move during the president's first term in office, even forcing three different votes on his impeachment resolution in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Republican lawmakers such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado frequently heckled former President Joe Biden's State of the Union addresses, but they were never removed from the chamber.

• Sam Altman announced in a late February post on X that his son had been born prematurely.
• In a Tuesday update, the OpenAI CEO said his company is no longer his proudest accomplishment.
• "Turns out I am now more proud of a preemie baby for learning how to eat on his own!" Altman wrote.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a Tuesday post on X, shared his first update about his infant son, who was born prematurely in late February, and declared his AI company is no longer his proudest accomplishment.

"Very proud of the openai team for what is perhaps the most impressive scientific/technical breakthrough of recent decades," Altman wrote. "Thought that was the thing i'd always be most proud of in life."

He added: "turns out i am now more proud of a preemie baby for learning how to eat on his own!"

Altman and his husband, software engineer Oliver Mulherin, welcomed their son, the couple's first child, in late February. The pair, who live together in San Francisco, have led a relatively private relationship and have only publicly shared one previous statement about their child since his birth.

"He came early and is going to be in the nicu for awhile," Altman wrote in the child's birth announcement, referring to the neonatal intensive care unit, where newborns receive specialized medical treatment after birth. "He is doing well and it's really nice to be in a little bubble taking care of him. i have never felt such love."

The OpenAI CEO hasn't said whether he plans to take paternity leave, but the new addition to his family has comes as the artificial intelligence company is in the middle of its transition away from a nonprofit entity. OpenAI announced plans in December to transfer control of daily operations to its for-profit subsidiary, in a move that has attracted legal challenges from OpenAI's competitor Elon Musk.

Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• US stock futures rose after Trump's commerce secretary hinted at tariff compromises with Canada and Mexico.
• Trump reimposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico after pausing it for a month.
• Markets closed lower for a second consecutive day as Nasdaq and S&P 500 saw significant declines.

US stock futures ticked back up after a sharp fall, following Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's comments on Fox Business on Tuesday afternoon that President Donald Trump could announce tariff compromises with Canada and Mexico as early as Wednesday.

Trump reimposed 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, a plan that was paused for a month and then came into effect early Tuesday morning. The tariffs were imposed over allegations that the neighboring countries were failing to stem the flow of drugs and crime into the US.

Lutnick's remarks came as US markets staggered and closed lower for a second consecutive day. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.4%. During the day, it briefly reached a 10% decline from its most recent closing high. The S&P 500 fell 1.2%, wiping out all post-election gains since last November.

Lutnick said talks with Canada would likely reduce some of the newly reimposed tariffs on imports from the two neighboring countries.

"Both the Mexicans and the Canadians are on the phone with me all day today, trying to show that they'll do better," Lutnick said, adding that Trump is "listening" and open to a middle-ground solution.

Canada has also swiftly responded with 25% of retaliatory tariffs. Canadian Premier Doug Ford announced Tuesday that he will cancel a $100-million deal with Starlink and remove US alcohol from shelves. He also threatened a 25% surcharge on electricity that Ontario sends to 1.5 million Americans.

Meanwhile, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said retaliatory measures are "going to wait" because she planned to speak to Trump this week.

While details of the compromise remain unclear, Lutnick said it will likely not be another tariff pause but a more long-term deal.

Trump is addressing Congress Tuesday night, with trade policy likely to be a key topic.

• "Daredevil: Born Again" starts with a horrific twist in its opening moments.
• During the scene, villain Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) attacks a bar in Hell's Kitchen.
• We break down the Marvel series' first shocking death, and what happens in the comics.

Warning: major spoilers ahead for "Daredevil: Born Again."

Marvel's "Daredevil: Born Again" comes out of the gate swinging, killing off a key character within minutes of its first episode in a move that's sure to shock fans.

The 2025 show is the revival of Netflix's "Daredevil" series, which starred Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer-turned-vigilante who defends the New York neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen.

While the original series flirted with its connections to the Marvel Cinematic Universe over three seasons before being canceled in 2018, "Born Again" takes place firmly in the same world as the Avengers — which makes episode one's brutal assassination all the more surprising. Here's what to know.

Bullseye shoots Foggy Nelson in the street

The opening scene sees Murdock go to Josie's Bar with his colleagues Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) for drinks after work. When Nelson takes a phone call outside of the bar from a worried client he's defending, Murdock suits up as Daredevil to help.

However, it was a ruse to lure Murdock away from his friends, and Nelson gets shot in the chest by a sniper: Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). The assassin wastes no time in shooting two police officers who were also in the bar before Daredevil returns, and a lengthy, bloody brawl ensues between them.

The show plays up the tension, so much so that Murdock hears his best friend's heartbeat fade as he bleeds out on the street. But is Nelson really dead? Actually killing him would be a surprising move, given that he's one of the most beloved characters from the original Netflix series.

But all might not be lost, especially if "Daredevil: Born Again" follows the comics.

In the comics, Foggy Nelson's death was faked by the FBI

In February 2006, Nelson was killed off in "Daredevil" #82 when he was stabbed to death by prison inmates while visiting an incarcerated Murdock, who had been arrested on suspicion of being the red-suited vigilante.

Because Murdock was locked up, he was powerless to save his best friend aside from listening to his heartbeat as he died.

However, it was a ruse.

A few issues later, in "Daredevil" #87, it was revealed that the FBI had moved Nelson into witness protection, where he was recovering from his injuries before beginning a life under a new identity.

If "Daredevil: Born Again" is paying homage to Nelson's faked death in the comics, there's a chance he could return in a later episode or season.

After all, it wouldn't be the first time that someone was seemingly killed or gravely injured before making a comeback. Bullseye himself was nearly murdered by Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio) at the end of "Daredevil" season three, and he's still alive and shooting.

• President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.
• Melania Trump attended the speech wearing a Dior blazer with a removable scarf and matching skirt.
• A style strategist and image coach said her look embodies "quiet authority."

First lady Melania Trump attended President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress in a gray skirt suit by Dior.

The wool tweed blazer, which features a removable scarf detail, retails for $5,500 on Dior's website. She paired the blazer with a matching skirt and accessorized with a black belt.

"First Lady Melania's style tonight is quiet authority — polished, self-assured, and entirely in command of her presence," Lauren A. Rothman, a style strategist and image coach, told Business Insider.

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

• "Daredevil" fans were crushed when Netflix cancelled the show in 2018, but it is now returning to Disney+.
• "Daredevil: Born Again" is gory and violent: proving Marvel can change and adapt.
• The show has flaws, but is the best Marvel project in years.

"Daredevil: Born Again" starts with an unsubtle wink to fans who have waited seven years for the show to return.

