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After musing publicly and privately with the idea of raising the top tax rate for wealthy millionaires as Republicans draft his big bill in Congress, President Donald Trump early Friday backed off that callsort of. Trump posted on social media that hiking taxes on anyone, even the rich, could stir a political backlash, reviving the Read my lips: No new taxes warnings of the Bush-era that helped topple a president. The post came days after he floated the idea of higher taxes on those single filers earning $2.5 million and above. But this time, the president, didnt completely discourage GOP lawmakers from pursuing that option as they rush to finish their massive tax breaks and spending cuts package this weekend. The problem with even a TINY tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, Read my lips, Trump wrote. In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but Im OK if they do!!! Trump wrote Friday. The last ditch-push by the president comes as Republicans are laboring to push his big, beautiful bill toward public hearings next week, on track for a House vote by Memorial Day. Divisions run strong in the party, and the president’s on-again, off-again push for millionaires taxes complicates the outcome. Over the past months, Trump has repeatedly brought up the idea of imposing a higher rate for millionaires and the president revived his request in private talks. Trump told Speaker Mike Johnson again this week he wants to see a higher rate on the wealthy in the big bill coming from Congress, according to a person familiar with the conversations and granted anonymity to discuss the private talks. The president sees higher taxes on millionaires as a way to clip the argument coming from Democrats that the GOPs big tax package only benefits his wealthy friends, including billionaire Elon Musk, the person said. Thanks to Trumps 2017 tax cuts bill, the top rate is now a 37% bracket that expires at the end of the year. That rate is for incomes beyond about $600,000 for single filers. Trump would like to see that rate expire, reverting back to 39.6%, or 40%. This week Trump pitched top rate on incomes of around $2.5 million for individuals and $5 million for couples. The debate over millionaires has been raging with a robust collection of anti-tax activists led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform and others working vigorously to prevent any tax hikes. Trump appeared Friday to have again heeded the message from Gingrich, who has warned that George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign pledged to not to implement any new taxes as president. Bush then faced an onslaught of criticism during his unsuccessful 1992 reelection campaign for breaking that promise. Trump posted a few weeks ago that Gingrich was correct. But on Friday the president said independent candidate Ross Perot had caused Bushs loss that year. As the conversations swirl in public and private, they keep coming back to Trumps own politically-populist instincts, touching off the GOP divide. Im not excited about the proposal, but I have to say, there are a number of people in both the house and the Senate who are, said Sen. Mike Crapo, the GOP chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said earlier this week on the Hugh Hewitt show, and if the President weighs in in favor of it, then thats going to be a big factor that we have to take into consideration as well. Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim, The Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
May has only just begun, but already, it has not been a good month for the tech industry in terms of layoffs. Since the month started, several prominent names in technology have announced layoffs, some involving a significant number of workers. Here are the companies involved in the latest round of tech layoffs Panasonic Holdings The iconic Japanese electronics giant, founded over a century ago, announced on May 9 that it would eliminate 10,000 jobs. That reduction equates to about 4% of Panasonics total workforce, reports Bloomberg. According to Panasonic CEO Yuki Kusumi, the cuts are to better prepare the electronics maker for the next few decades. The company will reportedly trim back operations in nongrowth areas such as televisions and industrial products in order to concentrate on other areas, including artificial intelligence (AI). On an earnings call, Kusumi addressed the cuts, saying he was truly sorry. He added: If we dont make drastic cuts to our fixed cost structure, we wont be able to chase growth again. Of the planned cuts, 5,000 jobs are expected to be lost in Japan, while the other 5,000 jobs will be cut overseas. It is unknown how many American jobs will be lost in the cuts. Match Group The owner of the worlds most popular dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge, has announced it will cut 13% of its staff. As noted by Bloomberg, in 2024, Match employed about 2,500 full-time workers, which means that the company will be cutting around 325 individuals. Match Groups new CEO, Spencer Rascoff, announced the cuts when reporting the companys Q1 2025 results yesterday, May 8. In recent years, younger generations, particularly Gen Z, have begun to sour on dating apps, a trend that Rascoff addressed in March, a month after becoming Match Groups CEO. Too often, our apps have felt like a numbers game rather than a place to build real connections, leaving people with the false impression that we prioritize metrics over experience, he said in a letter to employees. That needs to change. Bloomberg says the cuts will see one out of every five managers be let go at Match and quotes Rascoff as saying the aim of the cuts is to help the company focus on product velocity to drive growth. Google Search giant Google is also reportedly seeing tech layoffs, letting go of 200 workers in its global business unit, reports The Information. The global business unit handles partnerships and sales at the company. A company spokesperson told Reuters that the cuts were being made as part of some changes across its teams that are designed “to drive greater collaboration and expand our ability to quickly and effectively serve our customers.” CrowdStrike The cybersecurity company CrowdStrike said on May 7 that it will