In 2010, clinical psychiatrist Dale Archer published the New York Times best seller Better Than Normal, a book that highlighted the often-underappreciated benefits of various psychiatric diagnoses.
The book looked at strengths associated with conditions like bipolar disorder, OCD and schizophrenia. But there was one chapter that hit a little too close to home.
After publishing it, Archer asked a colleague to conduct a psychiatric diagnostic on him.
She said, youre off the charts for ADHD, and I go, Yeah, I know, I just wanted validation, he says.
In 2015, Archer published a follow-up book, The ADHD Advantage, focusing on some of the more positive attributes of his condition. In it, he profiled high achievers with ADHD, including the most successful athlete in Olympics history, Michael Phelps, comedian, actor and television host Howie Mandel, and Jet Blue founder David Neeleman.
Archers research ultimately led him to a hypothesis that has yet to be proven in a clinical study: That ADHDand all psychiatric diagnoses, for that matterexists on a continuum, which he plots on a 10-point scale. Those who score four and below might not even know they have the condition, those who score nine or higher are likely to struggle in everyday life and may require medication.
Those who were featured in his book fell between five and eight. Those in that range often report struggling in certain domains, while enjoying advantages in others.
According to Archer, though, that range is a sweet spot: one associated with above-average resilience and creativity. These folks also enjoy multitasking, remain calm in crisis, are more outgoing and can hyperfocus on things theyre passionate about.
ADHD Remains a Mystery and a Paradox
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, better known as ADHD, is a developmental disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity and/or impulsivity, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. It is also legally classified as a disability under The Americans with Disabilities Act.
While our understanding of the disorder has come a long way in recent years, there is still a lot we dont yet know. To make matters more confusing, much of what we do know seems paradoxical.
On the one hand, many with ADHD feel almost paralyzed by mundane tasks, struggle in traditional academic and workplace settings and suffer other mental health challengesincluding anxiety, depression, substance abuse and eating disordersat higher rates. They are also more likely to have unplanned pregnancies, get into car accidents and even have shorter average lifespans.
On the other, many are also more creative, entrepreneurial and intuitive. In fact, some of the worlds highest achieversincluding Simone Biles, Paris Hilton, Michael Jordan, Greta Gerwig, Richard Branson and Jamie Olivercredit ADHD for their success.
One person might experience it as a disability, and that’s really critical, because ADHD does cause functional impairment, explains Sarah Greenberg, a licensed psychotherapist for neurodivergence nonprofit Understood.org. ADHD also comes with a certain set of strengths, particularly when the environment is a right fit for that brain.
A Mixed Bag of Strengths and Struggles
Rather than viewing the condition on a continuum, Greenberg sees neurodiversity as creating jagged profiles, meaning many with neurological differences overperform in some areas and underperform in others.
I’ll be interviewing someone who is an incredible leader, incredible manager, very good at relationships, but cant really keep friendships, because theyre very bad at texting back or remembering birthdays, she explains.
Thats why Greenberg encourages those who work with, live with, love or have other close ties to someone with ADHD not take certain characteristics of the condition personally.
For example, many with ADHD struggle to sense how much time has passedoften referred to as time blindnessmaking lateness a chronic challenge.
If Im in a relationship with someone and theyre always 10 minutes late, Im naturally going to take that personally, like they dont respect my time, Greenberg says. That assumed intention is really going to impact the relationship, and we see it all the time in the workplace.
Cognitive Wheelchairs and Ramps
There are a lot of everyday activities that present obstacles for those with ADHD, and access to support can make a real difference.
Take someone who is unable to walk: If they have access to a wheelchair and a ramp, they can access the building, so they’re less disabled in that experience, explains Megan Anna Neff, an author, clinical psychologist and founder of Neurodivergent Insights, an online neurodiversity education and resource platform.
How disabled we are happens at the intersection between our impairment and our environment. Most schools and most workplaces are not built for ADHD brains, so that is why it’s a disability.
Neff explains that the medical model of disability tends to be binaryyou either have a disability, or you dontwhile the social model takes into account environmental factors.
A lot of older strategies are about trying to make the ADHD brain less ADHD, she says. [The social model] is more about: How do we understand the ADHD brain so we can actually work with it?
Neff believes ADHD should be classified as a disability so that those who need the support, resources and legal prtections can continue to access them. However, its also important to acknowledge that many with ADHD do not consider themselves disabled, and shouldnt be labelled as such.