As the lawyer Foggy Nelson wistfully recalls long-gone diners in New York City, his legal partner Karen Page replies: "This Hell's Kitchen nostalgia is running pretty thin you guys, you realize that, right?"

"Not nostalgia. Reverence for the past, yet hope for the future… Too much?" he says.

The tongue-in-cheek line might be on the nose (or horns), but it's a manifesto for the entire series.

"Daredevil: Born Again" has reverence for the eponymous 2015 Netflix show beloved by fans, who were crushed when it was canceled in 2018 after three seasons. But the symphony of violence when Bullseye attacks Josie's Bar in the opening minutes makes it clear that Disney wants to take the franchise to new heights, by taking risks and pushing the boundaries of what the Marvel Cinematic Universe can be.

Yes, projects like "Werewolf By Night" and the "Echo" miniseries have gritty moments, but fist-fights actually carry weight in "Daredevil: Born Again." They lead to oozing bruises, court cases, and questions from loved ones. They also enable characters to grow, especially after a tragedy in the first episode (which will likely annoy fans).

This is not the all-too-often vacuous family-friendly superheroics that Marvel typically relies on.

Sure, Daredevil doesn't need violence to work as a character in the MCU, as proven by his recent cameos in "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "She-Hulk."

But grabbing fans by the scruff of the neck with a combination of substance and high-octane action is a particularly smart move following a string of lackluster Marvel offerings, on both big and small screens.

It seems there's still fight left in Marvel, the studio just needs to figure out what makes each project special and lean into that, as it does with "Daredevil: Born Again."

"Daredevil: Born Again" isn't perfect, but it's the best Marvel project in years

Having said that, while the series shines when creating raw tension and using violence in clever ways, the story feels flimsy in places. This may be symptomatic of the creative overhaul that took place in June 2023. Marvel Television went back to the drawing board after filming several episodes of "Born Again" and started afresh with a new showrunner and writers that October.

For instance, Muse — an artistic serial killer who roams the streets looking for victims — is an exciting new enemy for Daredevil, like something out of David Fincher's "Seven" or the BBC's "Luther." But his storyline is cut disappointingly short.

There are some rough visuals in a CGI-enhanced fight, which is odd given some of the impressively choreographed stunts later in the series. And a few story beats are particularly rushed, including Murdock's relationship with the psychiatrist Heather Glenn, which materializes almost instantly without feeling particularly earned.

There's plenty of time spent exploring the hero's defining dilemma (his duty as Daredevil or his life and career as Matt Murdock), but it takes much longer than expected to get to the meat of the season: Kingpin's plan to ban superheroes from New York.

But there is still much for hungry "Daredevil" fans to unpick. The way Wilson Fisk weaponizes the general public will no doubt draw some real-world comparisons, but Vincent D'Onofrio's quietly chilling performance never jumps the shark into parody. Kingpin remains as terrifying as ever, as he sets his sights on the mayor's office, especially in the show's most obscenely gory moment.

Ultimately, the series as a whole, particularly how Daredevil and Kingpin develop as characters, proves an important point. It is possible for Marvel to add depth to its core characters alongside bone-crunchingly excellent fight choreography.

Throw in a tantalizing cliffhanger ahead of season two, and "Born Again" is the best MCU project in recent years, flaws and all.

To be blunt as Daredevil's billy clubs, Marvel has found a way to give audiences the hero they know and love, while having him exist in the same universe as the Avengers.

"Hope for the future," indeed.

• Wu Zhixun left his hometown and his job at a local bank to spend his 20s pursuing an acting career in Beijing.
• He entered his 30s ready for a career change and noticed Beijing lacked the flavors of his hometown.
• One year after opening his restaurant, Wu, now 31, says he has made back his initial investment.

Wu Zhixun stumbled into acting by accident when he was a young adult. Years later, a similarly unexpected turn of events led him to open — and become the face of — a popular restaurant in Beijing.

In 2013, the sporting brand Li Ning was sponsoring university basketball games across China. They chose Wu to appear in an ad. Soon after, people started recognizing him on the streets of Yunnan, the southern Chinese province, where he'd grown up.

After graduating, he got hired by a local bank, but six months in, a video-streaming company asked him to appear on a reality TV show in which he'd be cooking for celebrities.

"I thought it was a scam at first," he told Business Insider. But they offered to buy him a flight to Beijing, 1,500 miles northeast of Yunnan, so he quit his job and dove into the world of acting and television.

Career shift into F&B

Over a seven-year acting career, Wu appeared in three TV shows and a Huawei campaign.

In 2017, after his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, he returned to Yunnan for a year and a half to spend time with her.

While he was back home, he invested money into two F&B ventures, neither of which panned out.

The first was a snack shop. Wu and three partners each invested 100,000 yuan into the shop, which sold chicken feet, rice noodles, and mango rice. The shop shuttered after six months.

Next, he invested 50,000 yuan in a Japanese restaurant. Within three months, the restaurant closed. Looking back, he said he could see the problems were with the location and the management.

The restaurant was tucked away on the second floor of an office building, and no one on the management team had any experience running a kitchen. They didn't know how many ingredients to order, and they often sold out of popular dishes before the end of the day.

Bringing the taste of home to Beijing

At the end of 2018, Wu moved back to Beijing. Within a couple of years, he met his partner, and they started discussing the idea of starting a family.

He wanted more career stability and was tired of being an actor. "You're always waiting to be chosen," he said.

While living in Beijing, he spotted a market opportunity to serve authentic Yunnan food.

"Yunnan flavors are textured," he said. "There are sour, fragrant, numbing, spicy notes, and these are all from natural plants."

Restaurants in Beijing just weren't getting the flavors right — so he decided to launch his third F&B venture.

He needed money for the initial investment, so he sold an apartment his mother had given him and invested 600,000 yuan into the restaurant.

His mother was against the idea of him selling. "My mom needs to know something will have a 100% success rate before she'll do it," he said.

Hands-on management

It's been almost two years since Wu, now 31, began planning his restaurant, Yican, or Can Bistro in English. He works with a business partner, Qu Fei, who invested an additional 400,000 yuan into the business.

Learning from his previous business failure, Wu knew he wanted to open the restaurant in a busy area. He chose a commercial business park in southeast Beijing, near Sihuidong station.

They hired Yunnan chefs and slowly renovated a space that had previously been a clothing store.

The restaurant has been open for about a year. When BI visited the restaurant in early February, all 10 tables were full by noon.

Can Bistro is a dog-friendly restaurant, and a Bichon Frisé and a Schnauzer were among the guests. Diners sat on rattan chairs, eating from speckled black ceramic dishes. Steaming bowls of sour papaya fish, spicy beef, stewed chicken, and crispy tofu covered the wooden tables. Some guests washed down their meals with Asahi beer and natural wine from Yunnan.

