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With President Trump back in the White House, this year has brought a barrage of executive orders and edicts that target workers. Trump reduced the minimum wage for federal contractors, made major cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administrationwhose express mission is to keep people safe in the workplaceand attempted to undermine collective bargaining rights for federal workers. He has also, of course, set his sights on dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across both the federal workforce and corporate America. Still, theres a glimmer of hope for workers: Many states have taken it upon themselves to enshrine policies like paid leave and pay transparency, with some of them now turning their attention to how the misuse of artificial intelligence in hiring could harm workers. Here are some of the laws and policies that will take effect in 2026many of which continue to push forward on important issues for workers despite what the federal government has in store. Anti-DEI measures Trump has made anti-DEI policies a focal point of his time in office, kicking off this year with a number of executive orders that forced federal agencies to terminate all DEI-related policies and programs and stripped away a requirement for federal contractors that had been a crucial element of diversifying the workforce. That means, going into 2026, all federal DEI programs have been eliminatedbut there are a number of state-level bills that seek to curtail how DEI is utilized in hiring and across public education. In Ohio, for example, legislation that passed this year prohibits any consideration of DEI in hiring decisions at public colleges and universities. Similar laws in Kansas, Idaho, and Wyoming will curtail DEI programs for hiring across higher education. Meanwhile, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionthe agency tasked with enforcing antidiscrimination laws in employmenthas made clear that corporate DEI programs will be under greater scrutiny going into 2026. The use of AI in hiring As companies have embedded AI into their hiring process, many HR teams have started relying on automated résumé screeners and other AI tools. In 2026, three laws will take effect at the state level to create some guardrails around how AI is being used for employment decisions, following in the footsteps of New York City and California, which have already adopted AI in hiring laws. Colorado and Texas are introducing broader AI governance laws that also explicitly call for more oversight of how the technology is used in the hiring process to ensure it is not discriminatory. In Illinois, the law is an amendment of the states Human Rights Act and regulates how workers are impacted by the use of AI in all employment decisions. At the federal level, a bipartisan bill introduced in Congress last month wouldif passedforce employers to disclose when layoffs are caused by AI. Minimum wage The minimum wage continues to rise, year after year, as states have raised the wage floor in response to worker advocacy. As 2026 rolls around, 20 states will have enacted and started phasing in a $15 minimum wage, with hourly wages actually crossing $15 in a total of 11 states by the end of next year. Since 2012, a total of 15 states have adopted a $15 minimum wage, according to the National Employment Law Project, in no small part because of the Fight for $15 movement that originated among fast-food workers. By the end of 2026, many workers will see even greater pay increases as the minimum wage is boosted to $17 across 53 cities and localities. A handful of states have also approved changes to the subminimum wage, which typically pays tipped workers a lower hourly rate. (There have been several proposals at the federal level to eliminate the subminimum wage altogether, but nothing has successfully passed.) Paid leave While the efforts to pass federal paid family leave have more or less come to a standstill, a handful of states have kept pushing to secure those benefits for their workers. In Delaware, Maine, and Minnesota, a paid leave program will take effect in 2026, joining 10 other states that have already introduced the benefit. Meanwhile, states like Connecticut are making significant expansions to their paid sick leave program, now requiring companies with as few as 11 employees to provide leave. (By 2027, even employers with one worker will have to do the same.) In total, about 20 states now offer paid sick leave in some capacity, as these laws have picked up steam in recent years. A number of cities and localities also provide paid leave, even in states like Pennsylvania that dont have broader coverage. Pay transparency Pay transparency laws have grown in popularity over the last four years, in an effort to arm workers with more information as they go into salary negotiationsor before they apply for a job at all. These laws often require employers to disclose a salary range in all job postings, though some states have only mandated that employers verbally share salary information. This year, Massachusetts and New Jersey adopted laws that require pay ranges in job listings, bringing the total number of states with these laws on the books to 14. At the local level, some cities in Ohio have started requiring salary disclosures, as is also the case in Washington, D.C. Salary transparency laws also often prohibit employers from asking about a candidates salary history during the interview process and using that to determine their compensation.