When we have structures and environments where they can support that divergent thinkingwhen we can channel our interest into our career or creativity or out of the box thinkingthere absolutely are powerful things that can come of that, she says.
Having control over her work environment has allowed Neff to thrive as a medical professional with ADHD and autism.
Greenberg of Understood.org says she joined the organization as a psychotherapist with ADHD to study learning differences and apply those strategies to organizations of all shapes and sizes.
Dale Archer jokes he was only able to make it through medical school by accepting that he did his best work by procrastinating until a creeping deadline triggered his hyperfocus as a crisis response.
Like them, I too struggled in traditional academic and workplace settings, but have gone on to have a successful career as a freelance journalist and author not despite my ADHDbut because of it.
As our collective understanding of neurodiversity expands, those with ADHD are finding ways to better leverage many natural strengths and overcome our natural challenges.
The tech industry’s top leaders have a not insignificant amount of sway over the White House. But after a masked ICE agent killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, less than a month after federal agents also shot and killed Renee Good, many are still choosing to remain silent, showing just how tied to President Trumps administration Big Tech has become.
Now, their employees are piling on the pressure for their CEOs to speak out.
More than 800 tech workers from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter urging their CEOs to wield their influence and call the White House to demand that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leave U.S. cities.
“Tech professionals are speaking up against this brutality, and we call on all our colleagues who share our values to use their voice,” states the letter organized by ICEout.tech. “We know our industry leaders have leverage: in October, they persuaded Trump to call off a planned ICE surge in San Francisco.”
The letter also calls on tech companies to end their contracts with ICE. AWS (Amazon Web Services) currently provides ICE with data storage services, while Motorola Solutions was awarded a $15.6 million contract in 2023 to implement and maintain ICEs tactical communication infrastructure.
In October, Apple and Google removed apps that alerted people when ICE agents were nearby. Even Palantir employees have started openly questioning the work the company is doing with the Department of Homeland Security, according to a recent Wired report.
Promised a friendlier regulatory environment, tech CEOs have largely stayed silent throughout Trump’s second term and have readily appeared at public events to promote the president’s agenda.
As OpenAIs head of global business, James Dyett noted on X: There is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets. He continued, Tells you what you need to know about the values of our industry.
Target, UnitedHealth, Best Buy, and other Minnesota-based companies issued a joint statement Sunday, calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.
The statement’s tentative language was met with criticism, failing to outright condemn the shooting of Pretti or Good or urge the administration to remove ICE from the Twin Cities. Still, experts say it was significant, and marks a tipping point in the situation.
While some have chosen to remain silent, other notable tech figures have used their platforms to speak out.
Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, wrote: To everyone in my industry who’s ever claimed to value freedomdraw on the courage of your convictions and stand up.”
Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla posted: “ICE personnel must have ice water running thru their veins to treat other human beings this way. There is politics but humanity should transcend that.
Anthropic cofounder Chris Olah said he also felt compelled to say something. “I generally believe the best way I can serve the world is as a non-partisan expert, and my genuine beliefs are quite moderate,” he said on X.
“So the bar is very high for me to comment. But recent eventsa federal agent killing an ICU nurse for seemingly no reason and with no provocationshock the conscience.”
In its latest round of mass layoffs, Amazon is eliminating 16,000 jobsfollowing a round of 14,000 cuts back in the fall. The tech giant did not cite artificial intelligence in a memo to employees, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has previously denied that the company is slashing headcount due to AI. But theres no denying AI plays a role, whether or not these layoffs can actually be attributed to it.
Jassy has explicitly said that adopting AI across Amazon will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains. Even though there is limited data to suggest AI is directly responsible for the scourge of layoffs across corporate America, plenty of CEOs have made clear that they believe the technology will transform their workplaces, and that their employees need to get on board.
Workers are listeningand they’re anxious about what widespread AI adoption means for their job prospects in a challenging market.
A new report from Indeed surveyed over 2,000 workers and found that AI is a major concern, with over a third of them saying it will negatively impact their job opportunities and career growth. In fact, AI nudged out burnout as the leading concern among job seekers. For 40% of employers, adopting AI is a major focus in 2026but 35% of job seekers see this as a troubling shift.
Your employees know AI isnt going away and will impact their work, Matt Berndt, the head of Indeeds Job Search Academy, said in a blog post. The big question is how? This unknown breeds uncertainty, and thats the disconnect: Both employers and workers are using AI, but they dont understand or trust how the other is using it. This isnt a tech problem; its human.
