The fusillade of major announcements from Meta this month — including the termination of its fact-checking and DEI programs and the ascension of enigmatic content-moderation czar Joel Kaplan to head global policy — prompted a familiar churn of political reaction across the left and right. But virtually everyone agrees on one thing: Meta's changes are designed, at least in part, to please the incoming administration of Donald Trump.

That is why the most consequential announcement regards Joel Kaplan, Zuckerberg's tight-lipped political consigliere. For the coming years, Kaplan will be the face in your living room, justifying Meta's handling of whatever crisis, catastrophe, or hypocrisy that the new Trump era is likely to ring in. He will speak at Davos, before committees, and on Good Morning America, defending Meta publicly — and Mark Zuckerberg personally — from the right, the left, and quite possibly from Trump himself.

Kaplan is not widely known. Yet he arguably has done more to shape the modern internet — and quicken its consolidation with and capture of American politics — than any non-CEO in the world. With his ascension to the chief policy position at Meta, Kaplan etches his name into the pantheon of great political actors on the Washington stage — akin to a combination of Rahm Emanuel and Henry Kissinger, if they'd had every major global tech CEO on speed-dial.

You can understand Kaplan's value to Meta by appreciating the two dimensions that account for his rise: Kaplan as the talented political fixer, and as the free speech intellectual. Two distinct stories capture both dimensions of Kaplan's impact on Meta and on Zuckerberg.

Months before Trump was suspended from Facebook in 2021 following the attack of January 6, Trump's account was very nearly curtailed in an entirely separate ordeal. During the George Floyd protests and riots of 2020, Trump wrote a message on Facebook that ignominiously warned, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." Per Facebook's rules, which prohibit incitement to violence, Trump's post possibly merited a take-down.

For Meta, this was a problem from hell. Not removing Trump's post would inflame liberal America. Removing it would enrage conservatives — not to mention the sitting president, who just days before had threatened to punish Meta for its alleged anti-conservative bias.

Then something miraculous happened: Trump called Zuckerberg. As Zuckerberg would tell it — mirroring a version later to be widely retold — Trump called Zuckerberg to plead his case, while Zuckerberg lectured Trump about using the platform responsibly. Hours later, another miracle followed: Trump wrote a follow-up post to finesse his point, quelling the discord.

The crisis was averted. Equally important, however, was the supposed lesson of this story: Trump — desperate to keep his account intact — needed Meta.

This story has been broadly reported. But stories that involve Kaplan tend to have a carefully hidden trap door.

As it turned out, there was a problem with this account: It was precisely backwards. In the early morning of May 29, 2020, White House staffers gathered around on speakerphone and listened in disbelief to the voice on the other end: It was Mark Zuckerberg — calling them, at Kaplan's arrangement — asking for a personal word with Trump. Those familiar with this call would later say Zuckerberg's request was tinged with vulnerability, as he and Kaplan, also on the call, described the inevitable liberal revolt at Meta's headquarters if something weren't done about Trump's post. "I have a staff problem," Zuckerberg explained, according to those with knowledge of the call. (Meta has previously denied Zuckerberg said anything to this effect, maintaining that Zuckerberg was unequivocal in condemning the post.) When Trump rang Zuckerberg's cell later that afternoon, it wasn't contrition he was showing Zuckerberg — it was a favor.

This story, and its turns, illuminates several key things. First, it suggests the lengths Meta will go to convince the public that Trump — just like its 3 billion users — was dependent upon Meta for relevance. It shows the cunning of Kaplan in finding a way to project that image — through a half-story that was widely repeated in official Washington — while simultaneously defusing a serious crisis (Kaplan had put out a "four-alarm fire," one of his former staffers previously told me).

Above all, it illustrates the dependency that animates Zuckerberg and Trump's relationship, and hints at what direction it runs in: Meta needs Trump — perhaps a lot more than Trump needs Meta.

For much of his life, Kaplan has played exactly this sort of role: Attendant lord and adviser to princes. After finishing at the top of his class at Harvard Law School and serving as an officer in the Marine Corps, Kaplan clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; played a pivotal role in the events leading to Bush v. Gore; and became a senior advisor to George Bush during all eights years. He was among the closest advisors to his longtime friend Brett Kavanaugh, counseling the judge at the darkest hour of his confirmation fiasco.

But it's his role serving Zuckerberg that is the male relationship that defines Kaplan's professional life and achievements. Since joining Meta in 2011, Kaplan has helped navigate Zuckerberg's path and entry into official Washington. Initially, that entailed accompanying a young Zuckerberg to President Obama's Oval Office, or overseeing Zuckerberg's preparation for Congressional hearings. But with the explosion of MAGA, Kaplan's role grew dramatically, charting a path that would bring Zuckerberg and a fast-changing Republican party into something resembling — if not goodwill — then a mutual accord.

Half of this Zuckerberg achieved himself, by slotting Kaplan into a major role overseeing content moderation But the human side of Washington — never Zuckerberg's strong suit — was Kaplan's métier: arranging Oval Office huddles with Zuckerberg and Trump, or organizing a series of private dinners with mostly conservative (and some liberal) influencers. Kaplan, as Meta staffers and Washington Republicans told me, made sure that MAGA Republicans knew they always had a seat at Zuckerberg's proverbial table. (Meta did not provide new comment for this story.)

This growing authority inside Meta left many idealist staffers convinced of Kaplan's thralldom to conservative ideology. But Kaplan is also beloved and defended by many Democrats at Meta and throughout Washington — a fact that explains, in part, Meta's successful evasion of any significant tech regulation during the Biden presidency.

And yet Kaplan's most remarkable achievement is playing out right now: the extraordinary — once-unthinkable — political romance between Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump. A decade ago, the chasm separating these individuals seemed as insurmountably wide as the Capulets and Montagues. Yet both men have spent years running toward each other, barreling through and against the gauntlet of their respective tribes: Zuckerberg through the leftist principles of the Bay, Trump through Republican Washington.

In this slow-motion marriage plot, Joel Kaplan is their Friar Laurence, bringing his artful guile and influence to bear in the improbable effort to knit their two families together. Kaplan has "helped make sure the ties were never irrevocably broken — even through Trump being deplatformed," observes Katie Harbath, a Republican who served as public policy director under Kaplan for a decade, who now heads the tech consulting firm Anchor Change "Joel was sort of the captain of that ship."

Beginning with Trump's rise in 2016, Kaplan grew into another significant role: a de facto superintendent of the platform's rules around speech and content moderation. It's in this role — as a legal intellectual offering a distinct philosophy of free expression — that colleagues say Kaplan has shaped the company publicly, and Zuckerberg personally.

It was Kaplan, for example, who appeared on Fox News last week to explain the end of the fact-checking program, characterizing the decision as an effort to "reset the balance in favor of free expression." This echoed Zuckerberg's own video announcement, in which he lamented that the program had become "just too politically biased."

These comments are of a piece with Kaplan's own philosophy on free expression, which colleagues have summed up in the famous adage by Justice Louis Brandeis: that the remedy for false or misleading speech isn't "enforced silence," but instead "more speech."

It is tempting to view the complex issues at Meta as a simple proxy battle between "pro" and "anti" free expression. The fact-checking program was not without errors, as any complex program will be. And it is a genuine win for free expression that restrictions on user speech — on topics such as immigration, or gender and sexuality — are now lifted. Same for the nixing of DEI programs, which too often function to manufacture consensus on live issues at the internal staff level.

But the truth is there have long been meaningful objections to Kaplan's — and increasingly Zuckerberg's — Brandesian "more speech" rationale that Meta so often proffers for its decisions.

The first is that, when it comes to political expression, the basis for Meta's decisions often manifests not as high principle, but as political expediency.

The fact-checking program is a case in point. Few programs were so vocally targeted — and fervently manipulated — by conservative critics. For any conservative media publisher dinged for misinformation by Meta's algorithm, Kaplan's cell phone effectively functioned as a personalized, interlocutory appeals process. Such was the case with articles by Breitbart, or the Instagram posts of Charlie Kirk, who successfully appealed to Kaplan to intervene, and to have their flags or strikes removed. Or in the case of Meta's filter against "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior," which Kaplan and other executives quickly froze, around the time they learned that its classifier had begun flagging posts from the Daily Wire and Sinclair Broadcasting.

The second problem is that Kaplan's defenders have fallen under a common misreading of Brandeis. Unlike his fellow Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes — who generally prized individual autonomy — Brandeis believed the ultimate purpose of free expression was the preservation of democratic self-government itself. The reason "more speech" offers an effective remedy is that, in Brandeis's view, the freedom of unlimited speech was inextricably married with duty: what he called "the political duty of public discussion." Duty is a word that generally conveys the foregoing of certain liberties, to achieve a higher purpose. The Brandeisian view, in essence, described the First Amendment as a kind of bargain struck with Americans at large: in exchange for a near-bottomless freedom to purvey unlimited speech, Americans accepted an implied duty to yield to the necessary prerogatives of well-ordered public discussion.

Yet under Kaplan's Policy team, content decisions at Meta consistently tacked away from Brandeis' view. Perhaps no controversy illustrates the point better than a project called Common Ground.

Conceived by Meta staff in response to the 2016 election, Common Ground was a proposal to remake Facebook into a forum for healthier public discussion. In a bundle of proposed algorithm changes — detailed in internal memos — the program would replace users' self-segregation with more "exposure to cross-cutting viewpoints," downplay "incivility," recommend that users join more politically-diverse groups, and boost news outlets with high bipartisan readership.