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E-Commerce
Lorrie Faith Cranors latest effort to educate people about privacy is a short, colorfully illustrated book written for an audience who probably cant read it yet. Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh schools CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, wrote Privacy, Please! after publishing more than 200 research papers, spending a 20162017 stint as the Federal Trade Commissions chief technologist, and making a quilt and dress illustrated with commonly used weak passwords. In a Zoom video call, Cranor says she got the idea for this self-published childrens book when planning for a privacy-outreach event at a local library and getting input from the librarians there revealed an unmet need for one. I asked them for their recommendations, and they didn’t know of any children’s books about privacy, she recounts. And you know, there really isn’t much out there. Especially for a younger audience. The Eyemonger, a frequently recommended kids book by George Washington University Law School professor Daniel J. Solove published in 2020, is aimed at readers ages 6 to 9. Then I started thinking about, well, what would I want in a book for preschool kids about privacy? Cranor says. [Illustration: Courtesy of Lorrie Faith Cranor] The answer: 25 pages of her words and artwork by illustrator Alena Karabach, in which our nameless protagonist, often accompanied by a pet dog, turtle, and goldfish, explains basic concepts of privacy. Sometimes I want to be alone. I dont want anyone to see me, hear me, or come too close. This is called privacy. Sometimes I listen to music on my headphones so that only I can hear. When my best friend comes over we play in my clubhouse. Its our private space! Sometimes I want to create artwork without anyone watching. Privacy can help us have more fun! Superheroes need privacy to put on their costumes. My parents lock their phones so nobody can see their private things. When I play games online I use a funny name and picture so strangers dont know who I really am. Its nice to put my technology away and play outside where theres lots of privacy. Cranor took inspiration for this from an earlier public-outreach project: Privacy Illustrated, a workshop she started in 2014 to invite people of many ages to draw depictions of what they thought the concept looked like. That, for instance, is where the turtle came from, she recalls. I had never thought about turtles this way until I saw people drawing pictures of turtles and saying turtles carry their privacy with them. The goldfish, meanwhile, is a finned metaphor for having no privacy at all. I told the illustrator, make the goldfish look as sad as you possibly can, Cranor says. The first draft also included a dog giving himself some privacy by retreating into a doghouse. But the preschool teachers Cranor consulted pointed out that none of their city-kid students had doghouses and might not recognize a Peanuts reference anyway. Instead, the dog hides underneath a bed. At no point do we see this childs entire face, a choice Cranor made early on. I also wanted the main character to be a little ambiguous as to whether they’re a boy or a girl and what race they are, she saysthe idea being to give any child reading it a chance to see some part of themselves there. Theres also little technology on display, aside from one page that shows the main character sitting before an iMac G4 that would now be at least 21 years old and so must be some sort of hand-me-down. And any adult reader looking for explain-like-Im-5 advice about reading lengthy privacy policies wont find it in this slim volume. A lot of the more complicated lessons about online privacy just didn’t seem appropriate for this audience, Cranor says. But I didn’t want to not have digital privacy there at all, because, well, they’re already playing with their parents phones. Plus, it wont be too long before the members of the books preschool audience will need some grounding in the basics of tech privacy. You know, next year they will be online, and so I wanted to plant the seeds for that,” Cranor says. As for the parents, aunts and uncles, and other grownups reading the book aloud to children, Cranor says she hopes this work will encourage them to listen a little more. It’s okay to say you don’t want your picture taken, and this is a struggle for parents because parents love to take their kids’ pictures, she says. The books website includes a discussion guide for parents as well as a door-hanger exercise for kids that invites them to make a version of a hotels door tag (Privacy, Please! or Lets Play!) for their rooms from a cut-up cereal box. Cranor expects a large chunk of the sales of this $14.99 bookwhich she chose to self-publish after realizing that would take vastly less time than finding an agent to sell a traditional publisher on the ideawill involve other privacy professionals. They all want to buy it for the children in their lives,” she explains. But another potential target market comes to mind: founders of large tech companies with a demonstrated record of paying inadequate attention to privacy and missing peoples tastes in technologin particular founders with young children of their on. By which I mean, Mark Zuckerberg. Has Cranor sent him a copy of the book? I have not, she says. I mean, its probably worth trying.
