The discovery of the body of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who studied physics at Brown University, earlier this week in a New Hampshire storage facility brought closure to two alarming cases. Authorities say they believe Valente, a 48-year-old who recently arrived in Boston, was behind the December 13 mass shooting at Brown University, and the December 16 murder of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro.
The identification of Valente brings calm to communities worried about a mass killer on the loose. But it also puts the lie to theories floated by right-wing influencers, including Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire.
In recent days, Maguire, acting as a self-appointed digital detective, has shared posts suggesting that an entirely different man was behind the crimesa Palestinian student at Brown University. On December 16, in a post on X that has subsequently been deleted, Maguire speculated that it seems very likely that the student was behind the shooting, pointing to the fact that Brown is actively scrubbing his online presence. In fact, the student’s digital footprints were being wiped as a protective measure against rampant, errant speculation about his link to the shootings.
Accusations, speculation and conspiracies were seeing on social media and in some news reports are irresponsible, harmful, and in some cases dangerous for the safety of individuals in our community, Brian Clark, vice president for news and strategic campus communications at Brown, told Fast Company in an emailed statement. It is not unusual as a safety measure to take steps to protect an individuals safety when this kind of activity happens, including in regard to their online presence.
Clark adds: Its important to make clear that targeting individuals could do irrevocable harm.Neither Maguire, nor Sequoia, responded to interview requests for this story. Natalie Miyake, Sequoia Capitals communications partner, was not available when Fast Company called the firms offices. Still online is a subsequent post by Maguire speculating that MIT professor Loureiro was shot because he was Jewish. As evidence, Maguire points to a Google Gemini chatbot response and a Threads post criticizing Hamas. That Threads post is by a person sharing the same name as the slain man — but not actually the MIT professor.
The tenuous attempts to link an innocent man to a mass murder and a subsequent slaying follow months of inflammatory posts by the venture capitalist targeting Muslims and pro-Palestine activists. On July 4, Maguire made inflammatory comments calling New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani an Islamist, which resulted in an open letter calling for his firing that gained more than 1,000 signatures.
Maguire subsequently partially apologized for those comments in a video. This tweet did not land the way I thought it would,” he said. Sequoia’s then-managing partner Roelof Botha said in late October that Sequoia is a company to celebrate diversity of opinions, saying the firm needed spiky people within it, while acknowledging it can come with trade-offs. Maguire has previously called DEI policies within companies structural racism.”
Maguires comments may have cost the company staff. In October, chief operating officer Sumaiya Balbale stepped down from Sequoia,reportedly because of the firms inaction over Maguires past comments about Muslims. (Balbale did not respond to a request for comment.) Botha himself stepped down in November.
One VC figure, who asked not to be named because of the risk of repercussions, says the inaction against Maguire speaks to broader issues about Sequoia. If youre a partner at KKR or Blackstone, you would haveat the very minimumbeen told to stop posting stuff, they say. The fact its allowed to happen is just weird.
The VC figure points out that if such words were used about any other minority they would be immediately condemned. If you substitute any of this language, and you remove the word Muslim and put Jews, or you put Italians, or you put Irish, it would definitely not pass the sniff test.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which previously called for Maguires firing over his comments about Mamdani, tells Fast Company that Sequoia should reconsider their position on whether or not its appropriate for him to represent their company in any sort of way. Mr. Maguires rush to indicate that this Muslim student who supports Palestinian human rights was likely responsible for the Brown University shooting was deeply irresponsible and incredibly dangerous,” says Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIRs national deputy director. He believes that every person who fanned the flames of bigotry against this young man without any basis or any justification should apologize and be held to account if they cross the line into illegal defamation.In one post earlier this month, Maguire railed against the mainstream medias slow pace of reporting on the Brown shooting. It’s impossible to shake the feeling that we’re not getting the truth fast enough from law enforcement and our media … when it doesn’t fit their narrative, he wrote. Maguires posts imply which narrative he would have preferred as this story came to an end.
