A day care facility in a Texas county that’s part of the measles outbreak has multiple cases, including children too young to be fully vaccinated, public health officials say.West Texas is in the middle of a still-growing measles outbreak with 505 cases reported on Tuesday. The state expanded the number of counties in the outbreak area this week to 10. The highly contagious virus began to spread in late January and health officials say it has spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Mexico.Three people who were unvaccinated have died from measles-related illnesses this year, including two elementary school-aged children in Texas. The second child died Thursday at a Lubbock hospital, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral in Seminole, the epicenter of the outbreak.As of Friday, there were seven cases at a day care where one young child who was infectious gave it to two other children before it spread to other classrooms, Lubbock Public Health director Katherine Wells said.“Measles is so contagious I won’t be surprised if it enters other facilities,” Wells said.The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is first recommended between 12 and 15 months old and a second shot between 4 and 6 years old.Maegan Messick, co-owner of Tiny Tots U Learning Academy, where the outbreak is occurring, recently told KLBK-TV in Lubbock that they’re taking precautions like putting kids who are too young to get the vaccines together in isolation.“We have tried to be extremely transparent,” she told the TV station.There are more than 200 children at the day care, Wells said. Most have had least one dose of the vaccine, though she added, “we do have some children that have only received one dose that are now infected.”The public health department is recommending that any child with only one vaccine get their second dose early, and changed its recommendation for kids in Lubbock County to get the first vaccine dose at 6 months old instead of 1. A child who is unvaccinated and attends the day care must stay home for 21 days since their last exposure, Wells said.Case count and hospitalization numbers in Texas have climbed steadily since the outbreak began, and spiked by 81 cases from March 28 to April 4.On Tuesday, the state added another 24 cases to its count and two additional counties, Borden and Randall. One more person was hospitalized since Friday, with 57 total.Gaines County, where the virus has been spreading through a close-knit Mennonite community, has the majority of cases, with 328 on Tuesday. Neighboring Terry County is second with 46, followed by Lubbock County with 36.The Texas Department of State Health Services tracks vaccinations rate for kindergartners, though the data doesn’t include homeschooled children or some kids who attend private school. Gaines County’s rate is 82%, which is far below the 95% level needed to prevent community spreadand health officials have said it’s likely lower in the small religious schools and homeschooling groups where the early cases were identified.In Terry County, the vaccination rate for kindergartners is at 96%, while Lubbock County is at 92%.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met with Texas officials Monday to determine how many people it would send to West Texas to assist with the outbreak response, spokesman Jason McDonald said Monday. He expected a small team to arrive later this week, followed by a bigger group on the ground next week.The CDC said its first team was in the region from early March to April 1, withdrawing on-the-ground support days before a second child died in the outbreak.A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said late Sunday that the governor and first lady were extending their “deepest prayers” to the family and community, and that the state health department had sent epidemiologists, immunization teams and specimen collection units to the area.
AP reporter Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report.
Jamie Stengle, Associated Press
Last month, First Lady Melania Trump used her first public remarks of President Trumps second term to voice her support for the Take It Down Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at curbing deepfake revenge porn. She was joined by Elliston Berry, a Texas teenager who was a victim of deepfake porn. The widespread presence of abusive behavior in the digital domain affects the daily lives of our children, families, and communities, Mrs. Trump said. Every young person deserves a safe online space to express themself freely, without the looming threat of exploitation or harm.
The Take It Down Act unanimously passed the Senate and is now headed for the House. Across the political spectrum, lawmakers generally agree that deepfake porn, in which generative AI renders a sexually explicit likeness of a real person, must be regulated. The public is on board as well. When pornographic deepfakes of Taylor Swift were circulated online, her fans were outraged and social media platforms raced to restrict these images. But the conversation has been framed too narrowly as a problem of exploitation and consent. It is also an existential labor problem: AI-generated porn could put thousands of Americans out of work.
Like it or not, porn is big business. The industry currently operates as a hybrid market. Porn studios hire performers as private contractors, paying them a flat rate per shoot to own the recorded scene and freely disseminate it online. Performers can also create their own porn for OnlyFans, a social media platform primarily for explicit content where users pay for subscriptions to content creators accounts. Pornhub, the largest porn sitereceiving 5.25 billion visits each monthhosts around 20,000 verified performers. On OnlyFans, the numbers are even more staggering. In 2023, OnlyFans received $6.6 billion in payments, generating $1.3 billion in revenue. The company has over four million content creators, an estimated two million of whom are Americanabout twice the number of Uber drivers in the US.
AI throws the porn industry, along with the rest of us, into new legal territory. For promotional purposes, porn studios have long included clauses in performers contracts giving them rights over not only the film itself but also derivatives of all images created during the shoot. These clauses could now grant studios sweeping ownership of performers likeness that they could use to make deepfakes porn scenes without providing additional pay to performers.
But performers face an even broader threat, one that jeopardizes the studio and OnlyFans markets alike: In the not-too-distant future, companies will likely be able to make porn scenes generated by AI that are difficult to distinguish from scenes involving real performers and are cheaper to produce than hiring them. Even if consumers know that the person they are watching is not real, they may not care. Porn performers will not merely have to worry about having their particular likeness stolen for deepfake porn, because their profession as a whole could be largely replaced by AI.
Los Angeles economy, already ravaged by wildfires, would be particularly hard-hit. The San Fernando Valley remains the epicenter of the global porn industry, supporting not only tens of thousands of porn performers and adult content creators, but also other porn industry members, from makeup artists to grips. Los Angeles is a company town, and porn workers are its employees.