A meal for four typically includes around six dishes. The stewed chicken, 68 yuan, has become popular. The potatoes fall apart, and the meat is perfectly tender. The sour bamboo shoots and water spinach dish is an uncommon combination in Beijing, but popular among the Dai ethnic minority in Yunnan.

Beijing's changing food scene

Over the past five years, Beijing's food scene has seen waves of restaurants open and close. "Ninety percent of bistros close in their first year," Fiona Wu, a sales professional working in Beijing's lifestyle industry, told BI.

In order to make it in the Beijing market, Fiona said restaurants need to be popular "from the beginning."

And that's where it came full circle for Wu.

"It was about looks at first," Fiona said of Can Bistro's popularity. "The look of the place, the restaurant decor, and the bosses' being handsome, attracted users on RedNote," she said, referencing the popular Chinese social media app.

Shortly after opening, Wu's marketing team posted a series of candid photos of its owners on the Chinese social media app. The photos had captions like, "Not drinking coffee unless a hot guy has made it for me." Wu said that people who saw the restaurant online began to come in person.

"Without that marketing campaign, they wouldn't have gotten so much footfall in the beginning," Fiona said.

One year after opening, Wu said he and Di have made back their initial investment. Wu said that in the summer, lines often form outside the restaurant.

Running the restaurant has meant both Wu and his business partner have had to learn each other's way of doing things.

Wu says he's happier now. He visits the restaurant every day — and still has time to play basketball twice a week.

"It's a world away from when I was at the bank."

• Trump is delivering an address to a joint session of Congress tonight.
• He used the moment to celebrate tariffs and the DOGE office's efforts to cut spending.
• The address was at times raucous, with Democratic lawmakers protesting loudly through Trump's remarks.

President Donald Trump began his speech on Tuesday evening by declaring to the nation that the US is on the verge of a historic comeback.

Trump celebrated tariffs during his speech, defending them by listing off tariffs that have been imposed on the US by other countries.

"We have been ripped off by every other country on earth," he said.

The president announced earlier Tuesday that the 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada would begin. The tax on imports would impact the price of goods ranging from fresh produce to automobile parts.

Trump also said he will balance the federal budget in part by offering $5 million gold cards for wealthy immigrants, all the while announcing sweeping tax cuts for US citizens.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan held a small whiteboard that said, "Start by paying your taxes."

Republicans just passed a budget resolution that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts which would add to the federal deficit.

Trump also attacked the CHIPS Act, calling it a "horrible, horrible thing."

The CHIPS Act, a $280 billion legislative package to support chip manufacturing and R&D in the US, received bipartisan support and was signed into law by the Biden administration in 2022.

Trump's opening remarks were quickly disrupted by Rep. Al Green of Texas, who was escorted out of the chamber after repeated warnings from House Speaker Mike Johnson.

"Six weeks ago, I stood beneath the dome of this Capitol and proclaimed the dawn of the Golden Age of America. From that moment on, it has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action to usher in the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country," Trump said in his address to Congress. "We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in 4 years or 8 years — and we are JUST GETTING STARTED."

Before he was escorted out, Green shouted, "You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!" at the president.

Trump also said he'll "Make America Affordable Again" and blamed the Biden Administration for sky-high inflation and increasing the price of eggs.

In reality, Trump inherited a US economy that has largely recovered from its pandemic lows. The price of eggs has also spiked in part due to an avian flu outbreak.

On Tuesday, ahead of his speech, markets tanked after he imposed 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said after markets closed on Tuesday that a compromise could "probably" be imminent. After the comments, US stock futures recovered.

Trump made no indication that a compromise was in the works.

At times, Trump sounded like a leader gearing up for a trade war.

"Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them. Whatever they tax us, we tax them. If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market," Trump is expected to say. "We will take in trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before."

Elon Musk, the de facto head of the White House DOGE office, was also in the chamber, wearing a suit. GOP members gave a standing ovation at Trump's mention of DOGE, with many Republican lawmakers turning toward Musk in the House gallery to cheer for him.

Trump praised DOGE, claiming that it had discovered "billions of dollars of fraud," and listed off various payments the federal agencies spent in overseas programs. Some of those claimed savings, including $4 billion worth of contracts the group claimed to cancel, were retracted from DOGE's "wall of receipts."

Former federal workers who Musk has helped fire were invited as guests by Democratic lawmakers.

It's a State of the Union address in all but name — technically, in the president's first year, it's just a joint address to Congress.

The last time Trump was in the House chamber was during the final year of his first term when he delivered his final State of the Union address on the eve of the Senate acquitting him in his first impeachment trial.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, the January 6 insurrection, the Biden administration, and Trump's improbable political comeback.

Trump's speech could last up to two hours, according to White House press guidance.

As is often the case with Trump, it's possible the president goes off-script.

This story will be updated with new details from Trump's address when it begins.

• Katherine Phillips was burned out, so she left San Diego and moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2019.
• She works remotely on a Destination Thailand Visa and lives in a $340-a-month apartment.
• She says her life has slowed down since moving to Chiang Mai and it's done wonders for her mental health.

Katherine Phillips, 32, had never been to Chiang Mai, Thailand, before she moved there on her own in 2019.

Phillips, who grew up in San Diego, always dreamed of traveling around Asia. Her mother is from the Philippines, and while she's been to Manila multiple times to visit family over the years, she never got the chance to explore the rest of Southeast Asia.

After finishing grad school and getting her master's in counseling, she was ready to take a break.

"I was really burned out," Phillips told Business Insider. "It was a lot of 15-hour days."

While she was keen on the idea of taking a gap year to travel, she also wanted to make sure she had some income.

When she stumbled upon a job listing for a one-year counseling position at a private international school in Chiang Mai, she decided to go for it.

Why Chiang Mai?

Chiang Mai is about 450 miles north of Bangkok and has long been a popular destination for tourists and expats alike, in part due to its relatively low cost of living.

Phillips says Chiang Mai caught her attention because it frequently came up on lists of popular destinations for digital nomads and expats. It felt like a safe place to live.

Her parents were shocked when she first told them about her plans to move abroad.

"I've always done everything by the books. And this was the first time I was like, 'I'm going to leave the country,'" she said. "They were like, 'You couldn't have just gone to a different state? You had to go to a whole other country?'"

While they were supportive, they were also worried because they couldn't quite understand why she wanted to do it.

"My mom immigrated to the States when she was 18 or 19. She came here and created this really amazing life for herself. And then I, on the other hand, wanted to do the opposite and leave the States," Phillips said.

Her parents have always been somewhat traditional, she said: "You get the degrees, you climb the corporate ladder, that kind of thing, and I was not for that at all."