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E-Commerce
The holiday season always reminds me that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. My kids start winter break thrillednew toys to play with, days at home, permission to veg out. But by the time the new year rolls around, theyre itching to go back to school, eager to show off their favorite holiday gifts and dive back into their routine. It got me thinking: why dont we, as adults, approach returning to work after a vacation with that same positive energy? More often than not, coming back from time off stirs up feelings of anxiety. For some, it reaches the point of canceling out any lingering benefits of the break. Others overcompensate by overworking upon their return. Just as kids head back to school after winter break with renewed energy and a few shiny new accessories, we can return to the office with a sense of anticipation instead of dreadand without burning out right away. It all comes down to planning ahead and making smart use of the AI tools in your toolbox. Here are some of the strategies that I use and share with employees at Jotform to help ease back into work after time away. Automate the admin so you can focus on what matters After spending the holidays with my family in the Turkish countryside, one of my favorite parts of returning to work is catching up with colleaguesswapping stories and photos from our OOO adventures. But I wouldnt have the time or energy to do that if I were buried under the tedious busywork of easing back into work mode. Thats why I use, and encourage our employees to use, AI to automate as many manual administrative tasks as possible. It starts with an audit of your typical back-to-work routine, ideally before you leave the office, so youre prepared ahead of time. Make a list of every task in a normal day and all your responsibilities. Youll likely spot several that can be partially or fully automated with AIlike scheduling status meetings with Motion or Clockwise; taking meeting notes (and sending follow-up emails) with Fireflies.ai or Otter.ai; and managing your inbox with Superhuman, Shortwave, or Microsoft Copilot. When you let AI handle the busywork, you create space for diving back into activities that you enjoy, like more meaningful creative work and reconnecting with your team. Use AI to zoom out and see the big picture Research shows that nearly half of American workers dont take all their paid vacation time. One of the main reasons is that they fear falling behind. That worry isnt entirely misplaced; stepping away from the daily grind does mean falling out of the loop for a bit. But its important to zoom out and keep your break in perspective. Rather than focusing on the week-to-week, imagine that time off in the broader context of your year. Viewed this way, your vacation isnt a setback, but rather, its an investment in your long-term productivity. Studies consistently show that professionals who take regular breaks enjoy better sleep, higher job satisfaction, greater engagement, and stronger performance. Compiling quarterly recaps is a great way to maintain that big-picture view and track progress toward annual goals. AI can do it for you. Tools like Notion AI, ClickUp Brain, or ChatGPT can take your company data and summarize project updates, highlight milestones, and visualize your progress, without you having to manually compile the reports. Seeing your progress and achievements laid out explicitly can help you keep OOO time in perspective and eliminate the stress of falling behind when you return. Reignite curiosity and your momentum One of the biggest challenges of getting back on track after time away is momentum. When youre in the rhythm of work, collaborating with colleagues, or tracking project progress, productivity and ideation feel almost self-propelling. But after some much-needed R&R, getting that momentum back can feel like pushing a boulder uphill. This is where AI can step in as a creative partner. Tools like ChatGPT can spark fresh ideas during brainstorming sessions, or analyze datalike marketing reports or customer feedbackto generate insights and actionable takeaways. By handling some of the initial heavy lifting, AI can help reignite the curiosity and creative energy that makes returning to work fun. Finally, this may sound obvious, but give yourself time to ease back into work mode. Schedule some downtime, especially during the first week. Stagger your meetings, and resist the urge to burn the midnight oil right away. This can help prevent reentry shockthat disorienting jolt from relaxation to chaos. With a little thoughtfulness and some helpful AI tools, leaders and their teams can painlessly get back into the swing of things.
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E-Commerce
The United States hit Venezuela with a large-scale strike early Saturday and said its president had been captured and flown out of the country after months of intense pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s government an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack. The legal authority for the strike and whether Trump consulted Congress beforehand was not immediately clear. The stunning American military action, which plucked a nations sitting leader from office, echoed the U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of its leader, Manuel Antonio Noriega, in 1990 exactly 36 years ago Saturday. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, but it was not previously known that his wife had been and it wasnt clear if Bondi was referring to a new indictment. The details of the allegations against Flores were not immediately known. Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital, as Maduro’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an imperialist attack and urging citizens to take to the streets. With Maduro’s whereabouts not known, the vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, would take power under Venezuelan law. There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike. We do not know the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, Rodríguez said. We demand proof of life. Maduro, Trump said, has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. He set a news conference for later Saturday morning. The attack itself lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions at least seven blasts sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what theyd seen and heard. Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, according to Rodríguez, the vice president, without giving a number. It was not known if there more actions lay ahead, though Trump said in his post that the strikes were carried out successfully. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted on X that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had briefed him on the strike and said that Maduro has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States. The White House did not immediately respond to queries on where Maduro and his wife were being flown to. Maduro last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas. The strike came after the Trump administration spent months increasing pressure on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September. As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed at least 115, according to the Trump administration. Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as a necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. Maduro has decried the U.S. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power. Some streets in Caracas fill up Venezuelas government responded to the attack with a call to action: People to the streets! Armed people and uniformed members of a civilian militia headed into the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party. As daylight broke, some people rallied and yelled Bring back Maduro! while holding posters of the leader. In other areas of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Parts of the city remained without power, but vehicles moved freely. Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. The videos were verified by The Associated Press. Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power. The whole ground shook. This is horrible. We heard explosions and planes, said Carmen Hidalgo, a 21-year-old office worker, her voice trembling. She was walking briskly with two relatives in Caracas, returning from a birthday party. We felt like the air was hitting us. The Venezuelan government’s statement said that Maduro had ordered all national defense plans to be implemented and declared a state of emergency that gives him the power to suspend peoples rights and expand the role of the armed forces. The website of the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, a post that has been closed since 2019, issued a warning to American citizens in the country, saying it was aware of reports of explosions in and around Caracas. U.S. citizens in Venezuela should shelter in place, the warning said. Reaction begins to emerge Inquiries to the Pentagon and U.S. Southern Command since Trumps social media post went unanswered. The FAA warned all commercial and private U.S. pilots that the airspace over Venezuela and the small island nation of Curacao, just off the coast of the country, was off limits due to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity. The Armed Services committees in both houses of Congress, which have jurisdiction over military matters, have not been notified by the administration of any actions, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it. Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised deep reservations and flat out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling on boats near the Venezuelan coast and Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the military action and seizure of Maduro marks a new dawn for Venezuela, saying that the tyrant is gone. He posted on X hours after the strike. is boss, Rubio, reposted a post from July that said Maduro is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government. Cuba, a supporter of the Maduro government and a longtime adversary of the United States, called for the international community to respond to what president Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez called the criminal attack. Our zone of peace is being brutally assaulted, he said on X. Irans Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes. President Javier Milei of Argentina praised the claim by his close ally, Trump, that Maduro had been captured with a political slogan he often deploys to celebrate right-wing advances: Long live freedom, dammit! By REGINA GARCIA CANO and KONSTANTIN TOROPIN ___ Toropin and Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro reported from Washington.
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E-Commerce
The new year often brings sticker shock. A glance at our bank statements and credit card bills shows just how much we spent during the holidays, serving as a painful reminder that with the festivities behind us, we should work on getting our expenditures under control. A good first step toward doing that is to cancel unnecessary subscriptionswhether thats Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or any other service you pay for monthly but dont use. These unnecessary subscriptions can add upespecially as prices continue to rise. A 2025 CNET report found that the average U.S. adult spends $17 a month on subscriptions they dont usethats more than $200 a year. (A Self Financial study from the same year found subscribers were wasting less on unused subscriptions$10.57 per monthbut thats still more than $120 per year). Unfortunately, canceling a subscription isnt always straightforward. Yet if you want to stop burning through money in 2026, axing unnecessary subscriptions is essential. Heres how to quickly find and cancel yours. Track down your forgotten subscriptions Ive known people who were surprised to discover theyd been paying for a subscription for years that they had completely forgotten about, and thus had been literally wasting money each month on something they didnt even use. Thats why, if you want to stop wasting money on unnecessary subscriptions, you first need to find all yours. Thankfully, the digital nature of the payment methods we use can help us track down forgotten subscriptions: Check your bank and credit card statements for any recurring fees from the same vendor. This is the biggest tip-off that you have a subscription youve forgotten about. If you tend to subscribe to services via apps on your iPhone or Android, you may have signed up for them using Apples or Googles in-app purchase system. Apple and Google both make it easy to see what recurring subscriptions you are signed up for. Heres how to find those subscriptions on an iPhone and on an Android phone. You may have subscribed to a service via an apps dedicated signup page. You should check your account settings in all apps that offer subscriptions to see if you have any there. People also often subscribe to streaming TV channels (like Hallmark+ or Crunchroll) through third-party services, so its smart to check if you have any recurring subscriptions on those platforms, too. Heres how to see if youre paying for any extra subscriptions through Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, or YouTube. The points above arent exhaustive, but you should be able to find most of your subscriptions this way. Cancel subscriptions using your iPhone or Android Once youve tracked down all your unnecessary subscriptions, the next step is to cancel them. The cancellation process will differ depending on how you signed up. If you signed up via an apps dedicated signup page, open the app and navigate to its account settings. You should see a subscription cancellation option there (sometimes the app may point you to a website, email, or phone number you need to use to cancel). If you signed up via an in-app purchase on the Apple App Store, open your iPhones Settings app, tap your Apple Account name, and tap Subscriptions. Find the one you want to cancel there. If you signed up via an in-app purchase on the Google Play Store, open the Google Play Store app and tap your profile, account, then Payments & subscriptions. Tap the subscription you want to find the cancellation button for. Quickly cancel your subscriptions online Finally, some subscriptions require you to sign up or cancel on a web pageor at least allow you to cancel from any web browser. Here are some shortcuts to help pages for common subscriptions that explain how to cancel them. Amazon Music Standard Amazon Music Unlimited Amazon Prime Amazon Prime Video Apple Music Apple TV Disney+ DoorDash ESPN Grubhub HBO Max Hulu Netflix Paramount+ Peacock Spotify Premium Uber Eats Uber One YouTube Music Premium YouTube Premium
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E-Commerce