One might argue that the porn industry should simply be allowed to collapse. Indeed, this is the tact that has often been taken with sin industries through restrictions on banking, for example. The porn industry has a way to go when it comes to empowering performers, but further cutting into their pay is not the solution. Porn performers are workers, and AI-generated porn poses a threat to their work.
Instead, the porn industry should be recognized as part of the entertainment ecosystemthe rebellious stepsister, shall we say, of the mainstream film industryand shares with it a common foe in AI. SAG-AFTRA, the labor union representing about 160,000 media professionals globally, has made the fight against AI a top priority. The union won important protections for its members in the historic 2023 strike, including consent procedures regarding deepfakes in contracts, minimum pay scales for using deepfakes, and limitations on employing generative AI for screenwriting. In the ongoing video game strike, deepfakes remain the sticking point.
Unfortunately, none of these negotiations will directly help porn performers. Although SAG-AFTRA represents a wide range of media professionalsincluding mainstream actors, screenwriters, broadcast journalists, news writers, DJs, recording artists, stunt performers, puppeteers, and other media professionalsporn performers have never been eligible for membership. The porn industry also struggles to organize from within due to fragmentation and notoriously high turnover. While the Free Speech Coalition serves as the industrys trade association, the industry has no labor union. SAG-AFTRA should add porn performers to its ranks, devoting a branch to their specific needs.
The entertainment ecosystem would be strengthened if media professionals recognize that, when it comes to AI, their fate is intertwined with that of porn performers. Indeed, when it comes to fair compensation and the protection of human labor, all of our jobs may depend on it.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a series of executive orders aimed at boosting the struggling coal industry, a reliable but polluting energy source that’s long been in decline.Under the four orders, Trump uses his emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants set for retirement to keep producing electricity to meet rising U.S. power demand amid growth in data centers, artificial intelligence, and electric cars.Trump also directed federal agencies to identify coal resources on federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining, and prioritize coal leasing on U.S. lands.In a related action, Trump also signed a proclamation offering coal-fired power plants a two-year exemption from federal requirements to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals such as mercury, arsenic, and benzene.Trump’s administration had offered power plants and other industrial polluters a chance for exemptions from rules imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, under Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, set up an electronic mailbox to allow regulated companies to request a presidential exemption under the Clean Air Act to a host of Biden-era rules.Trump, a Republican, has long promised to boost what he calls “beautiful” coal to fire power plants and for other uses, but the industry has been in decline for decades.“I call it beautiful, clean coal. I told my people, never use the word coal unless you put beautiful, clean before it,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony where he was flanked by coal miners in hard hats. Several wore patches on their work jackets that said “coal.”“Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure, and powerful form of energy,” Trump said. “It’s cheap, incredibly efficient, high density, and it’s almost indestructible.”Trump’s orders also direct Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands and require federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the nation away from coal production. And they seek to promote coal and coal technology exports, and accelerate development of coal technologies.Trump also targeted what he called “overreach” by Democratic-controlled states to limit energy production to slow climate change. He ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to take “all appropriate action to stop the enforcement” of such laws.New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, cochairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance, said Trump’s order illegally attempts to usurp states’ rights to act on climate.“The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority. We are a nation of statesand lawsand we will not be deterred,” the two Democrats said. “We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans’ fundamental right to clean air and water (and) grow the clean energy economy.”The climate alliance is a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors representing nearly 55% of the U.S. population.
Trump has long championed coal
Trump, who has pushed for U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market, has long suggested that coal can help meet surging electricity demand from manufacturing and the massive data centers needed for artificial intelligence.“We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all,” he said Tuesday. “All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened, if they’re modern enough, (or) they’ll be ripped down and brand new ones will be built. And we’re going to put the miners back to work.”In 2018, during his first term, Trump directed then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take “immediate steps” to bolster struggling coal-fired and nuclear power plants, calling it a matter of national and economic security.At that time, Trump also considered but didn’t approve a plan to order grid operators to buy electricity from coal and nuclear plants to keep them open. Energy industry groupsincluding oil, natural gas, solar, and wind powercondemned the proposal, saying it would raise energy prices and distort markets.
The national decline of coal
Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper, and there’s a durable market for renewable energy such as wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.Trump’s administration has targeted regulations under the Biden administration that could hasten closures of heavily polluting coal power plants and the mines that supply them.Coal once provided more than half of U.S. electricity production, but its share dropped to about 16% in 2023, down from about 45% as recently as 2010. Natural gas provides about 43% of U.S. electricity, with the remainder from nuclear energy and renewables such as wind, solar, and hydropower.The front line in what Republicans call the “war on coal” is in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, a sparsely populated section of the Great Plains with the nation’s largest coal mines. It’s also home to a massive power plant in Colstrip, Montana, that emits more toxic air pollutants such as lead and arsenic than any other U.S. facility of its kind, according to the EPA.EPA rules finalized last year could force the Colstrip Generating Station to shut down or spend an estimated $400 million to clean up its emissions within the next several years. Another Biden-era proposal, from the Interior Department, would end new leasing of taxpayer-owned coal reserves in the Powder River Basin.
Changes and promises under Trump
Trump vowed to reverse those actions and has named Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to lead a new National Energy Dominance Council. The panel is tasked with driving up already record-setting domestic oil and gas production, as well as coal and other traditional energy sources.The council has been granted sweeping authority over federal agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation. It has a mandate to cut bureaucratic red tape, enhance private sector investments, and focus on innovation instead of “unnecessary regulation,” Trump said.Zeldin meanwhile, has announced a series of actions to roll back environmental regulations, including rules on pollution from coal-fired power plants. In all, Zeldin said he’s moving to roll back 31 environmental rules, including a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action against climate change.
