After a year of dominating U.S. headlines for everything from a major E. coli outbreak to a visit from Donald Trump, McDonalds today announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 financial report.
Here’s a quick look at the numbers:
Fourth-quarter revenue was $6.4 billion
Fourth-quarter net income was $2.2 billion
Full-year revenue was $25.9 billion
Full-year net income was $8.2 billion
Global comparable sales increased by 0.4% in the fourth quarter, while U.S. comparable sales dropped by 1.4% in the same period. (Thats compared to a 4.3% gain in the fourth quarter last year.)
The data shows that while McDonalds has made progress globally, U.S. numbers remain sluggish as the chain struggles to strike the right balance between fair prices and profit.
The $5 meal deal: A financial mixed bag
Over the past several months, McDonalds has been on a mission to dispel its reputation as a villain of the American inflation story. In a LendingTree survey last May, 65% of respondents said theyd been shocked by a fast food bill in the past six months, while 80% said they considered fast food to be a luxury.
Plenty of ire has been directed at McDonalds for its perceived role in contributing to unaffordable fast food costs.
To combat that perception and win customers back, McDonalds launched a $5 value meal in June. While the deal was meant to be a limited-time offering, the campaigns popularity (and financial payoff; its been credited for saving the chains third quarter) led McDonalds to extend the $5 meal into December 2024. Then, in November, McDonalds once again promised to offer its value meal for at least the first half of 2025.
On an earnings call today, a McDonalds spokesperson shared that Q4 was the companys best quarter of the year with the American low-income consumer segment.
However, per the financial report, the 1.4% drop in U.S. comparable sales could be attributed to a decline in average check, partly offset by slightly positive comparable guest countsmeaning that, as customers are spending less per meal, McDonalds is having trouble recouping the difference.
The impact of the E. coli outbreak continues
Theres another reason for McDonalds lackluster fourth quarter in the U.S., according to CEO Chris Kempczinski: the lasting impact of last years E. coli outbreak, which sent the companys stock into a tailspin at the time.
Our fourth-quarter performance reflects the impact of the food incident, Kempczinski said during todays earnings call.
The outbreak, which emerged in late October, sickened dozens of McDonalds customers and killed one person, causing the company to temporarily remove its Quarter Pounder from thousands of stores.
Months later, it seems like the company is still working to regain consumers trust as it continues to navigate a rocky economic climate.
Nevertheless, investors are relatively optimistic about the companys outlook: As of this writing, shares of McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) are up almost 5%, to about $309 per share.
Shortly after he was confirmed as President Donald Trumps transportation secretary, Sean Duffy circulated a memo that instructed his department to prioritize families by, among other things, giving preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average when awarding grants.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal called the directive last week deeply frightening,” and Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray called it disturbingly dystopian.
The memo also calls for prohibiting governments that get Department of Transportation funds from imposing vaccine and mask mandates and requiring their cooperation with the administrations immigration enforcement efforts.
With hundreds of billions of dollars in transportation money still unspent from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, such changes could be a boon for projects in Republican-majority states, which on average have higher fertility rates than those leaning Democratic.
States controlled by Democrats were generally more receptive to mask and vaccine rules to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and have been more resistant to Trumps immigration raids.
More births for more roads?
All administrations set their own rules for choosing which transportation projects to prioritize. But some of Duffy’s directives were received as highly unusual.
Distributing transportation funding based marriage and birth rates is bizarre and a little creepy,” said Kevin DeGood, senior director of infrastructure and housing policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “States and regions with aging populations tend, on average, to have lower birth rates … Are they somehow not deserving of transportation investment?
According to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2022, the 14 states with the highest fertility rates backed Trump in the November election while the bottom 11 plus the District of Columbia supported Democrat Kamala Harris. Marriage rates tend to skew higher for red states too, but by a smaller margin.
Vice President JD Vance has long expressed concern about declining birth rates, citing national economic needs as well as the inherent value of children.
Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn raised the idea of tying transportation funding to population growth during Duffys confirmation hearing.
People are leaving some of these blue states and coming to places like Tennessee, she said. And this means that we need to look at where those federal highway dollars are spent and placing them in areas with growing needs rather than areas that are losing population.
Sarah Hayford, sociology professor and director of the Institute for Population Research at Ohio State University, said she had never heard of birth rates being used to set funding priorities.
I was a little surprised,” she said. “Often the policy around birth rates is trying to address challenges or barriers to people not having children. This seems more focused on rewarding people for already having children.
The U.S. birth rate has been declining since 2007, which Hayford attributes in part to economic uncertainty during the Great Recession. She said research has tied higher birth rates to areas with lower education.
Longstanding transportation policy already considers where kids live, said Beth Jarosz, senior program director at the nonpartisan and nonprofit Population Reference Bureau.
If what youre trying to do is support families, birth rates arent necessarily the best way to do that, she said, pointing out that many growing families move to new communities when they find their homes are too small.
The Department of Transportation has not responded to questions about the memo.
So far, lawmakers and advocates are unaware of birth and marriage rates being linked to non-transportation grants.
Blue states push back
Blumenthal said the transportation secretary’s focus on birth and marriage rates was “reminiscent of what you might see in the Peoples Republic of China.
On its face, its social engineering. But clearly and indisputably, it is a dagger aimed at blue states, he said. It is patently discriminatory if you look at the numbers. This criteria was designed to punish blue states and coerce states to change their lawful policy on tolls, vaccines and immigration.
U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a Maryland Democrat, said he feared Duffy’s directives would harm some grants already announcedincluding $85 million awarded to Baltimore in the final weeks of the Biden administration to transform a blighted stretch of U.S. 40 known as the highway to nowhere.
If it’s an effort to reward red states, he ought to just go ahead and say that, Mfume said. Otherwise, there will be a lot of challenges by states and advocacy organizations all over the country who have no choice but to fight back, and that fight will become a legal one.
Yet Jarosz said the policy’s political intentions are unclear, noting communities like San Diego and Sacramento in California are above the national average in terms of birth rates, while certain rural areas of the country are below.
Is this even legal?
Legal experts say it is too early to know whether anything in Duffy’s memo could be struck down by the courts.
Although it is difficult to make a legal argument for funding equality based on political affiliation, federal law does protect against discrimination over such things as race, sex, and disabilities.
Joel Roberson, who handles transportation and infrastructure cases at the Washington, D.C., law firm Holland & Knight, said administrations have widespread authority to set their own criteria for awarding money. However, communities denied funding could file a lawsuit arguing they endured an illegal disparate impact.
As for whether Trump could redirect transportation grants awarded under Biden, Roberson said it largely depends on the status of the project and whether Congress has already appropriated the funding.
State transportation officials have expressed confidence that changes in priorities won’t impact the federal funds states use to set their own transportation priorities and build roads. But many other grants are awarded at the discretion of the administration in power.
Less clear is the status of some already approved discretionary grants, such as an agreement signed just before former President Joe Biden left office committing $1.9 billion toward a nearly $5.7 billion project to add four new L stations in South Side Chicago.
Blumenthal, a former state attorney general and federal prosecutor, said Duffy’s edict created uncertainty and confusion” and pointed out it doesn’t carry any legal weigt like statutes and regulations do. He predicted courts would ultimately reject the policy.
Anybody can write a memo, Blumenthal said.
Jeff McMurray and Susan Haigh, Associated Press
A single wind turbine spinning off the U.S. Northeast coast today can power thousands of homeswithout the pollution that comes from fossil fuel power plants. A dozen of those turbines together can produce enough electricity for an entire community.
The opportunity to tap into such a powerful source of locally produced clean energyand the jobs and economic growth that come with it is why states from Maine to Virginia have invested in building a U.S. offshore wind industry.
But much of that progress may now be at a standstill.
One of Donald Trumps first acts as president in January 2025 was to order a freeze on both leasing federal areas for new offshore wind projects and issuing federal permits for projects that are in progress.
The order and Trumps long-held antipathy toward wind power is creating massive uncertainty for a renewable energy industry at its nascent stage of development in the U.S., and ceding leadership and offshore wind technology to Europe and China.
The U.S. Northeast and Northern California have the nations strongest offshore winds. [Image: NREL]
As a professor of energy policy and former undersecretary of energy for Massachusetts, Ive seen the potential for offshore wind power, and what the Northeast states, as well as the U.S. wind industry, stand to lose if that growth is shut down for the next four years.