Economists have argued there is little evidence that AI is already displacing workers in high numbers, even in sectors that are more vulnerable to its effects. Still, employees across corporate America have reason to fret over AI: In just the last month, several companies have explicitly cited AI in layoff announcements. Pinterest will be laying off 15% of its workforce this year, in an effort to redirect resources to teams that are working on AI. Citigroup already cut 1,000 jobs in January, and CEO Jane Fraser has teased more layoffs later this year due to AI and automation. This report also aligns with the broader sentiment around AI adoption: Public opinion polling has repeatedly shown that Americans fear AI will usher in sweeping job losses.
Indeeds report also captures a fundamental disconnect between employers and rank and file workers. The overwhelming majority of employers are convinced they know what their workforce wants, according to Indeedthough their employees largely disagree. Half of employers also seem to think the job market is actually improving, while 40% of workers believe it is only getting worse. Many employers are worried about budgets and cost reduction, while two-thirds of workers are jockeying for a raise.
In spite of these findings, one thing employers and their workers might actually agree on is that burnout is loomingperhaps now more than ever.
For workers, burnout is a major concern, not far behind AI. Employers claim to be most concerned with employee wellbeing and burnout, while also anticipating that the 996 schedulethe 72-hour work week that is growing more popular across AI companieswill take over more workplaces.
Nearly 40% of employers said they expect longer work weeks, per the Indeed report, even as 46% of job seekers cited work life balance as a top priority. As they face increasing pressure from their employers to embrace AI, its little surprise that workers are not exactly optimistic about what 2026 has in store.
U.S. life expectancy rose to 79 years in 2024 the highest mark in American history.It’s the result of not only the dissipation of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also waning death rates from all the nation’s top killers, including heart disease, cancer and drug overdoses.What’s more, preliminary statistics suggest a continued improvement in 2025.“It’s pretty much good news all the way around,” said Robert Anderson, of the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released the 2024 data on Thursday.Life expectancy, a fundamental measure of a population’s health, is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, given death rates at that time.For decades, U.S. life expectancy rose at least a little bit almost every year, thanks to medical advances and public health measures. It peaked in 2014, just shy of 79 years.It was relatively flat for several years before plunging as the COVID-19 pandemic killed more than 1.2 million Americans. In 2021, life expectancy fell to just under 76 1/2 years. It has been rebounding since.The data reflect not only a complete turnaround from the pandemic but also a lasting improvement in the drug overdose epidemic, said Andrew Stokes, a researcher at Boston University.The bad news is that the U.S. still ranks below dozens of other countries, Stokes noted.“There’s a lot more to be done,” he said.In 2024, about 3.07 million U.S. residents died, about 18,000 fewer than the year before. Death rates declined across all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men and women.Heart disease remained the nation’s leading cause of death, but the death rate due to it dropped by about 3% for the second year in a row. A combination of factors are likely at play, including advances in medical treatments and weight management, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, who treats and studies heart disease at Northwestern University.Deaths from unintentional injuries a category that includes drug overdoses fell the most, dropping more than 14% in 2024. COVID-19, which only a few years ago was the nation’s No. 3 killer, in 2024 dropped out of the top 10.COVID-19’s fall meant suicide moved into the top 10, even though suicides in 2024 declined. Homicides fell that year, too, this week’s report said.Deaths statistics for 2025 are not finalized, but preliminary data suggest around 3.05 million deaths have been recorded. That number may grow as more death certificates are rounded up and analyzed, but Anderson said he expects last year will end up at least a slight improvement over the 2024.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Mike Stobbe, AP Medical Writer
Some blind and low-vision fans will have unprecedented access to the Super Bowl thanks to a tactile device that tracks the ball, vibrates on key plays and provides real-time audio.The NFL teamed up with OneCourt and Ticketmaster to pilot the game-enhancing experience 15 times during the regular-season during games hosted by the Seattle Seahawks, Jacksonville Jaguars, San Francisco 49ers, Atlanta Falcons and Minnesota Vikings.About 10 blind and low-vision fans will have an opportunity to use the same technology at the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, California, where Seattle will play the New England Patriots on Feb. 8. With hands on the device, they will feel the location of the ball and hear what’s happening throughout the game.Scott Thornhill can’t wait.Thornhill, the executive director of the American Council of the Blind, will be among the fans at Levi’s Stadium with a OneCourt tablet in their lap and Westwood One’s broadcast piped into headphones. He was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa when he was 8, and later lost his sight.