Facebook parent Meta has reached nuclear power deals with three companies as it continues to look for electricity sources for its artificial intelligence data centers.Meta struck agreements with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra for nuclear power for its Prometheus AI data center that is being built in New Albany, Ohio. Meta announced Prometheus, which will be a 1-gigawatt cluster spanning across multiple data center buildings, in July. It’s anticipated to come online this year.Financial terms of the deals with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra were not disclosed.The Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta said in a statement on Friday that the three deals will support up to 6.6 gigawatts of new and existing clean energy by 2035.“These projects add reliable and firm power to the grid, reinforce America’s nuclear supply chain, and support new and existing jobs to build and operate American power plants,” the company said.Meta said its agreement with TerraPower will provide funding that supports the development of two new Natrium units capable of generating up to 690 megawatts of firm power with delivery as early as 2032. The deal also provides Meta with rights for energy from up to six other Natrium units capable of producing 2.1 gigawatts and targeted for delivery by 2035.Meta will also buy more than 2.1 gigawatts of energy from two operating Vistra nuclear power plants in Ohio, in addition to the energy from expansions at the two Ohio plants and a third Vistra plant in Pennsylvania.The deal with Oklo, which counts OpenAI’s Sam Altman as one of its largest investors, will help to develop a 1.2 gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio to support Meta’s data centers in the region.The nuclear power agreements come after Meta announced in June that it reached a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy.
Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
In a remarkable rebuke of Republican leadership, the House passed legislation Thursday that would extend expired health care subsidies for those who get coverage through the Affordable Care Act as 17 renegade GOP lawmakers joined every Democrat in support.The tally, 230-196, signified growing political concern over Americans’ health care costs. Forcing the issue to a vote came about after a handful of Republicans signed on to a so-called “discharge petition” to unlock debate, bypassing objections from House Speaker Mike Johnson. The bill now goes to the Senate, where pressure is building for a bipartisan compromise.Together, the rare political coalitions are rushing to resolve the standoff over the enhanced tax credits that were put in place during the COVID-19 crisis but expired late last year after no agreement was reached during the government shutdown.“The affordability crisis is not a ‘hoax,’ it is very real despite what Donald Trump has had to say,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, invoking the president’s remarks.“Democrats made clear before the government was shut down that we were in this affordability fight until we win this affordability fight,” he said. “Today we have an opportunity to take a meaningful step forward.”Ahead of voting, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill, which would provide a three-year extension of the subsidy, would increase the nation’s deficit by about $80.6 billion over the decade. At the same time, it would increase the number of people with health insurance by 100,000 this year, 3 million in 2027, 4 million in 2028 and 1.1 million in 2029, the CBO said.
Growing support for extending ACA subsidies
Johnson, R-La., worked for months to prevent this situation. His office argued Thursday that the federal health care funding from the COVID-19 era is rife with fraud and urged a no vote.On the floor, Republicans also argued that the lawmakers should be focused on lowering health insurance costs for the broader population, not just those enrolled in ACA plans.“Only 7% of the population relies on Obamacare marketplace plans. This chamber should be about helping 100% of Americans,” said Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.While the momentum from the vote shows the growing support for the tax breaks that have helped some 22 million Americans have access to health insurance, the Senate would be under no requirement to take up the House bill and has already rejected it once before.Instead, a small group of senators from both parties has been working on an alternative plan that could find support in both chambers and become law. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that for any plan to find support in his chamber, it will need to have income limits to ensure that the financial aid is focused on those who most need the help. He and other Republicans also want to ensure that beneficiaries would have to at least pay a nominal amount for their coverage.Finally, Thune said there would need to be some expansion of health savings accounts, which allow people to save money and withdraw it tax-free as long as the money is spent on qualified medical expenses.GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, a leader in the group of about a dozen senators, said they hope to deliver a framework next week. He and others met with House colleagues on options.Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who is part of the negotiations, said there is agreement on addressing fraud in health care.“We recognize that we have millions of people in this country who are going to lose are losing, have lost their health insurance because they can’t afford the premiums,” Shaheen said. “And so we’re trying to see if we can’t get to some agreement that’s going to help, and the sooner we can do that, the better.”Trump has pushed Republicans to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can bypass the federal government and handle insurance on their own. Democrats largely reject this idea as insufficient for covering the high costs of health care.
