• The American Airlines jet that crashed in DC was given a runway change minutes before the tragedy.
• Audio tapes show the military helicopter had the passenger plane "in sight" before the collision.
• The NTSB will look at pilot and air traffic control actions when investigating the crash.

In the minutes before an American Airlines flight crashed into the Potomac River in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an air traffic controller requested a last-minute runway change.

The regional jet, operated by PSA Airlines, was descending over Virginia and headed for the north-facing "Mount Vernon Visual Runway 1" approach at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Pilots had confirmed their approach to air traffic controllers at the airport tower around 8:42 p.m.

Moments later, a controller reported high crosswinds on Runway 1 and asked the pilots to shift to the intersecting runway.

"Bluestreak 5342 Washington Tower winds are 320 at 17, gusts 25. Can you take Runway 33?" the controller said. Bluestreak is the call sign for PSA flights.

The pilots agreed, and within minutes, the plane collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter. All 67 people on board both aircraft died.

Business Insider reviewed official briefings, flight data, and air traffic control audio recordings to piece together what happened before tragedy struck.

The plane and helicopter's final moments of flight

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is an extremely busy airspace, but officials said it was a largely normal night of flying. Winds were gusty — something pilots are trained for — and the skies were clear.

The American flight had been approaching from the south, following the Potomac River along a well-known path for pilots and frequent flyers of the DC area.

The narrow corridor helps separate traffic from highly secure airspace around the White House, Pentagon, and other government buildings.

Seconds before the American flight agreed to change its path, another PSA jet responded to the same request to shift to Runway 33 as "unable," meaning it was not in a position to make the adjustment.

That flight, from Montgomery, Alabama, landed on Runway 1 as planned and continued to its gate.

The PSA pilots of flight 5342 accepting the change is not unusual. Runway 33 is a shorter strip that faces Northwest and can handle a regional aircraft like the Bombardier CRJ700 the pilots were flying.

The switch-up required the plane to move from its north-facing heading toward the Potomac's east bank before swinging back over the river to land.

At approximately 8:43 p.m., flight 5342 was cleared to land.

At the same time as the crew of flight 5342 was prepping for the new runway, an Army Black Hawk helicopter was making its way south along the river's eastern shore, following a standard, published path known as "Route 4."

Several of these channels cut through the DC area, allowing military aircraft to coexist with commercial traffic in and out of airports.

At about 8:47 p.m., a controller asked the helicopter, call sign PAT25, if they had "the CRJ in sight" and to pass behind it. The CRJ refers to the regional CRJ700 aircraft operated by PSA.

The helicopter pilot confirmed that they had the "aircraft in sight" and requested "visual separation."

Just seconds later, gasps from controllers can be heard on the audio tapes. ATC began canceling flight landings and diverting planes from National.

DC fire chief John Donnelly said emergency vehicles were on the scene by 8:58 p.m. to begin rescue operations.

Human factors are just one consideration for investigators

At a briefing Thursday, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board said teams will examine human factors as they piece together a complete picture of the crash.

"They will study the crew performance and all of the actions and factors that might be involved in human error, including fatigue, medication, medical histories, training, workload, equipment design, and work environment," NTSB member Todd Inman said. They'll also be combing through the wreckage and other evidence for clues as to what went wrong.

A preliminary FAA report obtained by the New York Times and others said staffing at National's ATC tower was "not normal" at the time of the crash. The outlet reported that the controller was handling the duties of two people, including directing helicopters in the area and passenger planes landing and taking off.

Brian Alexander, a military helicopter pilot and a partner at aviation accident firm Kreindler & Kreindler, told BI that the nighttime conditions, many aircraft lights, and busy skies may have contributed to the catastrophe.

"There was another jet on final, a couple of other jets on final, and it's conceivable the helicopter pilot was watching the wrong aircraft," he said, emphasizing that was speculation at this point.

An airline pilot previously told BI that flying in and out of National was like "threading a needle" due to the highly restricted corridors and heavy traffic, including low-flying helicopters.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a former Black Hawk pilot, told reporters that military pilots generally wouldn't talk directly to PSA pilots on the radio, but "everyone's listening on the same frequency."

She said the PSA plane would know that the Black Hawk was in the area but would be relying on ATC as the intermediary.

"Did one of the aircraft stray away latitude, sideways in the airspace from the route that they were supposed to be on? Was the Black Hawk higher than the 200 feet?" Duckworth said. "These are all things that the accident investigators would be looking at."

The NTSB said its preliminary report is expected to be published within 30 days.

• "Paradise," a new thriller, premiered this week.
• Shows like "Mythic Quest," "The Bachelor," and "The Recruit" returned.
• Movies including "Goodrich" and "You're Cordially Invited" are streaming.

Several new and returning shows aired this week.

Hulu's new series "Paradise" provides a twist on the typical political thriller. Meanwhile, shows including the Netflix drama "The Recruit" and the hit reality dating show "The Bachelor" both premiered new seasons this week.

Theatrical releases, like last year's "Goodrich," and new streaming-only films, like the rom-com "You're Cordially Invited," are out now, too.

Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're into.

Looking for a new thriller? Check out "Paradise."

"Paradise" stars "This is Us" actor Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden. The story picks up with the suspicious death of a president (Marsden), in which Brown's character is implicated. The show isn't your standard political thriller, though — it introduces a pretty big twist in the first episode.

Streaming on: Hulu

"The Bachelor" returned this week.

Grant Ellis, who previously competed on Jenn Tran's season of "The Bachelorette," takes over as the lead in the 29th season of the long-running ABC dating show. Only the first episode has aired so far, but the 30-year-old day trader from New York has already made connections with early favorites like first impression rose winner Alexe Godin.

Streaming on: Hulu

So did "Mythic Quest."

The workplace comedy about a fictional video game studio, from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" costars Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, returns for its fourth season. (An anthology spinoff, called "Side Quest," is also coming later this year.)

Streaming on: Apple TV+

"The Recruit" is back, too.

Noah Centineo returns as CIA lawyer Owen Hendricks. In the second season of the spy drama, he finds himself in the middle of a deadly situation in South Korea.

Streaming on: Netflix

The comedy "Goodrich" is now streaming.

Michael Keaton plays Andy Goodrich, a man whose life is turned upside down when he's left on his own with his 9-year-old twins. The typically hands-off dad ends up seeking help from Grace (Mila Kunis), his adult daughter from his first marriage.

It's the second feature from Hallie Meyers-Shyer — aka the daughter of rom-com legend Nancy Meyers.

Streaming on: Max

Good news for parents: "Ms. Rachel" is on Netflix now.

YouTube phenomenon and child educator Ms. Rachel recently signed a deal with Netflix to license a "curated compilation" of her existing content, including some of what exists already on her YouTube channel.

It's a natural progression for the content creator, who has over 13 million subscribers on YouTube and one of the platform's highest watch times on TVs.

Streaming on: Netflix

Craving a rom-com fix? Watch "You're Cordially Invited."

Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell star as two people who clash when weddings they're involved with are double-booked at the same venue. Sparks fly as a result of the chaos.

Streaming on: Prime Video

For a shocking true crime story, check out "Scamanda."

The new four-part ABC Studios docuseries "Scamanda" explores Amanda Riley's fake cancer scam. The blogger, whose story was previously featured on the hit 2023 podcast of the same name, pretended to have terminal cancer for nearly a decade, bilking friends and strangers out of thousands of dollars.

Streaming on: Hulu

• First Disney, then Meta. Now it looks like Paramount is planning to settle a Trump lawsuit.
• In normal times, Trump's suits against media and tech companies that upset him would face a steep challenge.
• But since Trump won in November, things have changed. Is this how business will work for the next four years?

Disney paid Donald Trump $15 million. Meta paid $22 million.

Next question: How much will Paramount pay?

The question after that: How many more giant tech and media companies will pay the president of the United States to settle lawsuits?

And the truly big question hanging over all of this: Is this just going to be how business works during Trump 2.0?

Here's the context: Donald Trump has a history of filing lawsuits — or at least threatening to file lawsuits — against people and companies he says have besmirched his image. But until he won his second presidential election last fall, he had only scattered success when he did that.

Things are different now.

In December, Disney agreed to make a $15 million donation to Trump's future presidential library in order to settle a defamation suit. Earlier this week, Meta agreed to donate $22 million to the same library to settle a suit Trump filed after the company suspended his Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Now Paramount is in talks to make a similar settlement, as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have reported and I've confirmed. (A Paramount rep declined to comment; I've asked the Trump White House for comment.) And there will be enormous pressure on newspaper publisher Gannett to settle another suit Trump filed after the election.

There are some differences between the suits. The Disney suit, for instance, was a somewhat straightforward defamation claim, focused on comments ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos made during a live interview. The Meta case revolved around Trump's argument that the company had violated his First Amendment rights.

The Paramount and Gannett filings accuse those companies of election interference and consumer fraud, respectively. Trump was specifically unhappy with the way Paramount's "60 Minutes" program handled an interview with Kamala Harris, and about a poll Gannett's Des Moines Register published before the election that projected he would lose in Iowa.

What all of those suits had in common: Lots of skepticism and eye-rolling from legal experts, who said Trump would have a very difficult time making his case.

But as it turns out, when the person making that case turns out to be the most powerful man in the world, the equation gets reworked.

Again, each situation is different: Disney sources told The New York Times they were worried the suit could end up at the Supreme Court, and that a loss there could set back First Amendment rights. Meta's settlement comes as Mark Zuckerberg has made a loud and dramatic pivot to become a Trump supporter.

In Paramount's case, both its current owner — Shari Redstone — and the man who wants to buy it — Oracle founder Larry Ellison, on behalf of his son David — are aligned with Trump to varying degrees. But that deal requires federal approval, and Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to run the Federal Communications Commission, has already said he intends to scrutinize the way Paramount's CBS handled the "60 Minutes" interview. Technically, Trump's suit and the FCC's approval of the deal are considered separate issues. But it's easy enough to draw a dotted line.

It's also easy to see a stark pattern emerging: Powerful companies with enormous legal resources deciding that they're better off making a payment — in the form of a donation — to Trump than fighting him.

If you're reading this, that suggests you have some interest in the news. For people who care about news — or any part of the protections the First Amendment provides — all of this likely sounds chilling. But even if you're a press/media/Big Tech skeptic or foe, you might worry about the lawsuits and settlements, and the precedent they set. What happens when Donald Trump — or a future president — comes after a company or industry you care about?

• We ranked all eight of the diss tracks exchanged by Drake and Kendrick Lamar over the past year.
• Lamar's Grammy-nominated kill shot "Not Like Us" took the top spot.
• Drake's disappointing surrender, "The Heart Part 6," was ranked the worst.

Ever since Kendrick Lamar declared "I choose violence" in March of last year, he and Drake have hurled a barrage of diss tracks back and forth, escalating a rap feud that had been brewing for years.

That declaration came in March 2024, when Lamar provoked two of his most famous peers, Drake and J. Cole, during his guest verse in "Like That" by Future and Metro Boomin.