“It will allow me to engage and enjoy the game as close as possible as people who can see,” Thornhill told The Associated Press. “As someone who grew up playing sports before I lost my vision, I’m getting a big part of my life back that I’ve been missing. To attend a game and not have to wait for someone to tell me what happened, it’s hard to even describe how much that means to me.“It’s a game-changer.”Clark Roberts experienced it first hand.The Seahawks fan was invited by the team to attend its home game against Indianapolis on Dec. 14 to experience the game with the OneCourt device that is the size of a thick iPad with raised lines outlining a football field.“The device does two wonderful things,” said Roberts, who lost his sight when he was 24 due to retinitis pigmentosa. “It vibrates in different ways for different plays and through headphones, I was able to hear Seattle’s amazing announcer, Steve Raible. Real-time audio is the real beauty of the device because usually when I’m listening to a game, there can be a delay of up to a minute or more and that can be challenging to constantly ask family and friends what happened.“Can you imagine how this can open up everything, not just football?”OneCourt is working on it.It has partnered with NBA and Major League Baseball teams to provide its devices at games and is in talks to make them available with the NHL, along with other leagues and sports organizations all over the world.OneCourt launched in 2023 after founder Jerred Mace saw a blind person attending a soccer match while he was a junior at the University of Washington.The startup with headquarters in Seattle uses the NFL’s tracking data from Genius Sports and translates it into feedback for the device to create unique vibrations for plays such as tackles and touchdowns.The data is generated from cameras and chips embedded in balls, jerseys and elsewhere. The same technology is used by the NFL’s NextGen Stats for health and player safety, statistics and gambling.“It’s a testament to the maturity of the product and our company that we have gone from delivering this to a handful of teams throughout the last year or two to having it at the largest event in American sports,” OneCourt co-founder Antyush Bollini said. “The Super Bowl is such an amazing event and now blind and low-vision fans can use our technology in a way they deserve.”Ticketmaster’s funding for the NFL pilot went toward underwriting the device to make it available to fans for free, according to senior client development director Scott Aller.“This is a very, very big social impact win,” Aller said. “We hope that we can make an investment like this in every single one of our markets.”After some teams approached the league about improving access for all, the NFL has spent the past few months piloting the program and ultimately decided to have the device make its Super Bowl debut.“It’s not lost on us that we have blind to low-vision fans and we want to do right by them,” said Belynda Gardner, senior director of diversity equity and inclusion for the NFL.Gardner said the league has been very encouraged by the pilot and potential of this technology.“We’re reviewing what we learned and evaluating how it can be implemented going forward,” Gardner said. “There aren’t any definitive next steps and we will use the offseason to determine where this technology sits in the NFL’s suite of offerings.”Thomas Rice, a Jaguars fans, who is blind, said he had a seamless experience with the OneCourt device at a game in Jacksonville. Rice picked up the tablet at guest services at EverBank Stadium and after settling in at his seat, he felt and heard football in a new way.“When Trevor Lawrence threw a touchdown pass to Brian Thomas Jr., I felt the ball travel through the air,” Rice said. “When Travis Etienne ran the ball, I could feel it happen along the sideline.”“It was like giving me my own pair of eyes.”
Follow Larry Lage on X
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Larry Lage, AP Sports Writer
No longer confined to the partisans and activists, the fierce backlash against Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has begun to break out across American culture, spanning the worlds of business, sports and entertainment.Bruce Springsteen released a new song Wednesday that slammed “Trump’s federal thugs.” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman told employees that “what’s happening with ICE is going too far,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And lifestyle icon Martha Stewart lamented that “we can be attacked and even killed.”“Things must and have to change quickly and peacefully,” Stewart wrote to her 2.9 million Instagram followers this week.A little more than one year into his second term, Trump is facing a broad cultural revolt that threatens to undermine his signature domestic priority, the Republican Party’s grip on power and his own political strength ahead of the midterm elections.Trump, a former reality television star often attuned to changes in public opinion, tried to shift the conversation this week by dispatching border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to replace Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol commander who has been a lightning rod.But it’s unclear if the move will change anything on the ground.Thousands of federal agents remain in Minnesota, where two U.S. citizens have been killed and communities have felt besieged by Trump’s crackdown. Meanwhile, operations have expanded into Maine as well.