Most businesses start with a spark, an idea fueled by hunger, resilience, or grit. But sustaining that energy through scale is the real challenge. Founders and leaders play a defining role in that journey. The same values, authenticity, and style that ignite early momentum can easily crush it. That’s why builders and entrepreneurs are essential to a new business. Think Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Sara Blakely. But that style is NOT for everyone, especially those who prefer less out-front leaders. These founders are visionary, pushing their teams to act in the way they want every employee to show up.
But leaders at successful companies realize that business and talent need to change when moving from idea to execution to real scale. With growth comes complexity, and with complexity comes the risk of losing what made you successful in the first place.
I am a firm believer that it’s possible to scale without losing either the speed or the special energy that makes the early stage so dynamic. Here’s how.
BUILD IT RIGHT
It’s common for early-stage company culture to revolve around the founder’s values, style, and passion. What actually makes it work? Leaders recruiting like-minded people, aligning around a clear vision, and rallying teams toward a common goal. But whats equally as important are the challengers, those who push them to think and do differently. Success cant be tied to just one person.
To manage growth and cultivate innovation, you need two types of people: leaders who provide guidance and trust, and entrepreneurs who move fast and are comfortable with failure.
Why is this so important? It establishes both the arena and terms for innovation. AI is shifting innovation to the edges of the organization. That’s a good thing, as long as leaders set the direction and standards, so speed doesn’t turn into waste or redundancy. Trust is equally important. No one takes risks or tries new things in a culture where failure equals termination. Leaders who ask for innovation hold others accountable, and see failure as a learning opportunity that will foster more successful teams and outcomes.
MOVE QUICKLY AND DECISIVELY
What’s also critical to ongoing entrepreneurship is a functioning feedback loop. We know that not every initiative will be a gamechanger, and that’s okay. The key is to find out quickly. That’s why we help clients build a quick prototype, test it fast, and either double down or shut it down before we’re too far down the line. Doing that effectively requires leaders who can collaborate but not necessarily seek consensus. They need to digest inputfrom customers, employees, and influencersand cut through it to make go/no-go decisions quickly. Wishy-washy or delayed decisions destroy entrepreneurial spirit.
Fail-fast cultures become harder to maintain as the stakes get higher. Everyone may understand in theory that the only way to discover breakthroughs is to experiment. But reality hits the moment you’re sitting across from an investor staring at a tough quarter or a revenue dip. Thats exactly why its important to celebrate mistakes (yes, you heard that right), learn from them, and allow them to fuel what comes next.
In those moments, “fail fast” can sound like “we’re failing, period.” But the best investors don’t expect perfection. They’re looking for accountability and transparency about why it didn’t work and what you learned. That builds trust.
In Airbnb’s early days, an investor advised the cofounders to go door-to-door with a camera to improve listing photos at underperforming properties. It worked on a small scale, but became painful and impossible. So they pivoted, first by hiring others, then expanded by offering photography to property owners. The failure wasn’t the endit was a learning leading to a bigger business opportunity.
Another example of this is with the Calm app, which started as a guided meditation platform but quickly hit a ceiling because users needed more variety. They pivoted by expanding into other content types, like sleep stories and mental health resources. What started as a narrow tool evolved and became more impactful because the team learned fast and iterated even faster.
REWARD INTENTIONALLY
Most technology and services companies rely on strong sales and delivery teams to drive revenue and support customers. Sales professionals are commonly charged with quotas and rewarded on deal size. That model works well, but if the organization only rewards selling and delivery, that’s where the energy and focus will go.
In my experience, incentivizing entrepreneurs, innovators, and idea-drivers is equally important. It’s not about delivering a bonus for every idea, but having a system that tracks impact KPIs like success rates, impact on sales and reputation, and time saved. With a clear incentive and KPI framework, plus a space to share stories that highlight both smart failures and big wins, you’ll spark entrepreneurial energy across every level and department.
When it’s working, you can see it and feel it: Teams challenge each other productively in meetings, new ideas flow consistently, and careers progress quickly. Speed is not sacrificed with the addition of discipline and relentless prioritization. At West Monroe, we also recognize the importance of celebrating and rewarding a culture of innovation by awarding bonuses to those who bring new ideas to life in ways that drive commercial success.
Companies that build this type of cultureand nurture it intentionallywon’t just survive in this era of constant disruption, they’ll create and lead it.