cut about 500 jobs, equating to about 5% of its total workforce. The Austin, Texas-based company employed just over 10,000 people as of January 2025. CrowdStrikes CEO George Kurtz said the job cuts will position the company to move faster, operate more efficiently, and continue our cybersecurity leadership, according to The Wall Street Journal. CrowdStrike was a little-known name outside of the cybersecurity industry until last year, when a bug in its software temporarily made millions of Windows PCs worldwide unusable. Symbotic The warehouse automation company based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, announced that it will lay off 400 workers from the robotics unit it purchased from Walmart in January, reported The Boston Globe on May 3. While decisions like these are always difficult, we made them following a thorough post-close review of our operations to ensure we are best positioned for the future with an effective structure to continue executing our long-term growth strategy, the company said in a statement to The Globe. The layoffs at Symbotic will take place on June 27. Tech isn’t the only industry facing layoffs While not a tech company, its worth mentioning that accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers, better known as PwC, announced earlier this week that it was laying off about 1,500 employees in the United States. That represents about 2% of its 75,000-strong workforce in America. The move is reportedly being made to cut costs. Tech layoffs mount in 2025 With these latest May tech layoffs, the total number of tech industry layoffs in 2025 has now reached 52,340, according to data compiled by the tracker Layoffs.fyi. Those layoffs have occurred at 123 companies. However, those layoff numbers are still well below the 152,922 people laid off in 2024, the 264,220 laid off in 2023, and the 165,269 laid off in 2022.
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E-Commerce
Planes at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport were briefly left flying blind overnight as the airport experienced another radar outagethe second incident in less than two weeks. The most recent radar outage, first reported by ABC News, occurred just before 4 a.m. ET on Friday and lasted for a minute and a half. There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson confirmed in a statement provided to Fast Company. Why New York area planes are getting their orders from Philadelphia A Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, is a facility that oversees arrivals and departures within a given airspace. Those facilities provide a critical link between traffic controllers based in airport towers who coordinate takeoffs and landings and the multistate area control centers that guide planes once they reach cruising altitudes. In the case of Newark Airport, that vital link in the chain of communication is newly operating out of Pennsylvania. The FAA relocated part of Newark Airports air traffic control operations to Philadelphia last year in an effort to add additional controllers and to reduce delays at one of the worlds busiest and most complex airspaces. But the move to Philadelphia appears to have caused more problems than it has solved, with short but potentially catastrophic outages sowing chaos for Newarks air traffic controllers. The most recent radar outage is not an isolated incident Fridays radar and communications outage at Newark Airport is just the latest in a string of recent safety lapses keeping frequent fliers up at night. A Newark air traffic controller told NBC News that radio contact has gone dark at least eight or nine times at the facility in the last few months. On April 28, Philadelphias TRACON Area C lost all contact with planes flying into Newark Airport for at least 30 seconds when communications and radar screens went offline. After the incident, a number of Newark air traffic controllers working that day took mental health leave due to the acute anxiety they experienced, worsening existing staffing shortages and snarling the airport in more than 1,000 cancellations and delays. In January, an American Airlines passenger plane collided midair with a U.S. Army helicopter near Reagan National Airport, killing everyone on board both aircraft. The tragedy prompted an intense public outcry over air travel safety in the U.S., which is plagued by outdated technology and hiring woes. The Department of Transportation has a planbut needs the cash Prior to Fridays outage, the FAA said that it planned immediate steps to improve the situation at Newark, with goals to staff up air traffic control and fast-track technology and logistics updates. Prior to the Trump administration, the Biden administration offered its own incremental updates to U.S. air travel, including millions for smaller airports to modernize their air traffic control towers. On Thursday, the FAA highlighted plans to update infrastructure including radar, software, and telecommunications systems. According to the detailed proposal by the Department of Transportation, legacy radios, some over 30 years old, rely on outdated analog technology, leading to frequent outages, high maintenance costs due to scarce parts, and incompatibility with modern digital standards like VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol]. The three-year proposal would modernize existing technology, including an updated digital radio system that would make regular communication blackouts a thing of the past. The proposed upgrades would also add six new air traffic control centers. The Trump administration would need Congress to fund such a massive overhaul to Americas air traffic control systems. Trump has enthusiastically steered around Congress on most issues so far, but for a huge infrastructure project, that would not be possible. Concerns over American air travel could be one area of rare bipartisan overlap during Trumps second term. The proposal is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars, though $12.5 billion has already bubbled up in a House appropriations bill. We use radar from the 1970s, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Thursday. This technology is 50 years old that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.
Category:
E-Commerce
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