Though perhaps idealistic-sounding, Common Ground was not a left-wing chimera. In fact, its premise was drawn in part from the research of NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt — a famously vocal critic of progressive ideology in college campuses and workplaces — whose findings Meta staffers had studied rigorously. It was precisely the sort of project that would make liberals more likely to encounter, say, a Wall Street Journal op-ed opposing mask mandates.

Kaplan and his team, however, correctly sensed that such proposals — no matter how "nonpartisan" in fact — would be castigated as partisan in appearance. In internal review sessions, Kaplan's team raised their concerns that the proposal would have a disparate effect on conservative users.

But the true killer lurked in a crucial detail: Exposure to this more ennobled strain of public discussion tended to reduce the engagement that users had with the platform. In a business model where enragement equals engagement, it turns out, Brandeisian discussion is an unwarranted expense.

Kaplan's defenders backstop these choices with a common refrain: Kaplan's team has ensured Meta's content policies remain "defensible." By "defensible," Meta staffers intend to invoke the importance of public accountability. What they tend to mean, though, is policies that can adequately be explained during a grilling before Congress — an understandable concern for a company that's been hauled before Congress more than 30 times.

That is perfectly plausible reasoning. But one thing it certainly isn't is a vindication of First Amendment values — a bulwark in the Constitution whose singular purpose, after all, is to prevent meddling by Congress, and government generally. Zuckerberg now says he regrets caving to pressure from the Biden administration during the Covid pandemic. But does anyone doubt that, the next time Trump calls Zuckerberg, the CEO won't be all ears? (Just as he was avidly listening when Jared Kushner similarly pressured Zuckerberg in 2020, arm-twisting repeatedly to cooperate with Trump's Covid response.) Kaplan is there to ensure the message, even if not followed upon, gets through loud and clear.

Putting a chief Washington lobbyist largely in charge of speech policy may be politically savvy. But it is the opposite of how a company would take seriously its obligations to free expression — an invitation, essentially, to a Republican Congress, or a Democratic White House, to inject politicians' notions about public discourse into your newsfeed. "One thing I notice," Harbath notes coolly, "is that after every major election since 2016, Mark has done this big recalibration about how the company handles content, based upon the electoral results."

Critics of Kaplan's supposed right-leaning bias, then, miss the point. It's that Kaplan and Zuckerberg's commitment to Brandesian free expression, as Gandhi might say, would make for an excellent idea. And some of Meta's changes — relaxing the restrictions on immigration and gender — are indeed aligned with liberal principles of free expression. But unavoidably, the platform remains a Death Star of bad reasoning, amplifying the worst of the left and right. Nor would Brandeis recognize Kaplan's enthusiasm for the incoming President Trump and his administration as "big defenders of free expression" — a man who sues local newspapers as retribution for polls, publicly invites violence on journalists, and orders his military generals to shoot protestors for exercising their First Amendment rights — perhaps the most anti-First Amendment candidate for president since Woodrow Wilson. Both on the platform and off, Meta's commitment reflects the opposite of Brandeis' well-ordered public discussion: a world of all freedom, and no duty.

One silver lining to Meta's termination of fact-checking, then, is that it has the potential to clarify a new consensus: one that recognizes the futility of the agonizing efforts of the last ten years attempting to liberalize social media — as fruitless and naive as environmentalists who implore oil and gas companies to cease being oil and gas companies. As scholars like Yuval Noah Harari or Jonathan Rauch have separately argued, social media at scale is inherently inimical to liberal values — and that its mob-like pathologies, with its viral lies and conspiratorial reasoning, eerily resemble the same tendencies of pre-Enlightenment, medieval Europe.

That sort of tragedy can only be laid at the feet of generations, not individuals. And that is the deep and common bond that Zuckerberg and Trump share. Both are men whose vast seizure of power was made possible by the energy and unique pathology of the mob — allowing one to build a company, the other a political movement — as they leveraged its bizarre vice-grip on our attention along with the mob's enduring ability, as Holmes warned, to "set fire to reason." In bringing these men to power, the best and brightest of their generation — Joel Kaplan, Sheryl Sandberg, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, nearly all the same age — ushered in a new strain of faithlessness, turning social media into a prison, and making our public life a hostage of the internet.

Zuckerberg and Kaplan's announcement is not an embrace of the right, or repudiation of the left. It's another example of what Meta does too often: wrap its business and political decisions into the language of liberal values and free expression. In reality, Meta does have a clear policy around free expression — but it doesn't follow the philosophical quotations of Louis Brandeis, or Oliver Wendell Holmes. Rather, under Zuckerberg and Kaplan, Meta's north star will always faithfully resemble the old chestnut from Lyndon B. Johnson: "Power is where power goes."

Benjamin Wofford has written for Wired, Politico Magazine, Vox, and Rolling Stone, and is a graduate of Stanford Law School.

If you are betting on the California wildfires, I don't know what to tell you. Go outside (if it's safe). Do some reflecting. Call a gambling-addiction hotline, probably. Though I suppose the impulse to wager on destruction isn't all bettors' fault — gambling companies have people right where they want them, placing wagers on things most of us never would have imagined just a few years ago. We're days into the new year, and it already feels like the gambling boom has gone too far.

In case you missed it, the prediction market Polymarket is letting people place bets on aspects of the fires that have ravaged the Los Angeles area. The platform set various markets for questions like how long it would take the first fire to be contained, how fast the various blazes would burn, and where they would spread.

The cryptocurrency-based market — which is off-limits for American gamblers, though some try to circumvent it with a VPN — seemed to recognize that this might not go over well. In a disclaimer on the site, Polymarket says the point of its prediction markets is to "harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events impacting society." The "devastating" fires were one such event in which Polymarket said it could "yield invaluable real-time answers to those directly impacted in ways traditional media cannot." In other words, if you want to know whether your house is about to burn down, check what a group of anonymous gamblers outside the US think — hopefully in addition to the news and local authorities and, you know, your own eyes.

The idea of bettors trying to make a quick buck when lives and livelihoods are at stake is morally fraught. It's also a sign of the times: Gambling is becoming increasingly common, and in the process, the lines around what's appropriate, logical, and ethical are becoming increasingly murky. If 2024 was the year we asked whether gambling culture in the US had gone too far, 2025 might be the year we get an answer.

It's tempting to look down on gamblers who take things too far, depending on your tolerance for that kind of stuff. But the problem with blaming individuals for getting in over their heads is that you miss the forest for the trees. Betting platforms and the gambling industry are designed to suck customers in and get them to bet at higher rates and in different ways.

While Polymarket may be operating in a bit of a gray area, even the formal, highly regulated platforms in the US are enticing people to develop a deeper relationship with betting. Businesses want to cross-sell — once Caesars gets you into its sports-betting pipeline, it would very much like to direct you to the casino. DraftKings is launching a subscription service that draws in bettors with the possibility of making extra money on super-long-shot bets. Delta Air Lines also recently announced a partnership with the sportsbook that could integrate its offerings or its branding into the gaming options on airplane seatbacks, though the details are vague. These innovations don't rival something as clearly problematic as betting on fires, but they show that gambling companies are succeeding at getting into more nooks and crannies of society.

In a statement to Business Insider, a DraftKings spokesperson said that the sports betting industry is "rigorously regulated" and that the company operates in "strict compliance" with the regulations of every jurisdiction it's in. "Equating DraftKings with unregulated prediction markets — particularly those that fall outside the scope of US regulation — is not only an egregious misrepresentation but also an insult to the integrity of regulators and responsible, law-abiding operators," the spokesperson said.

It's impossible to ignore the recent cultural shift when it comes to gambling. After decades of operating in the shadows, sports gambling is everywhere: Americans are thought to have wagered some $150 billion on sports in 2024, up from about $120 billion in 2023, and ads for gambling are almost inescapable during sporting events in many parts of the country. Beyond sports, some operators, including Robinhood, offer betting on things like elections. Polymarket's bread and butter may be elections, but it's also letting people wager on whether we'll see a new pandemic in 2025 or whether Israel and Hamas will agree to a cease-fire. People are even treating areas that are nominally not gambling, like the stock market, crypto, and even restaurant reservations, as if they're a casino. However you feel about gambling — maybe you're OK with it, maybe you think it's evil — the speed with which the lines around it are moving can make your head spin.

A spokesperson for Polymarket told me that the company didn't generate fees or revenue from the fire-related markets (or any of its markets) and described the markets as "a way to distinguish the signal from the noise in a news environment starved of quantitative data." They added: "These markets address the same questions being discussed across all of cable news and X. We've proven that markets can be an invaluable alternative information source for those seeking real-time quantitative data."

The fire-related markets are small — the largest one, about how many acres will burn, had about $275,000 in it on Friday afternoon. For comparison, more than $400 million has been bet on who will be inaugurated as US president on January 20. Why do this at all then? The smaller the prediction market, meaning the less money bet on it, the less the wisdom-of-the-crowd idea holds. That flies in the face of the argument that this is some noble endeavor to get information — it's just a handful of incredibly online gawkers betting on the outcome of an event that is devastating for thousands of people.