White House is ‘spooked’
Republican strategist Doug Heye said it’s too soon to know whether Trump’s attempt to control the fallout will work. He’s been in communication with Republican leaders across Washington in recent days who are worried that the escalating situation could jeopardize control of Congress in this fall’s midterm elections.“It’s very clear that the administration is spooked,” Heye said.And while some in the party may be concerned, Trump’s Make America Great Again base remains largely unified behind him and the immigration crackdown that he promised repeatedly on the campaign trail. They’re pushing the president not to back down.“It’s time for President Trump to ramp up mass deportations even more,” Laura Loomer, a Trump loyalist who has the president’s ear, told The Associated Press. “And if Minnesota is any barometer, it’s time for the focus to be on deporting as many Muslims as possible.”Such advice is at odds with a growing faction of prominent voices across American culture.
Who is speaking out?
Joe Rogan, a leading podcast host who endorsed Trump during his comeback campaign, said he sympathizes with concerns about immigration agents’ tactics.“Are we really going to be the Gestapo?” Rogan said. “‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”Over the weekend, more than 60 corporate executives, including the leaders of Target, Best Buy and UnitedHealth, released a public letter calling for de-escalation following the death of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse fatally shot during a confrontation with federal agents.The outcry intensified as the week progressed.Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday issued a memo to employees saying he was “heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis.”“I believe America is strongest when we live up to our highest ideals, when we treat everyone with dignity and respect no matter who they are or where they’re from, and when we embrace our shared humanity,” Cook wrote in the memo, first reported by Bloomberg News.Tech billionaire and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla used stronger language on social media to condemn “macho ICE vigilantes running amuck.”Jason Calacanis, a prominent tech podcaster, on Wednesday warned of dire consequences for Trump if he does not make sweeping changes among the people running the immigration crackdown.“President Trump needs to replace them all and reverse his plummeting ratings, or the entire Trump 2.0 agenda is over,” Calacanis wrote to his 1 million X followers. “America needs to put this dark and disgusting chapter behind us and unite behind a crisper immigration policy.”
Actors and musicians speak up
More outrage came from the entertainment industry, which is often viewed as a liberal bastion.Springsteen dropped his new song, “The Streets of Minneapolis,” on Wednesday. The famed musician referenced Pretti’s death directly.“Trump’s federal thugs beat up on his face and his chest. Then we heard the gunshots. And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead,” Springsteen sings.Other actors and entertainers who spoke out in recent days include Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish. Actor Mark Ruffalo described Pretti’s death as “cold-blooded murder.”The sports world has also begun to engage.Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch called the shootings “unconscionable” and expressed support for protesters. So did superstar NBA player Steph Curry.“There’s a lot of change that needs to happen,” Curry, who plays for the Golden State Warriors, told reporters this week. He said he’s been glued to news coverage of the latest Minnesota shooting.Guerschon Yabusele, of the New York Knicks, went further the day after Pretti’s shooting.“I can’t remain silent. What’s happening is beyond comprehension,” he wrote on X. “We’re talking about murders here, these are serious matters. The situation must change, the government must stop operating in this way. I stand with Minnesota.”
Trump may be getting the message
Trump appears to be softening his tone on immigration at least by his standards.“We’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” he said during a Tuesday interview on Fox News. He also chided Bovino, whom he displaced from his role.“Bovino is very good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of a guy,” he said. “In some cases, that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good here.”But Trump pushed back on the characterization that he was scaling back his operations in Minnesota. And in a social media post, he warned Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey that he was “PLAYING WITH FIRE” by refusing to enforce federal immigration laws.Even before Pretti’s death Saturday, public opinion was starting to turn against Trump on immigration, which was among his strongest issues at the beginning of his second term.Just 38% of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling immigration, down from 49% in March. That’s according to an AP-NORC poll conducted Jan. 8-11, shortly after the first shooting death of a U.S. citizen in Minnesota.There’s also some indication that Trump’s approval on immigration could be slipping among Republicans. The president’s approval among self-described Republicans fell from 88% in March to 76%in the January AP-NORC poll.A separate Fox News poll, which was conducted Friday through Monday, found that 59% of voters described ICE as “too aggressive,” a 10-point increase since last July.
AP writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed.
Steve Peoples, AP National Political Writer
Tesla, a brand once synonymous with consumer electric vehicles, is ditching some of the cars that brought its success.