"Fuck sneak dissing, first-person shooter, I hope they came with three switches," Lamar raps in the hit single. "Motherfuck the big three, n****, it's just big me."

While the rest of "Like That" doesn't scan as a traditional diss track, its implications were clear: Lamar made a point to reject the claim that Cole had previously made ("We the big three like we started a league") in his 2023 collaboration with Drake, "First Person Shooter."

Although J. Cole quickly surrendered to Lamar, Drake accepted his challenge, launching one of the most carnage-filled battles in hip-hop history.

Business Insider's senior music reporter ranked all eight of the pair's 2024 diss tracks (not including "Like That") by weighing factors like lyrical prowess and cultural impact.

Ayomikun Adekaiyero contributed additional reporting.

8. "The Heart Part 6"

Release date: May 5, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: N/A

There's a famous line from T.S. Eliot's 1925 poem "The Hollow Men" that feels applicable here: "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

If "Not Like Us" is a bang, "The Heart Part 6" is definitely a whimper. Drake's final offering in his feud with Lamar is some of the most feeble, mortifying stuff he's ever committed to tape. He attempts to deny accusations of pedophilia by insisting he's "way too famous" to get away with it (because who's ever heard of powerful men in Hollywood ducking years of slimy allegations?) and claims his team fed Lamar false information to use against him ("I thought about giving a fake name and a destination / But you so thirsty you not concerned with investigation").

Of course, no one bought Drake's defensive claim, because that strategy makes no sense. Why would you intentionally spread rumors about yourself? He also thought name-dropping Jeffrey Epstein unprompted was a good idea, somehow? What a mess. He would've been better off just bowing out quietly.

7. "Taylor Made Freestyle"

Release date: April 19, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: N/A

Drake unveiled "Taylor Made Freestyle" shortly after "Push Ups," hoping to land a one-two punch — a strategy that went over well during his 2015 beef with Meek Mill, chasing "Charged Up" with "Back to Back." However, the rollout was muddied by Drake's random, convoluted references.

In "Taylor Made Freestyle," Drake shows respect to Taylor Swift, calling her "the biggest gangster in the music game right now," yet a few days earlier, he poked fun at Lamar for collaborating with her. ("Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty / Then we need a verse for the Swifties," Drake raps in "Push Ups," a nod to Lamar's feature in Swift's "Bad Blood" remix.)

Why is he even dragging America's sweetheart into this? Sure, Swift mentioned Drake in her 2019 album "Lover," so they're probably on good terms, but on the other hand, Swift has worked with Lamar twice and as recently as 2023. I'm willing to bet she'd prefer to be excluded from this narrative.

But name-dropping Swift isn't even the biggest faux pas Drake makes here. "Taylor Made Freestyle" includes AI-generated verses from Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg, a foolish move for several reasons.

One, Drake had previously criticized the use of AI in music, so now he looks like a hypocrite. Two, Shakur is a paragon of West Coast hip-hop, a community to which Lamar belongs, not Drake. Three, and most egregiously, Drake didn't get permission to use Shakur's likeness, triggering a cease-and-desist from Shakur's estate that described "Taylor Made Freestyle" as a "blatant abuse" of the late rapper's legacy. Yikes.

6. "Meet the Grahams"

Release date: May 4, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: No. 12

Lamar dropped "Meet the Grahams" just minutes after Drake had unleashed his best diss track yet, effectively quashing any momentum that his rival could've had. It did exactly what it was designed to do, returning the upper hand to Lamar — but at what cost?

Over six-plus minutes, Lamar addresses each member of Drake's family, including his son, who was 6 years old at the time of the song's release.

"Dear Adonis, I'm sorry that that man is your father, let me be honest / It takes a man to be a man, your dad is not responsive," Lamar raps. "I look at him and wish your grandpa would've worn a condom / I'm sorry that you gotta grow up and then stand behind him."

That's a pretty grisly message to address to a child, but Lamar didn't stop there. He belittles both of Drake's parents for raising him poorly, even addressing Drake's father as a "horrible fucking person," adding, "The nerve of you, Dennis." And just in case Lamar hadn't made his feelings about their son clear, he declares, "I think n***** like him should die."

Yet another verse is addressed to an anonymous baby girl, implying that Drake fathered a second child in secret. (Drake has strongly denied this and there's no evidence it's true.)

The final verse is addressed directly to Drake, aka Aubrey Graham, in which Lamar tries to justify everything he just said.

"Dear Aubrey, I know you probably thinking I wanted to crash your party / But truthfully, I don't have a hating bone in my body," Lamar raps. "This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game / But you fucked up the moment you called out my family's name."

Given the song's title and premise, Lamar's final point seems a little sanctimonious, no? "Meet the Grahams" is a deeply sinister, malevolent song that feels almost dirty to listen to. I rebuke it.

5. "Push Ups"

Release date: April 13, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: No. 17

"Push Ups" was the first official shot fired by Drake, a direct reaction to Lamar's verse in "Like That."

The lyrics are fairly routine by rap-beef standards: Drake makes fun of Lamar for having small feet ("How the fuck you big steppin' with a size-seven men's on?"), criticizes J. Cole for backing down from the fight, and brags about his higher album sales ("Numbers-wise, I'm out of here, you not fuckin' creepin' up / Money-wise, I'm out of here, you not fuckin' sneakin' up").

Overall, "Push Ups" is a solid diss track with a handful of zingers and a fun beat. It pales in comparison to much that came after, but we didn't know that at the time.

4. "6:16 in LA"

Release date: May 3, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: N/A

Lamar took a cue from Drake by releasing "Euphoria" and "6:16 in LA" in quick succession. In fact, he promised he would do just that in the former track: "'Back To Back,' I like that record / I'ma get back to that, for the record."

Like "Euphoria," which shares a title with the HBO teen drama that Drake executive produces, the title of "6:16 in LA" is a subtle insult, poking fun at a naming pattern in Drake's discography ("5 Am in Toronto," "6PM in New York," "8am in Charlotte").

Unlike its predecessor, however, "6:16 in LA" is brief and spooky rather than comprehensive and direct. The song was only made available on Lamar's Instagram, and he spends most of it taunting Drake about the enemies in his own entourage — though he keeps his threats relatively veiled.

"Have you ever thought that OVO was workin' for me? / Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person / Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it," Lamar raps.

Fans also believe Lamar's lyric, "It was fun until you start to put money in the streets / Then lost money, 'cause they came back with no receipts," implies that Drake tried to pay for dirt on Lamar.

3. "Family Matters"

Release date: May 3, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: No. 7

Many fans and critics have described this feud as a total KO by Lamar, but to be fair, Drake didn't go down without a fight. "Family Matters," Drake's penultimate swing, actually features some of his most impassioned and nimble rapping in years.

The seven-and-a-half-minute song is split into three parts, allowing Drake to run the gamut — taking shots at Lamar, of course, as well as Rick Ross, A$AP Rocky, and The Weeknd — while shifting gears between bemused and bloodthirsty.

The former mode works well for Drake, who's been impossible to shake from the top of the charts for over a decade. It makes sense that his peers, especially those considered to be more "highbrow," would want to knock him down a few pegs — and why Drake would assume that's all this is about. I'm particularly fond of the line, "Ayy, Kendrick just opened his mouth / Someone go hand him a Grammy right now." That's legitimately funny.

The latter mode is riskier, but Drake makes sure to sell it. He takes aim at Lamar's private parenting style ("Why you never hold your son and tell him, 'Say cheese' / We could have left the kids out of this, don't blame me"), suggests that one of Lamar's children was actually fathered by his business partner, Dave Free, and even floats the grisly claim that Lamar abused his fiancée, Whitney Alford. (To date, there are no allegations or reports of domestic violence against Lamar. For her part, Alford attempted to nullify the claim by making a cameo in the "Not Like Us" music video.)

Ultimately, "Family Matters" is a formidable diss track that could've posed a real threat had Drake been facing a lesser opponent.

However, Lamar dropped "Meet the Grahams" mere minutes later, followed closely by "Not Like Us," all but knocking "Family Matters" off the scoreboard.

It's also worth noting that, in just a few months, several lines in "Family Matters" aged quite poorly — especially after Drake took legal action against Spotify and Universal Music Group, seemingly as a last-ditch attempt to damage Lamar's credibility and block "Not Like Us" from getting more spins. Uh, Drake, what happened to "a cease-and-desist is for hoes"?

2. "Euphoria"

Release date: April 30, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: No. 3

Lamar laid low for nearly two weeks after Drake dropped "Push Ups" and "Taylor Made Freestyle," leading some skeptics to count him out prematurely. Some fans said Lamar didn't have the interest or audacity to commit to a full-blown rap beef, that his heart wasn't in it. Oh, how wrong they were.

"Euphoria" appeared on YouTube without warning or promotion. It performed well on the Hot 100, but that felt incidental at this point — purely a testament to how many people had been waiting for Lamar's response. As Lamar says himself in the song, this wasn't about critics, gimmicks, or proving himself as the greatest. He was laser-focused on showing Drake just how audacious he could be.

Indeed, the damning six-minute track doubles as an itemized list of everything Lamar loathes about Drake.

"This ain't been about critics, not about gimmicks, not about who the greatest / It's always been about love and hate, now let me say I'm the biggest hater," he raps. "I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress / I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct."

Lamar also calls Drake a "scam artist," "master manipulator," and "habitual liar." He insinuates that Drake is a deadbeat dad, mocks the Canadian rapper for imitating Black American culture, and resurfaces old accusations that Drake relies on ghostwriters for his success.

Until "Euphoria," this showdown presented as a territorial struggle, a tale as old as time — two hip-hop heavyweights fighting for the belt. I don't think anyone knew just how much spite was festering in Lamar's heart, and he was all too eager to let it spew.

Drake attempted to brush it all off as petty and childish, sharing a clip from the '90s rom-com "10 Things I Hate About You" on his Instagram story. But Lamar was just getting warmed up.

1. "Not Like Us"

Release date: May 4, 2024

Billboard Hot 100 peak: No. 1 for two weeks

Before this battle had truly begun, the strengths of each contender seemed clear: Lamar was the critical darling and cerebral wordsmith, while Drake was the dominant commercial juggernaut. He may have fallen out of favor with critics in recent years, but if there's one thing Drake knows how to do, it's make a hit song.

Lamar completely upended that assumption with "Not Like Us," a musical killshot if one has ever existed.

The song compounds both Lamar's classic talents (he somehow managed to include a full history lesson in between calling his foe a bitch and a colonizer) and Drake's typical forte; it scored five Grammy nominations, including both song and record of the year, and topped the Hot 100 for two weeks. (In fact, Lamar had three No. 1 hits in 2024 alone, more than any other artist, while Drake had none.) By the time December rolled around, "Not Like Us" was being hailed as one of the year's best songs. It made a vicious brawl sound like a celebration.

The following week, streams of Lamar's back catalog had increased by 49%, per Billboard, while Drake's streams were down 5%.

Who won?