The school helped Phillips with her visa application, and she stayed in her job there for two years.

When the pandemic started, everything moved online, including her counseling sessions, and she could feel herself starting to burn out again.

"It just started to not feel fulfilling anymore, and I felt like I was doing a disservice. I don't want to show up every day miserable," Phillips said.

After she left her job, she got an education visa and enrolled in a university to learn Thai.

Now, she works remotely for a marketing agency. She has a Destination Thailand Visa, which was introduced last year and can be used by digital nomads and remote workers.

In November 2022, Phillips moved into a one-bedroom apartment near Nimman, a trendy district popular with tourists and expats. Her rent is 11,500 Thai baht, or about $340, a month. It's her third apartment in Chiang Mai.

The 550-square-foot apartment has an open floor plan, two balconies, and a washing machine.

Better mental health, more free time

In recent years, Chiang Mai has become a popular choice for people around the world looking to relocate.

Data from the Bureau of Registration Administration of Thailand indicates that 163,036 foreigners were living in Chiang Mai province as of December 31.

Several people who moved to Chiang Mai previously told BI they were drawn to the area's low costs and laid-back lifestyle.

Johnny Ward, a travel blogger, previously told BI he managed to build his dream "James Bond" villa in Chian Mai for about $600,000. Fred Jones, a retired cop from Florida, previously told BI that life in Chiang Mai is cheaper, safer, and less stressful than back in the US.

Living in Chiang Mai has done wonders for her mental health, and she has more control over her time now. That's partially due to the nature of her work, which is more flexible and project-based.

"I have time for hobbies now. What is that? Because that never happens in the States," she said with a laugh. Now, she gets to do creative things, like learn how to dance the salsa and the bachata, as well as make videos on YouTube and TikTok.

That said, her journey wasn't without its challenges. There was a language barrier, and it took Phillips some time to get used to the food in Chiang Mai, which was more spicy than back in the US.

She added that there was also a part of her that felt like she was missing out on things that were happening back in the States.

However, now that she's been living in Chiang Mai for so long, she says she doesn't see herself moving back to the US.

"I honestly feel safer than I do in the States sometimes," she said. "I feel like everyone looks out for each other."

Ultimately, she's glad she took the plunge to make the move.

"You can always go back to your 9-to-5, to your life in the States, but I think it's worth just experiencing it at least once, to try it out and see," she said.

Do you have a story to share about moving to a new country? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Trump still faces potential revocation of his NJ liquor licenses due to his hush-money conviction.
• His lawyers now want the federal courts to take control of his state appeal of the hush-money case.
• NJ officials tell BI that a license revocation hearing remains pending, though no date is set.

Lawyers for President Trump took the unusual step this week of asking a federal appellate court in Manhattan to take control of the state appeal of his New York hush-money conviction.

The hush-money case is "extraordinary" and relied on now-exempt official, presidential acts to reach a guilty verdict, Trump's lawyers wrote in asking that the state appeal be moved to the federal court system.

US law allows such a state-to-federal transfer, but almost only in cases that are pretrial. For judges to approve, a defendant must invoke a federal defense such as presidential immunity, and must establish that the alleged criminal conduct arose from official federal acts, his lawyers argued in a 40-page brief.

"This prosecution of President Trump, which never should have been brought, checks both boxes," they wrote.

The brief was filed Monday with the intermediate-level Second Circuit Court of Appeals. It was signed by attorney Robert J. Giuffra, Jr.

In the 10 months since his conviction, Trump has fought hard in no fewer than four courts to clear his criminal record.

So long as the conviction remains on his record, at least two of Trump's three New Jersey liquor licenses — for his golf courses at the Trump National Golf Club in Colts Neck and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, remain in jeopardy.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson with the New Jersey attorney general's office told Business Insider that revocation hearings on those golf club licenses remain pending, though no date has been set.

New Jersey law requires revocation if someone who holds or is the primary beneficiary of a liquor license has a felony conviction.

Although the three clubs' liquor licenses are in Donald Trump, Jr.'s, name, the elder Trump remains the primary financial beneficiary of the licenses through the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, the spokesperson said.

The Colts Neck and Bedminster clubs are selling liquor under provisional licenses; the license for Trump's third New Jersey club, the Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia in Pine Hill, expires in June.

A Manhattan jury in May convicted Trump of 34 felony counts.

The jury found that throughout 2017, his first year in office, Trump conspired with his top executives to falsify Trump Organization records to retroactively hide a $130,000 hush-money payment that had silenced porn actress Stormy Daniels 11 days before the 2016 election.

Monday's brief came in response to an older and far more narrow question — whether a federal judge erred in July 2023 when he rejected one of Trump's pre-trial efforts to move the case to federal court.

Trump had argued in that case that the hush-money matter "involves important federal questions" because he was president at the time prosecutors say the records were falsified.

US District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein disagreed, sending it back to state court for trial. Hellerstein found that Trump failed to demonstrate that the conduct he was actually charged with — falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment — related to any official acts as president.

Prosecutors with the office of District Attorney Alvin Bragg have yet to respond to Monday's brief, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In September they filed a brief arguing that Trump's efforts to move the case have come too late. In January they filed notice that they are willing to appear in court and participate in oral arguments before the appellate panel.

• Goldman Sachs is moving its annual headcount-cutting ritual from fall to spring this year.
• Reports suggested between 3% to 5% of Goldman's employees could be at risk.
• The bank is eyeing its vice-president ranks for cuts, BI has learned.

Goldman Sachs is moving its annual headcount-cutting ritual from fall to spring this year and will be zooming in on a key constituency for trims: its cohort of vice presidents.

The cuts are part of what is known inside Goldman as the annual Strategic Resource Assessment, or SRA, a process the bank has used to cull underperformers that has taken place in the fall in recent years.

"Like other banks, this is part of our normal, annual talent management process," a spokesperson for the bank said in a statement. "We don't comment on the specifics in any given year."

A key target of this year's cuts will be vice presidents, according to a recently departed Goldman employee who requested anonymity to freely discuss company matters. VPs are a rank of executives who sit above associates and below managing directors.

This person said executives at the bank had discussed either trimming or transferring some of the bank's VPs to other offices to save money as recently as the fourth quarter, adding that the VP population at Goldman had become so bloated in recent years that VPs were increasingly reporting to other VPs instead of managing directors.

The spring timetable and focus on vice presidents was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

In a January call with investors, CEO David Solomon addressed plans to cut costs over the next three years.

"Operating efficiency remains one of our key strategic objectives," he said. "We have established a three-year program as a part of our business planning process that will help us dynamically manage our expense base, harness technology and automation and reinvest in our businesses."