CEO Elon Musk has announced that the Model S and X vehicles are getting an honorable discharge, with production of them ending sometime next quarter. Instead, the company will use some of its factory space to build its humanoid Optimus robots.
The news, shared during Teslas quarter-four earnings call on Wednesday, January 28, comes as Tesla expands manufacturing of its Optimus robots, full self-driving vehicles, and robotaxis.
In fact, Tesla used its quarterly earnings report to describe itself as a physical AI company.
That report holds many of the answers as to why. Teslas total revenue fell 3% year-over-year from $25.7 billion to $24.9 billion, while its automotive revenues fell 11% YOY from $19.8 billion to $17.7 billion.
In quarter four, production of Model S and X vehicles dropped by 48% YOY, while deliveries fell 51% YOY.
None of this was helped by Elon Musks polarizing political views, on-again, off-again relationship with President Donald Trump, and the termination of $7,500 EV tax credits last fall.
Despite all this, Musk used the investors call to make one last push to customers: If you’re interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order.
The two models made up less than 3% of deliveries over the last quarter, with the remainder being Model 3 and Y vehicles. The latter two models appear to still be available for Tesla customers.
Whats next for Tesla?
Tesla is all in on AI. Earlier this month, the company invested about $2 billion in xAI, another Musk venture.
The pair also created a framework agreement to collaborate on AI that should enhance Teslas ability to develop and deploy AI products and services into the physical world at scale, according to Teslas quarterly report.
The company plans to announce the Gen 3 version of Optimus this quarter and says its the first one designed to be mass produced. Tesla aims to start production of the humanoid robot by the end of this year and plans to reach one million robots annually.
However, Musk noted that Tesla is still at the early stages when it comes to Optimus. So far, it has only completed some basic factory tasks.
Finally, Tesla is continuing to push its full self-driving mode and robotaxisthough most places still require a safety monitor.
The pivot doesnt seem to have rattled investors. Shares of Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) rose a bit over 2% in premarket trading on Thursday. The stock is up more than 10% over the last 12 months.
The Trump administration’s high-profile deployment of federal troops to six U.S. cities has cost taxpayers roughly $496 million through the end of December, and continued deployment could cost over $1 billion for the rest of the year, according to new data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.President Donald Trump has justified sending National Guard troops into U.S. cities as part of an effort to combat crime and support local law enforcement. Critics of the move argue the deployments undermine state and local authority and exceed the president’s authority under the Constitution.The CBO published the new data estimating the costs associated with the federal deployments of National Guard and active-duty Marines after a request from Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who is the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee.“The American people deserve to know how many hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars have been and are being wasted on Trump’s reckless and haphazard deployment of National Guard troops to Portland and cities across the country,” Merkley said in a statement about the CBO report.Factored into the estimates are troop deployments to Chicago, Memphis, Portland, as well as Los Angeles in June, when protesters took to the streets in response to a blitz of immigration arrests. The CBO said continued deployments to those cities would cost about $93 million per month.The estimate excludes the military’s December deployment to New Orleans.For further possible deployments down the road, the CBO estimates deploying 1,000 National Guard personnel to a U.S. city in 2026 would cost $18 million to $21 million per month, depending on the local cost of living.National Guard troops are expected to remain deployed in Washington throughout 2026, according to a memo reviewed by The Associated Press earlier this month.The troop deployments have provoked legal challenges from local leaders, and some have been successful. A California federal judge in January ruled that the Trump administration “willfully” broke federal law by sending National Guard units to the Los Angeles area.White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson did not address the CBO’s cost estimate but said in a statement that the White House’s deployment efforts have driven down crime.“Thanks to the Trump Administration’s highly successful efforts to drive down violent crime, cities like Memphis and D.C. are much safer for residents and visitors with crime dropping across all major categories,” she said. “The media should talk to individuals who are able to go about their daily lives without fear of being assaulted, carjacked, or robbed thanks to the Trump Administration.”
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
Shares of Facebook owner Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) are surging in premarket trading this morning after the company announced its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings yesterday afternoon.
The earnings not only exceeded investor expectations, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg also laid out his vision for how artificial intelligence is set to transform the companyand personal computingin the years ahead. Heres what you need to know.
Meta reports strong Q4 2025 earnings
Expectations for Metas Q4 2025 were relatively high, but when the company announced its latest quarterly earnings after the bell last night, they exceeded what most investors had hoped for.