Republicans go around their leaders
The action by Republicans to force a vote has been an affront to Johnson and his leadership team, who essentially lost control of what comes to the House floor as the Republican lawmakers joined Democrats for the workaround.After last year’s government shutdown failed to resolve the issue, Johnson had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on another health care bill that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes.But after days of discussions, Johnson and the GOP leadership sided with the more conservative wing, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up ACA, which they consider a failed government program. He offered a modest proposal of health care reforms that was approved, but has stalled.It was then that rank-and-file lawmakers took matters into their own hands, as many of their constituents faced soaring health insurance premiums beginning this month.Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York, signed the Democrats’ petition, pushing it to the magic number of 218 needed to force a House vote. All four represent key swing districts whose races will help determine which party takes charge of the House next year.Jeffries said in a celebratory press conference afterward that Thune should bring the Democratic bill to the Senate floor for an immediate vote.
Trump encourages GOP to take on health care issue
What started as a long shot effort by Democrats to offer a discharge petition has become a political vindication of the Democrats’ government shutdown strategy as they fought to preserve the health care funds.Democrats are making clear that the higher health insurance costs many Americans are facing will be a political centerpiece of their efforts to retake the majority in the House and Senate in the fall elections.Trump, during a lengthy speech this week to House GOP lawmakers, encouraged his party to take control of the health care debate an issue that has stymied Republicans since he tried, and failed, to repeal Obamacare during his first term.
Associated Press writers Matt Brown and Steven Sloan contributed to this report.
Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking, Associated Press
The worlds oceans once again hit a record high temperature in 2025, storing more heat than during any previous year since modern recording began.
That heat is so extreme that its calculated in zettajoules, a measurement equal to one sextillion joules. In 2025 alone, ocean heat increased 23 zettajoulesor 23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy.
That figure is daunting to understand. For comparison, the Hiroshima atomic bomb Little Boy exploded with an energy of about 63,000,000,000,000 joules.
That means in 2025, the amount of heat the oceans absorbed is equivalent to more than 365 million atomic bombsor, as thermal sciences professor John Abraham says, like 12 Hiroshima bombs being detonated each second, for every minute, hour, and day for the entire year.
Put another way, 23 zettajoules is about the same as 37 years of global primary energy consumption (based on 2023 figures). Its more than 200 times the entire global use of electricity.
‘Global warming is really ocean warming’
The figure on ocean warming comes from a new analysis published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, conducted by more than 50 scientists from 31 global research institutions.
Ocean heat is important to pay attention to because its a barometer for climate change. The ocean acts as a heat sink for our emissions.
When humans emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, those gases trap heat on our planet. But the ocean actually absorbs the majority of that heatmore than 90%.
Since the vast majority of global warming heat ends up in the oceans, I like to say global warming really is ocean warming, says Abraham, who helped conduct the analysis.
Rising ocean heat also drives climate impacts, like rising sea levels. Warmer oceans also strengthen heatwaves and worsen extreme weather like hurricanes.
Rising ocean temperatures also hurt marine life, leading to coral bleaching and disrupting food webs. As humans emit more carbon dioxide, that CO2 also dissolves into the ocean, making it more acidic.
A decades-long trend
The ocean has been warming more strongly since the 1990s. When it comes to sea surface temperatureswhich specifically affect weather patterns around the world, like heavier rains and stronger tropical cyclones2025 was the third warmest year on record.
Ocean temperatures have set a new record for each of the past nine years, notes Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, and another author of the analysis.
“It is indicative of the steady heating of our planet,” he says, “which will increase until fossil fuel burning and human-generated carbon emissions cease.”
The analysis of these rising ocean temperatures comes shortly after the Trump administration pulled the United States out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a landmark climate treaty.
Trump cutting ties with the worlds oldest climate treaty is another despicable effort to let corporate fossil fuel interests run our government, Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. Its foolish and downright deadly for Trump to turn his back on the climate devastation ripping across the U.S. and the world.
The Trump administration has also recently cut hundreds of millions of dollars from climate energy research, including for the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Renewable Energy Laboratorywhich Trump actually renamed, in December, to the National Lab of the Rockies.
These cuts will make the U.S. even more vulnerable to climate impacts, experts say.
Research is important to help us plan for the new climate, Abraham says. This research saves us money in the long term and also helps us prepare for extreme weather like hurricanes, droughts, and floods.”
For decades, design followed a singular truth. Whether it was the insistence that form follows function or the later pivot toward form follows emotion, the industry tended to adhere to a simple formula for design thinking: Find your North Star and follow.
