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As commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick oversees the U.S. government’s vast efforts to monitor and predict the weather.The billionaire also ran a financial firm, which he recently left in the control of his adult sons, that stands to benefit if President Donald Trump’s administration follows through on a decade-long Republican effort to privatize government weather forecasting.Deadly weekend flooding in central Texas has drawn a spotlight to budget cuts and staff reductions at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, two agencies housed within the Commerce Department that provide the public with free climate and weather data that can be crucial during natural disasters.What’s drawn less attention is how the downsizing appears to be part of an effort to privatize the work of such agencies. In several instances, the companies poised to step into the void have deep ties to people tapped by Trump to run weather-related agencies.Privatization would diminish a central role the federal government has played in weather forecasting since the 1800s, which experts say poses a particular harm for those facing financial strain who may not be able to afford commercial weather data.The effort also reveals the difficulty that uber wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet have in freeing themselves from conflicts, even if they have met the letter of federal ethics law.“It’s the most insidious aspect of this: Are we really talking about making weather products available only to those who can afford it?” said Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, a Democrat. “Basically turning the weather service into a subscription streaming service? As a taxpayer, I don’t want to be in the position of saying, ‘I get a better weather forecast because I’m willing to pay for it.'”The White House referred requests for comment to the Commerce Department, which said in a statement that Lutnick has “fully complied with the terms of his ethics agreement with respect to divesture and recusals and will continue to do so.” Trump nominees have ties to weather-related industries Privatizing weather agencies has long been an aim of Republicans. During Trump’s first presidency, he signed a bill that utilized more private weather data. And Project 2025, a proposed blueprint for Trump’s second presidency that was co-authored by his budget director, calls for the NOAA to be broken up and for the weather service to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”Lutnick is not the only one Trump nominated for a key post with close relationships to companies involved in the gathering of vital weather data.Trump’s pick to lead the NOAA, Neil Jacobs, was chief atmospheric scientist for Panasonic Weather Solutions and has been a vocal proponent of privatization. The president’s nominee for another top NOAA post, Taylor Jordan, is a lobbyist with a roster of weather-related clients.“If confirmed, Dr. Jacobs and Mr. Jordan will follow the law and rely on the advice of the Department’s ethics counsel in addressing matters involving former clients,” the Commerce Department said in its statement.Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent more than $250 million to help elect Trump, owns a controlling interest in SpaceX and its satellite subsidiary Starlink. Both are regulated by the NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, which lost about one-third of its staff in February layoffs facilitated by the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk helped create.SpaceX also stands to gain through a new generation of private and federally funded weather satellites that would be carried into orbit on its rockets.Though Musk has now departed Washington and had a very public falling out with Trump, the DOGE staffers he hired and the cuts he pushed for have largely remained in place.Emails seeking comment sent to a lawyer who has represented Musk, as well as to media contacts at his companies X and SpaceX, received no response.While Musk is focusing on his companies, others with potential conflicts remain immersed in government work. Lutnick ran Cantor Fitzgerald Lutnick resigned as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, an investing behemoth, upon taking office and began the arduous task of divesting his interests, as required by law.His two 20-something sons were given the reins of his financial empire. Brandon Lutnick was named chairman of Cantor, while Kyle Lutnick was tapped to be executive vice chairman. But his most recent ethics filing from June 19 stated that he was still selling his holdings in the firm.An ethics plan submitted in February states Lutnick would request a waiver allowing him to participate in matters that would have a “direct and predictable effect” on his family’s business while he was still divesting. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, meanwhile, show Lutnick has agreements to transfer his shares in the Cantor companies and a family trust to his son Brandon.The Department of Commerce referred questions about Lutnick’s ties to Satellogic, a satellite company that offers natural disaster imagery, to his former firm.Cantor spokesperson Erica Chase said that since Lutnick’s resignation from the company, he has not made any decisions with respect to the company’s investments or customer positions, or other operational matters.