The pervasiveness of betting — both in what you can gamble on and where you can gamble — is changing our relationship with it. In a 2024 survey of US adults by the American Gaming Association, 55% of respondents said they had participated in some sort of gambling over the past year, up from 49% the year before. And Gallup surveys suggest a healthy majority of Americans see gambling as morally acceptable. At the extreme, the gambling industry envisions a future where people will bet on everything and will be able to create markets for anything. Perhaps someday you'll be able to create a mini-market for people to bet on whether it will rain on your wedding day. On the one hand, whatever, maybe that's just an extra bit of fun to make the day more exciting. On the other hand, you could just check the weather and otherwise enjoy your wedding without making it into a money-making event for random people on the internet. Plenty of people are able to enjoy watching sports sans gambling as well, even as the sportsbooks spend a lot of money to convince people that betting really ups the fun quotient.

There are going to be a lot of "tipping point" moments for gambling in the months and years to come. For a lot of people, betting is a newfangled way to find some enjoyment and spice up life. But finding where the boundaries are — socially and legally — is a critical process where there aren't easy, straightforward answers. When we can bet on more and more things in more and more places, it's fair to ask: Just how far do we want gambling to go?

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• Blue Origin was set to launch its New Glenn rocket on Monday morning.
• But the launch was postponed due to a "vehicle subsystem issue," Blue Origin said.
• "We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt," the company said.

Rocket company Blue Origin postponed its highly anticipated New Glenn rocket launch on Monday morning, citing a need to "troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue."

The launch, originally scheduled for a three-hour window from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. Eastern Time, was repeatedly delayed before it was ultimately postponed.

"We're standing down on today's launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window," Blue Origin wrote in an X post. "We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt."

Ahead of the launch, Blue Origin's leadership — including its founder, Jeff Bezos — awaited the rocket's blastoff at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

A liftoff time of 1:31 a.m. was first set at the beginning of the launch's livestream. It was then delayed from 1:52 a.m. to 2:07 a.m., 2:27 a.m., 2:48 a.m., and finally, 3:15 a.m.

Before it was postponed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had wished Blue Origin well for the launch. SpaceX remains the only company to have recovered and reused a rocket's booster stages.

Ahead of the initial launch time, Blue Origin said on X that the company hoped to "reach orbit safely."

"Anything beyond that is icing on the cake. We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious—but we're going for it," the company wrote on X early Monday morning. "No matter what happens, we'll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch."

A successful launch would have greatly boosted Bezos' spacefaring ambitions for Blue Origin.

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. The billionaire told podcaster Lex Fridman in a 2023 interview that he stepped down as Amazon's CEO in 2021 because he wanted to focus on Blue Origin.

"I've turned the CEO role over, and the primary reason I did that is so that I could spend time on Blue Origin, adding some energy, some sense of urgency," Bezos told Fridman.

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

• The latest US sanctions on Russia's energy sector impact China and India, altering trade dynamics.
• The sanctions target Russian oil giants and tankers, raising oil prices to a four-month high.
• China and India may seek oil from other regions, while Russia might offer discounts.

The US' latest move to hit Russia's energy revenues is changing up the industry's global trade flows.

On Friday, the US Treasury Department— together with the UK — slapped new sanctions against Russia's key energy sector, including restrictions against oil giants Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas.

The Biden administration also imposed sanctions on 183 tankers associated with Russia's oil trade. Last year, that group of ships transported about one-quarter of Russia's energy exports, mostly crude oil, Goldman Sachs analysts estimated in a Sunday note.

Buyers from China and India — Russia's top oil customers — are likely to be impacted by the new sanctions, changing the world's energy trade dynamics.

Traders in China and India look to the Middle East, Americas

China will be impacted by the latest sanctions because most targeted tankers ship oil to the country, wrote Matthew Wright, the lead freight analyst at analytics firm Kpler, on Friday.

The sanctions, which would impact oil shipping, trading, and insurance, sent prices of the commodity up to a four-month high on Monday.

International benchmark Brent crude oil futures were 1.7% higher at $81.15 a barrel at 2.10 a.m. ET. The US benchmark West Texas Intermediate futures were up 1.9% at $78 a barrel.

Both Brent and WTI oil futures are up 8% this year to date.

Traders told Reuters that China and India will be forced by the new sanctions to seek non-sanctioned oil from the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas.

A Singapore-based trader told the news agency the sanctioned tankers shipped close to 900,000 barrels per day of Russian crude oil to China over the past 12 months and that these exports are going to "drop off a cliff."

Even before this round of sanctions, oil traders in China and India have been anticipating higher curbs on Russian oil. They have increased crude oil purchases from the Middle East and the Atlantic Basin, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

These latest developments illustrate the fast-changing pace of the world's energy flow since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered sweeping sanctions against the energy giant.

They also come just days before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The incoming American leader has pledged to lift energy output and boost the US' energy exports.

Russia is a top supplier of crude oil to both China and India.

Not a 'game-changer'

The incoming US administration's stance on the energy sector is one reason why recent oil price gains may not continue, wrote Vishnu Varathan, Mizuho's head of macro research for Asia, excluding Japan.

Varathan said in a Monday note that while the latest oil sanctions against Russia are boosting the market, they are not a game-changer.

Not only is the potential of higher US supply expected to hold up the market, but demand from China — the world's second-largest economy — has also slowed amid prolonged economic malaise.

Goldman Sachs analysts also cited the high spare capacity in oil as a factor that could weigh on prices.

Meanwhile, Russia is likely to pull out countermeasures to the US' latest sanctions package.

"Russian oil can discount to incentivize continued shipping by a dynamic shadow fleet and continued purchases by price-sensitive buyers in new or existing destination countries, with both the ships and buyers being less sensitive to Western sanctions," Goldman Sachs analysts wrote.

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom is already looking ahead to an "LA 2.0" post-wildfire.
• He said he is "organizing a Marshall Plan" to hasten the city's recovery efforts.
• The fires, which started last week, burned through more than 40,300 acres of land and resulted in at least 24 deaths.

As the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles continue to rage, Gov. Gavin Newsom is looking toward rebuilding an "LA 2.0" post-fire.

Newsom was asked in an NBC "Meet the Press" interview on Saturday if California would be ready to host the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics over the next couple of years in the aftermath of the wildfires.

Speaking against the backdrop of a fire-ravaged neighborhood, Newsom said that he's already "organizing a Marshall Plan" and already has a team "looking and reimagining LA 2.0."

The Marshall Plan harkens back to the post-World War 2 period when President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. The act saw more than $13 billion invested in rebuilding Western Europe's economies, bringing investments into the region, and stimulating the US economy by building a market for American goods.

When asked for details of the new "Marshall Plan," Newsom said he was talking to city, civic, business, nonprofit, and labor leaders about recovery efforts and working to "galvanize the community."

"We have got to be thinking three weeks, three months, three years ahead; at the same time, we're focusing on the immediacy, which is life safety and property," he told NBC.

Representatives for Newsom did not provide further comments in response to queries from Business Insider.

Newsom said in the interview that the wildfires will likely be one of the worst natural disasters in the country's history, in terms of the costs associated with it and its scale and scope.

AccuWeather, a weather forecasting service, estimated the total economic damage to land between $52 and $57 billion. JPMorgan analysts estimated that insured losses could reach $20 billion.

The wildfires have ravaged over 40,300 acres of land across Los Angeles. At press time, at least 24 people have died, and according to CalFire statistics, more than 12,300 structures have been damaged.

As the fire passed through the wealthy Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the homes of several Hollywood A-listers, like Paris Hilton, Milo Ventimiglia, and Billy Crystal, burned down.

The two largest fires, the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, are only 11% and 27% contained, per CalFire.

The governor said he had also ordered an investigation into why fire hydrants ran dry and lost water pressure in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, hindering firefighting efforts.

Newsom's latest statements come as he faces criticism from President-elect Donald Trump for his handling of the wildfires.

In a Truth Social post, Trump called Newsom "incompetent" and said he was to blame for the wildfires.

Newsom said in the NBC interview that Trump's comment was "inaccurate."

He then invited Trump to "come out" to California and "take a look for himself." Newsom's team has also launched a fact-checking website to combat misinformation about the fires.

• Dutch pension fund ABP sold its Tesla stake over Musk's pay and working conditions at the company.
• ABP disagreed with Musk's compensation package and voted against it in June.
• The fund called the pay package "controversial and exceptionally high."

A Dutch civil service pension fund sold its entire stake in Tesla over disapproval of CEO Elon Musk's pay package and working conditions at the company.

Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, one of Europe's largest pension funds, sold 2.8 million shares in the electric vehicle maker in September because it disagreed with Musk's pay package, Dutch outlet Het Financieele Dagblad reported Friday. The report did not detail the fund's specific concerns about labor conditions at the company.

A spokesperson for ABP, which manages $552 billion overall, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bloomberg reported that ABP's Tesla stake was valued at about $585 million.

In a statement to the NL Times, ABP said "we cannot and do not need to invest in everything," and that the divestment was not politically motivated. Musk has been a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, and is co-leading a commission called the Department of Government Efficiency.

In 2018, Tesla's board and shareholders voted in favor of a performance-based compensation plan. The same year, a shareholder sued Tesla and Musk, arguing that Musk influenced the board's decision through his personal relationships with board members, including his brother. In January 2024, a Delaware judge ruled to strike down Musk's compensation package, siding with a shareholder. The stock option-based package could be worth tens of billions of dollars.