But that formula does not fit todays reality.
Form follows X is no longer a clean equation, because X isnt a single variable. Its a constellation that refuses to be reduced to one guiding idea. Modern design across brands, products, and experiences must use a multidimensional approach, speaking to function, feeling, context, narrative, culture, and experience, all at once.
HUMAN EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Some of todays biggest brands are already accomplishing this balancing act.
Rivian offers a clear example of a brand showing up consistently across form, function, and feeling. At its core, Rivian builds electric vehicles, but the brands shift from product to experience is evident far beyond the car itself. From the thoughtful utility of the vehicles, designed for both rugged performance and everyday life, to its immersive retail spaces (think playground, not showroom), and community activations, Rivian operates at the intersection of engineering, lifestyle, and narrative. The result is a brand where technology, adventure, sustainability, and culture weave together to form a truly unique and modern design.
Meanwhile, Netflix released the final episode of Stranger Things in theaters over the holidays, inviting people off their laptops and into the real world to watch the wildly popular show surrounded by super fans. This, combined with its multi-award winning shows in the West End and on Broadway, not to mention the newly launched Netflix House, is a great example of multidimensional thinking.
For these brands, the new formula is clear: Consumers want experiences that operate on multiple dimensions at once.
MULTIDIMENSIONAL DESIGN ARCHITECTURE
To build for this new landscape, designers must move beyond linear thinking into a multidimensional approach, resting on three core pillars:
1. Anchored in narrative
As in-person and digital environments continue to merge, narrative consistency becomes the glue holding an experience together. The brand story must show up authentically, whether someone is scrolling an app, walking through a flagship store, or entering a fully immersive activation.
Nike does this beautifully. From its Run Club to House of Innovation stores to SNKRS drops, every dimension reflects the same core story: aspiration, movement, self-betterment. Each touchpoint has its own texture, but the spirit remains intact.
2. Breaks skill silos
Multidimensional experiences emerge only when traditional design silos are intentionally broken.
Architects, filmmakers, digital designers, spatial designers, game creatorseach carries a different perspective, discipline, constraint, and freedom. Its only when these ways of thinking converge that the richest experiences emerge.
Disney Imagineering stands as perhaps the most iconic example of this intentional barrier breaking, bringing engineers, artists, storytellers, and technologists together to create environments where narrative, architecture, and emotion coexist seamlessly.
3. AI as the new experience engine
AI is accelerating this shift, giving designers tools to create experiences as adaptive as the people who move through them. Picture entering a space that gently responds to your state of mindlighting softens when youre overwhelmed, or the physical environment adjusts like a host who senses what you need before you do. Multidimensional design thinking is building worlds that feel both impossible and inevitable.
Both Spotifys AI DJ and DeepMinds Genie 3 hint at whats coming: hyper-personalized experiences that meet every individual in real time. Its the next frontier of design (and of hospitality).
FROM NORTH STAR TO CONSTELLATION
Multidimensional design recognizes that humans arent one-note, so our products, environments, and stories shouldnt be either. The designers who thrive will be those who can move fluidly between dimensions, choreographing function, emotion, story, and technology into something deeply human.
Brands like Netflix and Rivian are just early examples of whats possible when we embrace every dimension of lived experience.
Andrew Zimmerman is CEO of Journey.
Whether scrambling for a last-minute gift, looking for something belated to send after the holidays, or just thinking ahead to the next birthday on your calendar, the checkout lines gift card rack has probably crossed your mind. Coffee shops, streaming services, big box retailers. You’ve done this dance before. Grab one, stick it in a card, call it a day. It’s easy. It’s simple. It’s also, for a growing number of Americans, starting to feel stale.
Nearly one in five U.S. adults now say they’d rather receive crypto than a gift card this holiday season. That’s according to a new survey from the National Cryptocurrency Association and PayPal, and it’s not a number many saw coming. Gift cards have been the default for decades. They’re what you buy when you don’t know what else to get. But something’s shifting, and it’s worth paying attention to the driver.
WHY CRYPTO IS SHOWING UP ON WISH LISTS
The case against gift cards isn’t complicated. They can expire. They’re tied to a single store or brand. They sit in wallets and junk drawers until someone remembers they exist, and by then, half the value might be gone to fees or fine print. Americans, on average, waste $90 in unused gift cards every year. That’s not a gift; that’s a slow leak.