After such a decisive victory, I'd be surprised if any rapper tried to go toe-to-toe with Lamar ever again. Next time, when a Pulitzer Prize winner describes himself as a "certified boogeyman," believe him.

• Amazon has agreed to block sales of skin-lightening creams containing dangerous amounts of mercury.
• The agreement settles a decadelong lawsuit brought by the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow.
• Amazon must comply with California's Proposition 65, which protects consumers from toxic products.

Amazon on Friday settled a decadelong legal battle by agreeing to block skin-lightening creams containing dangerous amounts of mercury from its website.

The settlement requires that Amazon pay a total of $6 million in civil penalties and legal fees. Amazon must also take specific measures to prevent brands and third-party sellers from offering FDA-banned creams — those containing more than .0065% mercury — on the site.

The settlement, which does not require that Amazon admit wrongdoing, ends a lawsuit originally brought in California by a group of anonymous plaintiffs and As You Sow, a nonprofit that works with corporations to promote environmental and social responsibility.

The lawsuit was later joined by the California attorney general's office, which sued Amazon under the state's Proposition 65 and its Unfair Competition Law. The AG's office will receive $600,000 of the settlement money.

A spokesperson for Amazon and its lead attorney on the case did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The original 2014 lawsuit alleged that Amazon, at one point, had 27 products for sale containing high amounts of mercury, sometimes at tens of thousands of times the allowable levels. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause prenatal defects and life-threatening kidney, brain, and central nervous system damage.

Amazon knows which brands have already been flagged by regulators as violating FDA standards and California health and safety codes, and their internal filters are capable of flagging others, said Rachel S. Doughty, a plaintiff attorney for the original lawsuit.

Many of the dangerous skin products have easily targeted "red flags" in their listings, the plaintiffs had argued. Most were made in Mexico and Pakistan, for example. Products claiming to both whiten skin and treat acne were also red flags, because mercury is the only ingredient known to do both, they had argued.

"I have seen an improvement in their website in the ten years since we filed the first case," Doughty told Business Insider. "And that means you will have a harder time finding well-known skin-whitening and lightening products on their website that have mercury in them."

She said she hopes that the settlement will prompt Amazon to be vigilant in policing its site for other potentially toxic products.

"I hope that internally, they don't want this to happen again, and that they are looking for other things that may have mercury, lead, cadmium, and a whole host of other chemicals," she said.

• President Donald Trump wants to impose new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.
• Many states had one of those three countries as their biggest trade partner in 2023.
• The expected tariffs may raise prices and lead to retaliatory trade moves.

President Donald Trump is planning to levy new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. Those countries are big international trade partners for many US states.

Trump listed on Thursday the "massive subsidies that we're giving to Canada and to Mexico in the form of deficits" as one of the reasons for the tariffs.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Friday that Trump will implement the 10% tariffs on China and the 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada as soon as Saturday.

Canada was the largest goods import trade partner for nearly half of the 50 states based on 2023 Census Bureau data. You can hover over the map below to see more about the top import trade partners for each state.

Trump talked about potential tariff plans before his second presidency started. One of Trump's Truth Social posts from November said the tariffs on Canada and Mexico would be in effect "until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!"

If Trump does implement his tariff plans, it could lead to retaliatory tariffs from the targeted countries, potentially harming US exports. Canada was the largest export trade partner for 36 states in 2023, while Mexico was the main export trade partner for several other states.

The new tariffs would likely affect US consumers.

"We'll see businesses deciding whether they're going to absorb those extra costs or they're going to pass them through to consumers," Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, previously told Business Insider. "Given that consumer spending has been fairly buoyant and that the economy is doing well, we would expect them to pass a lot of it through to consumers."

Tiff Macklem, the governor of the Bank of Canada, recently talked about the economic effects of a trade conflict between the US and Canada.

"A long-lasting and broad-based trade conflict would badly hurt economic activity in Canada," Macklem, the governor at the Bank of Canada, said this week. "At the same time, the higher cost of imported goods will put direct upward pressure on inflation."

• The 67th Grammy Awards will take place on Sunday, February 2.
• We're looking back on the most surprising and iconic moments from the show throughout its history.
• There have been several shocking wins, crashed acceptance speeches, and impromptu performances.

Known as music's biggest night, the Grammy Awards always deliver incredible performances and career-making wins.

Occasionally, the awards show goes rogue with crashed acceptance speeches, impromptu performances, and technical difficulties.

Here are 27 jaw-dropping moments from the Grammy Awards through the years.

Victoria Montalti and Elana Klein contributed to a prior version of this article.

Long before Ariana Grande sang "God Is a Woman," Helen Reddy made that proclamation during her 1973 acceptance speech.

Australian singer Reddy won best female pop vocal performance for her song "I Am Woman" in 1973. The artist and her anthem were symbols of the women's liberation movement at the time, BBC News reported.

During her brief acceptance speech, Reddy said, "I would like to thank Jeff Wald, because he makes my success possible, and I would like to thank God because She makes everything possible," according to the Recording Academy.

This feminist statement didn't go over well with the conservative audience — NPR called it "an audacious move." However, at a time when women's rights issues were being discussed — the Equal Rights Amendment passed the Senate in 1972 — it was an impactful statement.

"It really resonated for a lot of people," Nadine Hubbs, a professor of musicology at the University of Michigan, told NPR in 2018. "She was putting into words some really important social changes that were going on at the moment."

There was a tie for song of the year between legend Barbra Streisand and newcomer Debby Boone in 1978.

At the 20th Grammy Awards, there was a tie for song of the year — it was the first time this happened in this category.

Streisand and Paul Williams won for "Evergreen," the theme from her version of "A Star is Born," while Boone's song "You Light Up My Life," from the movie of the same name, also won.

However, as song of the year goes to the songwriter, not the performer, songwriter Joe Brooks accepted the award instead of Boone.

That night, Streisand also won for best female pop vocal performance and Boone took home the award for best new artist, according to the official website of the Grammy Awards.

Annie Lennox fooled show producers and the audience while dressed in drag in 1984.

Lennox was set to perform "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," but the show's production staff were panicking because they couldn't find her ... because she was unrecognizable while dressed in drag.

"People were unaware that it was me, so it was almost like being a fly on the wall for a while," Lennox told CTV News in 2009.

After Lennox took to the stage, staff and audience were first confused who the "man" was, as she was also singing in a deeper, lower register than normal, and she happened to be rocking mutton chops.

This was radical for the '80s. Lennox told CTV that she was responding to the whispers surrounding her sexuality and androgynous style. 

In a true upset, rock/jazz band Jethro Tull beat Metallica for the Grammy's first award for best hard rock or heavy metal performance in 1987.

In 1989, the Grammys added an award for best hard rock or heavy metal performance. Pitted against AC/DC, Iggy Pop, Jane's Addiction, and the favorites to win, Metallica, the rock-and-jazz old-timers Jethro Tull surprisingly won for "Crest of a Knave."

Presenters Alice Cooper and Lita Ford seemed just as shocked as the half-clapping audience. The pair accepted the award on the group's behalf.

In an interview with KSHE 95, Jethro Tull front man Ian Anderson said that members of Metallica were "actually very gentlemanly" about their loss.

In 1994, Frank Sinatra's acceptance speech was cut off early, so Billy Joel paused his performance to purposely waste time.

At the 36th Grammys, Sinatra was honored with the Legend Award.

After presenter Bono's four-minute introduction, Sinatra gave an emotional, comical, and slightly displeased four-minute acceptance speech. At that point, music started playing off the singer, upsetting Sinatra and the audience.

In response, in the middle of performing "The River of Dreams," Joel, his musicians, and a choir abruptly stopped.

Joel held up his wrist to read his watch and comically said, "Valuable advertising time going by." After pausing for 20 seconds, the upbeat performance started up again.

Performance artist "Soy Bomb Guy" crashed Bob Dylan's set to make a statement in 1998.

Midway through Dylan's low-key performance of "Love Sick" in 1998, one of his backup dancers ran up shirtless with the words "SOY BOMB" painted on his chest. As he danced energetically next to Dylan, the singer looked around, confused, but continued his performance stone-faced. The man was then taken off stage.

It was revealed that the "Soy Bomb Guy" was actually the respected performance artist Michael Portnoy.

A few weeks after the Grammys, Portnoy told Entertainment Weekly, "Soy Bomb is a dense, nutritional, transformational life explosion. That's what I think music and art should be."

Also at the 1998 ceremony, Aretha Franklin gave an impromptu performance of "Nessun Dorma" in Italian after Luciano Pavarotti called out sick.

At the 1998 Grammys, The Queen of Soul stepped in for a surprise performance (to the audience and production crew) of "Nessun Dorma."

While the show was airing, producer Ken Ehrlich was told that opera singer Pavarotti, who was set to perform, would not be coming because, in Pavarotti's words, "my voice is bad," Ehlrich told Billboard in 2018.

Panicking, he asked Franklin — who had already sung earlier in the ceremony — if she could fill in and sing Pavarotti's song since she sang it at a prior event honoring the opera legend.

"Aretha's performance was such a moment. I don't want to say it dwarfed the rest of the show, but it was epic," Ehlrich said.

The 1998 Grammys again proved shocking when Wu-Tang Clan rapper ODB crashed an acceptance speech for an award the group wasn't even nominated for.

Before Shawn Colvin could grab her award for song of the year for "Sunny Came Home," she was upstaged by Wu-Tang Clan rapper ODB.

ODB expressed that he thought Wu-Tang was going to win an award, saying, "Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best," and memorably declaring, "Wu-Tang is for the children."

The most confusing part, though, was the timing. Sean "Puffy" Combs and Wu-Tang were nominated earlier in the night in an un-televised, separate category from Colvin: best rap album.

Jennifer Lopez showed up to the 2000 Grammys in a daring dress that changed history — and the internet.

When Lopez showed up to the Grammys red carpet in "that dress," it wasn't just a look: It was a moment.

Wearing a green sheer dress with a plunging neckline by Versace, she awed both everyone around her and everyone watching at home. It was one of the most daring looks the Grammys had ever seen before.

The singer may not have won a Grammy that night, but she still stole the show.

People tried looking up photos of Lopez at such a rapid speed and in such high numbers that it inspired the creation of Google Images.

Despite Eminem's homophobic lyrics, Elton John teamed up with the rapper for a surprising performance and embrace in 2001.

One of the most controversial artists of the early 2000s was Eminem.

His album "The Marshall Mathers LP" was both praised for its artistry and criticized for its homophobic lyrics. After it was leaked that Eminem would perform a duet with gay icon Elton John at the Grammys, members of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups like GLAAD were horrified, Entertainment Weekly reported.

During the performance, Eminem was rapping his song "Stan" before a spotlight in the background showed John playing piano and singing the chorus, traditionally sung by Dido.

At the end of the performance, the two embraced, held hands, and hugged in a memorable moment.

50 Cent briefly crashed Evanescence's acceptance speech for best new artist after he lost in 2004.

As Evanescence took the stage at the 2004 Grammy Awards to accept their award for best new artist, a brief altercation took place.