Coal industry applauds, but environmental groups warn of problems
Industry groups praised Trump’s focus on coal.“Despite countless warnings from the nation’s grid operators and energy regulators that we are facing an electricity supply crisis, the last administration’s energy policies were built on hostility to fossil fuels, directly targeting coal,Ý said Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association.Trump’s executive actions “clearly prioritize how to responsibly keep the lights on, recognize the enormous strategic value of American-mined coal and embrace the economic opportunity that comes from American energy abundance,” Nolan said.But environmental groups said Trump’s actions were more of the same tactics he tried during his first term in an unsuccessful bid to revive coal.“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” asked Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council.“Coal plants are old and dirty, uncompetitive and unreliable,” Kennedy said, accusing Trump and his administration of remaining “stuck in the past, trying to make utility customers pay more for yesterday’s energy.”Instead, she said, the U.S. should do all it can to build the power grid of the future, including tax credits and other support for renewable energy such as wind and solar power.
Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.
Matthew Daly, Associated Press
Chinese producers of plastic Christmas trees and other festive decorations say orders from U.S. clients, which are crucial for their business, should have started to come in by now. But because of surging import tariffs, they haven’t.
U.S. President Donald Trump has raised tariffs on Chinese imports by 104% so far this year in an escalating trade war that threatens great pain for the world’s largest exporter of manufactured goods.
U.S. retailers are almost completely reliant on China for Christmas decorations, where they source 87% of such goodsworth roughly $4 billion. Chinese factories are also heavily dependent on the U.S. market, where they sell half of what they make.
If Americans want new Christmas decorations this year, they will have to pay a lot more for themif they can find them on the shelves at all.
“So far this year, none of my American customers have placed any orders,” said Qun Ying, who runs an artificial Christmas tree factory in the eastern city of Jinhua.
“Of course it’s about the tariffs. By mid-April all the orders are normally finalized, but right now . . . it’s hard to know if any orders are coming. Maybe American customers won’t buy anything this year.”
In Shaoxing, some 160 kilometres (100 miles) away from Jinhua, factory owner Liu Song was confident his business can cope by trying to sell more to Russia, Europe, and Southeast Asia, which together take 75% of his products already.
“We are worried that U.S. orders will come down,” he said, while adding: “We will definitely win this trade war.”
Jessica Guo, who also manages a Christmas tree factory in Jinhua, said she was just notified by an important U.S. customer that it is pausing a 3 million yuan ($408,191) order for which she had already spent 400,000 yuan on materials.
She expects that order will soon be cancelled and worries about her business.
“My peers and I rely on U.S. orders to survive,” Guo said. “This will inevitably affect a lot of people. No one can escape.”
Economists say the trade war will shave 12 percentage points off Chinese economic growth this year, exacerbate industrial overcapacity issues, threaten jobs, and further fuel deflationary forces.
As Chinese exporters sell less to the U.S., which last year bought goods worth more than $400 billion, they will have to compete ever more intensely on prices in other markets.
This will hit their already-thin profit margins and force them to cut costs at home, economists say.
Guo’s 10,800-square metre (116,250-square foot) factory employs 140 people regularly, but that number can hit 200 in peak production season over the summer. This year she does not expect to need extra workers.
“Losing the U.S. market will definitely impact many peoples jobs,” said Guo.
Domestic demand for Christmas decorations in China is insignificant, she added.
SILENT NIGHTS
Sourcing from countries other than China will be difficult. The second-biggest exporter of Christmas decorations to the U.S. is Cambodia, which makes 5.5% of the goods, and last week Trump imposed a 49% tariff on Cambodian imports.
Shifting production to the U.S., one of Trump’s goals in imposing tariffs on China and almost every other country in the world, is not feasible, says Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association.
“They certainly can’t be made in the United States. There’s no manufacturing, the technology isn’t here, the labour market isn’t here,” said Warner.
Warner, who expects significant, but hard to estimate, price increases, says 80% of all Christmas trees displayed in the U.S. are artificial. The pre-lit trees, which is most of them, are only made in China.
She decries her industry becoming collateral damage in a geopolitical fight.
“What our members make and sell are not strategic products,” said Warner.
“We’re not threatening. We’re a happy, joyful business. We’d like to stay in that joyful business.”
($1 = 7.3499 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(This story has been refiled to change additional reporting credit to Xiaoyu Yin from Xihao Jiang)
Andrew Silver and Casey Hall, Reuters
Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Companys work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions.
Q: How should I respond to rude comments at work?A: If I were to make a pie chart of most peoples complaints about work, the actual work would be one of the smallest slices. Bad bosses and annoying coworkers would take up the biggest slices, for sure.There are a few factors to consider if someone in your office is making rude comments.
Is it a one-off or part of a pattern?
If someone who is usually pleasant to work with says something rude out of the blue, its likely not worth making a huge deal out of it. You can respond with humor, as contributor Mita Mallick suggests. This can sometimes deflect the situation, disarm and catch the bully off guard. Using humor can shift focus away from the hurtful comment that was made in the moment. A well-put sarcastic response to a rude comment can serve the double purpose of calling it out and shutting it down. Give them the benefit of the doubt that some other stress is impacting their behavior or they just put their foot in their mouth.
If its part of a pattern
If the rude comments are part of a pattern and are directed at you, and you feel comfortable, you can call the person out either publicly or privately.
A public callout: A callout can be as simple as just repeating the comment back to them: “Did you just tell me I should smile more?” or as direct as “Calling my idea lowbrow is pretty insulting.” This approach certainly puts them on the spot and will likely cause them to get defensive, but it will probably make an impact.A private chat: If you want to be a little less confrontational about it, you can discuss the issue with them privately after. Start simple: Ask if you can speak with them at a time when you feel calm and there are no distractions. Then be direct but dont make assumptions. Try something like, When you call my ideas ‘lowbrow’ in a meeting, it feels really insulting. Is there a reason why you say things like that? Or, Please dont comment on my appearance.
Again, its likely that they will get defensive, but dont engage in an argument. They might say, It was just a joke, or, It wasnt my intention to offend you. Neither of those things matter; what matters is they said something that you found offensive and they shouldnt say it again. Let them know that and end the conversation.
If it’s still happening
If you confront the person insulting you and it keeps happening, or if you dont feel comfortable confronting them, go to your direct manager. Its a managers job to deal with these kind of uncomfortable interpersonal relationships and sometimes people are apt to take things more seriously if it comes from someone slightly higher up on the org chat. Talking to your manager about it also creates a record if the issue ends up needing to be escalated to HR or upper management.
Need more advice on dealing with rude comments at work? Here you go:
5 questions to ask before you take that comment personally
Why rudeness at work Is so contagious
How to respond to public bullying at work
Stung by your bosss comment? Heres what to do next
How to deal with a passive-aggressive coworker
As one of the worlds leading charity auctioneers and a seasoned keynote speaker for companies like Goldman Sachs and Google, I have spent 80 to 100 nights on stage every year for over two decades. Since I am typically one of the last people to take the stage at a fundraising event, I have watched countless people in various stages of panic just moments before they go on stage. After they find out my role, I usually receive a predictable set of rapid-fire questions from upcoming speakers in the hopes that some last-minute tips from a pro can help them do more than keep from passing out when they hit the stage.
Here are five things I tell people in the final moments before they take the stage to help them walk out looking and feeling confident, collected, and ready to rock the room.
Reframe Your Story
It doesnt matter how many times you go on stage; you will still get an adrenaline rush in the final moments before you walk out. Instead of thinking of that shaky, nervous, finger-tingling sensation as nerves, think of it as energy that you will bring to the room. You want to fire up the audience? You need that energy. The next time you start worrying that your nerves are going to get the best of you, reframe the narrative: This energy is going to fire me up, and Im going to use it to fire up the audience.
Find Your Strike Method
When I first started taking auctions, I realized that to calm my nerves and center my focus, I needed a solid routine. I decided to start every auction in the same way; banging down my gavel three times before I launch into selling. This movement allows me to channel my nerves into one action that grabs the audiences attention at the same time. I also came to understand that this personal routine which Ive since dubbed my Strike Method had an unexpected benefit. By doing the same thing every single time, I took away the guesswork. Now, every time I go on stage, I know the gavel will go down. This predictability allows me to focus on other things beyond myself, like strategically garnering bids and engaging with an audience that wants to be entertained.
To define your own Strike Method, look for something that feels authentic to you. Is there a mantra, a phrase, a physical movement that helps you focus and bring yourself to a point of strength? Spend time figuring out what you can do and do it every single time you get onstage.
Own the room
The first seven seconds of any presentation are the most important because seven seconds is how long it takes for people to make up their mind about you. You want to grab their attention in those seven seconds and keep them focused on you. When you are walking to the place where you present, whether it be a podium, center stage, or among the crowd, you want all eyes on you.
Keep your shoulders back, make sure your eyes are level, and make eye contact with people as you walk out with purpose. Do not slouch, cower in fear, or look down at the ground that will only make people fearful that your speech or presentation will be painful to listen to and even more painful to watch!
Sell as yourself
When you get on stage, do everything you can to act as natural as possible. An audience can sense when someone is playing a part which can immediately turn them off as it seems fake and, quite frankly, boring. Use your own words, your own voice, and communicate in a way that feels authentic to you. Now is not the time to try on a new character. Authenticity will always win on stage and in life so be yourself and sell your message as the trustworthy communicator that you are.
The audience wants you to succeed
Never forget that the people sitting in front of you are rooting for youthey are your biggest cheering section. The audience doesnt want to sit through an hour-long presentation with a terrible speaker. They want you to do a great job. Get on stage ready to give them a great show and they will be asking for you to come back every single time!
Many prominent law firms have recently found themselves in President Donald Trumps crosshairs. Skadden, Arps attorney Rachel Cohen encouraged the firm to fight the governments pressure, only to have her attempts rebuffed and to be effectively forced out from the firm. Cohen shares her fears about how the rule of law is changing in America, raising questions about the legal industrys role in the checks and balances of the U.S. system of government. Cohens experience encourages leaders everywhere to navigate the relationship between their business and broader society.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
These accommodations to the Trump administration, whether from law firms [or institutions like] Columbia University, some people start saying, Oh, they didn’t give up that much. It’s mostly sort of posturing and optics, and why pick a fight if you don’t have to?”
Yeah, I think a lot of people think that it’s 2016 and are so convinced of their own intellectual superiority that they are ignoring that the Trump administration is outplaying them. There’s a real problem with people being convinced that we are once again in a situation where you have a disorganized president who is blustery, who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
It’s a real indictment of judgment to be able to say, “Donald Trump is stupid, so it doesn’t matter. We’re going to just beat him.” I had people say to me in meetings, “Well, this will all work itself out in three years, because people are going to be coming out of the Trump administration trying to get jobs, and nobody will hire them because we’re all mad.”
We are fundamentally misaligned on what we think is going to come in the next three years if we fold on this now, because I do not think that there is an end to the Trump administration if we do not hold the line and act collectively.