Crypto doesn’t expire. It’s not locked to a single retailer. And while it can go up or down in value, it has the potential to grow in value. For younger consumers especially, that flexibility matters. According to the survey data, 58% of buyers see the potential for value growth as a real draw. Another 54% like the flexibility and choice that crypto offers. These aren’t abstract preferences; they’re practical.
Think about your cousin who’s been slowly building a digital wallet on the side. For them, getting crypto as a gift isn’t weird or complicated. It’s exciting. It’s something they can save, invest, and even spend at checkout. Around 23% of shoppers planned to use crypto to purchase gifts this past holiday season, and 35% say the top reason they dont shop and pay with digital assets more often is that not enough stores accept crypto payments.
A MODERN GIFT FOR THE CURIOUS
Not everyone wants to learn a new system just to open a present. Crypto is more flexible, sure, and a natural gift for someone already holding crypto. It does ask a bit more of the recipient who is new to crypto. There’s a wallet to set up, an exchange account to pick, and some basic security steps to learn. If the recipient isn’t a little curious about how it all works, the gift can feel more like a homework assignment than a present.
Your grandma, for instance, may not appreciate getting crypto when all she asked for was a coffee from her favorite local spot. And while her go-to coffee shop may accept crypto payments, a gift card might still make more sense for her. It’s familiar, immediately usable, and it doesn’t require her to learn any new tech. But as crypto becomes more mainstreamand millions are becoming more crypto curiousthere are plenty of free resources to learn about it, without the confusing hype or jargon. For example, the Crypto, Explained podcast or NCAs 101 courses and simulator let you practice using crypto, without using real funds.
When gifting crypto, there’s also the volatility question. The value of crypto can shift between when you buy it and when your recipient opens it. That is part of the appeal for some people, but for others, it could be a deterrent. If youre in the latter group, consider stablecoins, a type of crypto designed to stay flat in value. And today, trusted financial companies like PayPal are processing crypto transactions and managing price changes behind the scenes so the merchant and consumer are unaffected.
WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT WHERE WE’RE HEADED
The fact that crypto is even in the conversation as a holiday gift option says something about how far digital assets have come. A few years ago, this would have sounded like a tech enthusiast’s fantasy. Now crypto is showing up in gifting, shopping, donating, and beyond.
Retailers are watching this closely. Payment platforms are too. The gift card industry isn’t going to disappear overnight, but it’s facing real competition for the first time in a long time (or maybe ever). And the competitors aren’t other retailers; they’re entirely different ways of thinking about value, ownership, and flexibility.
For consumers, the takeaway is simple: You have more options now than you did a few years ago. Whether that means grabbing a gift card from the rack or sending some crypto to your friends wallet depends on who you’re buying for and what they actually want. The point isn’t that one is better than the other. It’s that the choice exists at all.
SO WHO’S THIS GIFT REALLY FOR?
Know your audience. If you’re buying for someone who already holds crypto, or who’s been curious about getting started, this could be the moment to skip the gift card aisle, whether it’s for a belated holiday gift, an upcoming birthday, or just because.
Gift cards had a good run. And they’re not going anywhere just yet. But for a surprisingly large slice of the country, crypto is starting to feel like the more interesting option. That shift in consumer behavior, quiet as it is, might be the most telling thing about whats to come next.
Stu Alderoty is president of the National Cryptocurrency Association.