Solomon also said in the January earnings call that the firm is "optimizing our organizational footprint by expanding our presence in strategic locations." One of those experiencing the most growth is the company's site in Dallas, Texas — which is on track to increase from its current headcount of about 4,600 employees to 5,000 by the time it opens a $500 million state-of-the-art campus in 2028.

Every year, Goldman looks for ways to reduce its bottom performers through the SRA. As BI previously reported, Goldman has, in years past, used the benchmark of roughly 5% of staff as a target.

While Goldman hasn't disclosed a goal for this year's SRA, WSJ said Goldman is eyeing a trim of between 3% to 5% of staff this year. As of its latest tally, the firm ended 2024 with about 46,500 employees. Cuts of 3% to 5% would suggest layoffs of between 1,395 and 2,325 positions.

Goldman's 360-degree annual performance review plays a role in job cuts: Employees are rated by peers and managers on factors like risk management and teamwork, BI has previously reported.

The bottom 10% of performers are typically the most vulnerable to being cut. Employees described the review process as stressful and time-intensive, requiring them to solicit feedback and complete evaluations outside work hours.

Reed Alexander is a correspondent at Business Insider covering Wall Street and financial-services institutions. He can be reached via email at [email protected], or SMS/the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758.

After a monthlong delay, President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. These countries are fighting back with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling these tariffs "very dumb."

• A top lawmaker identified the five capabilities he believes the US military needs to innovate in.
• Those areas are missiles, missile defenses, drones, counter-drone systems, and secure comms, Rep. Smith said.
• Special operations forces lead the charge on experimenting with some of those, he added.

There are five critical technologies needed to fight future wars, a top lawmaker on military and defense matters said recently.

Those areas are missiles, missile defenses, drones, counter-drone systems, and secure communications, Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat and the ranking member of the US House Armed Services Committee, said at a recent symposium in Washington, DC. He said these are the areas where the US needs to innovate and develop game-changing capabilities.

Having the best weapons within those areas, he said, is key to winning future wars. The war in Ukraine is showing just how crucial these capabilities are.

Smith pointed out that the development of countermeasures demands a constant cycle of modifying these systems. That's been seen especially in the mass use of electronic warfare to jam drones; in response, both sides of the war have developed ways to evade frequency jamming.

Beyond drones and counter-drone tech, the importance of missiles and missile defense are increasingly hot topics among military leaders as US rivals and adversaries, from Russia and China to Iran and North Korea, invest in missiles.

The US has seen interceptor stocks strained by Iranian bombardments and lower-end threats like the Houthis in Yemen, who terrorized ships in and around the Red Sea. In a great-power conflict, such as a potential war with China in the Indo-Pacific region, air defenses could be more critical to shield naval bases, air bases, and other installations, as well as ships.

The US military is also developing and fielding certain offensive missile capabilities, like the Typhon Mid-Range Capability, which is a land-based launch option for Tomahawk cruise missiles, and hypersonic missile systems.

Likewise, another key development area has been secure communications and assured navigation. Vulnerabilities in these spaces can be costly in a high-end fight.

For the US military, special operations forces can be seen leading the way in innovative iteration. "They're going to iterating on a day-in and day-out basis, and we need to learn from that and expand it," Smith said at the National Defense Industrial Association US Special Operations Symposium.

US special operators testing out uncrewed systems in different environments against different threats, for example, are at the front lines of figuring out what could be needed for a future fight.

They are often among the first to get their hands on new technologies, and they work closely with the defense industry to develop new systems, leading to real-time adaptations and rapid evolutions.

As special operations leadership said at the recent symposium, operators are going to need cheaper, more expendable weapons, like drones, in a potential future fight.

While this doesn't mean that other systems — such as F-35 Joint Strike Fighters or Ford-class aircraft carriers — aren't needed, it does raise questions about where the US Department of Defense's priorities are.

"We are spending a ton of money at DoD right now that isn't in those five things," Smith said.

The Pentagon is reshuffling the Defense Department's budget. It is still a bit murky, with submarines being among the few clearly articulated priorities, but it's moving roughly $50 billion from legacy programs to new priorities, which do appear to include missile defense and drone-related technologies.

Big challenges for the department in fielding new capabilities can be contracting issues and slow acquisition processes.

Military officials and industry partners at the NDIA special operations symposium spoke about the challenges facing the US military's acquisition process, including requirement and funding hurdles that have hindered the adoption of new weapons and capabilities.

Some speakers highlighted the agile and flexible acquisition process used by US special operations forces as a model for how the Department of Defense can better implement new technologies, especially drones and other uncrewed systems. They said that having a process able to produce a variety of systems could be vital in a longer, protracted conflict.

Others noted that a future, high-speed, highly digitized war could be even more demanding with the rise of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. Questions were raised, too, about whether decision-making will occur at such a pace that humans can't keep up. The technological space is evolving fast.

• Dolly Parton's husband, Carl Dean, died on Monday at the age of 82.
• Parton and Dean had been together for over 60 years.
• In previous interviews with BI, Parton revealed the dishes she loved to cook and share with Dean.

Dolly Parton has always used music to express love to her many fans, but whenever she came home to her husband, Carl Dean, food was their true love language.

On Monday, Parton announced that Dean had died at the age of 82, writing in an Instagram statement that "words can't do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years."

From Taco Bell to homemade fried chicken, Parton and her husband shared countless dishes in their six decades together. We looked back at some of our past interviews with Parton and the stories she shared about the couple's love for food.

Fast food and humble beginnings

Parton and Dean first locked eyes outside a laundromat on the very first day she moved to Nashville in 1964.

"I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me)," Parton wrote on her official website. "He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about."

Parton made just as much of an impression on Dean, who once told Entertainment Tonight that his first thought when they met was, "I'm gonna marry that girl."

"My second thought was, 'Lord, she's good lookin','" he recalled. "And that was the day my life began."

In her 2024 cookbook "Good Lookin' Cookin'," Parton shared memories of those early years with Dean, including Christmases before she became the queen of country music.

"Dolly and Carl couldn't afford anything more than a tiny silver tree that sat on their coffee table and a candle placed in the living room window," one passage reads.

Parton accumulated a net worth of $450 million, but she and Dean, who mostly stayed out of the spotlight, never stopped loving their fast-food dinners together.

"We love to just get out in that little camper of ours and drive through restaurants," she told Business Insider in 2022. "I love to get a good burger and french fries on the highway like everybody else, and we go get hot doughnuts now and then. It depends on what we're in the mood for. Whether it's tacos or burgers or whatever, we can go get it!"

Parton told BI that she and Dean were big fans of Taco Bell, where she'd always get the same thing:

• Taco Supreme
• Mexican Pizza
• Rice and beans
• Mild sauce

Weekends filled with Southern cuisine

Parton told BI that she loved cooking delicious feasts with classic Southern dishes for her husband on weekends.