Lead singer Amy Lee was heard saying, "Oh, what did I do? This is my first time!" before 50 Cent, her fellow best new artist nominee, walked onto the stage and between the band members before walking right off.

Evanescence laughed it off, and Lee jokingly thanked 50 Cent in her speech.

Melissa Etheridge performed on the 2005 Grammys stage with a bald head for the first time since completing chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer.

In her first performance since taking a break from working and receiving chemotherapy to treat breast cancer, Etheridge took the stage in 2005 for a tribute to Janis Joplin.

Met with roaring applause, Etheridge stepped out with no hair and gave an exceptional and passionate performance of "Piece of My Heart" with singer Joss Stone.

Looking back on it in 2014, Etheridge told Entertainment Weekly, "I wanted to show people that I've been through hell, yeah. This is awful, but I am not dying. I wanted to present myself as 'I'm back, I'm not weak, this has made me stronger.'"

After Chris Brown assaulted Rihanna after a pre-Grammys party in 2009, the two withdrew from performing, and other entertainers took their spots.

At Clive Davis' pre-Grammys party the day prior to the show in 2009, Rihanna and then-boyfriend Brown were all smiles. But afterward, the couple had an altercation, and Brown physically assaulted Rihanna, E! News reported.

The next day, Brown was arrested, and Rihanna, who had a photo of her battered face leaked online, was hospitalized. Both were set to perform separately at the Grammys but pulled out.

Hours before the show aired, a last-minute performance from U2 and a duet between Justin Timberlake and Al Green were planned.

Brown later pleaded guilty to one count of assault with the intent of doing great bodily injury in connection with the incident and was sentenced to five years probation.

Pregnant rapper M.I.A. gave an amazing performance on her due date in 2009.

M.I.A. performed while very pregnant at the Grammys with Jay-Z, Kanye West, T.I., and Lil Wayne.

In fact, it was later revealed that the event was on her actual due date, per Vulture.

She joined the rappers for a performance of "Swagga Like Us," which samples a line from her hit song "Paper Planes."

She gave birth to her son three days later.

Pink shocked the world with her aerial skills and performance at the 2010 Grammys.

Four months after her first dramatic aerial act on the VMAs stage, Pink performed "Glitter in the Air" at the Grammys. After taking off her dress to reveal a sheer bodysuit, she was lifted into the air on silks.

While Pink had cables and a partner supporting her in her previous performance, this time, she was solely held up by fabric and her own core strength. Dipped into a pool of water, she quickly twirled around while somehow effortlessly belting out notes.

In 2011, Lady Gaga proved how dedicated to her craft she is when she was carried into the awards in a giant egg, only emerging during her performance.

Lady Gaga showed her unique artistry at the Grammys red carpet by arriving in an oversize egg carried on the shoulders of latex-clad performers.

She emerged from the egg during her debut performance of "Born This Way." With jagged prosthetics on her face, she looked more alien than human.

After taking home three golden gramophones that night, she was interviewed by Jay Leno the next day. Gaga told Leno that she was in the "temperature-controlled vessel" for three days prior to the Grammys.

After Whitney Houston died the day before the Grammys in 2012, Jennifer Hudson sang an emotional tribute to the legend.

Prior to Clive Davis' 2012 pre-Grammy party, where Houston was expected to perform, the singer was found dead in her hotel room. With this sudden and tragic loss, the world and music community was in mourning.

In a last-minute performance at the Grammys, powerhouse vocalist Hudson paid tribute to Houston, singing, "I Will Always Love You," giving a pitch-perfect performance. At the end, she sang, "Whitney, we love you." She received an emotional standing ovation.

Nicki Minaj was called sacrilegious when she was escorted on the red carpet by a fake Catholic bishop and later performed an "exorcism" during the 2012 show.

Minaj walked the Grammys red carpet accompanied by a faux priest and wearing a devilish outfit with Versace's Medusa emblem on it.

Inside, she took the stage to perform "Roman Holiday" by starting off next to the priest in a confessional setup. The screen then cut to the words "The Exorcism of Roman" and a short horror film of the priest meeting with a deranged Minaj.

During her theatrical performance on the stage, the singer reenacted an exorcism. Hooked up to cables, she laid horizontally and even began "levitating."

This upset the Catholic League, who heaped criticism on the singer and the Recording Academy, The Washington Post reported.

"I don't know, what is the big issue?" Minaj said at an event a few days later. She added that it was part of a movie she was writing, per the Associated Press.

Queen Latifah surprised everyone by officiating 33 marriages onstage, while Macklemore performed "Same Love" in 2014.

In 2014, Queen Latifah introduced Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' performance of their queer anthem "Same Love," saying, "This song is a love song, not for some of us, but for all of us."

Toward the end of the song, Latifah stepped back onstage and the audience erupted in cheers as they realized what was happening — 33 gay and straight couples were lined up in the aisles, ready to get married. Latifah served as an ordained minister, and the couples exchanged rings.

As Latifah pronounced them married, a second wave of shock came when Madonna came out. She sang "Open Your Heart," accompanied by a choir and marching band.

After Kanye West crashed Taylor Swift's VMA acceptance speech in 2009, he did the same to Beck at the 2015 Grammys, once again because Beyoncé lost.

After West famously crashed Swift's acceptance speech at the 2009 VMAs, declaring that it belonged to Beyoncé instead, he nearly did the same in 2015.

In an upset, Beck beat Beyoncé for album of the year. When he took the stage, West did too, approaching the microphone, but quickly turned away. Beck waved for him to come back, but the rapper was already sitting and laughing with the rest of the audience.

While seemingly joking during the ceremony, during a televised interview with E! afterward, West said, "Beck needs to respect artistry, and he should've given his award to Beyoncé."

Adele sang off-key and off-time before her microphone cut out in a technical difficulty disaster in 2016.

A much-anticipated performance by Adele turned sour due to several audio issues. As she started singing "All I Ask," the song immediately sounded off, with a clattering triangle sound playing. Adele was thrown and sang off-key before her microphone cut out briefly. 

Although Adele powered through, the distractions kept her out of tune. Afterward, the singer posted on X, "The piano mics fell on the piano strings, that's what the guitar sound was."

Cardi B and Offset, who were thought to be broken up, made a surprising display of public affection on the red carpet in 2019.

Although Cardi B had recently announced her separation from Offset, the two appeared at the 2019 Grammys looking as intimate as ever. The two touched tongues on the red carpet, which came as a complete surprise to viewers who thought they were broken up.

Further confirming that they had resumed their relationship, Offset joined Cardi B on stage as she gave her acceptance speech when her album, "Invasion of Privacy," won best rap album.

She filed for divorce from Offset in 2020 but they got back together. She filed for divorce again in 2024.

Alicia Keys played two pianos simultaneously at the 2019 Grammys, and the audience went wild.

To the audience's surprise, host Alicia Keys played two pianos at the same time during the 61st Grammy Awards in 2019. Her medley, which she titled, "Songs I Wish I Wrote," included crowd-pleasers such as "Lucid Dreams" by Juice WRLD', "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon, and "Doo-Wop (That Thing)" by Lauryn Hill. 

"I've always wanted to play two pianos," she said before beginning her performance.

In their first performance since overdosing in 2018, Demi Lovato had to restart her emotional performance at the 2020 ceremony.

At the 62nd Grammy Awards, Lovato took to the stage for the first time since overdosing in July 2018. The singer performed "Anyone" — a song that calls out for help — which was written before the overdose and was released the same day as the Grammys.

A clearly emotional Lovato's voice cracked through the first line of the song before she paused. Receiving supportive applause, Lovato restarted and belted out a powerful performance, cementing the triumphant comeback.

In 2022, Doja Cat almost missed her chance to accept her award for best pop duo with SZA because she was using the restroom.

Doja Cat was using the bathroom when it was announced that she and fellow pop artist SZA had won best pop duo for their song, "Kiss Me More." 

When she made it onto the stage, Doja Cat was out of breath. She said she'd never used the bathroom so quickly "in my whole life."

"Thank you, everybody," she continued, adjusting her dress. "I really appreciate it."

In 2023, Harry Styles was criticized for his "As It Was" performance and his acceptance speech for album of the year.

Styles' two Grammy wins in 2023 were not without controversy.

While singing "As It Was," Styles appeared to trip and almost fall over on the stage's moving turnstile, and some fans pointed out that it wasn't his strongest vocal performance.

Several of his dancers later posted on social media that the turnstile malfunctioned and started spinning in the wrong direction, forcing them to perform the choreography backward.

Later in the show, as Styles accepted the album of the year award for "Harry's House," he said, "This doesn't happen to people like me very often," even though he was the 33rd white man to win the award.

The comment attracted online criticism, especially because he won over Beyoncé, who had been nominated for album of the year five times but never won. She's nominated in the category for the sixth time this year.

Killer Mike was arrested just hours after winning three Grammys.

Killer Mike (real name Michael Render) is a rapper who has been in the game for over two decades years, and 21 years after winning his first Grammy, Killer Mike should've been making a victory lap for winning best rap song, best rap performance, and best rap album in a non-televised ceremony before the main event.

Instead, as reported by the Associated Press, the musician was escorted out of the Crypto.com Arena in handcuffs by the LAPD and was later charged with a misdemeanor.

"As you can imagine, there was a lot going and there was some confusion around which door my team and I should enter," he said in a statement. "We experienced an over-zealous security guard but my team and I have the upmost confidence that I will ultimately be cleared of all wrongdoing."

A few months later, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office announced it would not be pressing charges after he completed a community service requirement during the hearing process.

• The Office of Personnel Management updated its FAQ page this week to encourage private-sector work.
• The update, coming after federal workers got payout offers, calls private jobs "higher productivity."
• The Department of Government Efficiency said on X that workers could use the time off to "chill."

The Trump administration has a novel idea for federal workers who take its payout offer: Go work for corporate America instead.

"We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to do so," the Office of Personnel Management's FAQ page now says. "The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector."

The addition was made sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, according to snapshots on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The updated FAQ page, which includes several other tweaks, was also sent out to some federal workers, a National Park Service employee told Business Insider.

If white-collar work doesn't appeal to someone, the administration lists some tantalizing possibilities: "You are most welcome to stay at home and relax or to travel to your dream destination," the page says. "Whatever you would like."

In a post this week on X, the Department of Government Efficiency also touted things federal employees could do with their time off: Take a dream vacation, watch movies, or "chill." Musk also reshared a post advertising the payout as a "PAID VACATION!"

Representatives for DOGE did not respond to a request for comment.

OPM sent out the initial offer to federal employees on Tuesday. The administration is giving workers a choice: Resign by February 6 and receive full pay and benefits through September, or stay on and face likely downsizing and a return to in-person work.

A spokesperson for OPM told BI that some federal employees had expressed confusion about the nature of the payout. The agency updated the FAQ page to provide clarity, the spokesperson said.

One federal worker previously told BI they would look for work outside the government. Another said on Friday that they didn't understand the nudge toward the private sector.