Casey Foss is chief commercial officer at West Monroe Partners.
First there was Spotify Wrapped. Then came Snapchat Wrapped, YouTube Wrapped, and even Uber Eats Wrappedshortly after, SNL parodied the idea.
If you thought you were officially wrapped up for the year, LinkedIn had other plans. The platform just dropped its inaugural Year in Reviewessentially, LinkedIn Wrapped.
LinkedIns Year in Review recaps your activity on the platform, from how often you logged on and when you were most active to how many posts you shared. It tallies your comments, new connections, and total profile impressions, then assigns you a personality type based on how you used LinkedIn.
The feature also taps into the platform nostalgia trend, which has defined 2025: It tells you the exact date you joined LinkedIn and who your very first connection was. If youre looking for either an ego boost (or a reality check) it also summarizes engagement metrics, like new followers, reactions, comments, and for Premium users, profile views.
All of it is packaged into a sleek highlight reel designed for social sharing. And people have been sharing though with mixed feelings.
Ah. LinkedIn reminding me that I was a top applicant for 28,388,338 jobs and landed 0 of them this year, the user wrote, with a screenshot on X showing that 865 of their connections started new jobs this year.
Woohoo. Thanks, LinkedIn Wrapped.
Another joked: linkedin wrapped didnt include ___ jobs applied because they knew it would be too much of a humiliation ritual.
A third put it bluntly: My 2025 LinkedIn wrapped is actually the last thing in the world I need right now
LinkedIns timing isnt the best: The U.S. unemployment rate recently hit a four-year high and earlier this year, the number of job seekers exceeded the number of jobs available for the first time in four years. Most jobseekers wont be looking back with fond memories on the hours/days/weeks they spent on the hiring platform this past year.
You applied for 1,000 jobs and none of them were actually hiring! one X user quipped.
The Linkedinfluencers, however, were slightly more enthusiastic.
Where my 5% crew at??!!, one wrote. Didn’t think I would get sentimental about a LinkedIn ‘Year in Review’ but here we are!
Another wrote: 344 days out of the 365 days in 2025 was spent on Linkedin! People often think I joke around when I say that Linkedin is actually the most used app on my phone. But Linkedin wrapped don’t lie!
Others are simply over the wrapped of it all.
Stop reviewing my life, stop wrapping it up, TikTok user @litty_city said in a video on Wednesday, pointing to the onslaught of year-end summaries. Everyone from Amazon and Apple Music to PlayStation, Discord, Duolingo, Asana, and even Partiful joined the wrapped party this year.
Im tired, she concluded.
Time to wrap it up.
Happiness is taking control of a beloved comic strip.
Sony is buying a 41% stake in the Charles M. Schulz comic Peanuts and its characters including Snoopy and Charlie Brown from Canada’s WildBrain in a $457 million deal, the two companies said Friday.
The deal adds to Sony’s existing 39% stake, bringing its shareholding to 80%, according to a joint statement. The Schulz family will continue to own the remaining 20%.
With this additional ownership stake, we are thrilled to be able to further elevate the value of the ‘Peanuts’ brand by drawing on the Sony Groups extensive global network and collective expertise, Sony Music Entertainment President Shunsuke Muramatsu said.
Peanuts made its debut Oct. 2, 1950 in seven newspapers. The travails of the little round-headed kid Charlie Brown and pals, including Linus, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, and his pet beagle Snoopy, eventually expanded to more than 2,600 newspapers, reaching millions of readers in 75 countries.
The strip offers enduring images of kites stuck in trees, Charlie Brown trying to kick a football, tart-tongued Lucy handing out advice for a nickel, and Snoopy taking the occasional flight of fancy to the skies. Phrases such as security blanket,” good grief and happiness is a warm puppy are a part of the global vernacular. Schulz died in 2000.
Sony acquired its first stake in Peanuts Holdings LLC in 2018 from Toronto-based WildBrain Ltd. In Friday’s transaction, Sony’s music and movie arms signed a definitive agreement with WildBrain to buy its remaining stake for $630 million Canadian dollars ($457 million).