"Sometimes on Saturdays, I'll think, 'Well, I need to make a big ol' lunch for him,'" she recalled with a laugh. "Where there's pinto beans and corn bread and things like that."

Parton's skillet corn bread couldn't be easier; all you need is:

• 2 cups of self-rising cornmeal (she recommends Martha White or White Lily)
• 1-1 ½ cups of buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons of bacon drippings, plus extra for the skillet
• 1 teaspoon of salt

Whenever the couple wanted something lighter, Parton would whip up omelets, scrambled eggs (she has a trick for making them perfectly fluffy), or Dean's favorite broccoli salad, which features:

• 8 cups of broccoli florets
• 6 slices of bacon
• 1 sweet onion
• ½ cup of raisins
• ½ cup of chopped raw pecans

And, for the dressing:

• 1 cup of mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
• 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper

Nothing says love like homemade fried chicken

When we asked Parton to share the one dish everyone should make for a successful marriage, she replied: "You can't go wrong with fried chicken."

"I think everybody should really know how to make good fried chicken," Parton added. "No matter where people come from, they love good fried chicken. So you need to make good fried chicken!"

Parton and her sister, Rachel Parton George, include tips for making great fried chicken in their "Good Lookin' Cookin'" cookbook:

• Marinate the chicken overnight before frying for best results
• The marinade should include buttermilk, eggs, onion, garlic, and Tabasco
• For the breading, use all-purpose flour, cornstarch, salt, rosemary, and thyme
• Add chicken fat from the skillet to your gravy

Parton said Dean was also a huge fan of her chicken and dumplings, as well as pork chop with green peas and her mashed potatoes.

"That's one of my husband's favorites," Parton told BI. "But he likes all my cooking."

In her cookbook, Parton also wrote that food allows us to keep people "near us in our memories" because "we're honoring them through food that they loved or shared with us."

"Through the years — good times and hard — food and family have sustained us," she added.

• The White House DOGE Office walked back $4 billion in claimed savings on its website.
• The group has made similar errors before, like when it lowered its savings by $9 billion in 2 days.
• Since the website doesn't provide details for all claimed savings, other totals are hard to verify.

The White House DOGE Office has slashed another $4 billion — from its own list of savings, not the federal budget.

On Sunday evening, the group deleted or changed upwards of 1,000 contracts that it said it had canceled, according to the New York Times. Together, the alterations accounted for more than 40% of the contracts that the White House DOGE Office had listed on its website the week prior.

Business Insider previously reported that the group lowered its claimed savings by more than $9 billion in a two-day period last month. In February, it had claimed savings on its website of $16.5 billion, mainly in canceled contracts. By March 4, that number was down to around $8 billion, according to the site's "Wall of Receipts," which lists canceled contracts.

A few contracts account for a significant chunk of the changes — for example, the site had said that canceling an Internal Revenue Service contract saved $1.9 billion, per the Times. Really, the outlet found that contract had been canceled in November. The same was true of the White House DOGE Office's earlier accounting snafus, when it claimed to save around $2 billion by cancelling three USAID deals, before deleting two of the entries and with them $1.3 billion in savings.

The website now says the group has saved $105 billion in total but does not list details for savings other than contracts, like the names of terminated grants or buildings with cancelled leases, making the total difficult to verify.

The White House DOGE office has repeatedly tempered expectations. Elon Musk, the group's de facto leader, initially said he'd help cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, before scaling the expectation back to $1 trillion. And earlier today, an agency quietly edited a key memo related to Musk's efforts to remake the federal workforce after a court ruling.

Representatives for the Trump administration and White House DOGE Office did not respond to BI's request for comment.

• Meghan Markle's Netflix show dropped on Tuesday, and she is launching a lifestyle brand this spring.
• It might be difficult for Meghan to stand out and seem relatable in the lifestyle industry.
• PR and branding experts said leveraging her royal status may help Meghan find success.

Say hello to the new Meghan Markle — again.

On Tuesday, "With Love, Meghan" dropped on Netflix. In the first episode alone, the Duchess of Sussex explained how to make a bath salt kit, shared a hack for making homemade popcorn in a paper bag, harvested honey from her personal hive, and made candles with the leftover wax.

The lifestyle series presents Meghan as a jack of all trades when it comes to hosting and homemaking, complementing her lifestyle brand, As Ever. The brand's first product line will be available later this spring. On Tuesday, Meghan revealed As Ever's offerings will include spreads, teas, crepe and cookie mixes, and flower petal sprinkles, which she often uses on "With Love, Meghan."

These new ventures won't surprise longtime fans who have followed Meghan since her scrappy blogging days, but it's also no secret that critics are primed to critique these latest moves. Add in the pressure of entering the oversaturated aspirational lifestyle market, and it's clear Meghan has an uphill battle in creating a brand that feels inviting and approachable. After all, few things are less relatable than a duchess telling you your life can be like hers.

Still, if Meghan can stay true to her fans and lean into her life's fairy-tale arc, she might be on her way to starting her best chapter, experts say.

The crowded lifestyle industry

Although she was known for her acting career before she married Prince Harry, Meghan also ran a blog called The Tig from 2014 to 2017, sharing recipes, travel stories, and posts about her favorite restaurants.

Her two new ventures — "With Love, Meghan" and As Ever — allow her to tap back into those interests before her royal detour, though it will have to evolve as she did in the last eight years.

"She was creating some branding, but it was not as cultured. It was not as refined," Stacy Jones, the founder and CEO of Hollywood Branded, told Business Insider of The Tig. "Becoming part of the royal family, she opened up a whole different level of product class."

Although Meghan's passion for lifestyle is well-established, the industry is crowded.

Martha Stewart has long been the it-girl of the lifestyle world, and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Alba have carved their own place in the industry with Goop and the Honest Company, finding commercial and financial success. Goop was worth $433 million in 2020, and as of March 2025, the Honest Company, which went public in 2021, was valued at about $530 million.

Likewise, influencers such as Meredith Hayden have built massive social media followings with lifestyle content, appealing to viewers as "every women."

Jones said Meghan will "need a strong and unique selling point" to make As Ever resonate. Megan Balyk, the vice president of Jive PR + Digital, told BI she thinks Meghan will struggle if she "cannot find a clear, consistent brand identity."

Consistency has been an issue for Meghan since 2020, said Balyk. Meghan has tried her hand at ventures that didn't pan out, like her animated series "Pearl" or the $20 million Spotify deal to make podcasts with Harry. (People reported on March 3 that Meghan is working on a new podcast with Lemonada Media.)