"People who work for the government are public servants," they told BI. "They do it for the joy of serving their country, community, or helping people."

The guidance comes as Trump's administration has aligned itself with several private-sector leaders. Chief among them is Elon Musk, whose work with DOGE has advocated for reducing the size of the federal workforce. Now formally situated inside the White House, DOGE has weighed in on recent actions regarding federal employees, including a recent return-to-office mandate.

Do you work for the federal government or have a tip? Reach out to the reporters from a nonwork device: [email protected] and [email protected] or via Signal at alicetecotzky.05 and julianakaplan.33.

• Bernard Arnault has said LVMH has no plans to relocate the company.
• It follows backlash over his criticism of proposed French tax hikes.
• Arnault had also praised the "optimism" in the US following President Donald Trump's return to office.

Bernard Arnault, the billionaire CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH, has said there are no plans to relocate the company after his criticism of proposed French tax hikes faced backlash.

"I never said that we were going to relocate the LVMH group. This statement is false," Arnault said in a statement posted on the company's X account on Friday.

"What I said is that the tax measures envisaged are an incentive for relocation, since they tax Made in France products, but not relocated French companies," he added.

Arnault had expressed frustration over proposed tax hikes on French companies in an earnings call earlier this week.

He warned that such measures could push businesses to move elsewhere.

"When you return to France and you see that they are planning to increase taxes on companies that produce in France to 40%, it's incredible! If you actually wanted them to relocate, that would be the ideal way to do it," he said.

He also contrasted the atmosphere with what he called the "wind of optimism" in the US following the return of President Donald Trump to the White House. Arnault joined a host of other billionaires and executives to attend Trump's inauguration earlier this month.

"Coming back to France is a bit like taking a cold shower," Arnault said.

His comments have been met with some criticism, including from Sophie Binet, the leader of the French trade union the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). Binet said in an interview on RTL that Arnault's remarks were a sign that "rats are jumping ship."

It wasn't the only part of the Tuesday earnings call that made headlines this week.

During the call, Arnault also said he had recently spoken with Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg about the decision to let low-performing Meta staff go.

While drawing parallels between job cuts at Tiffany & Co. and the layoffs at the Silicon Valley firm, Arnault said that the Meta employees were being "promoted outwards, so to speak."

LVMH generated 84.7 billion euros (around $88.2 billion) in revenue in 2024. France accounted for 8% of that figure, while the US accounted for 25%.

Johnathan Taylor served as a scout sniper in the United States Marine Corps for eight years. He is now the president of the USMC Scout Sniper Association, an organization helping veteran snipers access financial, medical, and psychological support.

He tells Business Insider how elite marksmen in the unit are trained for combat and describes the longest shot he took as a sniper in Afghanistan. He discusses his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the dangers he faced in the field, and the tactics he used to evade detection.

Taylor also explains the deep mental toll that active military service can have on veterans.

For more, visit the USMC Scout Sniper Association website and Instagram.

If you're a veteran in crisis or concerned about one, contact the Veterans Crisis Line to receive 24/7 confidential support. To reach responders, dial 988 then press 1, chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat, or text 838255.

• President Trump is steering the federal government in a distinctly conservative direction.
• Upon entering office for his second term, he signed a slew of executive orders to achieve this goal.
• There are many key dates to look out for as the administration rolls out its agenda.

Only two weeks into his second term, President Donald Trump's sweeping agenda has already started to take shape, with the president signing executive orders on everything from return-to-office mandates to tough immigration measures.

Here's a look at some of the key dates for initiatives and plans put into place by the Trump administration:

Feb. 1, 2025: Tariffs set to be announced for Canada and Mexico

Shortly after the November election, Trump vowed to impose 25% tariffs on imported goods from Canada and Mexico, two of the United States' leading trading partners.

Trump said both countries have allowed drugs and migrants to pour into the US, which ties squarely into the president's hard-line stance on immigration issues.

Last week, Trump also said he was considering a 10% across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods to begin on Feb. 1.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Feb. 1 was "still on the books" as the day the president planned to enact the tariffs. She reiterated that deadline during a press conference on Friday.

Feb. 3, 2025: Funding for federal programs will continue through this date

A federal judge on Jan. 28 temporarily put on hold the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants from taking effect that year. This decision means that funding for affected programs will continue until Monday, Feb. 3.

The decision came after a group of nonprofit, healthcare, and small business advocacy groups sued the Office of Personnel Management over the move, which caused widespread confusion across Washington.

Feb. 6, 2025: Deadline for federal workers to accept buyout

The Office of Personnel Management on Jan. 28 issued a letter offering all federal employees payouts and giving them a Feb. 6 deadline to accept the offer.

Federal employees who accept the administration's offer by the deadline "will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason)," the letter on the OPM's website read.

Workers who resign by Feb. 6 will have their severance paid through Sept. 30.

The offer comes as Trump ramps ups his efforts to not only reduce the size of the federal workforce but also install loyalists in key positions within the government.

Feb. 7, 2025: First jobs report under Trump

The first employment situation report under Trump's second term will be released on Feb. 7. January's jobs numbers will be included in the report, which means that the bulk of the report will feature employment data from former President Joe Biden's last month in office.

As of December 2024, the unemployment rate in the US sits at 4.1%.

Feb. 7, 2025: Agencies should have plans for federal workers to come back to the office

The Trump administration has set the date of Feb. 7 for federal agencies to have plans for how they'll adhere to the president's return-to-work order for employees.

The implementation plans are set to be vetted and approved by the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget.

March 7, 2025: First jobs report for Trump for his first full month in office

The February jobs report, which will include Trump's first full month in office, will be released on March 7.

Trump ran on tamping down inflation and lowering food costs, as well as making the broader economy more prosperous for a wide swath of Americans. It'll still be incredibly early in Trump's term when the report is released, but the report could set the tone for how he messages his economic policies throughout the rest of the year.

March 21, 2025: Deadline to eliminate most DEI offices and positions

On Inauguration Day, Trump signed an executive order to end "illegal and immoral discrimination" Biden-era programs implemented to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Trump and many of his Republican allies have rallied against DEI initiatives. Their pressure campaign has begun to spill over into corporate America, with top companies like Target rolling back some diversity-focused efforts.

Some agencies have already put employees on paid leave. Officials are also submitting lists of names to the White House, Government Executive reported.

By late March, Trump's EO calls for each agency head to the maximum extent allowed by the law to carry out the terminations of covered positions and programs.

April 5, 2025: End of a 75-day extension of the TikTok ban

Trump on Jan. 20 signed an executive order to pause the TikTok ban for 75 days, which would allow further efforts to find a US buyer for the highly popular social media platform.

The end of the 75-day period would be April 5, 2025.

Sometime in 2025: GOP hopes to pass a reconciliation bill addressing tax cuts

Trump is pushing for Republicans to pass a massive reconciliation bill that would lower taxes, dramatically roll back green energy measures, and make cuts to safety net spending.

While cuts to Social Security or Medicare are very likely off limits in the plans, Democrats could find their political footing in critiquing whatever plan emerges from the GOP congressional leaders.

July 4, 2026: The Department of Government Efficiency will sunset

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has grand plans for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as it aims to cut at least $1 trillion in spending from the federal budget.

While the DOGE is still in the earliest stages of its work, the commission isn't designed to be a permanent fixture of Washington.

When Musk and onetime co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy wrote about the DOGE in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, they said the commission would be phased out next year — on July 4, 2026.

"There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud," the two men wrote at the time.

• Auquan was founded in 2018 by Chandini Jain, a former analyst and derivatives trader.
• It launched an AI product in late 2023 that can automate research work usually done by analysts.
• It has since inked deals with UBS, Blue Owl Capital, and T. Rowe Price.

The wave of fintechs building autonomous agents for finance firms designed to do the work of a junior analyst or banker is swelling.

One such startup, Auquan, uses generative AI to automate the time-consuming but ubiquitous task of gathering and processing data and putting that information into a written template, like a due diligence report, an investment committee memo, or a pitch book.

Demand for this kind of technology is heating up in the finance industry, which is often bogged down with manual processes around data management, processing, and analysis. Since launching in October 2023, Auquan has brought in close to $2 million in annual recurring revenue and secured UBS, T. Rowe Price, and Blue Owl Capital as customers, according to CEO and cofounder, Chandini Jain.

From banking to software engineering to research, finance firms are keen to implement AI assistants that can carry out multi-step processes. While it's still too early to tell just how much the technology will impact adopters' bottom lines, venture-capital investors are writing checks to get in on the ground floor of what some industry leaders are calling a revolutionary technology.

In addition to scoring big-name clients and its revenue stream last year, Auquan also closed $8 million in seed funding. The round was led by Peak XV and included Neotribe Ventures.

Auquan has made inroads with various divisions at financial firms, from private-market investing to investment banking, as well as risk and compliance, and investor relations, Jain said. Across those functions, it's most heavily used by analysts or associates to produce documents or templates for their MDs, partners, or division heads.

Due-diligence reports are a big use case for Auquan. The startup automates the creation of 3,300 due diligence reports for 20 different clients, saving them a cumulative 55,000 hours of work, according to customer estimates.

How Auquan works behind the scenes

Auquan is built to try to mimic the humans whose jobs it is doing, Jain said.

The first step is accessing the raw data. Auquan pulls data from providers, like FactSet, CapIQ, and Pitchbook, as well as public data sets from government agencies and news sites. It can also plug into a client's internal file systems.

The second part involves the user stating an intent with an example, such as "I want to create an investment committee memo and I want it to come out looking like this template document," Jain said. Under the hood, the tech relies on an "agent super orchestrator" that breaks down the specific jobs to be done and organizes several "mini agents" to take on each of those jobs, Jain said.

In the investment committee memo example, there might be an agent that identifies the fields that need to be filled, another to run searches on underlying vendor data, another that scans public data, and a writing agent that takes all of the info and puts it into a company-specific format based on the template, like if a section should be presented in bullet points or a table. It's exported in the desired interface, such as a PowerPoint presentation or a Google Doc with the proper corporate branding. All of this happens automatically without human intervention, Jain said.

The first draft is presented to the user as a starting point. The user can make edits and tweaks for future documents, she said. The agent super orchestrator will assign new mini agents as needed, she added.

Pricing for Auquan is based on clients' estimated desired outcomes, Jain said. Examples of outcomes are producing one slide deck, one report, or one compliance check. Once the client chooses what workflow to automate, Auquan charges a dollar amount for that outcome, and multiplies it by how many times that process is expected to run, she said.

Too much data, not enough people

Jain knows firsthand how labor intensive it is to extract insights from data. Before Auquan, she worked as an analyst at Deutsche Bank and derivatives trader at the Dutch market-maker and proprietary trading firm Optiver, where she was drowning in information with not enough time or help to distill it.

"If I or anyone on my team could make the case for why we thought any data set would help us make better decisions, we could buy it no questions asked," Jain said. "What we didn't have a lot of was resources or time to go through that information," she said.