Rights to the Peanuts brand and management of its business are handled by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Peanuts Holdings.
WildBrain also owns other kids’ entertainment franchises, including Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies.
The Trump administration is calling on white men who believe they faced discrimination at work to file their complaints to a federal civil rights agency.
The head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission urged white men to formally register their complaints with the government this week in a video posted to X. Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws, EEOC Commission Chair Andrea Lucas said.
Lucas urged white men who qualified to contact the EEOC as soon as possible and pointed them to the agencys website and its explainer on DEI-related discrimination. The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL race and sex discrimination including against white male employees and applicants, Lucas wrote.
The EEOCs priorities have shifted dramatically during the second Trump administration. The EEOC, born out of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was created to protect Americans from workplace discrimination and harassment. Given its origins, the agency had a historic focus on protecting minority employees from racial discrimination, but in more recent years its mission included investigations into instances of discrimination over gender, disability, age and national origin.
At the same time that the EEOC is collecting complaints from white men, the agency has dropped six of its own cases representing transgender people who alleged workplace discrimination based on their gender identities.
Dismantling diversity
The Trump administration has deployed the EEOC in a very specific way over the course of the year, steering the agency toward its broader goals of dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In March, the EEOC and the DOJ released a joint press release along with new documentation warning employers against unlawful DEI-related discrimination that could be interpreted to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Far too many employers defend certain types of race or sex preferences as good, provided they are motivated by business interests in diversity, equity, or inclusion, Lucas said. But no matter an employers motive, there is no good, or even acceptable, race or sex discrimination.
While the subtext was clear from the EEOCs recent changes, Lucas said the quiet part out loud on X. The Trump administration is keen to highlight perceived examples of anti-white discrimination in the country, and its willing to pull all the levers of government in pursuit of that goal.
The White Houses framing of race in America increasingly reflects the language of once-fringe white nationalist theories, including debunked claims about a genocide of white South Africans and recent calls for remigration mass deportation for non-white immigrants. Trump himself has an extensive history of racist ideology, has repeatedly aligned himself with white nationalists and continues to promote a language of grievance around anti-white sentiment while stripping away federal policies designed to promote racial diversity.
The EEOC has an unusual structure, but that hasnt been enough to block Trumps efforts to weaponize it during his second term. The agency is a commission made up of five members, with no more than three allowed to be from the same political party. The president can appoint commissioners, who serve a five year term, and can designate a chair to steer the agency, but generally the EEOC is designed to be bipartisan by definition, limiting the potential influence of whoever sits in the White House and keeping the commission independent.
Quickly after taking office in January, Trump fired two of the federal agencys three Democratic commissioners an unprecedented departure from the commissions traditional five year terms. After filling one of the open slots with a lawyer who served in the Department of Education during his first term, two EEOC positions sit vacant, with one Biden appointee remaining in her role and two Trump appointees setting the agenda.
The livestream of a YouTube content creator talking about investments mysteriously appeared to take over a White House website, raising questions about whether the site was hacked.
The livestream appeared for at least eight minutes late Thursday on whitehouse.gov/live, where the White House usually streams live video of the president speaking.
It’s unclear if the website was breached or the video was linked accidentally by someone in the government. The White House said in a statement that it was aware and looking into what happened.
The video that appeared on the government-run website featured some of a more than two-hour livestream from Matt Farley, who posts as @RealMattMoney, as he answered financial questions.
Farley said in an email to The Associated Press on Friday that he had no idea what happened.
If I had known my stream was going to go super public like that I would be dressed a bit nicer and had a few more pointed topics! And it likely wouldnt have been about personal finance, Farley wrote.
President Donald Trump‘s administration and campaign have had a series of digital security breaches and challenges over the last year.
In May, government officials began investigating after elected officials, business executives, and other prominent figures received text messages and phone calls from someone impersonating Susie Wiles, the Republican president’s chief of staff.
Last year, Iran hacked into Trumps campaign. Sensitive internal documents were stolen and distributed, including a dossier on Vice President JD Vance, created before he was selected as Trumps running mate.
Michelle L. Price, Associated Press
Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.