I’ve been asking the CEOs on the show and other CEOs the extent to which business, and I guess law firms as part of that, are part of the checks and balances in the American political system overall. It feels that way to me that it should be, but is there any legal basis for thinking that?
I think business, less so. I certainly would argue that there’s a moral obligation when business leaders want to be listened to, and respected, and dismantle guardrails on American capitalism so that they can achieve certain profits, that then there becomes a moral obligation for you to continue to speak on those things even when it’s hard. But I don’t think there’s a legal one, and I think that’s just the nature of capitalism.
I do think with law firms it’s different because you swear your oaths. Most of us swear an oath to the Constitution. If you work in this industry, and especially if you’ve made millions and millions of dollars off of it, and your industry is crucial for the functioning of American democracy, and you also swore an oath to the law and the concept of this American experiment broadly, then yes, I think there’s an obligation for you to ensure that the law continues to exist.
The decisions to make these accommodations to the Trump administration by Skadden, by Paul Weiss, by other law firms, they’re doing that not necessarily for legal reasons, but for business reasons, right? Because otherwise, it’s going to cost them money. Isn’t it ultimately a business argument to say, “Oh, we want to keep doing that work for the government, or we don’t want to be blacklisted in some way?”
I think number one, it’s a bad business decision in the long term, and I’ll come back to that in a second. I’m going to read to you the profits per equity partner at Paul Weiss and Skadden, Arps.
This is the average, what the average partner earns in profits on an annual basis.
2023 profits per equity partner at Paul Weiss, $6,574,000. Skadden, Arps: $5,403,000 annually. I just want to make sure that when we’re talking about what profits are being lostand also the people who, again, swore an oath to the Constitution who are working in this industry, who need it to exist, who are clearing $5 million a yearI think that the long-term business strategy of capitulating to someone with authoritarian and oligarchal tendencies. We’ve seen the way that Elon Musk operates and how he turns on people on a dime.
Skadden represented Elon Musk in his Twitter acquisition, and that man has no loyalty. Donald Trump and Elon Musk don’t have loyalty to each other. To hedge your bets on being in good favor with someone who does not respect people, it’s much less about policy aims of the Trump admin, and that I certainly would not be quitting my job. I didn’t quit when he got elected. That’s a political thing. I don’t expect the firm to speak on political issues, though they have in the past, but I certainly don’t expect that from a business.
That’s not what this is. It’s not about politics. It’s about existential infringement on American values, and the existence of a constitutional republic in this country.
What’s next for you and what’s your goal? In some ways you’ve become a bit of a pied piper. I know you created a tool kit for lawyers who want to protest internally. What’s your goal in all this?
I don’t have a next career move. With the nature of my educational credentials, my financial situation, having worked at Skadden for several years, all of these things, I already felt that I had an obligation to try to prevent the bad thing that I see coming.
For some of those folks who are listening to this who may be like, “It’s a little bit too extreme. Is it really that bad?” Maybe there’s some other impact that could be had between here and there about what an alternate view of America’s future looks like?
Oh, that’s the path that I’m on. That’s the path that we go down if people collectively act now and intervene. That’s the path that we’re on, is some bad things will happen. We’re already seeing them happen. There’s people with legal status being deported to Salvadorian prisons because of clerical errors, because the’re deporting people over judge’s orders.
I think that there’s absolutely a path to not just interrupt these harms, but to channel the kind of response and reaction right now to make a much better version of this country. I think no matter what, things get darker before that happens, but I think at the end of the day, I’m coming on and saying, “These bad things could happen,” but I’m acting in a way where I’m very confident they don’t have to.
The fear of retaliation is so strong right now, and where is the bravery going to come from? I guess if you’re already making $5 or $6 million a year and you’re not brave enough to push back, but I don’t know. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire, and he’s not pushing back. Where is that bravery going to come from?
It’s going to come from people of color. It’s going to come from people that understand theory, and allyship, and are plugged into their communities and care about them deeply. Hopefully, we also get some people that have a little bit more agency, but if we don’t, that’s all that’s ever worked anyway.
Theres one big thing about Rodrigo Corral that does not initially make sense: The book cover maestro does not have a signature style.
Consider his chameleonic cover hits. The Fault in Our Stars. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Survivor, Lullaby and the rest of Chuck Palahniuks catalog. Rachel Cusks books. James Freys controversial A Million Little Pieces, the cover that helped launch Corral into ubiquity. Recent collaborative output like Intermezzo and Mojave Ghost. The books don’t have obvious visual connective tissue between thembut somehow, as creative director of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and his eponymous studio, Corral has spent the past three decades quietly redefining the look of the modern book again and again.
[Photo: Michael Schmelling]
A thing that we repeat often in the studio is, ‘Let’s be careful of what we’re good at, because it is the kind of work that you will attract,’ he says.
Corral has heeded that caution throughout his career, avoiding pigeonholes and a life of designing the same jacket over and overwhich is notable in a design subset often particularly driven by trends. Consider the Big Book Look of the 60s, or the ubiquitous Book Cover Blob that seemingly seeped onto every jacket a few years ago. If a style has a proven track record, risk-averse publishers or marketing departments are quick to embrace it.
Corrals output, which often feels consistently contemporary, is novel for its sheer novelty.
Book covers usually follow trends, Frey, one of Corral’s earliest clients, told me in an email exchange. Someone makes a great one and everyone else copies it. If you care about such things, and I do, and try to find who made the original great one, its always Rodrigo.
[Photo: Michael Schmelling]
GETTING WHAT YOU CAME FOR
Corral was born and raised on Long Island, New York, the child of immigrants from Colombia. His parents ran a travel business together, not entirely unlike how he and his partner Anna Corral operate his personal studio today. Books didnt play a huge role in his youth, but when he was around nine or 10, Corrals parents bought him a set of Encyclopedia Britannicaand he savored their object quality.