In June, the EV maker held a second vote, which led to shareholder approval of Musk's pay. ABP voted against the pay package and called it "controversial and exceptionally high."

Last month, the judge, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, once again ruled against the compensation package, saying that Tesla's June shareholder vote wasn't enough to pass the package.

Tesla's Model Y was the best-selling car in the Netherlands in 2024, but the carmaker's sales have been declining in Europe. New Tesla car registrations from January to November 2024 fell over 15% compared to the same period in 2023, according to European Automobile Manufacturers Association data.

Tesla is worth about $1.27 trillion and its stock has risen about 74% in the past year.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• DOGE plans to deploy its staffers to major government agencies after Donald Trump takes office.
• Two DOGE representatives will be embedded at each agency, The New York Times reported.
• The commission has been hiring since it was announced in November.

Elon Musk's government efficiency commission is looking to embed staffers at government agencies to lead cost cutting efforts.

Most major government agencies will be given two representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing about a dozen people who are familiar with DOGE's operations.

Those who aren't deployed will instead be stationed at the US Digital Service, a branch of the White House that provides IT consulting services to federal agencies, the outlet reported.

Then-President Barack Obama described the USDS as a "startup at the White House" when he created the agency in 2014.

The Times added that DOGE could also have an office at the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The OMB prepares the president's budget request for Congress.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In November, Trump announced that DOGE would be co-led by Musk and biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. The commission, Trump said in his announcement, is set to conclude its work by July 4, 2026.

DOGE kicked off its recruitment efforts in the same month. The commission started an account on Musk's social network X and asked applicants to send in their CVs via direct message.

Thus far, the commission said it has been hiring for software engineering, information security engineering, HR, IT, and finance roles.

Back in October, Musk said that DOGE would help the government to save at least $2 trillion, though he didn't specify where the savings would come from. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in the 2024 fiscal year.

Last week, Musk said that saving $2 trillion would be "the best-case outcome" for DOGE, adding that his commission had a "good shot" at saving $1 trillion.

"If we can drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and free up the economy to have additional growth such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply, then there will be no inflation. So that, I think, would be an epic outcome," Musk told Mark Penn, the chairman and CEO of marketing company Stagwell, in an interview on January 8.

• Ukraine has been releasing excerpts of what its forces say is a North Korean soldier's diary.
• They include a stick-figure sketch of using a comrade as "bait" to shoot down a drone.
• Other entries include musings on class struggles and a confession for stealing undisclosed Russian items.

Excerpts from a North Korean soldier's diary released by Ukraine show a glimpse at how Pyongyang's troops in Russia believed they could defend against drones and artillery strikes.

Ukraine's special forces have been releasing excerpts of the diary since Christmas week, saying the entries were written by a now-deceased North Korean private named Gyeong Hong Jong.

The latest of these, published on Thursday, appeared to feature the young soldier confessing that he was stealing items from his Russian allies to sell. He did not specify what the stolen goods were but wrote that he had been caught.

"While working in the barracks, I thought that no one was watching me and put the Russians' things in my pocket," the diary excerpt said, per Ukraine's special forces.

"I will no longer trade in other people's things. I will heroically advance in the forefront and destroy the enemy," the soldier added.

Other entries released by Ukraine included praises of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and musings on class struggle.

"Longing for my homeland, having left the warm embrace of my dear father and mother here on Russian land. I celebrate the birthday of my closest comrade Song Ji Myong," another entry read, per a translation by The Wall Street Journal.

One of the earliest entries, published by Ukraine on December 26, featured a stick-figure drawing of what the soldier described as "How to eliminate a drone."

The simple illustration showed a figure standing upright on open ground while another two stick figures fired at a quadcopter drone.

"If a UAV is spotted, gather in groups of three," the diary read, per The Journal's translation. "One person must act as bait to lure the drone while the other two take aim and neutralize it with precision shooting. The bait must maintain a distance of seven meters from the drone. The other two should prepare to shoot down the drone from a distance of 10 to 12 meters. When the bait stands still, the drone will stop and it can be shot down."

Ukraine's special forces said the North Korean soldier also wrote of how to avoid artillery strikes. An excerpt of his diary said that Pyongyang's troops were supposed to "disperse in small groups" if fired upon by artillery.

The excerpt also said he could hide in the location of "the previous hit" because he believed artillery doesn't repeatedly strike the exact same spot.

Business Insider couldn't independently verify the authenticity of the diary entries. Ukraine posted photos of what it said were the soldier's corpse and passport. The Journal also cited a former North Korean soldier and a former South Korean major general who said the choice of words in the diary aligned with the ideology and vernacular of North Korea's troops.

The soldier's diary could give insight into how North Korean forces are adapting battlefield doctrine for combat in Russia.

The West worries that Pyongyang's involvement will allow its forces to glean valuable lessons from battling Ukraine, especially as they face off against American and European equipment and encounter drone warfare.

Dorothy Camille Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, said on Wednesday that Pyongyang "is significantly benefiting from receiving Russian military equipment, technology, and experience, rendering it more capable of waging war against its neighbors."

Western and South Korean intelligence says that 12,000 North Korean troops are stationed and fighting in Kursk, a Russian border region that Ukraine attacked in the summer of 2024.

Moscow hasn't addressed the presence of Pyongyang's troops on its soil, but Ukraine has increasingly been trying to cast a spotlight on North Korea's direct involvement in the war.

Most recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy published images of who he said were two captured North Korean soldiers. He did not provide evidence that they were North Korean, though Seoul's intelligence service backed up his claim.

"This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea's involvement in the war against Ukraine," Zelenskyy wrote. He has said that around 3,000 North Korean soldiers were wounded or killed.

Thousands of North Korean troops serve as a valuable source of manpower for Russia, which is relying on mass infantry assaults along the front lines to whittle down Ukraine's defenses.

Still, Pyongyang's reinforcements are still few compared to the over 600,000 people that Ukraine and the West believe Moscow has lost.

Russia is believed to be providing Kim with much-needed finances, economic support, food, and technology in exchange for the latter's troops.

• Microsoft Outlook is an email platform with productivity features like calendar and file-sharing.
• Microsoft discontinued its old email platforms, MSN and Hotmail, and folded them into Outlook.
• Outlook is free for personal accounts, but paid subscriptions offer greater storage and security.

In case you hadn't noticed, Microsoft has a released a lot of software over the past five decades. From its groundbreaking Windows operating system to its search engine Bing to stalwart programs like Word and Excel, now a part of the subscription-based Microsoft 365 suite, the company is a juggernaut of the software industry.

And when a company has released a plethora of programs, it's no surprise that the company has cancelled, merged, or rebranded many programs, too.

What is Microsoft Outlook?

Microsoft Outlook is, first and foremost, an email platform, but it goes well beyond just sending and receiving electronic mail. It also features a calendar, an easy way to store and manage contact information, file sharing of data saved in the cloud, and schedule and task tracking.

Microsoft Outlook is free to use for personal email and calendars, but there are some limitations. For example, a free Outlook account can only store up to 15 GB of mail, and that cap can be surprisingly easy to reach. Also, advanced security features are only available with a paid subscription.

Using Outlook is a great way to streamline your work and home life, keeping yourself up-to-date and aware of appointments, assignments, travel, deadlines, and more. You can set it up such that flight or hotel reservations are automatically added to your calendar, so that it will remind you of scheduled events, and you can set it to flag important messages for you — and to screen out the unimportant, too.

What happened to Hotmail and MSN?

Both Hotmail and MSN, also known as MSN Messenger, have been discontinued for a number of years, folded into other products. Chat messaging platform MSN was first released in 1999 and was rebranded as Windows Live Messenger in 2005.

Though it was used by hundreds of millions of people each month, following the acquisition of Skype in 2011, Microsoft found its own messaging platform redundant. The company shut the messenger service once known as MSN down for good in 2013. MSN email addresses still work, but they are managed via Outlook

Interestingly enough, the year 2013 also tolled the death knell for Hotmail. The mail platform was founded in 1996 and acquired by Microsoft the following year, and would enjoy nearly 17-year run until it was folded into Microsoft Outlook. You can still get an email address using @hotmail.com, but you'll need to sign up for it via Microsoft Outlook.

Is Microsoft discontinuing Outlook?

There are no plans for Microsoft to discontinue its Outlook platform. In fact, the company announced that as of the end of 2024, its Mail and Calendar applications would no longer be supported and that their functions would be rolled into Outlook, so Microsoft is putting even more of the proverbial eggs in the Outlook basket.

Outlook vs. Gmail

From contact management to calendar services to, of course, email, Microsoft Outlook and the Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Meet, Google Drive, and Google Docs, have a lot of crossovers.

Google's professional suite is great for collaborative teams, offering more storage space and easy ways to connect, work on shared documents, and to swap files. Alternatively, people wanting advanced email features and numerous optional automations might prefer Outlook.

Both are superb workflow suites; it's truly a personal call.

• As the mom of two tweens, I really wish schools would keep snow days.
• I have so many great memories from those unexpected magical days growing up.
• I feel like my kids spend too much time on screens for school already; let them have fun.

As temperatures drop, I hope school administrators call for at least one "old-fashioned" snow day this season. I think it's important that kids across the country — including my own two pre-teens — experience the style of snow days that I did growing up, and not because I got to stay inside relaxing. In fact, I learned surprising lessons in those days about history, science, and art.