The government took stakes in a number of private companies during 2025, and it’s likely to continue making equity investments while Donald Trump remains in office. Whether or not this is a wise long-term strategy is an ongoing debate, with strong opinions on both sides.
The practice represents a new industrial policy thats meant to tie the executive branch of government closer to companies it considers essential to national security and economic prowess. The Trump administration hopes its a more robust approach than subsidy grants in rebuilding critical supply chains domestically, reducing reliance on China, and ensuring key industries remain under U.S. control.
But it also puts the government in the venture capital businesswhich may not be a good fit for politicians and bureaucrats. The government now perceives itself as a source of capital and the markets perceive them as a source of capitalits not going to stop, said former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on a recent episode of The Informed Board, a podcast from Skadden Arps. And it may not be easy for a private company to say no. Any business that either sells a lot of stuff to the federal government or gets a lot of subsidies from the federal government is going to be a target, he added.
I think its extraordinarily dangerous. And the reason I think its not going to go away is that regardless of the outcome, I think this is where the Republican Party is, Mulvaney said. “And its where the Democrat Party has wanted to be for a long time.
The U.S. government has taken equity shares in private companies before, but only in times of war or economic crisis, and never as a normal feature of industrial policy, as the Trump administration views it.
The government took a minority stake in Chrysler in the early 1980s when the company faced bankruptcy. During the 2008 financial crisis, the government took equity stakes in AIG, General Motors, Citigroup, Bank of America, and others. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Treasury received equity warrants in airlines, including Delta, United, and American, in exchange for payroll support.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested that the administration is considering expanding the practice of buying equity to include defense contractors.
The U.S. and Intel
The governments biggest equity investment is the troubled chipmaker Intel. The Trump administration said in August that it would take a 9.9% stake, using $8.9 billion of CHIPs and Science Act grant money that had already been earmarked for the company. Intel finance chief David Zinsner said the governments investment was meant to incentivize Intel to keep majority control over its contract chip-fabrication business.
The bigger picture is that the U.S. economy, including the defense industry, is increasingly reliant on the powerful chips used to train and run AI models, and the vast majority of those are made in Taiwan by TSMC. The U.S. could benefit greatly if Intel could fabricate equally advanced chips in the U.S. Taiwan is a potential geopolitical flash point because its a mere 85 miles away from China, and while the island has its own government, the Chinese government denies its sovereignty and claims it as its own.
Other bets
In July, the Defense Department paid $400 million for a 15% stake in the rare earth minerals company MP Materials (MP), making the Pentagon the companys largest shareholder. The deal includes a $150 million loan to help MP build a heavy rare earth separation plant in California.
The government received a golden share in Nippon Steel in exchange for approving the Japanese companys proposed merger of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp. The golden share doesnt represent equity in Nippon, but it does give the U.S. veto power in certain kinds of business decisions, as well as a right to appoint a board member.
In October, the Department of Energy loaned the Canadian mining company Lithium Americas Corp. (LAC) and its Thacker Pass lithium mine project $2.26 billion in exchange for a 5% stake in both LAC and the mining venture.
In October, the Department of Defense paid $35.6 million for a 10% stake in the Canadian company Trilogy Metals, which is developing the Ambler Access Road infrastructure project in Alaska to access metals like copper, cobalt, and zinc.
In November, the Commerce Department said it intended to use $50 million in CHIPs Act money to buy a significant stake in the private rare-earth magnet producer Vulcan Elements. The Pentagon also intends to loan Vulcan another $620 million to help it build a large facility for neodymium iron boron magnets.
Risky business
There is a real purpose behind the stakes. The government isnt putting tax dollars into golf courses or TV networks (not yet, anyway). The investments are targeted at weak spots in the supply chains that the government and its suppliers need to support U.S. economic interests and national security. That was the core idea behind the CHIPs Act, too.
After the government dispenses grants to private sector companies, equity investments allow the government to have something to show for them. And the equity ownership often affords the government some direct influence over the operations and plans of the company.Prominent progressives have championed this sort of thing. In 2022, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren proposed that CHIPS Act beneficiaries give Uncle Sam an equity stake for that reason, but the measure failed. Sanders and Warren also wanted to attach prohibitions against CHIPs grant recipients from using the funds to buy back stock, to offshore U.S. jobs, or to discourage unionization.