Luigi Mangione is due in federal court Friday for a pivotal hearing in his fight to bar the government from seeking the death penalty against him in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.Mangione’s lawyers contend that authorities prejudiced his case by turning his December 2024 arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle and by publicly declaring their desire to see him executed even before he was formally indicted.If that doesn’t work, they argue, the charge that has enabled the government to seek the death penalty murder by firearm should be thrown out because it is legally flawed.Federal prosecutors say Mangione’s lawyers are wrong, countering that the murder charge is legally sufficient and that “pretrial publicity, even when intense” is hardly a constitutional crisis. Any concerns about public perceptions can be alleviated by carefully questioning prospective jurors about their knowledge of the case, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.Mangione has pleaded not guilty to federal and state murder charges, which carry the possibility of life in prison.Friday’s hearing, Mangione’s first trip to Manhattan federal court since his April 25 arraignment, is also expected to cover the defense’s bid to exclude certain evidence. U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett has said she also plans to set a trial date.A cause célbre for people upset with the health insurance industry, Mangione’s court appearances have draw dozens of supporters, some of whom wear green clothing or carry signs expressing solidarity with him.Mangione’s lawyers have asked the judge to bar the government from using certain items found in a backpack during his arrest, arguing that the search was illegal because police had not yet obtained a warrant.Those items include a gun that police said matched the one used to kill Thompson and a notebook in which he purportedly described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.One big question is whether Garnett will need to hold a separate hearing on the evidence issue like one last month that took three weeks in Mangione’s parallel state murder case.Mangione’s lawyers want one. Prosecutors don’t. They contend police were justified in searching the backpack to make sure there were no dangerous items and that the gun, notebook and other evidence would have eventually been found anyway.Thompson, 50, was killed Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.Mangione, 27, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.He’s already had success paring down his state case. In September, a judge threw out state terrorism charges against him.U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last year that she was directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty, declaring that capital punishment was warranted for a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”Mangione’s lawyers argue that Bondi’s announcement, which she followed with Instagram posts and a TV appearance, showed the decision was “based on politics, not merit.” Her remarks tainted the grand jury process that resulted in his indictment a few weeks later, they said.Bondi’s statements and other official actions, including a choreographed perp walk in which armed officers led Mangione from a Manhattan pier, “have violated Mr. Mangione’s constitutional and statutory rights and have fatally prejudiced this death penalty case,” his lawyers said.On Wednesday, federal prosecutors pushed back on what they said were the defense’s “meritless” and “misleading” claims that Bondi’s decision was tainted by her past work as a lobbyist for a firm whose clients include UnitedHealthcare’s parent company.
Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister, Associated Press
Hiring likely remained subdued last month as many companies have sought to avoid expanding their workforces, though the job gains may be enough to bring down the unemployment rate.December’s jobs report, to be released Friday, is likely to show that employers added a modest 55,000 jobs, economists forecast. That figure would be below November’s 64,000 but an improvement after the economy lost jobs in October. The unemployment rate is expected to slip to 4.5%, according to data provider FactSet, from a four-year high of 4.6% in November.The figures will be closely watched on Wall Street and in Washington because they will be the first clean readings on the labor market in three months. The government didn’t issue a report in October because of the six-week government shutdown, and November’s data was distorted by the closure, which lasted until Nov. 12.Another wrinkle: The economy lost 105,000 jobs in October, mostly because federal government employment fell 162,000, reflecting a purge of federal workers earlier last year by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. That drop won’t be repeated.Still, sluggish hiring in December would underscore a key conundrum surrounding the economy as it enters 2026: Growth has picked up to healthy levels, yet hiring has weakened noticeably and the unemployment rate has increased in the last four jobs reports.Most economists expect hiring will accelerate this year as growth remains solid. Yet they acknowledge there are other possibilities: Weak job gains could drag down future growth. Or the economy could keep expanding at a healthy clip, while automation and the spread of artificial intelligence reduces the need for more jobs.Economists do expect Friday’s jobs report to have some good news, driven partly by a rebound from the government shutdown, which likely drove a higher unemployment rate in November. Still, should the rate remain at 4.6% or even tick higher, that would be a cause for concern.“I’m really looking for a lot of that weakness to reverse in December,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Yale Budget Lab, “and if it doesn’t, I am going to start getting much iffier about the labor market.”Either way, December’s report will cap a year of sluggish hiring, particularly after “liberation day” in April when President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, though many were later delayed or softened.The economy generated an average of 111,000 jobs a month in the first three months of the year. But that pace dropped to just 11,000 in the three months ended in August, before rebounding slightly to 22,000 in November.Even those figures are likely to be revised lower in February, when the government completes an annual benchmarking of the jobs figures to an actual count of jobs derived from companies’ unemployment insurance filings. A preliminary estimate of that revision showed it could reduce total jobs as of March 2025 by 911,000.And last month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the government could still be overstating job gains by about 60,000 a month because of shortcomings in how it accounts for new companies as well as those that have gone out of business. The Labor Department is expected to update those methods in its report next month.Last November, the U.S. economy had just 770,000 more jobs than 12 months earlier, down from 1.9 million in the 12 months ending in November 2024 and the smallest yearly gain since early 2021. The benchmark revisions next month will likely reduce that figure even further.With hiring so weak, the Federal Reserve cut its key short-term interest rate three times late last year, in an effort to boost borrowing, spending, and hiring. Yet Powell signaled that the central bank may keep its rate unchanged in the coming months as it evaluates how the economy evolves.Should December’s jobs report come in surprisingly weak, it could strengthen case for a rate reduction at the Fed’s next meeting Jan. 27-28.Even with such sluggish job gains, the economy has continued to expand, with growth reaching a 4.3% annual rate in last year’s July-September quarter, the best in two years. Strong consumer spending helped drive the gain. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta forecasts that growth could slow to a still-solid 2.7% in the final three months of last year.Many economists are optimistic that growth will pick up in 2026, in part because Trump’s tax legislation, approved last summer, should lead to outsize tax refunds this spring. If growth does accelerate, it’s possible hiring may as well. At the same time, there are signs that companies are using technology and other tools to make their workers more efficient, which can spur growth without requiring more jobs.At the same time, inflation remains elevated, eroding the value of Americans’ paychecks. Consumer prices rose 2.7% in November compared with a year ago, little changed from the beginning of the year and above the Fed’s 2% target.