I’d start cracking them open and appreciating the materials, the foil stamping, the faux leather, he says, recalling how the anatomy section featured acetate layering for the nervous system and the muscular system. Those are my closest earliest memories of a book experience.
After realizing design and art was a path he wanted to pursue, he applied to the School of Visual Arts, where he found himself studying under industry icons like Chip Kidd and Barbara deWilde.
They just always had a smile on their face, he recalls. And their work alone, it just had wit, it had charm, it had layers. And that really for me was like, ‘OKI think I’d like to join the space, or at least try my hand at it.’
After leaving SVA, Corral got a job at Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1996, where his first assignment was a paperback edition of Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or a Ph.D. The book already had cover art, and he was disappointed that he didnt get to infuse his own creativity into the project. Then he decided to make the best of it. The all-yellow cover featured a black-ink New Yorker-style illustration of a person hoisting a degree into the air. He made the diploma white to highlight its importance of, well, getting what you came for. It was a tiny victory, but perhaps an important early lesson in how one can infuse their perspective into an at-times rigid paradigm.
[Photo: Rodrigo Corral Design Studio]
On the whole, Corral loved his early days at FSG, especially because it was an environment where young designers got to sit in on meetings and where the publisher would walk the halls and greet everyone personally. Designers and their work were valued, which helps explain why its a house with a long history of fantastic cover outputfrom Joan Didions Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Lawrence Ratzkin) and Tom Wolfes The Right Stuff (Kiyoshi Kanai) to contemporary jackets like Jonathan Franzens Freedom (Charlotte Strick) and Tove Ditlevsens Copenhagen Trilogy (Na Kim).
Farrar, Straus and Giroux has always been a powerhouse literary publishing house that is editorially driven. And what that means from a design standpoint is we’re not reacting to what the markets are asking us, Corral says. It’s strong points of view with brilliant editors and a publisher at the helm [who] are reacting through fiction and nonfiction to what the world is telling us, in many ways. And so that all leads to supporting great design.
After five years at the company, Corral says there wasnt much room for upward movement, so he left and did a stint at Grove Atlantic, fllowed by Doubleday. He was laid off in the post-9/11 publishing downsizing, but was given nine months severanceand thats when he started Rodrigo Corral Design Studio. He opened it in the back of a friends production house, A2A Graphics, in Chelsea. And soon after he took on his first project: the cover for A Million Little Pieces.
[Photo: Michael Schmelling]
REDEFINING THE BESTSELLER
But two decades on, you can probably instantly envision itthat outstretched hand, the kaleidoscopic candy dots, that hospital-hued background.
Frey had no clue what Corral was going to turn in, but he did have high expectations for the cover to his addiction saga. With a background in art and art history, Frey had been sending Corral paintings of hell by old masters and related imagery.
Thankfully, he ignored them all and made his own cover, Frey recalls. When I saw it, I was initially taken aback. Visually, its very arresting, jarring. It felt sharp, dangerous. It also felt lonely, and somehow broken. All of which were a reflection/representation of the text.
Frey, who also worked with Corral on his upcoming book Next to Heaven, says he didnt respond for a day. He let his feelings settle.
[Photo: Michael Schmelling]
And when they did, I was in love.
Corral came up with the idea on the way home from his studio. He would often walk past a particular confectionary shop. A package of candy dots in the window always jumped out at him, and as he was pondering Freys book, it clicked. He took his entire fee for the project and hired a photographer, and the two brought the cover to life.
Ultimately, Corral says the publisher didnt quite know what to make of it, and found it to be off-puttingbut they said they couldnt stop looking at it. It yielded a visceral reaction.
It cemented the tone for the kind of work we wanted to attract, he says. We wanted to do work that was not fitting nicely and neatly into a category and that did not necessarily fit the mold of what a bestseller must look like.
Catherine Casalino remembers the early days at Corrals studio. She joined as an intern in 2003, and soon became full time.
Rodrigo has made a habit of swinging for the fences, and he encourages anyone who works at his studio to do the same. A big part of that is constantly seeking out fresh inspiration and collaborators, she says. In an age where you can easily marry up a stock image and a font to create an instant cover, or make a living by producing the same style of cover over and over, Rodrigo pushes back against that kind of process. You hire his studio not because you know what youre going to get, but because you know they can deliver something special that you would never have imagined.
[Photo: Rodrigo Corral Design Studio]
SOLVING THE BOOK
While Corral may intentionally lack a signature style, he has a signature approachand it yields work that can feel urgently relevant. When hes designing, Corral starts with what he dubs bad poetryhe reads the manuscript and jots down quick notes in his phone. The ones that still resonate days or a week later are what hell start to focus on pushing forward. From there he concepts and designs. Sometimes hell start a cover and finish it completely. Other times in the studio hell have multiple people working on something.
He likens the book design process to cinematography. To explain, he offers the concept of a book that has oranges as a theme. A cinematographer ponders, say, the temperature of the film, the color, whether its set primarily during day or night.
I find that parallel with book covers, where it’s typography, it’s scale, it’s composition, it’s lightingand all those things can play into how that same orange can be very different on two different covers, he says.
Current Random House vice president, executive art director Greg Mollica joined Corrals studio as a junior designer circa 2002/2003.
Hes a deep and close reader; hed read manuscripts all day, bring them home and read them again at night, and come into the studio the next morning with ideas and brilliant singular ways to execute them, Mollica recalls. What struck me first about his studio and process was that the fine art, photography, fashion and culture books outweighed the traditional graphic design books in his personal collection. He was always devouring images and collecting art. Art was everywhere. Rodrigo thought like an artistthats what separated him in the cover design world.
In 2011, Corral rejoined FSG as creative director, and today that is officially his full-time job. The decision to return felt strangely predetermined, he says.When I looked at the publishing landscape [publishers and imprints], I kept coming back to FSG as the place where I could contribute and feel valued as a visual artist. He splits his time between New York City and California, and operates his independent studiowhich works across all publishing houses for projects or as a creative director at largeater-hours.
At FSG, he says he works with a team of experienced designers in a bit of an autonomous environment. On the studio side, he sees it as more of an agency model that utilizes Anna Corrals background in branding and marketing in chorus with his creative direction.
On the whole, How we try to look at projects is we’re not solving to a stylewe’re solving the book itself, he says.
Casalino would seemingly agree.
I think Rodrigos impact on modern book cover design is that he responds to the unique voices of modern literature in a way that truly reflects where modern literature is going, she says. I remember him saying that he got assigned Chuck Palahniuk initially because the writing was so unique that no one knew quite how to approach it. Instead of making those covers look like prior fiction, he reflected that unique language with a unique visual language.
[Photo: Michael Schmelling]
BY A SHOW OF HANDS
Those who have passed through Corrals studio make up a remarkable roster. Theres Mollica. Casalino. June Park, Elena Giavaldi, Ben Wiseman, Liana Finck, Tyler Comrie, Jason Ramirez, Christopher Brand, Devin Washburn, and on and on. Today, he works with Adriana Tonello, Giacomo Girardi and a couple others.
Corral wont take credit for any of their careers or talent. But he does have an impressive track record of hiring wildly talented individuals wherever he oversees designand that, perhaps, is his greatest contribution to publishing at large, beyond any single image.
If you hosted a book design event in NYC and you asked the audience by a show of hands who has mentored/worked with Rodrigoover half the audience would raise their hands, Mollica notes. Hes mentored countless designers who are now exceptional art directors. The book cover industry would be completely different without Rodrigos influence. That is not an exaggeration. Hes our Paul Rand.
For his part, Corral says hes always looking to surprise himself in his design workand whether at FSG or his own studio, he is always seeking to help his teams surprise themselves, too.
I think Rodrigos work has encouraged more designers and publishers to push back against stereotypical cover design and rise to meet the incredible creativity that modern authors are producing, says Casalino.
Or, as Corral puts itand likely put it years ago with that cover for A Million Little Pieces: Hopefully we’ve delivered projects that can be genre-busting or genre-breaking, and that can become little victories for the futurefor designers to say, Look, this book was successful with that jacket. Why can’t we as a house take that same leap?
What is Rodrigo Corrals style? I don’t know. But if you spot a cover in a store that feels like it was designed and printed just moments before, theres a good chance I could guess who art directed or made it.
Its an ordinary morning. Youve woken up from what you thought was a blissfully restful nights sleep. To ensure your body and mind arent playing tricks on you, you check the activity tracker that youve recently strapped on your left wrist. You hope itll turn you into a fitter and healthier version of yourself. But your sleep score says otherwise. It indicates that youve woefully underperformed across all stages of the sleep cycle.
It’s also the end of a long month on the job. Youve completed all your deliverables on time, impressed your bosses, and, by all accounts, been a pleasant and reliable colleague. You decide to check your bank account. The balance staring back at you offers a sobering reality check and bleak forecast for the month(s) ahead. Once again, youre compelled to adopt the mantra keep your head down and keep plugging away as your professional credo. Surely, things will eventually get better, right?
Why were drawn to numbers
Numbers can have that effect on people. They turn feelings of restfulness and satisfaction into dust in the blink of an eye. They can also trick you into believing the complete opposite. Your wearable technology might measure a bad nights sleep more favorably than youd expect. At work, a shockingly mediocre work performance might result in a pay raise or bonus simply because you touted the corporate line.
What is undeniable is that humans are magnetically drawn to abstractions of realityboth their own and those of others. Numbers is the true universal language that transcends cultures and geographies. And thats not necessarily a bad thing. After all, quantification helps us measure and organize the world around us. Its how we tell time, keep records, conduct financial transactions and scientific experiments, administer medications, and write computer code.
Numbers have even changed the way we communicate. People find percentages and simple frequencies astonishingly persuasivethe more abstract they are, the more they capture attention. Here are two ways I could promote this Fast Company article to a broader audience: I could say, Many people have read and enjoyed this article. This version relies purely on qualitative evidence. I could also say, The click-through rate for this article is 55%, with two-thirds of readers finishing the entire piece. To our 21st-century sensibilities, the latter strangely sounds far more credible and captivating.
Fred Hargadon, a former dean of admissions at both Princeton and Stanford, once said: Because we cannot measure the things that have the most meaning, we give the most meaning to the things we can measure. We see this reflected in the cost-cutting efforts of Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), or our obsessive monitoring of global stock market indexes.
When numbers dont tell the whole story
The real issues arise when we try to apply the same logic used to track a golf handicap to the complexities of the human experience. We assign a numerical representation to someones creditworthiness. In Canada, scores range between 300-900. The higher the score, the more worthy an individual appears in the eyes of a lender.
But quantification doesnt stop at the individual level. The Gini coefficient reduces the wicked problem of economic inequality across countries to a single score ranging from 0 to 1. The World Happiness Report uses a 0 to 10 scale to evaluate the quality of life and well-being of entire populations, then assigns them to a global ranking. In 2025, Finland was ranked the happiest country for the eighth year in a row. Does this ranking mean there arent any unhappy Fins? Far from it.