Under Trump 2.0, the government is making bets on private-sector companies using tax money without the consent of Congress or the voters. What could go wrong? If the company falls on hard times, the governments equity could shrivel, and the tax dollars that bought it could vanish.
In a broader sense, Republicans, especially small-government conservatives, have historically been hesitant to back private companies, out of fear of appearing as if the government is picking winners in the marketplace. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that the government’s buying into private companies could turn innovative manufacturers into state-owned enterprises and hrm U.S. competitiveness.
Still, the governments investment has been met with criticism. The Cato Institutes Scott Lincicome writes in a Washington Post op-ed that government equity stakes represent a dangerous turn in American industrial policy, adding that it abandons decades of market-oriented principles and risks politicizing Intels decision-making. With the U.S. government as its largest shareholder, Intel will face constant pressure to align corporate decisions with the goals of whatever political party is in power, he cautions.
All of these companies saw their stock prices rise, in some cases dramatically, after their government investments were announced. And most of the companies are still doing well. Intel stock has gained about 53% (calculated from the preannouncement opening price to the closing price on December 18). MP Materials shares have risen 8%. Trilogy Metals is up 113%. Lithium Americas is down 35%.
To tax tips or not? That is a question that will confront lawmakers in states across the U.S. as they convene for work next year.
President Donald Trumps administration is urging states to follow its lead by enacting a slew of new tax breaks for individuals and businesses, including deductions for tips and overtime wages, automobile loans, and business equipment.
In some states, the new federal tax breaks will automatically apply to state income taxes unless legislatures opt out. But in many other states, where tax laws are written differently, the new tax breaks won’t appear on state tax forms unless legislatures opt in.
In states that don’t conform to the federal tax changes, workers who receive tips or overtime for example will pay no federal tax on those earnings but could still owe state taxes on them.
States that embrace all of Trump’s tax cuts could provide hundreds of millions of dollars of annual savings to certain residents and businesses. But that could financially strain states, which are being hit with higher costs because of new Medicaid and SNAP food aid requirements that also are included in the big bill Trump signed.
Most states begin their annual legislative sessions in January. To retroactively change tax breaks for 2025, lawmakers would need to act quickly so tax forms could be updated before people begin filing them. States also could apply the changes to their 2026 taxes, a decision requiring less haste.
So far, only a few states have taken votes on whether to adopt the tax breaks.
States in general are approaching this skeptically,” said Carl Davis, research director at the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Trump’s treasury presses states to ‘immediately conform’
A bill Trump signed on July 4 contains about $4.5 trillion of federal tax cuts over 10 years.
It creates temporary tax deductions for tips, overtime, and loan interest on new vehicles assembled in the U.S. It boosts a tax deduction for older adults. And it temporarily raises cap on state and local tax deductions from $10,000 to $40,000, among other things. The law also provides numerous tax breaks to businesses, including the ability to immediately write off 100% of the cost of equipment and research.
Forty-one states levy individual income taxes on wages and salaries. Forty-four states charge corporate income taxes.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this month called on those states to immediately conform to the federal tax cuts and accused some Democratic-led states that haven’t done so of engaging in “political obstructionism. Though Bessent didn’t mention it, many Republican-led states also have not decided whether to implement the tax deductions.
By denying their residents access to these important tax cuts, these governors and legislators are forcing hardworking Americans to shoulder higher state tax burdens, robbing them of the relief they deserve and exacerbating the financial squeeze on low- and middle-income households, Bessent said.
But some tax analysts contend there’s more for states to consider. The tax break on tips, for example, could apply to nearly 70 occupation fields under a proposed rule from the Internal Revenue Service. But that would still exclude numerous low-wage workers, said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the nonprofit Tax Foundation.
Lawmakers need to consider whether these are worth the cost, Walczak said.
Only a few states offer tax breaks for tips and overtime
Because of the way state tax laws are written, the federal tax breaks for tips and overtime wages would have carried over to just seven states Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, and South Carolina. But Colorado opted out of the state tax break for overtime shortly before the federal law was enacted.