She would learn from conversations with financial clients that she wasn't alone in that problem. The broad applicability has won over investors.

Here's the pitch deck Auquan used to raise $8 million.

• First lady Melania Trump strayed from White House traditions during Donald Trump's first term.
• She didn't move to the White House right away in 2016 and arrived at events separately from Trump.
• She has indicated she will not live at the White House full time during her husband's second term.

In many ways, Melania Trump was a traditional first lady during her husband's first term as president.

She wore a ball gown to the inauguration and donated it to the National Museum of American History's "First Ladies" exhibit. She took up the cause of children's wellness with her "Be Best" campaign. She led White House restoration projects, renovating the Rose Garden and designing a new rug for the Diplomatic Reception Room.

However, the fiercely private first lady also remained something of an enigma and made the role her own by straying from presidential protocol and long-held White House traditions.

Melania Trump is once again serving as FLOTUS now that President Donald Trump has begun his second, non-consecutive term. Having been largely absent from the 2024 campaign trail, her exact level of White House involvement remains to be seen. However, her new official White House portrait suggests she's "ready to embrace her position," its photographer told BI.

Here's how Melania Trump has defied expectations as first lady thus far.

The Office of Melania Trump and representatives for the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Melania Trump made occasional appearances during Trump's presidential campaigns but largely remained out of the spotlight.

First ladies often act as representatives of their husbands' campaigns, traveling the country to deliver speeches and meet voters at events. During all of Trump's presidential campaigns, Melania was noticeably absent, making only occasional appearances.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that while Melania Trump privately supported Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, she rejected his offers to campaign with him.

When asked about Melania Trump's absence, Donald Trump told "Meet the Press" in 2023 that he likes to keep her away from the campaign trail because "it's so nasty and so mean."

"She's a private person, a great person, a very confident person, and she loves our country very much," he said of his wife.

When Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, Melania Trump didn't move into the White House right away.

While Donald Trump moved into the White House after the inauguration, he told reporters that Melania Trump stayed behind in New York with their then-10-year-old son, Barron Trump, so that he could finish out the school year.

Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan wrote in her book, "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump," that Melania Trump also used the time to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement.

In 2018, Melania Trump arrived at the State of the Union address in a separate motorcade.

In January 2018, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that one of Donald Trump's lawyers, Michael Cohen, transferred a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to keep her from speaking about their alleged 2006 affair.

After reports emerged of Donald Trump's alleged affair, which he denied, Melania Trump backed out of a trip to Switzerland and other public engagements. She also arrived at the 2018 State of the Union address in a separate motorcade in a break from the tradition of presidents and their spouses arriving together.

Melania Trump's then-director of communications, Stephanie Grisham, said that the first lady did not travel with her husband because she was accompanying the guests of honor, the BBC reported.

Donald Trump was later found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment to Daniels. After the hush-money trial reached its verdict in May, Donald Trump continued to deny the affair and called the trial a "witch hunt."

Melania Trump broke protocol again weeks later by arriving at Marine One separately from Donald Trump.

After The New Yorker published a report detailing a former Playmate's alleged affair with Donald Trump, which he denied took place, Melania Trump once again did not appear publicly by her husband's side.

Instead of taking the traditional walk with Donald Trump across the White House lawn, she arrived at the presidential helicopter in a separate vehicle.

"With her schedule, it was easier to meet him on the plane," Grisham told CNN of Melania Trump's separate route.

Melania Trump's White House Christmas decorations broke the mold of traditional holiday decor.

For her first Christmas in the White House in 2017, Melania Trump lined the East Colonnade with bare white branches that cast shadows on the hall. In 2018, she filled the East Colonnade with dark-red trees that garnered comparisons to costumes in the dystopian TV series "The Handmaid's Tale." The following year, clear acrylic panels lined the hall, and her final White House Christmas featured potted plants.

Her avant-garde Christmas decorations garnered some criticism, while others praised her unconventional choices.

"Everyone has a different taste," Melania said of the critical responses to her Christmas decorations at a town hall event hosted by Liberty University in 2018.

In a speech at the First Baptist Church in Dallas in 2021, Donald Trump said that Melania Trump "didn't get exactly a fair shake" when it came to her Christmas decor choices.

"She would make the most beautiful Christmas decorations," he said. "And I remember she made these magnificent red trees, and the media said, 'Oh, that's terrible.'"

While first ladies have long used clothing to send subtle messages, Melania Trump's "I really don't care, do u?" jacket seemed more overt.

Throughout US history, first ladies have chosen outfits with deeper meanings that reflect their values. Laura Bush wore red to help bring awareness to the dangers of heart disease. Michelle Obama chose to highlight up-and-coming designers from underrepresented backgrounds. Jill Biden appeared at campaign events wearing boots emblazoned with the word "vote."

Melania Trump's "I really don't care, do u?" jacket, worn while traveling to visit immigrant children at the US-Mexico border in 2018, seemed an unusually combative wardrobe choice for a first lady.

Melania Trump wrote in her 2024 memoir that her press secretary wouldn't let her clarify that the jacket's message was directed at the media.

"The media claimed the jacket meant I did not care about the children or the border, which was clearly not true," she wrote.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 election, she didn't invite Jill Biden to the White House as Michelle Obama had done for her.

After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the Obamas hosted the Trumps at the White House in a long-held tradition ensuring a smooth transition of power.

While Barack Obama and Donald Trump met in the Oval Office, Michelle Obama hosted Melania Trump for tea in the Yellow Oval Room and discussed raising children in the White House.

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he refused to concede and did not invite the Bidens to visit the White House ahead of the inauguration.

The Trumps skipped Joe Biden's inauguration, opting to fly to Mar-a-Lago instead.

Outgoing presidents and first ladies have traditionally attended presidential inaugurations even after painful defeats.

Upon leaving the White House, Donald Trump and Melania Trump skipped Joe Biden's inauguration, held their own farewell ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base, and flew to their Palm Beach home.

Unlike previous years, she attended only the last day of the 2024 Republican National Convention and did not deliver a speech.

Melania Trump delivered speeches at the 2016 and 2020 conventions. In 2024, she only attended the final day of the Republican National Convention and did not speak.

After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Melania Trump declined Jill Biden's invitation for tea at the White House, citing a scheduling conflict with her book tour.

Donald Trump accepted Joe Biden's invitation to meet at the White House as part of Joe Biden's pledge to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. However, Melania Trump, who released her memoir, "Melania," in October 2024, turned down the first lady's offer to meet for tea.

"Mrs. Trump will not be attending today's meeting at the White House," Melania Trump's office wrote in a statement on X. "Her husband's return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success. In this instance, several unnamed sources in the media continue to provide false, misleading, and inaccurate information. Be discerning with your source of news."

Before the inauguration, Melania Trump indicated that she may not live at the White House full time during her husband's second term.

In November, CNN reported that Melania Trump was "unlikely" to move into the White House full time.

A week before the inauguration in January, when asked by Ainsley Earhardt of Fox News about her plans, Melania Trump said that she would primarily live at the White House, but would also divide her time between Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.

"I will be in the White House," she said. "And, you know, when I need to be in New York, I will be in New York. When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach."

She added that her "first priority" was to be a mom, first lady, and wife and to "serve the country."

• President Trump has proposed that the US government get a stake in TikTok as part of a sale.
• But can the government actually own a piece of TikTok?
• Legal analysts said it could spark free-speech issues that would make the app hard to run.

TikTok needs to find a new owner for its US app to comply with a divest-or-ban law. Could it be the government?

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly proposed that the government get some type of stake in TikTok.

"What I'm thinking about saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States," he said during a January 21 press conference.

In its bid to buy TikTok, AI company Perplexity AI answered Trump's call. This week, the company updated its proposal to merge TikTok's US business with its own by offering the US government half of the new entity. That's on the condition that it goes public at a valuation of at least $300 billion, a source familiar with the offer told Business Insider.

But what would happen to TikTok if the US government owns part of it? Is there a precedent for this?

While the government has controlling shares in other companies, such as Amtrak, owning a piece of a major social app would be new territory.

"It's a social-media company that has a significant platform demonstrably for political reach and communication," said Aram Gavoor, associate dean at the George Washington University Law School who focuses on issues in tech, regulation, and national security. The ownership would bring about "novel constitutional questions with regard to speech," he said.

For a TikTok sale involving the government to work, the dealmakers would need to set up editorial guardrails to prevent the US from encroaching on its users' First Amendment rights. Even then, legal analysts told BI that TikTok's content moderation, such as removing videos that violate its policies, could create an avalanche of legal challenges from the app's users.

"What would be necessary, though I'm not sure it would be sufficient, is an extremely strict separation between the government and this new TikTok entity, especially when it comes to anything editorial," said Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who previously served as an advisor at the Justice Department.

Let's walk through some of the big questions around a TikTok deal.

Can the government legally own TikTok?

If the government grabs a stake in TikTok, it wouldn't be the first time it's done so in a company in a moment of flux.

During the Great Recession, the government was deeply involved in various businesses, bailing out automakers and banks and taking a controlling stake in AIG, for example.

It also owns consumer-facing institutions like the US Postal Service and Amtrak.

There is some precedent for the government's financial involvement in media companies, too. The government funds the broadcasting network Voice of America, and Congress partially funds NPR and PBS through appropriations to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Each of those organizations has strict guidelines to protect editorial independence, however. NPR's ethics handbook says that its journalists have "full and final authority over all journalistic decisions." PBS said its content "must be free of undue influence from third-party funders, political interests, and other outside forces." And Voice of America has a firewall that "prohibits interference by any U.S. government official in the objective, independent reporting of news."

A version of TikTok partially owned by the government would likely need to establish similar editorial barriers as its media counterparts and provide assurances of independence.

Even if a TikTok deal establishes a government firewall, it might not hold up in court

Even if TikTok sets up contract language to keep the government out of its editorial work, it may not matter in the courts. Other government-owned entities that have attempted to define themselves as independent have faced First Amendment lawsuits and lost.

In 1994, Amtrak was sued after it tried to block a billboard from displaying political content in one of its stations. The Supreme Court ruled that the company, as a government entity, had violated the First Amendment rights of the billboard's creator.

The Supreme Court said that Amtrak, by virtue of being federally owned and controlled, "was subject to First Amendment restrictions in the same way as any other federal actor," said Jennifer Safstrom, a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School who directs its First Amendment clinic.

In its opinion on the case, the court wrote that even though Congress attempted to establish Amtrak as independent from the US government, "it is not for Congress to make the final determination of Amtrak's status as a Government entity for purposes of determining the constitutional rights of citizens affected by its actions."

The case establishes that the government's self-characterization of how it owns a company may not stand on its own. "Courts will look beyond formal language to assess the extent of the government's entanglement," Safstrom said.

Would a government-owned TikTok be allowed to block porn and hate speech?

Many social apps block pornography and hate speech (and a ton of other stuff like content promoting eating disorders) as part of their community guidelines. But those types of expression are generally protected under the First Amendment, and a government-owned TikTok may face a flurry of legal challenges if it removes videos.