“Cantor and its subsidiaries operate in heavily regulated industries, and maintain robust compliance programs to ensure compliance with all applicable laws,” Chase said.Federal officials are barred from making decisions that benefit the business holdings of themselves or their spouses, but that prohibition does not extend to assets held by their adult children, according to Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer during Republican George W. Bush’s administration.Among its legion of disparate businesses, Cantor has interests in weather and climate. It owns a controlling interest in BGC Group, which operates a weather derivatives marketplace that essentially allows investors to bet on climate risk and where hurricanes will make landfall.Lutnick also played a pivotal role in cultivating Satellogic. He helped raise the capital to take the company public and held a seat on its board until Trump nominated him. Cantor holds a roughly 13% stake in Satellogic, according to a March SEC filing.The company now bills itself as an emerging federal contractor that can offer crisp images of natural disasters and weather events in real time, which in 2021 Lutnick said makes it “uniquely positioned to dominate the Earth Observation industry.”While Lutnick was still in charge of Cantor, it paid a $6.75 million fine to the SEC after it was accused of making misleading statements to investors about Satellogic and another company. The White House’s 2026 spending plan, developed by Trump’s budget director and primary Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, proposes $8 billion in cuts for future NOAA satellites, which capture imagery of the planet provided to the public.Satellogic stands to benefit if the government retreats from operating climate-monitoring satellites. 2 Trump nominees have ties to weather companies Jacobs, Trump’s pick to lead the NOAA, led the same agency on an acting basis during Trump’s first term.He is scheduled to appear Wednesday before a Senate committee weighing his nomination. Jacobs has long advocated for a greater role for the private sector in government weather forecasting. During a 2023 hearing focused on the future of the NOAA, he argued that the agency needed to be “relying more heavily on the commercial sector.”He also has expressed concerns about what happens to commercial data purchased by the government. “They give it away to the rest of the planet for free,” he testified before Congress in 2023.He was a consultant at the time for Spire Global and Lynker, both of which have millions of dollars in weather data contracts with the NOAA, according to records including his most recent financial disclosure.Jordan, Trump’s pick for another top NOAA post, has similarly close relationships. His financial disclosure lists more than a dozen weather-related lobbying clients, including Spire and Lynker. He also represented AccuWeather, a commercial forecast provider, before Congress and in meetings with the Commerce Department on “issues related to private sector weather forecast improvement,” according to lobbying disclosures.Though his nomination is pending before the Republican-controlled Senate, disclosure reports show he still represents weather and space companies and is still listed as a principal employee at a Washington lobbying firm. Contact the AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/. Brian Slodysko and Michael Biesecker, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
A “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have required businesses to make it easy for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships, has been blocked by a federal appeals court just days before it was set to go into effect.The Federal Trade Commission’s proposed changes, adopted in October, required businesses to obtain a customer’s consent before charging for memberships, auto-renewals, and programs linked to free trial offers.The FTC said at the time that businesses must also disclose when free trials or other promotional offers will end and let customers cancel recurring subscriptions as easily as they started them.The administration of President Joe Biden included the FTC’s proposal as part of its “Time is Money” initiative, a governmentwide initiative that was announced last year with the aim of cracking down on consumer-related hassles.The FTC rule was set to go into effect on Monday, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said this week that the FTC made a procedural error by failing to come up with a preliminary regulatory analysis, which is required for rules whose annual impact on the U.S. economy is more than $100 million.The FTC claimed that it did not have to come up with a preliminary regulatory analysis because it initially determined that the rule’s impact on the national economy would be less than $100 million. An administrative law judge decided that the economic impact would be more than the $100 million threshold.The court decided to vacate the rule.“While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission’s rulemaking process are fatal here,” the court wrote.The FTC declined to comment on Wednesday.The agency is currently moving forward with its preparations for a trial involving Amazon’s Prime program. The trial stems from a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that accused Amazon of enrolling consumers in its Prime program without their consent and making it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions.The trial is expected to take place next year. Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Just over a month ago, Samsung did something strange to start hyping up its next foldable phone announcements. Those phones, which Samsung revealed today, are officially called the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 and Flip7, but in a blog post from early June, the company teased the news as “the Next Chapter of Ultra.” Bestowing its flagship branding on new foldables would have been a big show of confidence, especially amid reports that Samsung is scaling back foldable phone production this year. But that didnt actually happen. While Samsung says the Fold7 and Flip7 address a lot of the complaints people have about foldable phones, don’t expect any kind of major rebranding or strategic pivot. As before, the phones will have to speak for themselves. A thinner Fold with better cameras Samsung is at least being honest now about the reasons people have avoided foldable phones until now, because it claims to have addressed them. The Galaxy Z Fold7, for instance, is only about 9% thicker than a Galaxy S25 Ultra or iPhone 16 Pro Max when folded shut, and at 215 grams it’s even a little lighter than those phones. The camera system is also closer to flagship quality now, with a 200 megapixel wide-angle lens and a 44% larger image sensor, though its 10 megapixel telephoto and 12 megapixel ultrawide lenses still lag behind the Ultra’s 50 megapixel versions. Samsung’s also giving up on hiding a front camera behind the inner display, and will instead use a camera cutout with a higher-quality 10 megapixel version. [Photo: Samsung] The Galaxy Z Fold7 looks more like a normal phone when it’s folded shut as well, with a 6.5-inch outer screen that’s wider than previous models. The inner screen now stretches to 8 inches as a result, and Samsung says it’s improved the hinge so the crease on the inner screen isn’t as noticeable. “We’re really excited about this device,” says Blake Gaiser, head of mobile phone management for Samsung Electronics America. “We think that a lot of those barriers that have kept customers from choosing a foldable over a traditional bar-type phone are continuing to be eliminated or minimized.” Better and cheaper Flips Samsung’s smaller foldables had their own set of compromises, which the company’s trying to address with the Galaxy Z Flip7. The phone is wider now, giving the inner screen a 21:9 aspect ratio that matches most regular phones. The outer screen also has smaller bezels and matches the smooth 120 Hz refresh rate and brightness of the inner screen. Because the 4,300 mAh battery is larger and the processor is more efficient, Samsung says the Flip 7 lasts eight hours longer in video playback tests on a single charge. The Flip7 is also about 8% thinner than the Fold 6 when folded shut, and it’s about 12% thinner than a Galaxy S25+ when unfolded. The camera system is the same, with 50 megapixel wide and 12 megapixel ultrawide lenses, though it’ll be aided by a new image processing system. “We had to make some sacrifices with that compact form factor, but I think that’s something we’ve addressed in the last generations, and something we’ll continue to address with Flip7,” says Peter Park, Samsung Electronics America’s senior product manager for foldables. The pricing problem Even as Samsung chips away at what bothered people about foldable phones, price might still be the biggest barrier. “Consumers who were interested in trying a foldable, especially a Flip, for them budget or price was the number one reason why they were not able to make that leap,” Park says. [Photo: Samsung] Samsung doesn’t really have an answer for that yet. It’s releasing a $900 Flip7 FE, which is largely just a rebrand of last year’s Flip6 with the same smaller outer screen and weaker battery life. The Flip7 will still cost $1,100, leaving it on the higher end of flagship phone pricing. The Galaxy Z Fold7, meanwhile, is moving in the wrong direction with a starting price of $2,000. That’s $100 more than the Fold6 and $200 more than the Fold5. For now, it seems that Samsung would rather not release an “FE” variant with last year’s compromises. “We just haven’t seen at this point a dramatic market for the trade-offs we would need to take in order to decrease the price,” Gaiser says. Making the case In lieu of lower pricing, Samsung will have to make the case for its foldables in other ways. Gaiser hopes that simply seeing the phones in all their glory will be enough. To that end, Samsung has been working with wireless carriers on adhesive-mounted security mechanisms instead of bulky claw grips so shoppers can get a better feel for the phones. It’s also leaning on carriers for subsidies in exchange for long-term service plans, though it’s unclear if those will be much different from the discounts they offer on other phones. “At the end of the day, foldable awareness is still far below that of a traditional bar-type phone,” Gaiser says. “One of the things that really excites us about Fold 7 is that, even when I showed it around to people for the first time here in the office, they didn’t realize that it was a foldable.” But what about that whole “Next Chapter of Ultra” business? Is there another phone forthcoming? Did Samsung have a bigger rebrand in mind and get cold feet? Gaiser says the goal was merely to “allow people to understand that this is more like an Ultra that unfoldsÝ and acknowledged the potential for confusion. But when asked about reports of Samsung cutting production plans for this year’s foldables, and rival OnePlus’ decision not to ship a foldable in 2025, Gaiser says Samsung still believes in the category. The evidence is in what Samsung’s announcing this week. “We think that the future of foldables is bright, and we’re uniquely positioned to bring forth the innovation necessary to get more and more people excited about foldables,” he says. “If others don’t see it that way, we’re happy to fill the void.”
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E-Commerce
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