The ever-evolving nature of Meghan's post-royal life has also bred some public distrust, and she doesn't do herself any favors by seeming to take cues from the royals' "never complain, never explain" mantra when it comes to her middling business dealings.

For instance, Meghan announced in February that she was changing her company's name from American Riviera Orchard, a nickname for her neighborhood of Santa Barbara, to As Ever. She cited her partnership with Netflix, her desire to make items that aren't just localized, and the name's nod to her longtime love of cooking as the reasons for the change.

There's truth there, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The trademark office temporarily denied Meghan's application for American Riviera Orchard in August 2024, saying the name was "primarily geographically descriptive."

That denial was likely a motivating factor in the rebrand, and when that kind of information trickles out to the public from the media or internet sleuths as Meghan tells an edited version of events, her critics — who have no reason to give her the benefit of the doubt — may feel even more vindicated in distrusting her.

Finding her brand

Meghan's ventures have an effortlessly luxurious feel in their branding so far, simultaneously appealing and just slightly out of reach. Their light tones are also starkly different from those of her previous Netflix hit, "Harry & Meghan," which detailed her struggles with royal life. Harry is also largely absent from her new show.

The people watching "With Love, Meghan" will likely differ from those eager to hear about her dramatic life as a royal.

"People like looking at train wrecks and car crashes, and they want to gossip," Jones said. "You're really leaning into a very different type of fan base."

Meghan has to build out a new audience that trusts her, but her existing supporters can help. Young women make up much of her fan base, and Black women have been some of Meghan's strongest supporters as she's risen to fame.

Jones said it could "be a huge missed opportunity" if Meghan doesn't prioritize Black women in her lifestyle ventures.

"Most celebrity lifestyle brands cater to a polished, elite, mostly white audience," she said. "If Meghan embraces this community with real action, As Ever could be powerful. If she doesn't, it may feel like she's lost touch with the very people who saw themselves in her story."

Balyk also said that it might be easier for Meghan to build a brand people trust if she positions Melinda Gates and Oprah Winfrey as her contemporaries rather than Stewart or Paltrow, as her passion for philanthropy has been clear to the public from the earliest days of her fame.

If she can incorporate that focus on giving back into her lifestyle work, Meghan may even be able to get the best of both worlds.

Authentically Meghan

When Meghan made The Tig, she was in the sweet spot of being successful but not too famous.

Now, though, she is among the most famous people in the world, married to a prince, and mother to children who are sixth and seventh in line for the British throne. She also lives in a celebrity-studded neighborhood in California and counts A-list stars among her close friends.

Lifestyle content thrives when consumers relate to the creator, but Meghan's life is so singular that relatability isn't an option for her anymore, no matter how much she wants it to be.

Ironically, Jones told BI that Meghan may be able to make herself more approachable to audiences by reminding them that she isn't like them.

"Everyone can buy in on the princess," she said. "Americans like a fable. They like a happy ending."

Viewers might not be able to see themselves in much of Meghan's life, but they can invest in the American dream she lived, looking to her for guidance on how to make their ordinary lives just a bit more sparkly. The duchess can also use her show to tell that story and sell customers on As Ever.

"She has a literal infomercial for who she is that can be viewed 24/7 and streamed," Jones said. "She can tell the stories about the lifestyle and the brand. She can paint pictures about her jam and how it came to be and all the little steps that actually people are fascinated with."

Meghan's fairy tale shouldn't be hard to sell. She is a beautiful actor who fell in love with a prince and wants to live happily ever by helping people make their lives more aesthetically pleasing. If she can tap into that narrative, Meghan will finally find a niche that feels like home.

• In a Deloitte survey, 26% of leaders said their organizations were seriously exploring autonomous agents.
• ServiceNow, SAP, and Salesforce are among the firms that have debuted AI agents to do work tasks.
• This article is part of "AI in Action," a series exploring how companies are implementing AI innovations.

When clients of the cloud-based-software provider ServiceNow contact the company's customer support center, 80% of the cases — in the form of calls and chat messages — are handled without any human intervention.

Instead, the company relies on analytical and generative artificial intelligence — in the form of AI agents — to address common customer questions.

Chris Bedi, ServiceNow's chief customer officer and enterprise-AI advisor, said employees still handle one out of every five customer-support requests.

They're getting new support from agentic AI, which can automate tasks such as drafting a response email to a customer. Workers remain in the loop for a final sign-off before any agentic-AI actions are executed. The combination of human workers and agentic AI shrank the amount of time it took to handle the more complex cases by 52% in a two-week period, ServiceNow said.

OpenAI's cofounder Sam Altman and other leading technologists have said that 2025 will be the year that AI agents "join" the workforce.

In addition to ServiceNow, software developers such as Salesforce and SAP have rolled out their own agentic-AI platforms. These can perform workplace tasks such as processing customer invoices, providing customer support to clients, and drafting emails. The business software giant Intuit, which owns TurboTax and QuickBooks, began rolling out agentic-AI capabilities in December.

Humans mostly remain in the loop for now, but vendors anticipate this technology will become fully autonomous. Multiagent systems, where two or more AI agents collaborate to complete work, will proliferate.

"Agents are the next level of understanding around how you apply AI," Jim Rowan, the head of AI at the consultancy Deloitte, said. "It can perform actions for you."

In a recent Deloitte survey of 2,773 business leaders, 26% of respondents said their organizations were exploring autonomous agents to a "large or very large extent."

Why AI agents have become the new focus for generative AI

For the first two years of the generative-AI boom — which kicked off after the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022 — most businesses that adopted the technology scaled it to power chatbots and complete routine tasks like drafting meeting summaries. AI agents represent an evolution of generative-AI technology, built to complete tasks autonomously, though most are still monitored closely by workers.

Agentic AI "actually possesses some unique skills around reasoning, planning, and orchestration," Bedi told Business Insider. "These agents can collaborate with each other and really start to deliver on the promise of work happening autonomously."

Buzz for AI agents kicked into high gear after Salesforce debuted Agentforce in September to automate tasks in customer support, sales, and marketing. The company has said it will roll out 1 billion agents to customers by the end of this year. The company also reported that more than 340,000 of its customer support questions had been answered autonomously with Agentforce.

ServiceNow estimates that the company's AI agents, already deployed in various parts of the business, such as customer service, human resources, and IT, are driving an estimated $325 million in annualized value by bolstering workplace productivity by 20%. ServiceNow says AI-agent-supported work saves 400,000 labor hours annually.

Still, technology companies are in the early stages of their agentic-AI development. Many are figuring out which processes they can fully automate with the technology. As a result, company leaders implementing agentic AI are training their workers to collaborate with — and provide feedback on — their new "coworkers."