Lawmakers in states including Iowa, New Jersey, and Virginia have introduced bills to make it easier for districts to replace traditional days off with remote classes. I hope this doesn't become the preference. Kids will lose out if they're robbed of the unexpected time to be curious.

I have fond memories of my snow days

When I think back to the snow days I enjoyed growing up in the 1980s — in the farm-filled New Jersey town of Freehold — I picture long strings of glowing red lights.

My dad would drive my brother and me to Monmouth Battlefield State Park, where lit-up displays at the visitors' center outlined routes that Washington's Army and British soldiers took to get to the bloody battle in which as many as 400 died. We were actually there because the hilly park has become a popular sledding destination, but after we took turns careening toward the woods on our creaky Flexible Flyer, we'd head inside to thaw out and study the displays.

I remember learning about the long battle that took place on a hot day, pondering what it was like for soldiers to battle the elements through the seasons as they battled each other. Reading history in a textbook was one thing; seeing a display or demonstration was more impactful.

I learned a lot while out of the classroom

When winter came, I used to write the forecasts on a wall calendar near my bed. Tracking temperature trends, probabilities, and records is a terrific introduction to the principles of empirical evidence.

One of my best lessons from a snow day was about small joys and art. I was 9 years old, gazing out my kitchen window as I sipped soup, and I spied — on a snow-covered pine — a cardinal sitting sentinel, observing the terrain. The contrast of the red on white was so beautiful that I longed for a camera, but my dad never let me use our cheap Kodak 110. I vowed to get a camera of my own someday, and a few years later, I bought a 35-millimeter with babysitting funds. To this day, I take photos for my job. I love framing and capturing a scene to share the beauty with others.

Nature's handiwork can be surprising, powerful, and treacherous. I want my kids to appreciate all of it. It's hard to watch the snow fall, build with it, and play in it when chained to a Chromebook all day.

It can be hard as a working parent

As a working mom, I understand the nervousness of watching the forecast and wondering about childcare if schools close. Inclement weather days should, of course, be used sparingly. But when safety precautions force a closure anyway, the default shouldn't always be remote learning. Those days can be just as challenging for a caregiver.

Some traditions aren't coming back. I remember the wonder and joy of gazing at the streetlights when a storm was predicted, hoping to catch the first flakes fluttering when it was too dark to see the street. My classmates and I would snuggle in our beds the next morning, listening to our clock radios to see if our district would be on the list of closings read by the announcer. Parents also had not-so-reliable phone trees to spread the word decades before robocalls. But even with communication becoming less personal, I've observed the magical reactions of kids who realize they're getting a snow day; I actually heard cheering outside my window last February when our district made the announcement via email in advance of a storm the next day.

I think schools are over-relying on technology in general. I was disappointed this past summer when one of my kids was expected to do all of the summer assignments on a Chromebook, including the actual reading. I placed an order for the physical book anyway. Kids spend enough time stuck to their screens. If a day comes this winter when it's unsafe to go out, let them have their magical time to explore and dream — at least once.

• Andrew Taylor, 70, left the US to retire in Malaysia a decade ago.
• He now lives in a 2-bedroom condo in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, that costs about $620 a month.
• "I probably would not be retired if I were still in the US," Taylor said.

At 60, Andrew Taylor retired and left the US to move to Malaysia.

Taylor, who used to do administrative work, started thinking about retirement when he was in his mid-fifties. However, the high cost of living in the US made it feel like a pipe dream.

"I realized that I was probably not going to be able to stay in the United States, or I was going to have to work until I was 80," Taylor, now 70, told Business Insider.

He started considering retiring abroad, and it was through his then-partner — who lived in Penang, a state in the northwestern part of Malaysia — that he first learned about the Malaysia My Second Home, or MM2H, visa program. The MM2H program was introduced by the government in 2002 to attract foreigners to retire and live in Malaysia.

The conditions for the visa have been tightened over the years.

Based on the most recent rule changes announced in 2024, there are now three different categories: Platinum, Gold, and Silver. Depending on the category of visa they apply for, applicants are required to have minimum bank deposits of between $150,000 and $1 million and also buy property in Malaysia. The validity of the visa ranges from 5 years to 20 years. Because Taylor got a visa under an earlier version of the visa rules, he wasn't required to purchase property in Malaysia.

Having visited multiple times before, the idea of living in Malaysia appealed to him. He said he saw the visa program as something that could help him retire much earlier.

In late 2014, he applied and was approved a few months later. In 2015, Taylor packed up his bags and moved from Washington, D.C. — where he had lived for 40 years — to start the next chapter of his life.

Creating a dream apartment in the city

It's been 10 years since Taylor arrived in Malaysia. He spent seven years in Penang before moving to Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, three years ago.

He's been in his current rental — a two-bedroom condo — for about five months.

Taylor said that his previous unit was on two floors, and he had to climb 20 steps to reach the bedroom. "I'm 70 and the stairs are irritating to me now, so I want it to be all on one floor," he said.

Taylor says he took just one weekend to find his apartment, which was about two miles outside the city center. The view of the city immediately caught his attention.

"I'm on the 22nd floor, and I can see the Twin Towers. I can see all the major towers in KL, and it's just a beautiful view. I think if I'm going to be in KL, that's what I wanted," Taylor said.

His rent costs 2,800 Malaysian ringgit, or $620, each month. It's a two-year lease with an option for a third year. Unlike his previous apartments, he opted for an unfurnished unit this time.

"I really never liked the furniture in the apartments that I was renting," he said, adding that he has always been interested in interior design. Most of his furniture is sourced locally.

"It's sort of eclectic," he said, describing his apartment. "I have oriental carpets and things like that, but with modern furniture."

His apartment block is part of a five-building condo development, which offers amenities like a pool and a gym.

This is Taylor's fifth apartment in Malaysia, and he says he plans to continue renting and riding around the city on his Vespa for the foreseeable future.

Lessons learned along the way have contributed to his decision. The first place he moved into after arriving in Malaysia was on the 35th floor of a building in Penang.

"The landlord said, 'Oh, they'll never build in front of it.' Well, yes, they built right in front of it immediately," he said. "If you buy a place, it's just harder to move on."

Americans are retiring abroad

Taylor isn't alone in his decision to retire abroad.

Analyses in the past year have estimated that a single person would need to earn $96,000 a year to live comfortably in many major US cities. It comes as no surprise that more and more Americans are being priced out of the US.

There's also a retirement crisis sweeping across the nation, with more people over 65 still punching the clock because they can't afford to retire.

An AARP survey of 8,368 people conducted in January 2024 found that 1 in 5 Americans 50 and over reported having no retirement savings. Over half of them also said they do not think they'll have enough money to keep them afloat in retirement.

It's a sentiment that Taylor shares. "I probably would not be retired if I were still in the US," he said.

In contrast, the MM2H visa has made Malaysia an attractive destination for expats.

As of January 2024, there were 56,066 active MM2H pass holders in the country, Malaysia's Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Tiong King Sin said during a parliament session, per local paper The Star. Chinese nationals form about 44% of pass holders, followed by those from South Korea and Japan. There were 1,340 pass holders from the US. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent by BI.

'Pretty similar' lifestyles in both countries

While Taylor's lifestyle in Malaysia is "pretty similar" to the one he had back in the States, the lower cost of living here means that his money can go further each month.

"I would say I used to try to keep my budget to $2,000. Now it's a little bit more than that. I would say $2,500 is what I live on now," Taylor said, adding that he doesn't think he could live on the same amount back in the US.

He has a basic health insurance policy that costs 340 Malaysian ringgit each month.

"There are other much better policies, but I went with the cheap option," Taylor said. He says it only covers hospitalization and related costs.

He's also satisfied with Malaysia's healthcare facilities.

"And you don't have to wait long for an appointment or wait long at your appointment," he added.

Cost of living aside, Taylor says he also feels safer in Malaysia.

"I've never felt safer anywhere. Where I lived in my last place outside D.C., sometimes I would hear gunshots from outside my window, and that just is so foreign here. There's nothing like that," he said. "I've never ever felt any uncomfortable feeling when I'm out, even alone walking around."

These days, Taylor spends his time filming YouTube videos about what it's like to live in Malaysia.

However, he says that such a drastic move might not be for everyone — especially for those who have children, grandchildren, or even aged parents. It only worked for him because he had loose family connections.

Looking back, Taylor says he's learned not to be afraid of living outside his comfort zone.

"My family thought I would last about six months, and then I would come back. 10 years later, and I'm still here, and I have no intention of ever going back to the US," he said.

Have you recently relocated to a new country and found your dream home? If you have a story to share, contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Shruti Dhumak navigated maternity leave amid Google's AI industry shift and layoffs.
• She split her leave to maintain visibility and manage family support from India.
• Dhumak focused on self-improvement and open communication to regain her work efficiency.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shruti Dhumak, a cloud customer engineer in Google's Boston office who gave birth in February 2023. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her employment history.

Before I had my son, I always doubted how I was going to manage being this overly ambitious person with motherhood.

I've been with Google for about four years. I had my first child in February 2022 and split up my maternity leave in three phases to make the most of temporary support I had when my family visited.

Between Google's policy of six months of maternity leave, one month of prepartum leave, and one month of paid time off, I had a total of eight months of time away from work. I knew I was fortunate to have this time off because it is rare in the US, but going on leave and the anxiety of being replaced while I was away was one of the hardest things I have dealt with.

