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Facebook owner Meta has named Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration adviser and longtime finance executive, as president and vice chairman of the tech giant. Powell McCormick previously served on Meta’s board of directors where, the company notes, she was deeply engaged in accelerating its artificial intelligence push across platforms. In her new management role, Meta says Powell McCormick will help guide its overall strategy, including the execution of multi-billion-dollar investments. The news, announced Monday, quickly gained the applause of U.S. President Donald Trump. In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, the Republican president said the move was a great choice by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and noted that Powell McCormick had served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction. Zuckerberg said in a statement that Powell McCormicks experience in global finance, combined with her deep relationships around the world, made her uniquely suited to help Meta in its future growth. Powell McCormick is a veteran of two presidential administrations and the Republican National Committee. She worked as a national security adviser at the start of Trump’s first term, and also held roles in the White House and the Secretary of State’s office under President George W. Bush. She is married to U.S. Sen. David McCormick, who served in high-level positions in the Commerce and Treasury departments under Bush before he joined hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and rose to become CEO. And Powell McCormick has a long background in finance. She spent 16 years in senior leadership at Goldman Sachs, but was most recently vice chair, president and head of global client services at merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners. She’s also held a handful of other corporate board positions including at oil giant Exxon Mobil. According to a securities filing, Powell McCormick had previously resigned from Meta’s board in December, eight months after joining as a director. The addition of Powell McCormick to Meta’s management team arrived amid wider efforts from California-based Meta to boost its ties with Trump, who was once banned from Facebook. Like other powerful tech CEOs, Zuckerberg has dined with the president at the White House and doubled down on U.S. investment promises worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Last year, the company also appointed Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to its board, another familiar figure in Trump’s orbit. Wyatte Grantham-Philips, AP business writer AP Reporter Marc Levy contributed to this report.
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Iran hasn’t changed its flag, but the emoji for it has changed on X, the social network previously known as Twitter. Iran’s tricolor flag features green, white, and red horizontal stripes, with the country’s national emblem displayed in its center white stripe. But some opposition groups use a historical flag that instead shows a golden lion holding a sword in front of a sun. Since ongoing anti-government demonstrations erupted in Iran in December, that lion-and-sun version of the flag has been used as a symbol of protest around the world, including in demonstrations over the weekend in Los Angeles and London, where one protester held the flag at the Iranian embassy after taking down the national flag. Now it’s also on X. [Images: x.com/Twemoji] After an X user asked the site’s head of product, Nikita Bier, to update the flag last Thursday, Bier responded, “Give me a few hours.” The updated emoji appeared first on the web browser version of the site before rolling out to iOS devices. Other emoji vendors like Google and Facebook still use the standard emoji of Iran’s national flag, so the lion-and-sun flag isn’t available on most platforms, and it’s also not available for X on Android devices. The change on X, though, meant that accounts tied to Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs suddenly found their bios displaying an emoji that could be construed as anti-regime. Iran’s foreign ministry has since removed the emoji from its bio. X previously used default Apple emoji on iOS, but since 2023, it has used its own native emoji, according to Emojipedia. X last redesigned an emoji in 2024, when it changed its pistol emoji from a green water pistol back to an actual pistol. Protests in Iran began on December 28 over deteriorating economic conditions. They have reached every province in the country. At least 572 people have died, and more than 10,600 people have been detained, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization. X users in the country haven’t had much of a chance to use or sound off about the new emoji, as Iran shut down internet access and telephone lines last Thursday.
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up. Since the national Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country that shift has varied. Generally speaking, local housing markets where active inventory has jumped above pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced softer home price growth (or outright price declines) over the past 36 months. Conversely, local housing markets where active inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 36 months. Where is national active inventory headed? National active listings are on the rise on a year-over-year basis (+12.1% between December 2024 and December 2025). This indicates that homebuyers have gained some leverage in many parts of the country over the past year. Some sellers markets have turned into balanced markets, and more balanced markets have turned into buyers markets. Nationally, were still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (-5.5% below December 2019) and some resale markets, in particular chunks of the Midwest and Northeast, still remain tight-ish. While national active inventory is still up year-over-year, the pace of growth has slowed in recent monthsmore than typical seasonality would suggestas some sellers have thrown in the towel and delisted in weak/soft markets. December inventory/active listings total, according to Realtor.com: December 2017 -> 1,127,799 December 2018 -> 1,185,865 December 2019 -> 1,033,887 December 2020 -> 612,300 (Pandemic Housing Boom overheating) December 2021 -> 445,303 (Pandemic Housing Boom overheating) December 2022 -> 680,925 December 2023 -> 714,176 December 2024 -> 871,509 December 2025 -> 976,833 If we maintain the current year-over-year pace of inventory growth (+105,324 homes for sale), we’d have 1,082,157 active inventory come December 2026. Below is the year-over-year active inventory percentage change by state. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); While active housing inventory is rising in most markets on a year-over-year basis, some markets still remain tight-ish (although it’s loosening in those places too). As ResiClub has been documenting, both active resale and new homes for sale remain the most limited across huge swaths of the Midwest and Northeast. Thats where home sellers next spring are likely, relatively speaking, to have more power than their peers in many Southern markets. In contrast, active housing inventory for sale has neared or surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 levels in many parts of the Sun Belt and Mountain West, including metro area housing markets such as Punta Gorda and Austin. Many of these areas saw major price surges during the Pandemic Housing Boom, with home prices getting stretched compared to local incomes. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Punta Gorda and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices. This softening trend was accelerated further by an abundance of new home supply in the Sun Belt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives (if they have the margins to do so) to maintain sales in a shifted market, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market: Some buyers, who would have previously considered existing homes, are now opting for new homes with more favorable dealswhich then puts some additional upward pressure on resale inventory. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); At the end of December 2025, 17 states were above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington. (The District of Columbiawhich we left out of this analysisis also back above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels too. Softness in D.C. propers predates the current admins job cuts.) window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Big picture: Over the past few years weve observed a softening across many housing markets as strained affordability tempers the fervor of a market that was unsustainably hot during the Pandemic Housing Boom. While home prices are falling some in pockets of the Sun Belt, a big chunk of Northeast and Midwest markets still eked out a little price appreciation in 2025. Nationally aggregated home prices were pretty close to flat in 2025. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Below is another version of the table abovebut this one includes every month since January 2017. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});
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