When numbers ignore humanity
Matters become even more complicated when we pressure organizations that prioritize people and the planet over profits to justify their existence and demonstrate their impact through dataeven though we can’t (and frankly, shouldn’t measure their contributions, at least not in the short term. Global climate action is a prime example. If we judge the efforts of an entire industry devoted to combatting the climate crisis solely by meeting ambitious targetslike achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050we risk overlooking the true stories of progress, resilience, and adaptation that occur along the way.
Relying on numbers can also be downright sinister in instances where it has a dehumanizing effect. Assigning prison inmates numbers instead of using their names, or publishing casualty statistics during a war, reduces individuals to mere figures, which strips away their humanity.
People are not numbers, and life isnt always a data set that we need to optimize or manipulate. Sometimes, we need to hear the full story. Otherwise, we risk reducing human existence to mere abstractions and approximations of reality. The added benefit? Several studies have shown that people can retain qualitative information much longer than quantitative information. While numbers and statistics can have an immediate effect, like ruining a perfectly good night’s sleep, a well-crafted story or anecdote leaves a lasting impression.
Researchers at Northwestern University just found a way to make a temporary pacemaker thats controlled by lightand its smaller than a grain of rice.
A study on the new device, published last week in the journal Nature, found that the tiny pacemaker delivered effective pacing in both animal subjects and human hearts from organ donors. The device is designed specifically for patients who need temporary pacemakinglike newborn babies with heart defects or heart surgery patientsand its made with materials that allow it to safely dissolve into the body once its no longer needed.
The current standard in temporary pacemakers (called an epicardial pacemaker) involves sewing electrodes to the heart via wires, which then protrude out of the patients chest and connect to an external box. By contrast, the Northwestern researchers new device is small and dissolvable, and it can be implanted without any wire. The design could potentially help patients avoid complications involved with temporary pacemakers and open new possibilities for heart synchronization.
From left: A traditional pacemaker and leadless pacemaker dwarf the tiny new device. [Photo: Northwestern]
‘Wires literally protrude from the body’
Generally, pacemakers are small, implanted devices that use electrical impulses to regulate the heart’s beating. Temporary pacemakers are a subcategory, and they have a few primary uses. To start, around 1% of babies worldwide are born with congenital heart defects that require surgery, after which the child needs a pacemaker for about seven days to allow the heart to self-repair. According to study lead John A. Rogers, a bioelectronics engineer, and co-lead Igor Efimov, an experimental cardiologist, pediatric use-cases were the main motivation behind designing the tiny new pacemaker.
Theres a crucial need for temporary pacemakers in the context of pediatric heart surgeries, and thats a use case where size miniaturization is incredibly important, Rogers explained in a press release. In terms of the device load on the bodythe smaller, the better.
Outside of pediatric cases, temporary pacemakers are also commonly used for a period after heart surgery in order to support recovery and minimize complications. However, Efimov notes, the standard temporary pacemakers can also present complications.
Wires literally protrude from the body, attached to a pacemaker outside the body, Efimov said in the release. When the pacemaker is no longer needed, a physician pulls it out. The wires can become enveloped in scar tissue. So, when the wires are pulled out, that can potentially damage the heart muscle.
A less invasive pacemaker
Rogers and Efimovs new pacemaker is designed to address the risks presented by the wires used in existing temporary pacemaker models. Instead of using wires to transmit the small electrical pulses that keep the heart on track, the new device relies on a surprising tool: light.
The patient wears a small, soft device on the outside of their chest (just a bit larger than a penny), which is tasked with tracking their heart rate. When their pulse drops below a certain level, the wearable is triggered to emit a tiny pulse of infrared light through the skin and tissues to the pacemaker. Inside the body, the pacemaker has a kind of light-activated on and off switch, which is calibrated to give an electrical pulse whenever its in the on state.
Alongside eliminating the need for wires, the light-based activation technology also allowed Rogers and Efimov to scale their prototype down so significantly. The researchers had previously developed a quarter-sized dissolvable pacemaker powered by a form of wireless communication, which required the device to include a receiver antenna. Once they swapped that with the infrared light scheme, it allowed them to scale the pacemaker down to just 3.5 millimeters in length, making it the smallest pacemaker ever made.
The pacemakers size and lack of wires also allow insertion to be minimally invasive.
Typically, a surgeon will attach (sew or glue) it to the heart after surgery, when they have direct access to the heart, Efimov explained in an email to Fast Company. In cases where a patient needs temporary pacing but isn’t having heart surgery, he added, the device is small enough that it can be inserted through just a small incision in the skin. Efimov’s team is also working on a syringe-like device that will safely inject the pacemaker into the heart for emergency pacing, like in the wake of a heart attack.
After insertion, patients wont have to worry about a potentially dangerous removal surgery, given that the tiny pacemaker is made from dissolving, bioreabsorbable materials. The current prototype is designed to dissolve after a weekwhich is the standard amount of time needed for the heart to return to normal pacing after surgerybut Efimov says the design might allow researchers to expand the lifespan of the device up to several months.
In the future, Rogers and Efimov believe that their pacemaker design could have broad applications for various heart conditions. For those with arrhythmias, for example, multiple small pacemakers could be placed around the heart to correct its rhythm. Beyond heart conditions, the researchers posit that the light-based, dissolvable implant technology could be applied for nerve problems, wound treatment, and pain blocking.
Currently, the tiny pacemaker is still in its testing phase. Efimov says the regulatory climate makes it difficult to know when the device will be ready for use in human patients, but he believes it could be available within the next five years.