AI agents are often developed as worker-collaboration tools

John Kucera, the senior vice president of product management at Salesforce, recommended that businesses be transparent about what work AI agents can handle and what will remain with workers. He added that businesses should be clear about what an AI agent actually is, saying that not all agentic systems are equal.

"There's a lot of false agents out there," Kucera said. "It's only an agent when you're taking a request and the agent is figuring out what to do and then what data to put in."

While surveys frequently find that many workers worry that AI will replace them, technologists say AI agents won't replace people but assume responsibility for mundane tasks.

"These agents are going to help me do my job, but at no point will they make me do something I'm not aware of," said Walter Sun, the global head of AI at SAP, which sells software for financial, supply chain, and other business management needs. "The most important thing is that the employees are always in control."

How companies are tailoring AI agents with employee feedback

To ensure workers have a voice in how AI agents are developed, SAP encourages employees across its various business lines — including the travel- and expense-management provider Concur and SuccessFactors, which provides HR, payroll, and talent management software — to use an internal online form to reach out to the AI team and propose compelling agentic use cases.

At Intuit, the AI-powered financial assistant Intuit Assist can get businesses paid 45% faster by detecting past-due invoices and automatically drafting a personalized reminder note. After a business owner approves the note's language and sends it out, they are paid, on average, five days sooner than with a human-only process, Intuit Assist said.

But before Inuit Assist takes action, humans have the final say. "What we're trying to do is have the right human-automation interaction," Ashok Srivastava, Intuit's chief data officer, said.

Intuit has embraced a robust AI-training program, focused on responsible AI and what the technology can and cannot do, and built a "sandbox" called GenStudio that allows employees to interact with large language models in a secure environment. The company has also developed educational programs tailored to senior executives, directors, and engineers. "It's very pervasive across the company," Srivastava added.

Asana, which makes work-management software, launched AI agents in October, focusing on a few functions, including marketing, IT, HR, and research and development. Rather than track a specific number of actions that agentic AI takes over, Asana monitors the types of work that can be automated, eliminating the drudgery of busy work to allow employees to focus on more complex tasks.

The company is also keeping a close eye on which tasks AI systems get wrong compared with people. In cybersecurity, human errors tend to occur later in the day, when workers are tired after a long shift. AI doesn't get tired, but it is susceptible to hallucinations — or when an AI model generates a response that is misleading or false information but nonetheless presents it as fact. For example, Asana's AI agent might respond to certain questions by suggesting tasks that are, in reality, nonexistent to a particular workflow.

"The kinds of errors we see are different, so the way we fix them needs to be different," Asana's chief information security officer, Sean Cassidy, said. He said the company conducts automated tests to detect hallucinations and improve the product when they occur.

For AI agents to create a compelling return on investment for the companies that implement them, Deloitte's Rowan said, workers should be tasked with frequently checking on simple automated tasks before any agentic AI actions are taken.

If businesses want to see big returns on their agentic AI investment, they need to place AI at the center of their work model, and then consider how humans will engage with the work, Rowan said. If not, "the savings really won't be there," he added.

ServiceNow's Bedi said the success of AI agents depends on companies nailing three factors: New agentic capabilities should be developed for each department and its specific needs, unique training plans should be designed for every part of the business — like finance, marketing, and sales — and the value and return on of agentic workflows should be closely monitored.

"The companies that combine all three of those ingredients are going to have a competitive advantage," Bedi said.

• The internet is rapidly destroying TV because it gives people more ways to spend their time, for less money.
• Except! The thing that commands the most live attention on the internet is the same thing that commands the most attention on TV.
• Yup: NFL games.

Two things can be true at the same time:

• The internet has atomized the way we absorb information, entertainment, and culture. Which means we all exist in our own bubbles of interest and affiliation.
• The internet is very good at showing lots of people the same thing lots of people used to consume before the internet existed. Which means we're all still watching the same things we used to watch on TV — we're just getting it through broadband pipes.

Here's evidence for the second thing: a list of the top live internet events, ranked by broadband traffic, for the last three months of 2024. If you'd like to see a nonscreenshot version, download this report from AppLogic Networks, a broadband infrastructure company.

As you can see, the fifth entry on the chart is Netflix's Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson kinda-fight — the kind of stunt programming that used to run on ABC's "Wide World of Sports." (See: Knievel, Evel.) And the remaining nine events are all NFL games, streamed by Amazon, or ESPN, or Peacock.

That is: NFL games — basically the only thing that draws big numbers of viewers on TV anymore — are also basically the only thing that draws big numbers of internet viewers. At least when it comes to live, concurrent viewing.

As anyone who works in the TV business can tell you, that doesn't mean you can simply port TV shows over to the internet and get the same viewership, or money, that the traditional TV infrastructure used to deliver. It's much more complicated than that.

But it does seem to mean that TV's biggest live draw is also the internet's biggest live draw.

• Amazon and GE Vernova are partnering on power solutions for data centers.
• Grid operators in the US struggle to keep pace with surging data center demand.
• Big Tech companies are exploring alternative ways to get power to their sites quicker.

Amazon and GE Vernova have signed a strategic framework agreement to help power the cloud provider's rapid data center expansion, both companies said Tuesday in a press release.

Under the agreement, GE Vernova is set to help Amazon connect its growing international fleet of data centers to the electric grid through major electrical equipment expansion, project management, and construction support. The companies will also partner on renewable energy projects, and Amazon plans to work with GE Vernova's accelerator business to explore new forms of power generation for data centers.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Amazon, along with other Big Tech companies, is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data center expansion to advance artificial intelligence technology. Amazon plans to allocate over $100 billion in capital expenditures this year, mostly on expanding its cloud and AI infrastructure.

The development boom has caused energy demand in the US to surge for the first time in decades, and grid operators are struggling to keep up with the pace of growth.

As a result, data center operators are partnering with energy companies to explore various alternative options for getting power to their sites quicker. Last year, Amazon signed a deal with Talen Energy to use power from its Susquehanna nuclear power station in Pennsylvania.

GE Vernova builds and implements electrical power systems and equipment for energy sources such as natural gas, hydropower, wind, nuclear, and steam. The company's gas division saw significant growth in orders in 2024 for natural gas turbines, partially due to data center demand, CEO Scott Strazik said on an earnings call in January.

The company's natural gas turbines are providing power at the first Stargate site in Abilene, Texas. Stargate is a $500 billion joint initiative by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and the White House to build AI infrastructure.

Amazon and GE Vernova did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Do you have a story to share about data centers and energy? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Top hedge funds such as Citadel and Millennium lost money in February, BI has reported.
• Geopolitical tensions brought on by President Donald Trump led to rocky markets last month.
• See how some of the biggest multistrategy funds stack up.

Here's how multistrategy funds — which have raised billions in recent years because of their ability to handle volatility — stack up for the year so far: