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LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. homeowners are spending more on home renovation projects, bucking a broader pullback by consumers amid diminished confidence in the economy.

Sales at building materials and garden supply retailers rose 0.8% last month from March, the biggest gain since 2022, and were up 3.2% from April last year. At the same time, U.S. retail sales overall rose 0.1%, a sharp slowdown from March.

The trend comes even as prices for home improvement products have been rising.

The cost of home repairs and remodeling climbed by nearly 4% in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to Verisk’s Remodel Index. The strategic data analytics firm tracks costs for more than 10,000 home repair items, from appliances to windows.

Recent price increases appear to be driven primarily by labor costs and don’t appear to reflect the ongoing trade war that the Trump administration is engaged in with major U.S. trading partners like Mexico, China and Canada.

“We haven’t seen panic buying from contractors or investors concerned about the impact tariffs might have on future costs, or labor rates being driven up by stricter enforcement of immigration policies,” Greg Pyne, vice president of pricing for Verisk Property Estimating Solutions, said in a report earlier this month.

Home Depot said Tuesday that it doesn’t expect to raise prices because of tariffs, saying it has spent years diversifying the sources for the goods on its shelves. However, executive Billy Bastek said some products now on Home Depot shelves may disappear.

He also noted that the chain is seeing fewer customers taking on large home improvement jobs like kitchen and bath remodels, because high interest rates may be dissuading homeowners from borrowing money to finance such projects.

Spending on home renovations has remained resilient as elevated mortgage rates and skyrocketing home prices have frozen out many would-be buyers. That’s kept U.S. home sales in a slump, limiting the market for homeowners who want to sell.

Many homeowners also bought or refinanced their mortgage when the average rate on a 30-year home loan was below 3% or 4% in the first couple of years of the pandemic. That’s made them reluctant to sell now, when the average rate is hovering near 7%.

In response, many homeowners have opted to to invest in sprucing up their home rather than sell and take on a mortgage with a sharply higher interest rate.

A shortfall in new home construction more than a decade in the making has kept people living in older homes longer. Nearly half of the owner-occupied homes in the U.S. were built before 1980 and have a median age of 41 years, according to an analysis of Census data by the National Association of Home Builders. That aging stock of homes has helped fuel the need for repairs and improvements.

Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ most recent quarterly outlook of home improvement projects that spending on home renovations will continue to increase this year, despite economic uncertainty.

Spending by homeowners on maintenance and home improvement projects increased 0.5% in the first quarter from a year earlier to $513 billion, according to the JCHS’ leading indicator of remodeling activity, or LIRA.

It also forecasts annual increases from here that will drive spending to $526 billion by the first quarter of next year. That would represent a 2.5% increase from the first quarter of this year.

Rising home prices and signs of a solid economy have supported the outlook for higher spending on home improvement, but that could change if the housing market and economic outlook worsen, said Carlos Martín, director of the JCHS’ Remodeling Futures Program.

“Building materials retail sales are strong, but we are seeing a significant downturn in the sales of existing homes and their median sales price since the last projection — both are known contributors to home improvements,” Martin said. “Broader economic turbulence like a recession, a worsening job market or higher inflation would almost certainly temper our expectations.”

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Almost four dozen Venezuelan workers who had temporary protected status have been put on leave by Disney after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to strip them of legal protections.

The move was made to make sure that the employees were not in violation of the law, Disney said in a statement Friday.

The 45 workers across the company who were put on leave will continue to get benefits.

“We are committed to protecting the health, safety, and well-being of all our employees who may be navigating changing immigration policies and how they could impact them or their families,” the statement said.

About two-thirds of the workers were in union jobs. The union contract for Walt Disney World service workers in Florida allows them to be reinstated without loss of seniority or benefits once they provide proper work authorization within a year of losing their jobs, said Julee Jerkovich, secretary-treasurer of the United Food And Commercial Workers International Union’s Local 1625.

“It’s very distressing,” Jerkovich said Friday. “Disney is being made to be the bad guy, but they didn’t have any choice.”

Disney would have been criticized if the workers weren’t put on leave, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made raids at Disney World, she said.

The Supreme Court’s order on Monday put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month. The justices provided no rationale, which is common in emergency appeals.

The order potentially exposes as many as 350,000 Venezuelans to deportation. The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.