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
Fans of Macy’s Inc. will be disappointed to learn that the iconic department store has announced its next round of store closures. Fourteen Macys locations in 12 states will shutter as a result of this move. Heres why and when the closures will take place.
Whats happened?
On Thursday, Macys published a letter from CEO Tony Spring to its employees updating them on the companys A Bold New Chapter strategy, which the department store chain unveiled in February 2024.
As part of that strategy, Macys announced at the time that it would be closing 150 underproductive stores through the end of 2026. Fast Company previously reported on 66 stores marked for closure in January 2025.
In his Thursday letter, Spring said that the Bold New Chapter strategy, which includes simplifying operations and investing in customer experiences that its shoppers value most, is working.
We are seeing customers respond through strong performance in our go-forward business, record Net Promoter Scores, and improved results over the first three quarters, Spring stated.
As a point used to highlight the A Bold New Chapters success, Spring said that the strategys Reimagine element, which is seeing Macys invest in 125 of its best-performing stores, was paying off. Those stores saw comparative sales grow 2.7% in the third quarter, which Spring said was the result of investment in those stores elevated merchandising, store design, and customer experience.
Unfortunately for some Macys employees, Spring also confirmed that the next round of store closures is beginning now.
How many Macys stores are closing?
Springs memo confirmed that Macys will close additional stores. Axios reported earlier that 14 stores that are closing in this round, and those store locations have also been marked with the notation This location is closing on Macys store locator tool.
The 14 stores are believed to be part of the 150 locations Macys previously said would close by the end of 2026 as part of its A Bold New Chapter strategy.
When will the Macy’s stores close?
In a FAQ about the store closures, Macys says the stores impacted will begin their clearance sales this month, and those sales will go on for approximately 10 weeks.
That places the closing date for these 14 locations at around the third week in March.
“These decisions are not made lightly,” Spring said in his letter. “We communicated directly with affected colleagues first and are providing support, including transfer opportunities where available, as well as severance and outplacement resources where applicable.
Which Macys stores are closing?
Fourteen Macys stores will be closing in this round. Those 14 stores are located in 12 states. Fast Company has reached out to Macy’s to confirm. The stores include:
California
Grossmont Center: 5500 Grossmont Center Drive, La Mesa, CA 91942
West Valley Mall: 3200 Naglee Rd, Tracy, CA 95304
Georgia
Northlake Mall: 4880 Briarcliff Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30345
Maryland
Marley Station: 7900 Ritchie Highway, Glen Burnie, MD 21061
Michigan
Rivertown Crossings: 3850 Rivertown Parkway SW, Grandville, MI 49418
Minnesota
Crossroads Center: 4101 West Division Street, St Cloud, MN 56301
New Hampshire
Fox Run: 50 Fox Run Road, Newington, NH 03801
New Jersey
Livingston Mall: 112 Eisenhower Parkway, Livingston, NJ 07039
Interstate Shopping Center: 225 Interstate Shopping Center, Ramsey, NJ 07446
New York
Boulevard Mall: 1255 Niagara Falls Boulevard, Amherst, NY 14226
North Carolina
Triangle Town Center: 3801 Sumner Boulevard, Raleigh, NC 27616
Pennsylvania
Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills: 100 Pittsburgh Mills Cir, Tarentum, PA 15084
Texas
La Palmera Mall: 5488 S Padre Island Dr Ste 5000. Corpus Christi, TX 78411
Washington
Parkway Super Center: 17855 Southcenter Pkwy, Tukwila, WA 98188
How has Macys store reacted?