I'm a customer engineer, and a large part of my role revolves around managing relationships with our cloud clients. If someone takes over for me, the customers end up being closer to that representative and I risk losing my accounts to someone else.

I was also paranoid that my absence or my performance below my peak, once I returned, would make me more susceptible to a layoff. Two weeks before my delivery, Google announced its biggest, 12,000-people layoff. As someone on an H1-B visa, a layoff would mean I would have to find another job in a matter of weeks or risk having to move back to India with a newborn.

When I came back to work, I was not a hundred percent myself — not as a person and not as an employee. I was not a hundred percent efficient. I've had my moments where I broke down and lost my train of thought during a call.

Despite my efforts, some other senior people were preferred by the business partners for some responsibilities. To add to it, Google was entering the artificial intelligence industry. Being away months felt like I was behind by many years.

But I was able to turn my performance around. In 2024, I got awards for my performance, and it's just the opposite of how last year went.

There were four things I did to make the transition easier on myself:

1. Split up my leave

Google offers employees the flexibility to take their maternity leave for up to a year after the baby is born. I broke up my leave into three stages, which allowed me to come back to work periodically to ensure I was visible and my work was not forgotten.

I took my first break a month before the baby was born. I returned in my third month after the delivery and went back on leave in the months of September, November, December and January. It was designed based on who was there to help me with the child throughout the year — first my parents and then my in-laws.

2. Highlight my work

Nobody is going to talk about me until I do, which is something I have struggled with in my previous companies.

I made sure to speak up when things weren't going right and made sure to collect evidence of my efforts and achievements.

I took advantage of the help I had and spent evenings and weekends taking exams and completing certifications to upskill myself and show others that I was coming up to speed.

3. Have open, honest conversations

What helped me through the year was my manager. She saw what was happening when I missed things because I've been a good performer all these years.

I shared everything with her openly during one-on-ones, which helped because she understood my challenges. She also helped me maintain visibility with upper management, because Google is strict with grades and the ratings you get.

It made a world of a difference to have a female manager and a work culture where men could empathize, too. My job involves a lot of talking and explaining, and I suffered from shortness of breath during my third trimester. My male counterparts recognized this and asked me to take breaks and go off-camera, which helped me work until the day I left for leave.

I also built my network and spoke to women who are managers in other teams in the company. Women who have been outperformers shared their experiences crying secretly after they became parents, and nobody said they had it all sorted out. Now, I share my journey with others.

4. Taking it one day at a time

During the wave of tech layoffs in 2022, I had at least three close friends who were laid off from Google, Microsoft, and Meta, which lingered on my mind and made me paranoid about my own situation.

The stress and postpartum depression is not behind me, but I decided to take it one day at a time.

I decided to be laser-focused and do things as they come up. There have been times I feel like delaying a reply but do it anyway, because I know it could lead to more tasks that I can add to my annual review.

Do you work in Big Tech and have a tip or story to share? Please reach out at [email protected].

• Wendy Altschuler has traveled around the world with her husband and three sons.
• Her kids agree that Japan has been their favorite destination.
• Sumo wrestling was the highlight of their trip.

My kids have been fortunate to enjoy the benefits of my main work perk as a longtime travel writer: accumulating airline miles.

Of all of the places we've traveled around the world — including Peru, Greece, Dominican Republic, Thailand, India, Singapore, UAE, and Aruba — Japan remains the absolute favorite for all three of my boys.

During our summertime trip to Japan, we explored incense-heavy shrines, wandered through gardens bursting with hydrangeas, marveled at castles, indulged in street food, met wild monkeys, and sauntered through a bamboo forest. The kids made it clear that Japan lights up all five of your senses — no matter what age you are.

We all enjoyed finding a beach full of smooth pottery pieces, remnants from a long-ago shipwreck; and watching a crazy robot show in Tokyo with swirling lights and loud music while eating dinner.

But the highlight of their trip was learning about sumo wrestling.

The whole family tried sumo wrestling

In Nara, near Kyoto and Osaka, we encountered sacred deer that bowed when we fed them crackers. It was near there, at the foot of Mt. Nijo in Katsuragi City, where I had another quest for my boys — to learn about Japan's oldest sport: Sumo wrestling.

Katsuragi is the origin of sumo, Japan's national sport with 1,500 years of history. At Kehayaza Sumo Museum, we took our shoes off and sat in a box seat on top of cushions to watch.

We were the sole spectators at the event that aims to educate visitors on the art of sumo. Rather than attend a Grand Sumo Tournament, which can be difficult to visit with only six tournaments held each year, the museum is much more open, affordable, and accessible for families on a year-round basis.

There was beautiful singing, a display of flags, and rice throwing to purify the elevated ring, which was made of clay and covered in rough sand. Two massive rikishi, or sumo wrestlers, entered the circular ring, the dohyo, wearing only a mawashi, or loin cloth. We observed as the two athletes lifted and stomped each leg, slapped their stomachs, and prepared for the match.

They learned about Japanese culture

Sumo originated as a ritual dance to entertain the gods at shrine festivals. Nowadays, professional sumo has six divisions. Wrestlers move up the ranks depending on their skill, and their pay increases as they progress and evolve. The Grand Champion, or Yokozuna, is an exclusive title that can earn the wrestler 2.8 million yen, or $18,000 per month, per the South China Morning Post.

Tickets for standard seats to the tournaments start at around 2,500 yen and go up to around 20,000 yen for ringside seats. Box seats, which accommodate four people, can cost up to 60,000 yen per box.

A benefit of visiting the museum is that entrance is free for visitors with foreign passports.

We all stepped into the ring

With eyes wide, my boys were dialed in as the straight-faced men collided while endeavoring to push each other to the ground or out of the ring to win the match. We were told that in sumo, often, the opponents aren't the same size or weight, like in American boxing, which allows spectators to root for an underdog.

After the match, my husband was asked if he wanted to try. He cautiously stepped into the ring with the largest of the two wrestlers and went through the entire ritual — tossing the rice in the air, bowing, clapping, crouching down with his fists on the ground, mirroring the correct footwork, and facing his opponent. I went next. Then each of my boys got a chance to test their mettle.

While a referee — dressed in a long red and gold robe, black pointed hat, white belt, and holding a small paper fan — officiated, my boys followed the ceremonial tasks and squared off with their skilled challenger. I'll never forget how the athlete, who seemed so imposing when he was brawling with his opponent, morphed into a playful fellow when my kids each entered the ring.

When the near-naked wrestler picked up my firstborn son, who was 12 at the time, and swung him around by his mawashi, I roared with laughter. I still smile when I think about how high-pitched the wrestler's giggle was, completely contrasting his size and power.

My youngest pressed firmly into his challenger's belly, not moving him an inch, and then, par for the course, he became airborne, just like his older brother. My middle son took a different strategy: he stood on his tippy toes and went for the shoulders, attempting to drive his adversary off balance.

The final match was unfair: all three boys were against their dad. After the match, we thanked the sumo wrestlers for the immersive education.

Later, at home, I organized a postcard writing project in which short travel stories were mailed to isolated seniors. My youngest wrote about getting in the ring with a 400-pound sumo wrestler in Japan: "I was only 8, I obviously lost."

• With Trump's inauguration fast approaching, more details about DOGE have emerged.
• Musk, who Trump tapped to co-lead DOGE, may become a "special government employee."
• SGEs have less stringent ethics rules — to a degree — compared to regular federal employees.

With President-elect Donald Trump set to take office next week, a key detail has emerged regarding the Department of Government Efficiency, the forthcoming commission that Tesla CEO Elon Musk will co-lead alongside businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Some DOGE staffers who are expected to work unpaid for six months before returning to their more lucrative jobs would be classified as "special government employees," and Musk could be among them, The New York Times reported.

A special government employee is an individual who can be paid or unpaid and is categorized as a temporary worker. The federal government can employ that individual for no more than 130 days amid a consecutive 365-day span.

The designation is significant because special government employees — who are generally brought in to offer outside expertise to the federal government — are subject to more limited conflict of interest rules compared to regular federal employees.

When Trump tapped Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, to co-lead DOGE, government watchdogs, and some Democratic politicians questioned how he could handle such a role given potential conflicts of interest involving SpaceX, Tesla, and X.

Musk's omnipresence within Trump's political orbit in recent months has only reinforced those concerns. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent a letter to Trump's transition team asking if the tech executive would adhere to conflict-of-interest rules in his forthcoming role.

"Putting Mr. Musk in a position to influence billions of dollars of government contracts and regulatory enforcement without a stringent conflict of interest agreement in place is an invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes," Warren wrote at the time.

"Currently, the American public has no way of knowing whether the advice that he is whispering to you in secret is good for the country — or merely good for his own bottom line," she added.

Musk in 2024 spent over $250 million to help send Trump back to the White House and aid other GOP candidates in their respective races.

Business Insider reached out to Trump's transition team for comment.

• A former Disney employee agreed to plead guilty to altering allergen info on restaurant menus.
• Michael Scheuer admitted to the hack, as well as adding swastikas to the memus.
• He faces up to 10 years in prison for his charges, according to the plea agreement.

A former menu production manager for Disney World has admitted to altering allergen information and adding swastikas to menus as part of a plea agreement.

Federal authorities charged Michael Scheuer in October with causing the transmission of a program, information, code, or command to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage. Disney had fired Scheuer months earlier for misconduct, according to the criminal complaint.