The case was the latest in a string of emergency appeals President Donald Trump’s administration has made to the Supreme Court, many of them related to immigration and involving Venezuela. Earlier this month, the government asked the court to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, setting them up for potential deportation as well.

“These workers — our colleagues, friends, and neighbors — have contributed immensely to the success of the Walt Disney Company and to the vibrant culture of central Florida,” a coalition of unions at Disney World said in a statement. “No worker should have to live in fear of losing everything after building a life here.”

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Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky at @mikeysid.bsky.social.

The Republican-controlled Federal Trade Commission is abandoning a Biden-era effort to block Microsoft’s purchase of “Call of Duty” video game maker Activision Blizzard.

In an order issued Thursday, the FTC said it had determined that “the public interest is best served by dismissing the administrative litigation in this case.”

It was the second time in one day that the FTC pulled out of litigation begun during the Biden administration. Earlier Thursday, the FTC said it was dismissing a lawsuit against PepsiCo that was filed by the Democratic-controlled FTC in January.

Microsoft announced a $69 billion acquisition of Activision in January 2022. It’s one of the most expensive tech acquisitions in history and was designed to boost sales of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, which has lagged in sales behind Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo.

In December 2022, the Federal Trade Commission – then led by Democratic Chairwoman Lina Khan -- sued to temporarily block the acquisition, saying it would let Microsoft suppress competitors who want access to Xbox and its subscription content.

In July 2023, the U.S. District Court in Northern California denied the FTC’s request to pause the acquisition, but the FTC appealed. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court also denied the FTC’s request.

In the meantime, Microsoft completed its purchase of Activision in October 2023 after it won approval from Britain’s competition watchdog, which had also considered blocking the merger.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chairman and president, said Thursday in a statement on X that the decision is a victory for video game players and for “common sense in Washington D.C.”

“We are grateful to the FTC for today’s announcement,” Smith said.

Khan stepped down from the FTC when President Donald Trump took office in January, and Trump fired Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in March. Bedoya and Slaughter have sued the Trump administration, saying their removal was illegal.

Right now, the FTC is made up of three Republican commissioners, and it’s unclear when the two Democrats on the commission will be replaced. The FTC said Friday that it had no comment.

In the PepsiCo case, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said the Biden-era FTC rushed to authorize a case just three days before Trump’s inauguration. He said Thursday that the case, which alleged that PepsiCo was violating the law by giving unfair price advantages to Walmart, was a “dubious political stunt.”

But the FTC hasn’t stood in the way of some Biden-era policies. Earlier this month, a rule the FTC announced in December requiring ticket sellers, hotels, vacation rental platforms and others to disclose their fees up front went into effect.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are falling on Friday after President Donald Trump threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union that could begin in a little more than a week.

The S&P 500 was down 0.4% in afternoon trading and on track for its worst week in the last seven. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 132 points, or 0.3%, as of 1:58 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% lower.

Trump threatened the tariffs before the U.S. stock market opened, saying on his Truth Social platform that trade talks with the European Union “were going nowhere” and that “straight 50%” tariffs could go into effect on June 1. The European Union is one of the United States’ largest trading partners.

Stocks fell immediately afterward in Europe, with France’s CAC 40 index losing 1.7%, and the threat shook the futures market for U.S. stock indexes, which earlier had been suggesting only modest moves at the open of trading. U.S. stock indexes fell less than their European counterparts, but the damage was still widespread, and about 60% of stocks within the S&P 500 sank.

Apple dropped 2.6% and was one of the heaviest weights on the index after Trump went after the company specifically. He said he’s been pushing Apple CEO Tim Cook to move production of iPhones sold in this country to the United States, and he warned a tariff “of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.” if it doesn’t.

Trump has been criticizing companies individually when he’s frustrated with how they’re acting because of his tariffs and because of the uncertainty his trade war has created. He earlier told Walmart it should “eat the tariffs,” along with China, after the retailer said it would likely have to raise prices to cover the increased cost of imports.

Deckers Outdoor, the company behind the Hoka and Uggs brands, became one of the latest companies to say all the uncertainty around the economy means it won’t offer financial forecasts for the full upcoming year. Instead, it gave forecasts only for the upcoming quarter, and they fell short of analysts’ expectations for revenue and profit.

That sent its stock down 19.6%, even though the company reported a stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected.

Ross Stores fell 11.1% after it pulled its financial forecasts for the full year, citing how more than half the goods it sells originate in China. “As such, we expect pressure on our profitability if tariffs remain at elevated levels,” CEO Jim Conroy said.

The off-price retailer gave a forecast for profit in the current quarter that included a hit taken from tariffs, and it fell short of analysts’ expectations. That dragged its stock down even though the company also reported a better profit for the latest quarter than expected.

“The volatility of trade policies and the corresponding impact on the economy, the consumer, and our profitability is highly unpredictable,” Conroy said.

On the winning side of Wall Street was Intuit, which rose 8.4% after the company behind TurboTax and Credit Karma reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected thanks in part to a strong tax season. Perhaps more importantly, Intuit also raised its forecasts for revenue and profit over its full fiscal year.

Trump’s latest tariff threats are stirring up Wall Street after it had recovered nearly all of the losses it had earlier taken because of the trade war. The S&P 500 dropped roughly 20% below its record at one point last month, when worries were at their height about whether Trump’s stiff tariffs would cause a global recession. The index then climbed back within 3% of its all-time high after Trump paused his tariffs on many countries, most notably China.

In the bond market, Treasury yields fell after swinging back and forth a few times. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.51% from 4.54% late Thursday.

It had been running higher earlier in the week, in part on worries about how Washington’s efforts to cut taxes could add trillions of dollars to the U.S. government’s debt. Higher Treasury yields can drive up mortgages and rates for other kinds of loans, which can in turn slow the economy. They also can discourage investors from paying high prices for stocks and other investments.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Asia, where markets closed before Trump issued his latest tariff threats. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.5%, while stocks fell 0.9% in Shanghai.

The price of gold, meanwhile, climbed 2.1% as investors looked for safer places to park their cash.

—-

AP Writers Matt Ott and Jiang Junzhe contributed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has reached a deal with Boeing that will allow the airplane giant to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly misleading U.S. regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed and killed 346 people, according to court papers filed Friday.

Under the “agreement in principle” that still needs to be finalized, Boeing would pay and invest more than $1.1 billion, including an additional $445 million for the crash victims’ families, the Justice Department said. In return, the department would dismiss the fraud charge in the criminal case against the aircraft manufacturer.

“Ultimately, in applying the facts, the law, and Department policy, we are confident that this resolution is the most just outcome with practical benefits,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

“Nothing will diminish the victims’ losses, but this resolution holds Boeing financially accountable, provides finality and compensation for the families and makes an impact for the safety of future air travelers.”

Many relatives of the passengers who died in the crashes, which took place off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, have spent years pushing for a public trial, the prosecution of former company officials, and more severe financial punishment for Boeing.

“Although the DOJ proposed a fine and financial restitution to the victims’ families, the families that I represent contend that it is more important for Boeing to be held accountable to the flying public,” Paul Cassell, an attorney for many of the families in the long-running case, said in a statement earlier this week.

Boeing was accused of misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about aspects of the Max before the agency certified the plane for flight. Boeing did not tell airlines and pilots about a new software system, called MCAS, that could turn the plane’s nose down without input from pilots if a sensor detected that the plane might go into an aerodynamic stall.

The Max planes crashed after a faulty reading from the sensor pushed the nose down and pilots were unable to regain control. After the second crash, Max jets were grounded worldwide until the company redesigned MCAS to make it less powerful and to use signals from two sensors, not just one.

Boeing avoided prosecution in 2021 by reaching a $2.5 billion settlement with the Justice Department that included a previous $243.6 million fine.

A year ago, prosecutors said Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 agreement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws. Boeing agreed last July to plead guilty to the felony fraud charge instead of enduring a potentially lengthy public trial.

But in December, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth rejected the plea deal. The judge said the diversity, inclusion and equity, or DEI, policies in the government and at Boeing could result in race being a factor in picking a monitor to oversee Boeing’s compliance with the agreement.

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It’s been a bumpy ride for Uber $UBER, which lost billions of dollars under founder Travis Kalanick, subsidizing rides to win users away from traditional taxi and car rental services. But it looks like under the leadership of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who arrived in 2017, the ride-hailing app is finally back in the good graces of investors—and riders.

Since cratering in mid-2022, Uber’s share price has boomed about 275%, as it sits on a firm three-quarters of the U.S. rideshare market and is finally making a profit on every ride. Q1 revenue of $11.5 billion was up more than 13% from a year earlier, and the bookings grew 18% year-over-year to $44.2 billion. Just three years ago, investors and Uber watchers were writing off the company — its market was saturated, lower-cost competitors were eating its lunch, and the company faced a slew of lawsuits over its employment practices. Here’s what’s made Uber rise again:

• Khosrowshahi put a focus on profitability ahead of expansion, with Uber making its first profit in five years in 2023, exiting unprofitable markets, and trimming promotional costs.
• Uber began working with Waymo and China’s WeRide to start using robotaxis. That hasn’t yet brought in a profit, but analysts see it as a preparatory step for future growth and a hedge against Tesla’s robotaxis.
• Maybe the biggest single boost Uber got was being added at the end of 2023 to the S&P 500. That nearly always boosts a stock’s price, as it means institutional investors and popular index-tracking funds need to buy the stock.
• Then there’s Bill Ackman, whose Pershing Square Capital Management took a $2.3 billion stake in Uber this month, with Ackman calling the stock undervalued. JPMorganChase analysts this week raised their price target from $92 to $105, citing Uber’s progress toward its three-year goals, including mid-to-high teens percentage growth in gross bookings and a 35%–40% increase in EBITDA. Uber is one of the cheapest big stocks compared to its bottom line, trading at 24.17 times its free cash flow, a fraction of other notable technology stocks like Tesla (397 price-to-free-cash-flow), Palantir (168) and Nvidia (62). Uber generated $6.9 billion in cash in 2024, more than double its $3.4 billion in 2023.

• OpenAI buys Jony Appleseed: It’s a race to get your AI model into the hands of consumers, and Sam Altman’s industry-leading OpenAI took a look at the landscape and decided they’d prefer to own the next ubiquitous AI device rather than pay someone else billions a year to carry his Chatbot on their device. (Much like Alphabet’s been paying Apple $AAPL to make Google the main search engine on the iPhone.) Altman didn’t look far. He’s just paid $6.5 billion for io, a year-old company created by Jony Ive, the man credited with designing the iPhone for Steve Jobs. Io is developing (behind a curtain) the next generation of tools designed around AI. “It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer, and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company,” Altman and Ive said in a blog post that looks a lot like a Paperless Post wedding invitation. Three cheers for the happy couple!
• Google’s dilemma: Alphabet’s $GOOG Google this week unveiled a raft of new AI tools in a bid to recover users and searches it is losing to AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Grok. There’s now an AI-mode on its search page, but gone are many of the blue links, which provided most of Google’s revenue (57% last year), and its future looks murky. After an Apple executive said last week that his company would begin offering AI options, Google’s shares slid 7.3%. “It’s a total reimagining of search with more advanced reasoning,” said Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. “​​We are now entering a new phase of the AI platform shift.”
• Meta-bollicking: Mark Zuckerberg is not happy, so Meta $META is telling managers to fire more people. How? By ensuring they put more people in the “below expectations” bucket at their mid-year performance reviews. Business Insider says it saw an internal Meta memo saying the boss wants teams of 150 people or more to put 15% to 20% of their members in that slop bucket.
• Nvidia’s no longer feeling Nvincible: Jensen Huang, the leather-jacket-wearing founder of chipmaker Nvidia $NVDA, says rules meant to maintain America’s lead in the AI race by curbing China’s access to his company’s advanced AI chips have had the opposite effect. Now Chinese tech firms like Huawei have filled the gap with their own chips. The export controls gave Chinese companies “the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” Huang said at a Taipei conference this week. “All in all, the export control was a failure.”
• Missed Target: Target $TGT missed expectations for sales in the most recent quarter as sales fell 3.8%, and the retailer said it expects sales to fall by single digits this year. Tariffs are only part of the problem: Consumers are losing confidence in the economy, and some shoppers are boycotting Target over its decision to end DEI programs. Target has been losing ground against Walmart and Amazon for years, trailing Walmart’s growth for the last 13 quarters. The company says it will create an “acceleration office” this year to speed up changes and win back customers. Interestingly, Amazon $AMZN CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
• Penalties with interest: Capital One $COF agreed to pay $425 million to settle a class action lawsuit arguing that it cheated depositors out of higher interest rates by failing to let them know about high-interest savings accounts the bank offered. Standard accounts offered a 0.3% interest rate, while high-yield accounts offered as much as 4%. Cap One did not admit responsibility. A similar suit brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was dropped by the Trump Administration, but two days earlier, N.Y. state attorney general Letitia James brought a similar suit.

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• Vanishing value: Tesla $TSLA has backed off its no-trade-in policy for the Cybertruck, and some owners tell Business Insider they’ve lost 37% to 38% of the value of their stainless steel mojo-mobiles in less than a year, Business Insider reports. Kelley Blue Book notes that on average, new cars lose 16% of their value after their first year.
• China syndrome: Right-wing troublemaker Steve Bannon tells the Atlantic it all went south for Elon in Washington when Trump said there’d be no China briefing for the DOGE man. “You could feel it. Everything changed. The fever had been broken,” Bannon told The Atlantic.
• Castles in the sand: That trip to the Gulf states was a great deal for Elon Musk. Musk’s X ventures secured several contracts, including approval to operate its Starlink satellite internet service in Saudi Arabia, a clinical study to test his Neuralink brain chips in Abu Dhabi, and a possible contract to provide Starlink to Emirates Airlines. Musk’s family is also doing business in the Gulf. Dad Errol Musk is in talks to build a Musk Tower in Dubai to house the Musk Institute, which the elder Musk told the New York Times would be devoted to studying “gravity and space-time travel.”
• What, me worry? Musk told a conference in Qatar that Tesla’s sales and share price are fine, despite ample evidence to the contrary. “Sales numbers are strong, we see no problem with demand,” Musk said, adding that the market is the ultimate scorecard for Tesla’s business. “You can just look at the stock price if you want the best inside information,” he said. “A stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if it was not, if things weren’t in good shape. They’re fine, don’t worry about it.” Tesla shares are down 30% from an all-time high last December, and down 10% this year, despite a recent rebound, and first-quarter car sales dropped 13% over 2024.
• Caddy-attack: EV buyers are trading in their Teslas for new Cadillac EVs, says General Motors $GM. Nearly 8 out of every 10 customers purchasing a Cadillac EV are new to the brand, and about 10% of those customers are trading in a Tesla.

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• Pulling the plug: The U.S. Treasury is now singing the Moody’s blues. On Friday, Moody’s, the credit rating company, cut the U.S. government’s debt rating a notch, from AAA to Aa1, saying it “reflects the increase over more than a decade in government debt and interest payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns.” The key word there is “ratios.” That means that as spending is inevitably increasing, revenue is not. In effect, if the government wants to keep spending, it needs a pay raise. The one thing it doesn’t want to do is take a pay cut. But that’s the net effect of the Trump tax cuts from term one, the tariff turmoil that’s cut economic activity (and therefore tax collections), and the “Big, beautiful bill” that increases tax breaks for the rich and that just passed the House of Representatives. The Moody downgrade hit hard on Monday, when bond markets saw a rapid sell-off in 30-year Treasury bonds, whose yields jumped to their highest level since 2023. “I think that Moody’s is a lagging indicator,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday. “I think that’s what everyone thinks of credit agencies.” There are multiple ways to interpret that statement, but none of them suggest the economy will boom anytime soon. One thing the downgrade does mean is that even more taxpayer money will have to be spent on interest on the debt. And that’s got one of America’s most prominent business voices worried. JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon said the risks of higher inflation and even stagflation posed by record U.S. deficits, tariffs, and international tensions aren’t priced into the stock market. “We have huge deficits; we have what I consider almost complacent central banks,” Dimon said. “You all think they can manage all this. I don’t think they can,” he said. “People feel pretty good because you haven’t seen effective tariffs,” Dimon said. “The market came down 10%, [it’s] back up 10%. That’s an extraordinary amount of complacency.”
• Suck it up! When Walmart said it was going to pass the cost of tariffs on to its customers, Donald Trump got himself in a huff: “Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Trump fumed on his social media platform, that occasionally sounds more like Truth Socialism. “ Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” Walmart’s gross profits rose 7.12% in the past year. About a third of Walmart products are imported, the vast majority from China and Mexico.
• Star Wars, the Sequel: Trump said Tuesday the U.S. will spend $175 billion on a space-based defense system aimed at blocking missiles from China and Russia, which he dubbed the “Golden Dome,” a reference to Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system. Trump said it will be finished within four years, but experts say it will take twice as long and cost as much as $831 billion. Whether or not it succeeds, defense contractors are poised to win big contracts, and names mentioned include SpaceX, Palantir $PLTR, L3Harris Technologies $LHX, Lockheed Martin $LMT, and RTX Corp $RTX. Ronald Reagan attempted a similar project in the 1980s called Star Wars, but it was cancelled after the U.S. and Russia agreed to avoid an expensive arms race in space.
• Audit this: Trump’s pick to lead the IRS sold his friends a tax break that the IRS said does not exist, and Democratic senators at his confirmation hearing this week went to town. Former Missouri congressman Billy Long offered his customers a “tribal tax credit” linked to oil and gas. “I did not indicate that they were anything but real,” Long told Senators on Tuesday. And it’s there’s more trouble ahead: Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said he’s got recordings of Long promising favorable tax deals for friends of Trump.