Here are the key financials Meta reported:
Quarterly revenue: $59.89 billion
Earnings per share (EPS): $8.88
Quarterly revenue was a 24% increase from the same period a year earlier. As noted by CNBC, it also blew past LSEG analyst expectations of $58.59 billion. In other words, Meta brought in around $1.3 billion more than most people thought it would.
Thanks in part to its strong revenue, Meta also beat earnings per share (EPS) estimates. Most LSEG analysts had been expecting an EPS of $8.23. Meta beat that by 60 cents per share.
The company also revealed some other interesting metrics, most notably about its user base.
For the quarter, Meta reported a family daily active people (DAP) metric of 3.58 billion. Family daily active people is the term Meta uses to encapsulate how many individuals use its family of products on a daily basis.
Metas family of products includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Metas family DAP for the fourth quarter grew 7% year over year.
Looking ahead at the companys financials, Meta said it expects its current first-quarter 2026 revenue to come in at between $53.5 billion and $56.5 billion. Thats significantly ahead of the $51.41 billion most analysts were expecting.
Zuckerberg tries to predict the futureagain
Meta didnt just reveal its financial metrics. Zuckerberg also spoke about the future of technology and the way artificial intelligence will both boost Metas business and change personal computing more broadly.
To the latter point, the chief executive said he believes AI-powered smart glasses will represent a paradigm shift in personal computing, likening the specs to the smartphones impact on computing, and saying glasses will be the ultimate incarnation of the device we use most efficiently to consume AI content.
They’re going to be able to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you and help you as you go about your day, and even show you information or generate custom UI right there in your vision, Zuckerberg stated in comments posted to Facebook.
I think we’re at a moment similar to when smartphones arrived, and it was clearly only a matter of time until all those flip phones became smartphones,” he added. “It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses aren’t AI glasses.
His statement here isnt much of a surprise, however, considering how Meta has long worked on devices aimed at dethroning the smartphone as peoples personal computer of choice.
Meta first tried to do this with its virtual reality headsets and virtual metaverse world. These initiative were run by the companys Reality Labs division. But early this month, Meta initiated massive layoffs at Reality Labsand admitted that its VR product never caught on with the general public.
AI as an advertising booster
Any hardware that Meta makes still represents a minuscule part of Facebooks revenues. The company is, after all, primarily an advertising company, not a hardware technology one.
Around 97% of its revenues are made from selling ads across its platforms.
Not surprisingly, Zuckerberg touched on how artificial intelligence would be a boost to its current ad business. The Meta CEO said that it was currently working on merging its LLMs with its ads system and said that its current world class recommendation systems, which its ads rely on, were still primitive compared to what will be possible soon.
As an example, Zuckerberg pointed out that Meta’s existing ad systems help businesses find the right, specific users who are likely to purchase their goods.
But thanks to AI, New agentic shopping tools will allow people to find just the right very specific set of products from the businesses in our catalogue.
It’s not the only way that Metas ad business stands to benefit from the artificial intelligence boom.
Meta, like many tech giants, is rushing to build out its personal data center capacity to run artificial intelligence tools on. By owning the data center directly, Meta and these other companies will be able to cut down on costs, which are currently paid to third-party data center owners.
As analyst firm MoffettNathanson pointed out in a research note on Thursday, Metas buildup of its own data centers could benefit its business.
[Given] the AI capacity constraint facing the industry, Meta has been forced to use third-party cloud offering as their own data centers are not ready to move online yet, the research firm noted. Longer-term, these workloads should shift from 3rd party contracts to Meta’s own facilities which, we think, should produce margin leverage.
Metas stock price jumps
Given Metas robust Q4 2025 results and a Q1 2026 forecast that beat what most analysts were expecting, its little surprise that the companys stock price is surging in premarket trading this month.
As of this writing, shares of Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) are up around 8.8% to $668.73 per share.
In its Thursday note, MoffettNathanson maintained its “buy” rating for Meta’s stock and increased its price target to $810.
As of yesterdays close, META shares had only increased about 1.3% year-to-date, according to Yahoo Finance data.
If the companys premarket stock price gain holds when markets open, that will mean Metas stock has already surged 10% in the first month of 2026.
Todays premarket gain also means that Metas stock price is now out of the red for the past year. As of yesterdays market close, Metas stock was down about eight-tenths of a percent over the past year. That contrasts with the Nasdaq Composites broader gain of around 21% over the same period.