Yesterday, when Macys published Springs letter, the companys stock price (NYSE: M) closed up for the day, around 5.5% to $23.72 per share.
However, the gain in shares probably has little to do with the announcement of the closure of those 14 stores, as the company has long informed investors that it plans to close 150 locations by the end of this year.
Instead, the share price gain was most likely driven by Spring’s comments about the companys 2.7% comp growth in its Reimagine stores and 9% comp sales growth in its Bloomingdales stores in the third quarter.
With yesterdays share price jump, Macys shares are now up 7.57% for the year as of the time of this writing. Over the past 12 months, Macys shares have jumped nearly 48% and in the last few months have traded around levels not seen since January 2023.
Welcome to the first Fast Companys Plugged In of 2026, and Happy New Year to you.
More than 18 years ago, as the internet was transforming how we consume everything from news to music, someone called books the last bastion of analog. That someone happened to be Jeff Bezos. And he made the observation in a Steven Levy Newsweek article about Amazons original Kindle e-reader, a device designed to drag books into the digital age.
Bezoss comment resurfaced in my consciousness last week, as I read a New York Times article by Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter on how the book publishing business fared in 2025. The upshot: It did pretty well overall, and remains a surprisingly analog enterprise.
To be clear, the internet in generaland Amazon in particularhas transformed how we buy and consume books. Market share figures for booksellers are tough to come by, but estimates show the company controlling 50% or more of print book sales, leaving chains such as Barnes & Noble and independents to jostle for whats left. Thats before you account for e-books and audiobooks, where Amazons Kindle and Audible platforms are overwhelmingly dominant.
Despite that, paper books remain popular, and many people choose to buy them at brick-and-mortar stores. As of mid-December, roughly three-quarters of the 707 million books sold last year were of the traditional, dead-tree variety. In the first 10 months, e-books accounted for only 11% of revenue, down from 17% in 2016. The American Booksellers Associations ranks swelled by 422 new shopsindependent ones, not chain operations. On top of that, we got dozens of new Barnes & Noble locations, with more on their way.
All of that suggests that books in their classic form arent just running on fumes of nostalgia or consumer inertia. Much of whats delightful about the whole experience of engaging with the medium is inherently physical, in ways that other mediamusic, movies, newspapers, magazinesare not.
I knew that a year ago when I declared that I was going to go out of my way to read dead-tree tomes in 2025, starting with the tower of them stacked on my nightstand. Taking the time to do so was a rewarding experience, and though life interfered with me reading as many as Id hoped, Im looking forward to continuing the quest in 2026 and beyond.
As I wrote in that newsletter, Im hardly an e-book hater. Theyre often cheaper than print equivalents. They let you carry your entire library wherever you go. They can be easily searched. For nonfiction volumes being read for research purposesa meaningful chunk of my book consumptionthey beat print as the best overall format.
Still, as I also wrote back then, e-books havent lived up to their full potential. Typographically and layout-wise, they remain rudimentary compared to paper. And even when they do things that print cant, they dont always do them well.
Thats been my experience with a new AI-powered Kindle feature called Ask this book. Introduced last month for thousands of titles in the Kindle iPhone and iPad apps, it lets you use a chatbot-style interface to pose questions about a books contents. To avoid spoilers, it defaults to its answers reflecting only what youve read so far.
The tool has proven controversial, in part because authors arent compensated and cant opt out. But when I tried it with my Kindle edition of Walter Isaacsons Steve Jobs, the big problem was that it was terrible. Its responses repeatedly mangled factual material, from the circumstances of Jobs time at Reed College to the year the iPod was introduced. They also failed to provide any citations, rendering them useless as entry points for additional reading within the e-book.
Ask this book does have the potential to evolve into something more interesting and useful. But when it comes to the shopping experience, for both digital and print books, Amazon has been marching in the wrong direction for years. Author Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to describe how tech products tend to grow customer-hostile over time. In his new book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, he declares Amazon to have reached a terminal stage of the phenomenon.
Indeed, the companys original taglineEarths biggest bookstorenow feels more like a threat than a promise. Even if you cut the company some slack for offering a shopping experience thats relentlessly utilitarian rather than intellectually stimulating, the place is in shambles. Search results are smothered with unrelated sponsored links and blatantly AI-generated junk books. Pages devoted to specific authors may be missing books, or, worse, list ones they didnt write. The search results for John Grisham started with a paperback copy of his 2002 novel The Summons for an absurd $51.76, with an estimated delivery turnaround of up to two weekseven though Amazon also has it for under 10 bucks with free Prime overnight shipping.