In a plea agreement filed Friday in Florida federal court, first reported by Court Watch, Scheuer pleaded guilty to hacking and one count of aggravated identity theft. He faces a maximum of 10 years and a mandatory minimum of two years in prison for the charges.

The plea says the government agreed to recommend that Scheuer receive a downward adjustment on the length of his sentence for agreeing to take responsibility for the charges.

Scheuer also agreed to pay restitution to his victims, including Disney.

The agreement says that Scheuer changed allergen information on some of Disney's menus to falsely show that items were safe for people with allergies, which "could have had fatal consequences depending on the type and severity of the customer's allergy."

Scheuer also admitted to changing the regions of wines on some menus, some of which he changed to the locations of mass shootings, the plea agreement says.

"Scheuer also added or embedded images to one or more menus, including in one instance a swastika," the document says.

On some Disney menus that contained a QR code to show a digital version of the menu, Scheuer changed the code to direct to a website promoting the boycott of Israel, the document says. Manufacturers printed some menus with the falsified QR codes, but caught the change before they were distributed.

By the end of his hacking campaign, Scheuer had impacted "nearly every menu in the system," according to court documents.

"The entire repository of menus had to be reverted to older versions and brought up to date manually," the agreement says.

Scheuer's attorney, David Haas, did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider. Haas told CNBC that Scheuer is "prepared to accept responsibility for his conduct."

"Unfortunately, he has mental health issues that were exacerbated when Disney fired him upon his return from paternity leave," he told the outlet.

Disney did not immediately return a request for comment about Scheuer's plea agreement.

Disney became embroiled in a separate controversy involving food allergens in 2024 when a widowed husband filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the entertainment giant. The lawsuit said the man's wife experienced a "severe acute allergic reaction" and died after eating at a restaurant operated at Disney Springs.

Lawyers for Disney asked an Orange County court to dismiss the lawsuit because the husband previously purchased theme park tickets and signed up for a free Disney+ trial, but criticism from the public caused them to reverse course.

• Jamie Dimon urges incoming president Donald Trump to prioritize immigration policy in his second term.
• Trump has said he plans to conduct mass deportation in his second term.
• Dimon also advocates for education reform and doubling the earned income tax credit.

With Donald Trump set to take office in about a week, top Wall Street leaders are coming forward with advice.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon honed in on immigration policy when asked what advice he'd give Trump for his second presidential term in a CBS News interview posted Sunday. "Get immigration, border security right," he said. "Then proper immigration after that."

Since his debut on the political stage, Trump has been outspoken about immigration policy. On the campaign trail last year Trump said he would carry out the "largest domestic deportation in American history." He also plans to end birthright citizenship, build new ICE detention centers, and reinstate his first-term policies. During his first term in office, he curtailed legal immigration rates, signed an executive order that suspended several types of work visas, including H-1B visas, which are crucial for the tech industry, and completed hundreds of miles of construction on a border wall between the US and Mexico.

Dimon says he agrees with Trump's big-picture view on immigration. "You could talk about specifics and disagree, but the concern around border security, obviously, every country in the world is concerned about that," he said.

Beyond immigration, Dimon says he wants to see changes to our education system. "I would love to see high schools, community colleges, and colleges measured on what is the outcome of the kid being educated. Like do they get a job that's well paying, not do they do math well," he said. "I believe that would put a lot more pressure on schools to teach skills that can give you really good paying jobs." That includes jobs in fields like data analytics, manufacturing, nursing, compliance, and financial skills, he said.

He's also in favor of eliminating tax breaks, even for the wealthy. He proposed doubling the earned income tax credit: a refundable tax credit for low to moderate-income workers, particularly those with children. "That alone would put a lot more money into the pockets of people who are working who are lower income, it would go into their communities, into their families," he said.

• Dana White grew the UFC into a multibillion-dollar company after acquiring it in 2001.
• In that time, White also became a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump.
• Now, he is joining Meta's board of directors.

Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White has been on quite the journey over the last two decades.

From managing MMA fighters to appearing at the Republican National Convention three times to support President-elect Donald Trump, White has become a global figure in both sports and politics.

And now he's entered the sphere of Big Tech, joining the board of directors at Mark Zuckerberg's Meta.

Here's how White went from a small-time trainer to the board of one of the world's most influential tech companies in just a few years.

White purchases the UFC in 2001 for $2 million.

White started out as a boxing trainer in Las Vegas and then Boston before shifting focus to mixed martial arts, he told Forbes in a 2014 interview.

Eventually, White managed MMA fighters who participated in UFC bouts, which resulted in a contract dispute with the UFC. White told the outlet that the contract dispute motivated him to find a way to beat the UFC.

His plan involved two of his childhood friends, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta.

"I ended up finding that out, that they're in trouble, and they're probably going to go out of business," White said, referring to the UFC. "And I'd been to a [UFC] event, and I was looking around and thinking, 'Imagine if they did this, and imagine if they did that. This thing could actually be really big.'"

So, White said, he called his friends and suggested that together they try to buy the UFC.

The brothers founded Zuffa, LLC and purchased the UFC for $2 million in 2001. White took over as president and received a 9% stake. He then began to turn the company into an MMA juggernaut.

That year, White hosted a UFC battle at the now-defunct Trump Taj Mahal casino and resort in Atlantic City.

White told The Hill in 2018 that the UFC's popularity grew, in part, because of Trump's early support. When he first purchased the UFC, the company, as well as mixed martial arts more broadly, the sport faced criticism for its violent fighting style.

"Any good thing that happened to me in my career, Donald Trump was the first to pick up the phone and call and say 'congratulations,'" he told the outlet.

White takes the UFC mainstream.

Under its new leadership, the UFC gradually became a mainstream success. MMA stars like Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey attracted more attention to the sport, which led to more ticket sales and higher revenue.

In 2016, the company said it raked in $17.7 million in ticket sales, and over 20,400 guests attended UFC 205, its inaugural event in New York City. UFC 306, held last September in Las Vegas, generated $22 million in ticket sales.

The official UFC website said its programming is now broadcast in over 165 countries and territories to over one billion households worldwide. BetMGM, a sports betting partnership between MGM Resorts International and Entain Holding, valued the UFC at $12 billion in November 2024.

White faces controversy as head of the UFC.

White's time with the UFC hasn't been seamless. Some fighters have accused White of underpaying them.

Last October, a Las Vegas judge approved a class action settlement that requires the UFC to pay $375 million to fighters who accused the UFC, and its parent company, of violating antitrust laws to block rival promoters and maintain exclusive deals with fighters. The UFC and White have denied any wrongdoing.

Some also criticized White for his push to hold UFC events during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and after a video published by TMZ showed him slapping his wife, Anne White, in 2023.

The UFC is sold in a multibillion-dollar deal.

The Fertitta brothers sold the UFC in 2016 for just under $4 billion. White remained its president after the sale and became CEO in 2023 after the UFC's parent company merged with WWE to create TKO Group Holdings.

White remains the face of the UFC, which often attracts celebrities and other big-name figures to events. Trump attended UFC 309 after winning the presidential election in November. Elon Musk, Kid Rock, and Joe Rogan also appeared.

Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos have also attended UFC fights.

White told The Hill in 2018 that he would "never say anything negative about Donald Trump because he was there when other people weren't."

White joins Trump's inner circle.

White has advocated for Trump and his political positions since the beginning of the president-elect's political career. He spoke onstage during the 2016 Republican National Convention, appeared virtually in 2020, and again at the most recent convention in 2024.

White has also appeared at Trump campaign events and gave a speech during Trump's 2024 presidential election night event.

"Nobody deserves this more than him, and nobody deserves this more than his family does. This is what happens when the machine comes after you," White said, according to The Hill.

White called Trump a "fighter."

"I'm in the tough guy business, and this man is the toughest, most resilient human being that I've ever met in my life," he said, standing among Trump's family.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta appoints White to its board of directors.

Meta announced in January that White and two others would join its board of directors.

"I've never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta's board. I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future," White said in a statement. "I am very excited to join this incredible team and to learn more about this business from the inside. There is nothing I love more than building brands, and I look forward to helping take Meta to the next level."

Zuckerberg's interest in MMA and the UFC has helped foster a relationship between the two men. Like White, Zuckerberg has also supported Trump and his policy positions. Zuckerberg recently announced Meta would roll back DEI efforts and dial back content moderation.

Zuckerberg told Rogan on his podcast last week that he is "optimistic" about Trump's potential impact on American businesses.

Representatives for the UFC did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Meta announced big changes to kick off the new year, including ending third-party fact-checking and DEI programs.
• The moves illustrate the latest evolution in Mark Zuckerberg's leadership.
• You might call it Zuckerberg 3.0 — and it comes as Donald Trump takes power.

Mark Zuckerberg has shown himself to be the ultimate Silicon Valley shapeshifter, and in the first couple weeks of 2025, we got our best look yet at the latest version of the Meta CEO.

To kick off the new year, Zuckerberg made some big changes at his company, including ditching third-party fact-checking and slashing DEI initiatives.

He appears to be remaking Meta, which did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, at least partly in the image of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And he doesn't seem too concerned about the backlash he's facing in some quarters, including from the same people who villainized him during the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the 2016 election, or even his own Meta employees — many of whom have reacted negatively to his latest decision to roll back DEI efforts.

His recent moves hint that he's entering a new era, one in which his leadership increasingly reflects Trump's tastes.

Zuckerberg's transformation

For years, Zuckerberg was known as an almost robotic presence in Silicon Valley. Some people criticized him for copying ideas rather than innovating, and others held onto his image as a wunderkind wearing hoodies or too much sunscreen.

By the end of 2023, though, the Meta CEO had undergone a substantial makeover and was garnering praise in business and cultural circles.

Zuck got shredded and was winning jiu-jitsu competitions. He went on popular podcasts, like Joe Rogan's, to discuss his workouts and make fun of himself.

As a business leader, he acted as the adult in the room and led Meta's "year of efficiency," which turned the company's stock around.

In 2024, he continued his transformation: He ditched his jeans and hoodie uniform for designer T-shirts and gold chains. And his adoration for his wife Priscilla Chan — as evidenced through gifts like a statue of her, a custom Porsche minivan, and his very own version of "Get Low" — won him fans.

His newfound swagger grew into a new kind of boldness.

In the fall of last year, he said his biggest regret in his two decades of running Meta was taking responsibility and apologizing for problems that he believed weren't Meta's fault.

Zuck's next era comes as Trump takes power

Cut to 2025. Zuckerberg now appears to embrace some of the "anti-woke" ideas favored by some political billionaires like Musk, Peter Thiel, and, of course, Trump.

While Zuckerberg didn't endorse Trump — or Harris — in the 2024 election, he and other tech CEOs were quick to congratulate Trump on his victory. Zuck met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago weeks after the election and, through Meta, donated $1 million to his inaugural committee.

Now, he's taking what he calls "masculine energy" and putting it into action at Meta.

"Masculine energy, I think, is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it," he said in an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that aired on Friday. "It's like you want feminine energy, you want masculine energy."

"But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung toward being this somewhat more neutered thing," he added.

He started the new year by putting Dana White, the UFC CEO and Trump's longtime ally, on Meta's board and replacing the company's head of policy, liberal Nick Clegg, with former GOP lobbyist Joel Kaplan.

Then, he ended third-party fact-checking on Meta platforms, which some conservatives have criticized, in favor of a more hands-off approach. Like X, Meta will now use "community notes" to allow users to police each other.

"The recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech," Zuckerberg said while announcing the changes, implying that the choice was, at least in part, a response to the political landscape.

Meta's CMO, Alex Schultz, also told BI that Trump's election influenced the policy change.

The decision has come under scrutiny, with some saying the lack of content moderation opens the door to hate speech.

Under the policy, Meta users can say that members of the LGBTQ+ community are mentally ill for being gay or transgender, for example.

Dozens of fact-checking organizations have signed a letter calling it "a step backward for those who want to see an internet that prioritizes accurate and trustworthy information."

Still, others, including Musk and Trump, lauded the change.

"Honestly, I think they have come a long way, Meta, Facebook," the president-elect said on Tuesday.

In the recent Rogan interview, Zuckerberg said while some may see the timing of the content changes as "purely a political thing," it's something he has been thinking about for a while.

"I feel like I just have a much greater command now of what I think the policy should be and like, this is how it's going to be going forward," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg's recent decision to cut Meta's DEI initiatives could also placate conservatives, who have criticized such policies.

While Trump has not commented on the DEI decision, he has criticized DEI policies in the past.

On Friday, Meta's vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, said in an internal memo that the company would no longer have a team focused on DEI or consider diversity in hiring or supplier decisions.

"The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing," she said in a memo.

The decision sparked a backlash among some. Internally, nearly 400 employees reacted with a teary-eyed emoji to the announcement; one called it "disappointing," and another said it was a "step backward," BI reported on Friday.

"Wow, we really capitulated on a lot of our supposed values this week," another employee commented, seemingly referring to both the DEI and fact-checking moves.

Others, though, did seem to support the move: 139 employees "liked" the post, and 57 responded with a heart emoji.

• A luxury Pacific Palisades mansion once featured in "Succession" has been destroyed by the LA fires, the Daily Mail reported.
• The San Onofre estate was purchased by tech CEO Austin Russell in 2021 for $83 million, per Realtor.com
• The Palisades Fire has now burned through more than 23,000 acres.

A luxury Pacific Palisades mansion once featured in the television drama "Succession" has been destroyed by the wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area, the Daily Mail reported.

Photos published by the Mail seemingly show the house reduced to charred beams and rubble.

The mansion was purchased by the founder and CEO of the lidar manufacturer Luminar Technologies, Austin Russell, for $83 million in 2021, per Realtor.com.

The 20,000-square-foot house, known as the San Onofre estate, featured six bedrooms and 18 bathrooms and had been available to rent for $450,000 a month.

The house had previously featured in the season four premiere of the Emmy Award-winning HBO series "Succession" in 2023.

A representative for Russell did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, which was sent outside regular working hours.

The Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades area north of Santa Monica is one of a number of blazes raging through the Los Angeles area this week.

The Palisades Fire has burned through over 23,000 acres and is 11% contained as of Sunday, according to Cal Fire.

The blaze, which began on Tuesday, has so far damaged or destroyed over 5,000 structures.

The Pacific Palisades area is home to a number of celebrities, many of whom have now lost their homes to the fire. Those affected include Paris Hilton, Billy Crystal, and Milo Ventimiglia.

The Palisades Charter High School — used as a set for movies like "Carrie" and 2003's "Freaky Friday" — has also been damaged in the fires.

Meanwhile, a Spanish Colonial revival mansion in Altadena that was featured in "Hacks" and the Marvel series "Runaways" was destroyed in the Eaton Fire, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Other Los Angeles landmarks related to the industry have also been lost, including the Will Rogers Ranch house.

The LA County Medical Examiner has reported 16 deaths related to the wildfires so far, with five linked to the Palisades Fire.

• Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, Trump's pick to lead the EPA, made $186,000 from paid op-eds and speeches.
• Some of those op-eds criticized climate policies and ESG.
• The former NY congressman also made $45,475 from gambling at casinos.

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, has made millions of dollars in recent years from consulting, speaking fees, and paid op-eds, according to a financial disclosure made public on Saturday.

That includes tens of thousands of dollars to write about environmental and climate change-related topics. In one instance, Zeldin was paid $25,000 for an op-ed in which he likened environmental, social, and governance investing, or ESG, to the practices of disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried.

A staunchly pro-Trump Republican first elected to Congress in 2014, Zeldin left office after mounting an unsuccessful bid for governor of New York in 2022. As retiring lawmakers in both parties often do, Zeldin cashed in, establishing a consulting firm to advise corporate clients while enmeshing himself in the well-funded world of conservative political advocacy.

It's paid off. According to the disclosure document, which covers Zeldin's major financial activities since the beginning of 2023, the ex-congressman has made a total of $775,000 in salary income and between $1 million and $5 million in dividends from his main firm, Zeldin Consulting.

He's also received $144,999 from America First Works, a pro-Trump nonprofit where he has a board seat, along with $65,500 from paid speeches and $15,000 from an entity called "Plymouth Union Public Research."

He also got lucky — literally — winning a combined $45,475 in the last two years from gambling at the Golden Nugget, Venetian, and Atlantis casinos.

"All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies," Trump-Vance Transition Spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.

Zeldin did not respond to a request for comment.

$120,500 for writing op-eds

The ex-congressman's disclosure reveals a variety of income streams, including substantial speaking fees from GOP organizations in Florida and California, a Long Island synagogue, and a Turning Point USA event in Michigan in June. In multiple instances, Zeldin was paid over $10,000 for a single appearance.

He also disclosed a combined $26,775 in payments from Fox News and Nexstar Media Group for "use of media studio."

The document lists payments from several public relations firms for paid op-eds, listing the news outlet and the date of publication. The titles of those opinion pieces are not listed, but Business Insider identified several that matched the publication and date included in the disclosure.

Among the most notable were a series of paid op-eds on climate issues — Zeldin could soon lead the agency responsible for the federal government's environmental policies.

In an op-ed for Real Clear Policy published in March 2023 entitled "How Congress Can Stop the Next FTX," Zeldin called on Congress to investigate ESG practices and the nonprofit watchdog Better Markets, arguing that companies may use ESG to avoid regulatory scrutiny in the same manner that Bankman-Fried used political contributions to curry favor with Washington.

The disclosure indicates that Zeldin was paid $25,000 to write that op-ed. He also appears to have made an additional $10,000 for another Newsday op-ed in August about ESG and $3,000 for a Fox News op-ed in July that criticized New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's climate policies and called on her to lift the state's fracking ban.

Zeldin was also paid to write about other topics, including $10,000 for a New York Post op-ed criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris' housing policy proposals, $10,000 for a Washington Times op-ed calling on regulators to crack down on China-linked financial platforms, and $15,000 for a Washington Examiner op-ed accusing the Biden administration of targeting Republican-run states via Medicaid regulations.

In some cases, Zeldin was paid even when the articles never saw the light of day. His disclosures list two op-eds that were never published, for which he received $10,000 and $30,000.

In total, Zeldin reported $120,500 in op-ed payments. The original clients who made those payments are unclear, and Zeldin and the Trump-Vance transition did not respond to a question about the original sources.

As with other nominees, Zeldin has agreed to divest himself from his consulting business if he's confirmed as the next EPA administrator, according to his ethics agreement. His confirmation hearing is set for Thursday, January 16.