• Media notes: Paramount’s $PARA CBS division sacked CBS News chief Wendy McMahon after she disagreed with the company’s move to settle a $60 billion lawsuit brought by Trump, who accused “60 Minutes” of selectively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Legal experts call the suit baseless, and Trump beat Harris at the polls anyway, so what’s his beef? But Paramount needs the FCC’s blessing to sell itself to Hollywood studio Skydance, run by Oracle $ORCL founder Larry Ellison’s son David.
• Sesame stream: As the Trump administration moves to cut all funding from public broadcasting, Sesame Street has reached a deal with Netflix to syndicate the show and launch new episodes simultaneously with PBS. Since 2015, HBO has paid Sesame Workshop $30 million to $35 million a year for new episodes of “Sesame Street,” The New York Times reported. But HBO parent Warner Bros. Discovery $WBD let that deal expire as it turns away from children’s content and faces its own financial issues. Warner shares are down 16.5% so far this year.
• $256MillionandMe: Failed DNA fortune-telling firm 23andMe said it has agreed to be bought by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals $RGN, a biotech company that uses DNA research to develop new drugs. 23andMe became a household name as Americans got their saliva tested to learn who their parents were and where they’d come from. But it ran rapidly through its potential customer base and offered nothing for a returning customer. It tried to use the genetic data to develop its own drugs, but that failed and the company filed for bankruptcy protection. Regenoron says it will still collect valuable new data for free by continuing to offer DNA testing.
• Airbnb, begone: Facing one of Europe’s worst housing crises, the Spanish government ordered Airbnb $ABNB to take down nearly 66,000 listings in the country, as an increasing number of Spaniards rent their homes—or sell them to companies that rent them out—to tourists. Airbnb says the Spanish government needs to look for the cause of its housing crisis at home: “The solution is to build more homes — anything else is a distraction,” the company said in a statement.
• Fortnite’s back! Apple reinstated Fortnite in the App Store after a federal judge ruled it coudn’t force developers to use Apple’s $AAPL costly payment system. Fortnite owner Epic had sued back in 2020, after Apple booted it from the ecosystem when Epic told customers to pay it directly rather than accepting Apple’s 30% sales commission.
• Sweet: Medical device maker Medtronic’s $MDT diabetes business has been lagging for several years, as new drugs, cheaper pumps, and a federal freeze on insulin prices slashed margins. Safety issues led it to delay selling a new insulin pump. Now it’s spinning off the diabetes business into a standalone company. “These are higher-margin markets than the diabetes space, and they better leverage our core strengths as a company,” said CEO Geoff Martha.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans stayed up all night to pass their multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package, with Speaker Mike Johnson defying the skeptics and unifying his ranks to muscle President Donald Trump’s priority bill to approval Thursday.

With last-minute concessions and stark warnings from Trump, the Republican holdouts largely dropped their opposition to salvage the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that’s central to the GOP agenda. The House launched debate before midnight and by dawn the vote was called, 215-214, with Democrats staunchly opposed. It next goes to the Senate, with long negotiations ahead.

“To put it simply, this bill gets Americans back to winning again,” said Johnson, R-La.

The outcome caps an intense time on Capitol Hill, with days of private negotiations and public committee hearings, many happening back-to-back, around-the-clock. Republicans insisted their sprawling 1,000-page-plus package was what voters sent them to Congress — and Trump to the White House — to accomplish. They believe it will be “rocket fuel,” as one put it during debate, for the uneasy U.S. economy.

Trump himself demanded action, visiting House Republicans at Tuesday’s conference meeting and hosting GOP leaders and the holdouts for a lengthy session Wednesday at the White House. Before the vote, the administration warned in a pointed statement that failure “would be the ultimate betrayal.”

After the legislation’s passage, Trump posted on social media: “Thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill! Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work.”

The Senate hopes to wrap up its version by the Fourth of July holiday.

Central to the package is the GOP’s commitment to extending some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks they engineered during Trump’s first term in 2017, while temporarily adding new ones he campaigned on during his 2024 campaign, including no taxes on tips, overtime pay, car loan interest and others.

To make up for some of the lost tax revenue, the Republicans focused on changes to Medicaid and the food stamps program, largely by imposing work requirements on many of those receiving benefits. There’s also a massive rollback of green energy tax breaks from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.

Additionally, the package tacks on $350 billion in new spending, with about $150 billion going to the Pentagon, including for the president’s new “ Golden Dome” defense shield, and the rest for Trump’s mass deportation and border security agenda.

All told, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 8.6 million fewer people would have health care coverage and 3 million less people a month would have SNAP food stamps benefits with the proposed changes.

The CBO said the tax provisions would increase federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would tally $1 trillion in reduced spending. The lowest-income households in the U.S. would see their resources drop, while the highest ones would see a boost, it said.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York read letters from Americans describing the way the program cuts would hurt them. “This is one big ugly bill,” he said.

As the minority, without the votes to stop Trump’s package, Democrats instead offered up impassioned speeches and procedural moves to stall its advance. As soon as the House floor reopened for debate, the Democrats forced a vote to adjourn. It failed.

In “the dark of night they want to pass this GOP tax scam,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.

Other Democrats called it a “big, bad bill” or a “big, broken promise.”

Pulling the package together before his Memorial Day deadline has been an enormous political lift for Johnson, with few votes to spare from his slim GOP majority whose rank-and-file Republicans have conflicting priorities of their own.

Conservatives, particularly from the House Freedom Caucus, held out for steeper spending cuts to defray costs piling onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt.

At the same time, more moderate and centrist GOP lawmakers were wary of the changes to Medicaid that could result in lost health care for their constituents. And some worried the phaseout of the renewable energy tax breaks will impede businesses using them to invest in green energy projects in many states.

One big problem had been the costly deal with GOP lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states to quadruple the $10,000 deduction for state and local taxes, called SALT, to $40,000 for incomes up to $500,000, which was included in the final product.

For every faction Johnson tried to satisfy, another would roar in opposition.

Late in the night, GOP leaders unveiled a 42-page amendment with a number of revisions.

The changes included speedier implementation of the Medicaid work requirements, which will begin in December 2026, rather than January 2029, and a faster roll back of the production tax credits for clean electricity projects, both sought by the conservatives.

Also tucked into the final version were some unexpected additions — including a $12 billion fund for the Department of Homeland Security to reimburse states that help federal officials with deportations and border security.

And in a nod to Trump’s influence, the Republicans renamed a proposed new children’s savings program after the president, changing it from MAGA accounts — money account for growth and advancement — to simply “Trump” accounts.

Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind., said Americans shouldn’t believe the dire predictions from Democrats about the impact of the bill. “We can unlock the ‘Golden Age’ of America,” she said, echoing the president’s own words.

By early morning hours, the chief holdouts appeared to be falling in line. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said they “got some improvements.”

But two Republicans voted against the package, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a deficit watcher who had been publicly criticized by Trump, remained unmoved. “This bill is a debt bomb ticking,” he warned.

And Rep. Andy Harris, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus who wanted more time, voted present. Some others did not vote.

Final analysis of the overall package’s costs and economic impacts are still being assessed.

Along with extending existing tax breaks, it would increase the standard income tax deduction, to $32,000 for joint filers, and boost the child tax credit to $2,500. There would be an enhanced deduction, of $4,000, for older adults of certain income levels, to help defray taxes on Social Security income.

To cut spending, those seeking Medicaid health care, who are able-bodied adults without dependents, would need to fulfill 80 hours a month on a job or in other community activities.

Similarly, to receive food stamps through SNAP, those up to age 64, rather than 54, who are able-bodied and without dependents, would need to meet the 80 hours a month work or community engagement requirements. Additionally, some parents of children older than 7 years old would need to fulfill the work requirements.

Republicans said they want to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal programs.

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Associated Press writers Matt Brown and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.