Michigan this fall became first and, so far, only state to opt into the tax breaks for tips and overtime wages, effective in 2026. The overtime tax exemption is projected to cost the state nearly $113 million and the tips tax break about $45 million during its current budget year, according to the state treasury department.
Michigan lawmakers offset that by decoupling from five federal corporate tax changes the state’s treasury estimated would have reduced Michigan tax revenues by $540 million this budget year.
Republican state Rep. Ann Bollin, chair of the Michigan House Appropriations Committee, said the state could not afford to embrace all the tax cuts while still investing in better roads, public safety, and education.
The best path forward is to have more money in peoples pockets and have less regulation and this kind of moved in that direction, she said.
Arizona could be among the next states to act. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has called upon lawmakers to adopt the tax breaks for tips, overtime, seniors, and vehicle loans, and follow the federal government by also increasing the state’s standard deduction for individual income taxpayers. Republican state House leaders said they stand ready to pass the tax cuts when their session begins Jan. 12.
Several states have rejected corporate tax breaks
In addition to Michigan, lawmakers in Delaware, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island have passed measures to block some or all of the corporate tax cuts from taking effect in their states.
A new Illinois law decoupling from a portion of the corporate tax changes could save the state nearly $250 million, said Democratic state Sen. Elgie Sims, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He said that could help ensure continued funding for schools, health care and vital services.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, an outspoken Democratic opponent of Trump, also cited budget concerns for rejecting the corporate tax cut provision. He said states already stand to lose money because of other provisions in Trump’s big bill, such as a requirement to cover more of the costs of running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistanc Program.
The decoupling is an effort to try to hold back the onslaught from the federal government to make sure that we can support programs like the one were announcing today, Pritzker told reporters at a December event publicizing a grant to address homelessness in central Illinois.
David A. Lieb, Associated Press
Associated Press writer John O’Connor contributed to this report.
Visa and Mastercard have agreed to pay $167.5 million to settle a long-running class action lawsuit. The suit, which was first filed back in October 2011, accused the two major credit card companies of conspiring to keep ATM fees artificially high.
If approved, the proposed settlement filed on Thursday in Washington will bring an end to “almost fourteen years of vigorously contested litigation.” The lawsuit alleged that both Visa and Mastercard “participated in an unlawful conspiracy” to block independent ATM operators from offering lower prices.
The settlement, if approved, will have Visa and Mastercard pay millions to ATM users who say they were charged an unreimbursed access fee to withdraw cash from independent non-bank ATMs. Per a Guardian report, Visa is set to pay 53% of the settlement ($88.8 million) while Mastercard will contribute 47% ($78.7 million).
Attorneys for the plaintiffs called the settlement an excellent result in light of the risks of continued prosecution. Attorneys for the defendants did not immediately reply to a Fast Company request for comment.
Last year, Visa and Mastercard also agreed to pay $197.5 million to ATM users who claimed they were overcharged at bank-operated ATMs. At the time, the plaintiffs’ attorneys said the settlement will “deliver immediate and assured relief.” That settlement followed a 2021 settlement in which major bankssuch as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargoagreed to pay $66 million to settle similar claims.
Still, the lawsuits against the two major credit card companies are not over, as a third lawsuit, launched by independent ATM owners and operators, is pending against the companies.
“The rules prevent ATM operators from passing on the savings to cardholders when their ATM transactions are handled by an ATM network other than Visa or Mastercard,” Jonathan Rubin, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in 2023 when announcing that the lawsuit would continue to move forward. At the time, he added that the suit will ask the court to eliminate rules that all but eliminate competition.
Despite Thursday’s settlement, the companies have denied any wrongdoing.
Ford is recalling more than 270,000 electric and hybrid vehicles in the U.S. because of a parking function problem that could lead to them rolling away.
The Detroit automaker said that the recall includes certain 2022-2026 F-150 Lightning BEV, 2024-2026 Mustang Mach-E, and 2025-2026 Maverick vehicles. At issue is the integrated park module, which may fail to lock into the park position when the driver shifts into park.
Ford said that it will implement a park module software update for free.
Vehicle owners may contact Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332 for additional information.