These are "uncharted waters," Safstrom said. "It's hard to know how expansive that world of litigation could be given the volume of users on that platform."

If TikTok continually gets challenged for pulling down hate speech and other unsavory content and stops a lot of its moderation work, it would be "essentially unusable and certainly very unprofitable," Rozenshtein said.

Who would control the TikTok algorithm?

The First Amendment protects the speech of TikTok users. But what about TikTok's algorithm? If the US government owns a part of TikTok, can it limit what users see?

That question remains up in the air, as algorithm decisions may qualify as "government speech," legal analysts said.

"If the government has a platform, it's not obligated to promote every person's particular point of view," Rozenshtein said. The government often makes choices as to what content it shares or doesn't share, such as last year when the State Department worked with the private sector to promote a set of music artists internationally as part of a diplomacy initiative.

He said the postal service offers a possible comparison for understanding why the government may have more discretion over the TikTok algorithm versus users' videos. The post office gets to decide what art it features on stamps, but it doesn't have the authority to limit most of what people write in the letters they send in the mail.

Ultimately, there are many unknowns as to what will happen around a TikTok sale, if ByteDance opts to sell it at all. Earlier this month, TikTok's lawyer said divesting its US app from its parent company would be "extraordinarily difficult" over any timeline.

And, of course, the Chinese government could block a ByteDance deal.

Asked on January 21 about a TikTok sale, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson seemed open to letting a deal be "independently decided," though he added that "China's law and regulations should be observed."

Representatives for the White House, TikTok, and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.

• "Severance," an office thriller show, is partially filmed at a real office in suburban New Jersey.
• The office, Bell Works, was originally Bell Labs, a historic incubator for telephone technology.
• Today the building is a mixed-use development with office space, stores, and restaurants.

Lumon Industries, the fictional employer at the center of the workplace thriller "Severance," is probably not anyone's ideal employer.

In the Apple TV+ series starring Adam Scott, Lumon is a cultlike biotechnology company that employs some "severed" workers. These employees undergo a procedure to separate their consciousness into an "outie," who goes about life outside of work, and an "innie," who toils away in the basement on mysterious tasks. As a result, the innies' restrictive workspace is the only world they've ever known.

Workers at the 60-year-old office complex where parts of the show are filmed, however, have the option to order caviar service and mezcal Negronis at its on-site restaurant and bar.

Bell Works, in Holmdel, New Jersey, a township about 30 miles south of Newark, was once a hub of technological innovation. Formerly Bell Laboratories, the 2 million-square-foot building was designed by the famed architect Eero Saarinen for a division of AT&T and opened in 1962.

There, scientists researched and developed technologies for phones and other devices. In 2015, though, it was transformed into a walkable complex of modernized offices and restaurants, bars, shops, and more.

While Bell Works may still look huge and monolithic, its interior is more bustling and alive than the show's sterile and mundane aesthetic suggests.

Here are four facts about the office building used as a filming location for "Severance."

Only parts of Lumon's office were filmed at Bell Works

"Severance" features Bell Works' exterior and entrance, as well as its actual parking lot. Its central skylit atrium also appears in a few scenes. The rest of the show was filmed in New York on several sound stages, according to Curbed.

The production designer Jeremy Hindle built the interior of the office — including the narrow hallways and the iconic green carpet — from the ground up.

"Green is the most common color to your eye, like that's the theory that it's calming, it makes you feel calm," Hindle told Variety in 2022. "Some of the colors, the theories were kind of who they are as characters and what they needed to survive. I think green is something you need to survive."

The original Bell Labs building was a tech incubator

While nobody in the show knows what Lumon Industries' severed employees really do, we have records of the developments that have emerged from work in the Bell Labs building.

From 1962 to 2007, the Bell Labs building had more than 6,000 employees — including a few Nobel Prize winners — who were responsible for many technological innovations.

The theory for the laser, as well as the Big Bang theory, originated in the Bell Labs building. It's also the location of the receiving end of the first cellphone call.

Bell Labs is now a mixed-use development called Bell Works

Inside, the Bell Works building is nothing like the office in "Severance." It's also much changed from its original look, thanks to some recent renovations.

A New Jersey firm called Inspired by Somerset Development purchased it in 2013 for $27 million with plans to modernize the outdated and unused office building.

"The greatest experiment is yet to come for these walls, and that is the ability of a community to come together," the company's president, Ralph Zucker, told NJ.com in 2013. "This building will be repurposed as a place for living."

Inspired renamed it Bell Works. More than 70 vendors have set up shop there, including restaurants, a bar, an indoor golf simulator, and an ice cream shop. There are also fitness franchises and a basketball court.

Tenant companies include the local utility Jersey Central Power & Light, the HR recruiting software iCIMS, and the insurer Guardian Life. Bell Works also hosts conferences and events.

Bell Works' website calls it a "Metroburb," which it defines as "a little metropolis in suburbia."

The show spent almost 5 times as much money filming the 2nd season in New Jersey

The budget for the second season of "Severance" is nothing to sniff at.

NJ.com reported that while the show in its first season spent $5.1 million filming in New Jersey, for its second season it spent more than $24 million over three years filming there.

Other filming locations in the state included Kings Landing, a condominium complex in Middletown, and part of Palisades Interstate Park in Alpine, which overlooks the Hudson River.

Further north, Phoenicia Diner in the Catskills was used to film scenes at Pip's Bar & Grille.

Palmer Haasch contributed reporting to this story.

• Several firms have rolled back DEI efforts amid pressure from conservative groups and the White House.
• Some CEOs have voiced their support or defended the diversity programs at their companies.
• Deutsche Bank's CEO is the latest bank executive to defend DEI initiatives.

The list of CEOs who are publicly backing their companies' DEI policies is growing.

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing is the latest, joining JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs' David Solomon in publicly defending DEI programs amid wider external criticism of diversity initiatives from conservative activists and President Donald Trump's new administration.

One of Trump's first executive orders placed federal DEI staffers on administrative leave as work began to dismantle their departments.

The pullback on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the private sector began before Trump took office. A slew of companies — including Meta, Walmart, and McDonald's — either reduced or ended their own DEI initiatives. Some had been targeted by conservative activist groups.

However, amid the tensions around DEI, some executives are taking a public stance in support of their firms' policies.

Deutsche Bank

In a Frankfurt press conference on Thursday, Sewing said his company was "firmly behind" its DEI programs, calling them "integral" to its strategy.

"Quite honestly, I know what diversity has brought us on the management board at the top reporting level," Sewing said. "That's why we are strong supporters of these programs."

If the legality of DEI programs should ever change, the bank might reevaluate its stance, he added.

"But in terms of our basic attitude, in terms of our mindset, both issues — whether it's diversity policy, inclusion, or sustainability — are an integral part of Deutsche Bank's strategy," he said.

JPMorgan

Dimon was defiant in the face of apparent targeting from activist shareholders over the company's DEI programs.

"Bring them on," he told CNBC on January 22. "We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community."

Goldman Sachs

Solomon said that while he'd heard of shareholder proposals, he hadn't yet reviewed them.

"We're advising our clients. They think about these things," Solomon said in a separate interview with CNBC on January 22. "They think about decarbonization, they think about climate transition. They think about their businesses, how they find talent, the diversity of the talent they find all over the world."

Goldman Sachs' stated inclusion goals are geared toward funneling more women into leadership positions, making "progress towards racial equity," and ensuring diversity both among its vendors and in its boardroom.

Cisco

In an interview with Axios on January 22, Chuck Robbins, the CEO of Cisco, said that a diverse workforce being better was an inarguable fact.

"I think the pendulum swings a little wide in both directions. And for us, it's about finding the equilibrium," Robbins said, adding: "You cannot argue with the fact that a diverse workforce is better."

Robbins added that DEI was being discussed as "single issue" but that he believed it's far more complex.

"And in reality, it's made up of 150 different things, and maybe seven of them got a little out of hand," he said. "I think those six or seven things are going to get solved, and then you're going to be left with common sense."

Costco

Costco has been clear about its support for DEI, even as it faces mounting pressure from conservative groups to walk back its policies.

Nearly all of Costco's shareholders rejected a proposal by the National Center for Public Policy Research last week that was similar to the one received by JPMorgan. It would have required Costco to issue a report on the legal and financial risks of DEI policies.

"The overwhelming support of our shareholders' vote really puts an answer to that question," Costco CEO Ron Vachris said.

Costco's board has also previously issued statements reaffirming the company's dedication to DEI.

"Our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary," the board wrote in December.

The company continues to face scrutiny for its policies, as 19 Republican attorneys general sent a letter to Vachris urging him to end what they called "divisive and discriminatory DEI practices."

• Cloud and inference providers see rising demand for Nvidia H200 chips due to DeepSeek's AI models.
• DeepSeek's open-source models require powerful hardware to run the full model for inference.
• The trend runs counter to the Nvidia sell-off following growing awareness of DeepSeek.

Some cloud providers are experiencing a notable uptick in demand for Nvidia's H200 chips after Chinese AI company DeepSeek burst into the race for the winning foundation model this month.

Though the stock market caught wind of the powerful yet efficient large language model Monday, sending Nvidia's stock down 16%, DeepSeek, has been on the radar of AI researchers and developers since it released its first model, V2, in May 2024.

But the performance of V3, released in December, is what made AI developers sit up and take notice. When R1, the company's reasoning model, which competes with OpenAI's o1, was released in early January, demand for Nvidia's H200s started climbing.

"The launch of DeepSeek R1 has significantly accelerated demand for H200. We've seen such strong interest that enterprises are pre-purchasing large blocks of Lambda's H200 capacity, even before public availability," said Robert Brooks, founding team member and vice president of revenue at cloud provider Lambda.

DeepSeek's models are open source, which means users pay very little to use them. However, they still need hardware, or a cloud computing service to use them at scale.

Business Insider spoke with 10 cloud service and AI inference providers. Five reported a rapid increase in demand for Nvidia's H200 graphics processing units this month.

Amazon Web Services and Coreweave declined to comment. Oracle, Google, and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

This week, AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia have made DeepSeek models available on their various cloud and AI-developer platforms, or provided instructions for users to do so themselves.

Nvidia declined to comment, citing a quiet period before its February 26 earnings release.

AI cloud offerings have exploded in the last two years, creating a slew of options beyond the mainstays of cloud computing like Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services.

The demand has come from a range of customers from startups and individual researchers to massive multinational firms.

"We've heard from half a dozen of the 50 largest companies in the world. I'm really not exaggerating," Tuhin Srivastava, cofounder of inference provider Baseten, told BI.

Friday, semiconductor industry analysts at Seminanalysis reported "tangible effects" on pricing for H100 and H200 capacity in the market stemming from DeepSeek.

Total sales of Nvidia H200 GPUs have reached the "double digits billions, CFO Colette Kress said on the company's November earnings call.

'Exponential demand' for Nvidia H200s

Karl Mozurkewich and his team at cloud provider Valdi saw H200 demand ramp up throughout January and at first, they didn't know why.