Senate Democrats are threatening to block legislation that would fund the Department of Homeland Security and several other agencies Thursday, potentially bringing the government a step closer to a partial shutdown if Republicans and the White House do not agree to new restrictions on President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement.As the country reels from the deaths of two protesters at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis, irate Senate Democrats laid out a list of demands ahead of a Thursday morning test vote, including that officers take off their masks and identify themselves and obtain warrants for arrest. If those are not met, Democrats say they are prepared to block the wide-ranging spending bill, denying Republicans the votes they need to pass it and triggering a shutdown at midnight on Friday.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Democrats won’t provide needed votes until U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “reined in and overhauled.”“The American people support law enforcement, they support border security, they do not support ICE terrorizing our streets and killing American citizens,” Schumer said.There were some signs of possible progress as the White House has appeared open to trying to strike a deal with Democrats to avert a shutdown. The two sides were talking as of Wednesday evening, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who requested anonymity to speak about the private talks. One possible option discussed would be to strip the funding for the Homeland Security Department from the larger bill, as Schumer has requested, and extend it for a short period to allow time for negotiations, the person said. The rest of the bill would fund government agencies until September.Still, with no agreement yet and an uncertain path ahead, the standoff threatened to plunge the country into another shutdown just two months after Democrats blocked a spending bill over expiring federal health care subsidies, a dispute that closed the government for 43 days as Republicans refused to negotiate.That shutdown ended when a small group of moderate Democrats broke away to strike a deal with Republicans, but Democrats are more unified this time after the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents.
Democrats lay out their demands
There’s a lot of “unanimity and shared purpose” within the Democratic caucus, Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith said after a lunch meeting Wednesday.“Boil it all down, what we are talking about is that these lawless ICE agents should be following the same rules that your local police department does,” Smith said. “There has to be accountability.”Amid the administration’s immigration crackdown, Schumer said Democrats are asking the White House to “end roving patrols” in cities and coordinate with local law enforcement on immigration arrests, including requiring tighter rules for warrants.Democrats also want an enforceable code of conduct so agents are held accountable when they violate rules. Schumer said agents should be required to have “masks off, body cameras on” and carry proper identification, as is common practice in most law enforcement agencies.The Democratic caucus is united in those “common sense reforms” and the burden is on Republicans to accept them, Schumer said, as he has pushed for the Homeland spending to be separated out to avoid a broader shutdown.Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has indicated that he might be open to considering some of the Democrats’ demands, but he encouraged Democrats and the White House to talk and find agreement.
Many obstacles to a deal
As the two sides negotiated, it was still unclear whether they could agree on anything that would satisfy Democrats who want Trump’s aggressive crackdown to end.The White House had invited some Democrats for a discussion to better understand their positions and avoid a partial government shutdown, a senior White House official said, but the meeting did not happen. The official requested anonymity to discuss the private invitation.The House passed the six remaining funding bills last week and sent them to the Senate as a package, making it more difficult to strip out the homeland security portion as Democrats have demanded. Republicans could break the package apart with the consent of all 100 senators or through a series of votes that would extend past the Friday deadline.Even if the Senate can resolve the issue, House Republicans have said they do not want any changes to the bill they have passed. In a letter to Trump on Tuesday, the conservative House Freedom Caucus wrote that its members stand with the president and ICE.“The package will not come back through the House without funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” according to the letter.
Republican opposition
Several Republican senators have said they would be fine with Democrats’ request to separate the Homeland Security funds for further debate and pass the other bills in the package. But it might be more difficult to for Democrats to find broad GOP support for their demands on ICE.North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said he’s OK with separating the bills, but is opposed to the Democrats’ proposal to require the immigration enforcement officers to unmask and show their faces, even as he blamed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for decisions that he said are “tarnishing” the agency’s reputation.“You know, there’s a lot of vicious people out there, and they’ll take a picture of your face, and the next thing you know, your children or your wife or your husband are being threatened at home,” Tillis said. “And that’s just the reality of the world that we’re in.”Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said that “what happened over the weekend is a tragedy,” but Democrats shouldn’t punish Americans with a shutdown and a “political stunt.”Democrats say they won’t back down.“It is truly a moral moment,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “I think we need to take a stand.”
Associated Press writer Michelle Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Mary Clare Jalonick, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro, Associated Press