For decades, the fact that local book shops couldnt compete with Amazons massive inventory seemed like an existential weakness. But the best ones curate their selections in ways that offer a powerful alternative to Amazons unedited sprawl. To my knowledge, no online merchant has replicated the artful serendipity of brick-and-mortar book browsing, where wandering the aisles and stumbling across stuff you never knew existed is part of the point, not a distraction.
Recently, I did much of my holiday gift shopping at one of my favorite Bay Area bookstores, Menlo Parks Keplers. A large storebut not a completely enormous oneits a joy to get lost in. I didnt have to elbow my way past AI slop or sponsored chum, and emerged with a stack of books I would never have discovered through online shopping.
Unlike Amazon, Keplers doesnt offer discounts off list price. Actually, it tacks on a small surcharge to pay its employees a living wage. I am happy to pay it. The 70-year-old store, which almost went out of business in 2005, doesnt feel like a relic. Instead, like every good bookstore, its an idea too vibrant to be rendered irrelevant by technology. Its heartening to think the publishing industry has settled into a groove that will keep such neighborhood gems viable for years to come.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on fastcompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompay.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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One of Ikeas most popular lamps of the past several yearsnicknamed the donut lampis about to get a smart, colorful upgrade.
The original donut lamp debuted back in 2023 as part of Ikeas 20-piece Varmblixt collection with the Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis. With its glossy orange glass and soft, retro glow, the lamp quickly emerged as a fan favorite: In the three years since its debut, Ikea says one donut lamp has sold every five minutes in the U.S. Its the companys best-selling lamp, both in the U.S. and worldwide.
Given the lamps popularity, Ikea has teamed up with Marcelis for a new version, this time featuring a smart function that allows it to cycle through a curated palette of colors. The new donut lamp will be available for $99.99 starting in April, alongside a $149.99 color-changing version of a pendant lamp that also debuted as part of the original Varmblixt collection.
[Photo: Ikea]
The updated lamps come as Ikea is investing more into its smart products with a new range of easy-to-use bulbs, sensors, and smart plugs that debuted in November. Both the donut lamp and the pendant lamp are compatible with Ikeas smart home system hub, Dirigera, as well as Matter, the smart home technical standard that undergirds the rest of the companys smart home tech. This new integration signals that as smart systems become more central to Ikeas product approach, we might see the company begin to integrate new functions into more of its most popular items.
[Photo: Ikea]
How the donut became Ikeas most popular lamp
Theres a pretty good chance that youve stumbled across Ikeas donut lamp on your feeds. Since 2023, the lamp has gone viral multiple times among design enthusiasts. It’s become so ubiquitous that Marcelis says shes often walked past houses and seen it glowing through the windows.
It was pretty wild how viral it went, she says. When designing Varmblixt, I wanted to create timeless pieces that could be interpreted in many ways. The fact that the lamp can be both wall mounted and used as a table lamp already makes it very versatile. It’s a lamp that even if you have nothing else in a room, it works.
On TikTok and Instagram Reels, the donut lamp has generated an entire subgenre of videos dedicated to donut lamp hacks that use colorful electrical tape pasted over the interior bulb to darken the hue of the lamp. But with the smart donut lamp, Ikea fans will no longer need to risk overheating tape to curate their own lighting vibe.
[Photo: Ikea]
The donut lamp gets a colorful facelift
To make the smart donut lamp compatible with a range of colors, Marcelis traded the originals glossy orange surface for a matte white exterior that lets the interior bulbs colors shine through.
Its soft in texture and void of color, making the internal light source and colors it creates inside the volume glow in a really soft, diffused manner on the shell, Marcelis says.
Users can choose to connect the lamp to the Dirigera hub, which allows them to access a full color spectrum of more than 40 hues, adjust light intensity, and fiddle with dimming settings. The lamps default setting, however, is controlled by a remote featuring 12 colors selected by Marcelis specifically for the collection. The sequence moves through different temperatures of white light, into glowing amber and red, followed by soft pink, cool lavender, turquoise, yellow, and back to white.
I wanted the presets that you can vary between with the remote to be 12 specific atmospheres that range from alert work-mode light to party mode and all the way to cozy, calm mode, Marcelis says. I’ve had an early prototype in our guest room for the last six months, and this one pretty small lamp can change the hue of the whole room.