The Valdi team doesn't own chips, it acquires capacity from existing data centers and sells that capacity to customers. The company doesn't know every use case for each chip it makes accessible, but it polled several H200 customers and all of them wanted the chips to run DeepSeek.

"Suddenly, R1 got everybody's attention — it caught fire — and then it kind of went exponential," Mozurkewich said.

American companies are eager to take advantage of DeepSeek's model performance and reasoning innovations, but most are not keen to share their data with a Chinese firm. That means they can either use an API offered by a US firm or run the model on their own hardware.

Since the model is open source, it can be downloaded and run locally without sharing data with DeepSeek.

For Valdi, the majority of its H200 demand is coming from startups, Mozurkewich said.

"It appears the market is reacting to DeepSeek by grabbing the best GPUs available for testing as quickly as possible," he said. "This makes sense, as most companies' current GPUs are likely to continue to work on ongoing tasks they've been allocated to," Mozurkewich continued.

Though many companies are still testing and experimenting, the Valdi team is seeing longer-term requests for additional hardware, suggesting an uptick in demand that could last beyond DeepSeek's initial hype cycle.

Chip light, compute-heavy

DeepSeek's models were trained with less powerful hardware than US models, according to the company's research paper. This efficiency has spooked the stock market.

Players like Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft have invested billions in AI infrastructure, with billions more on the way. Investors are concerned about whether all that capacity will be needed. DeepSeek was created with fewer, relatively weak chips (though the number is hotly debated).

Training chips aside, using the models for inference is a compute-intensive task, cloud providers say.

"It is not light and easy to run," Srivastava said.

The size of a model is measured in "parameters." More parameters require more compute. The most powerful versions of DeepSeek's models have 678 billion parameters. That's less than OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 which has 1.76 trillion, but more than Meta's largest Llama model, which has 405 billion.

Srivastava said most firms were avoiding the 405 billion parameter Llama model if they coud help it since the smaller version was much easier to run. DeepSeek offers smaller versions too, and even its most powerful version is cheaper to run, which has stoked excitement with firms who want to use the full model, the cloud providers said.

H200 chips are the only widely available Nvidia chip that can run DeepSeek's V3 model in its full form on a single node (8 chips designed to work together).

You can also spread it across more lower-power GPUs, but that requires more expertise and leaves room for error. Adding that complexity almost inevitably slows down performance, Srivastava said.

Nvidia's Blackwell chips will also be able to handle the full V3 model in one node, but these chips have just begun shipping this year.

With demand spiking, finding enough chips to run V3 or R1 at high speed is tough if it hasn't already been allocated.

Baseten doesn't own GPUs; it buys capacity from data centers that do and then tinkers with all the software connections to make models run smoothly. Some of its customers have their own hardware in their own data centers but still hire Baseten to optimize model performance.

Its customers especially value inference speed — the speed that enables an AI-generated voice to converse in real time for example. DeepSeek's capacity at the open source price is a game-changer for its customers, according to Srivastava.

"It does feel like this is an inflection point," he said.

Have a tip or an insight to share? Contact Emma at [email protected] or use the secure messaging app Signal: 443-333-9088

• Apple avoided a hit to its share price from DeepSeek, but it has another China-made problem.
• iPhone sales in the country have fallen again.
• An 11% slide in sales last quarter is raising concerns about Apple amid tough competition in China.

DeepSeek may not have triggered a sell-off panic for Apple, but the iPhone maker has another China headache.

While Apple avoided the pummelling handed to its Silicon Valley peers this week by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, the company had its own China-related problems on Thursday as it reported an 11% year-on-year drop in revenue in the country to $18.5 billion.

The slide in last quarter's sales is a sign of deepening struggles for Apple in its most important international market — and is raising concerns among some investors and analysts who had forecast better results.

In its last financial year, Apple's net sales in Greater China decreased 7.7% from $72.5 billion the previous year. The year before that, net sales decreased by 2.2%. Understanding if the decline can be stopped is now key for Apple watchers.

During Thursday's earnings call, CEO Tim Cook took the 11% China decline head-on by explaining that "over half of the decline" was driven by changes in "channel inventory."

He also had another explanation. "It's the most competitive market in the world," Cook said.

That competition has been a particular threat to Apple's smartphone sales in China, where domestic companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi have been enticing consumers with 5G-enabled devices that now appear to rival the capabilities of iPhones.

Figures from research firm Counterpoint show that in the last three months of 2024, Apple's smartphone sales fell 18.2%, while Huawei's grew by 15.5% as it was boosted by the launch of its latest high-end smartphone series, the Mate 70.

In a research note after Thursday's earnings, Logan Purk, senior analyst at Edward Jones, said that "sales in China were weak and will remain a point of debate among investors," particularly as Apple contends with "fierce competition in China for 5G phones."

That said, analysts also see an opportunity for Apple to counter the competition later this year once it rolls out one of its biggest bets to China: Apple Intelligence.

The tech giant's generative AI features, unveiled in June last year, are yet to be rolled out in China and are seen as a key driver of a huge upgrade cycle in iPhones in the future.

Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst, said in a note on Friday that his firm expects growth to "markedly rebound" in China to "double-digits" year-on-year starting in the June quarter, with the "anticipated April rollout" of the Apple Intelligence in the country.

His confidence was boosted by the fact that "markets where Apple Intelligence was available" saw clear year-on-year performance "outpace markets without this AI rollout."

Still, Apple's AI push in China remains untested, with domestic competitors in the country vying to show local consumers that their technology can match America's best.

Apple will need to show Chinese consumers that iPhones are fit for the AI era.

• The backlash against "Emilia Pérez" has turned to its star Karla Sofía Gascón after old tweets were resurfaced.
• Fans highlighted negative tweets that appear to have been posted by Gascón as recently as 2021.
• "Emilia Pérez," the Oscars frontrunner, has faced criticism for its portrayals of Mexico and trans people.

Karla Sofía Gascón, the star of "Emilia Pérez," is under fire for comments and past tweets following claims the most-nominated film this award season has problematic portrayals of Mexico and transgender people.

Critics and fans of "Emilia Pérez," which won 4 Golden Globes and received 13 Oscar nominations, have voiced their opinions about the film on social media. Some say it's boring, and others say it portrays transphobic stereotypes.

Gascón, who became the first out trans woman to be nominated for an Oscar for her role in "Emilia Pérez," has been one of the film's main defenders.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian publication Folha de S.Paulo published a video interview in which Gascón criticized people who were tearing her down to support Fernanda Torres, one of her competitors for the best-actress Oscar.

In response, some sought to have Gascón disqualified from the Oscars, accusing her of breaking an Academy rule prohibiting those involved with a film from sharing public communication that casts a competing movie in a "negative or derogatory light."

Variety reported on Wednesday that Gascón didn't break the rule because she didn't comment on Torres' performance in "I'm Still Here."

On Thursday, the Canadian journalist Sarah Hagi shared screenshots on X of posts that appeared to have been made by Gascón. Business Insider couldn't verify all the screenshots, and some posts seem to have been deleted.

The screenshots contained disparaging remarks about Muslims and Islam.

The posts were written in Spanish but translated through Google by Hagi. This sparked more social media users to search for and share screenshots of other posts that appear to be from Gascón.

Gascón wrote in other posts, seen by BI, that all religions should be banned. In a post from 2020, the actor referred to the COVID-19 vaccine as "the Chinese vaccine" and said it had a chip inside it.

Variety reported that in a post shared in 2021, Gascón referred to the Oscars ceremony that year as an "Afro-Korean festival" and "ugly, ugly gala." That year Daniel Kaluuya, a Black British actor, and Yuh-jung Youn, a South Korean actor, both won Oscars.

Gascón has now deleted her X account.

On Thursday, Gascón shared a statement with several outlets after the posts resurfaced: "I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt. As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness."

Some are still calling on the Academy to retract Gascón's Oscar nomination despite the apology.

Representatives for Netflix, Gascón, and the Academy didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI.

• To celebrate my kids' graduations, my family and I went on our first cruise.
• Although we had a great time, I wish we had known a few things before getting on board.
• For example, turning our phones on airplane mode would have saved us a lot of money.

2024 was a big year in our household. All three kids were graduating — our oldest from high school and our twins from junior high.

When it came time to celebrate these achievements, we gave them an option. We could throw a party or use the money for an awesome family vacation instead.

So, before our oldest left for college, we came together one last time for a seven-day trip to Alaska on our first-ever cruise.

We were all excited about the idea, and honestly, everyone had a fantastic time. However, I don't think any of us were completely prepared our first cruising experience.

Here are four things I wish we had known before boarding the Celebrity Cruise ship.

Turning our phones on airplane mode would have saved us a lot of money

Our phones are such an important part of our lives that it's almost unheard of to go without them for minutes, let alone days. However, we purposely didn't purchase the ship's WiFi package because we wanted a chance to disconnect and enjoy Alaska's beauty.

What we were unaware of, however, is that once we got away from land, we should have put our phones on airplane mode. Since we didn't, they switched to a service called Cellular at Sea, which uses satellites to keep the phones connected. However, this can be expensive.

Luckily, after racking up $100 in charges within hours of setting sail, AT&T cut my device off until I contacted them. However, this was a costly lesson. Next time, we'll be sure to turn on airplane mode and call our cellular provider to talk about cruise packages.

I wish we would have known about the formal night

Typically, we're a jeans and T-shirt family. It's not that we don't clean up well; it's just that we don't do it often, so a formal night wasn't even on our radar.

We knew we needed nicer clothing for our dinner reservations on the ship, but we didn't know that one night, everyone would go all out.

We skipped dinner that night and hit the buffet instead (which, honestly, we did more often than not anyway), and we certainly weren't the only ones not dressed up.

However, I wish we had known about this in advance, as it would have been exciting to join in on the fun.

Excursions through the cruise line can be expensive

It's no secret that cruising isn't cheap. So, when it came time to book excursions, we knew they would be pricey. However, we still weren't prepared for just how pricey they would be.

Luckily, almost every port we stopped at had third-party companies who would pick passengers up at the dock and take them to do fun and exciting things.

For example, being in Alaska, we wanted to learn about and visit a dog-sled team. Although the cruise line offered this experience, we saved more than 50% by booking with an outside party.

However, it's important to know your schedule and check to make sure the third party will guarantee you'll be back on time — because if you're not, the ship won't wait for you.

Getting a good space on the deck on cruising days can be hard

On the days the ship doesn't stop at a port, finding space to call your own on the boat can be a battle. Tables at breakfast, couches by the windows, and lounge chairs by the pool all become valuable real estate.

Instead of waking up early to claim a space near the pool, we chose to sleep in instead. However, because of this, we should've been prepared to settle for a less-than-prime space to sit and relax.

Instead of a view of the ocean and the mountains, we got stuck in the middle of the ship near the bathrooms.

Even with these small missteps, none of it was enough to put even the slightest damper on what was a fabulous time aboard our first cruise. The next time we take to the seas, though, we'll be better prepared for what's to come.