Expectations fall from 30 gigawatts by 2030
The Northeasts coastal states are at the end of the fossil fuel energy pipeline. But they have an abundant local resource that, when built to scale, could provide significant clean energy, jobs and supply chain manufacturing. It could also help the states achieve their ambitious goals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on climate change.
The Biden administration set a national offshore wind goal of 30 gigawatts of capacity in 2030 and 110 gigawatts by 2050. It envisioned an industry supporting 77,000 jobs and powering 10 million homes while cutting emissions. As recently as 2021, at least 28 gigawatts of offshore wind power projects were in the development or planning pipeline.
With the Trump order, I believe the U.S. will have, optimistically, less than 5 gigawatts in operation by 2030.
That level of offshore wind is certainly not enough to create a viable manufacturing supply chain, provide lasting jobs or deliver the clean energy that the grid requires. In comparison, Europes offshore wind capacity in 2023 was 34 gigawatts, up from 5 gigawatts in 2012, and Chinas is now at 34 gigawatts.
What the states stand to lose
Offshore wind is already a proven and operating renewable power source, not an untested technology. Denmark has been receiving power from offshore wind farms since the 1990s.
The lost opportunity to the coastal U.S. states is significant in multiple areas.
Trumps order adds deep uncertainty in a developing market. Delays are likely to raise project costs for both future and existing projects, which face an environment of volatile interest rates and tariffs that can raise turbine component costs. It is energy consumers who ultimately pay through their utility bills when resource costs rise.
The potential losses to states can run deeper. The energy company rsted estimated in early 2024 that its proposed Starboard Offshore Wind project would bring Connecticut nearly US$420 million in direct investment and spending, along with employment equivalent to 800 full-time positions and improved energy system reliability.
Massachusetts created an Offshore Wind Energy Investment Trust Fund to support redevelopment projects, including corporate tax credits up to $35 million. A company planning to build a high-voltage cable manufacturing facility there pulled out in January 2025 over the shift in support for offshore wind power. On top of that, power grid upgrades to bring offshore wind energy inlandcritical to reliability for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity will be deferred.
Atlantic Coast wind-energy leases as of July 2024. Others ind energy lease areas are in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Pacific coast and off Hawaii. [Image: U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement]
Technology innovation in offshore wind will also likely move abroad, as Maine experienced in 2013 after the states Republican governor tried to void a contract with Statoil. The Norwegian company, now known as Equinor, shifted its plans for the worlds first commercial-scale floating wind farm from Maine to Scotland and Scandinavia.
Sand in the gears of a complex process
Development of energy projects, whether fossil or renewable, is extremely complex, involving multiple actors in the public and private spheres. Uncertainty anywhere along the regulatory chain raises costs.
In the U.S., jurisdiction over energy projects often involves both state and federal decision-makers that interact in a complex dance of permitting, studies, legal regulations, community engagement and finance. At each stage in this process, a critical set of decisions determines whether projects will move forward.
The federal government, through the Department of Interiors Bureau of Offshore Energy Management, plays an initial role in identifying, auctioning and permitting the offshore wind areas located in federal waters. States then issue requests for proposals from companies wishing to sell wind power to the grid. Developers who win bureau auctions are eligible to respond. But these agreements are only the beginning. Developers need approval for site, design and construction plans, and several state and federal environmental and regulatory permits are required before the project can begin construction.
Trump targeted these critical points in the chain with his indefinite but temporary withdrawal of any offshore wind tracts for new leases and a review of any permits still required from federal agencies.
Jobs and opportunity delayed
A thriving offshore wind industry has the potential to bring jobs, as well as energy and economic growth. In addition to short-term construction, estimates for supply chain jobs range from 12,300 to 49,000 workers annually for subassemblies, parts and materials. The industry needs cables and steel, as well as the turbine parts and blades. It requires jobs in shipping and the movement of cargo.
To deliver offshore wind power to the onshore grid will also require grid upgrades, which in turn would improve reliability and promote the growth of other technologies, including batteries.
Taken all together, an offshore wind energy transition would build over time. Costs would come down as domestic manufacturing took hold, and clean power would grow.
While environmental goals drove initial investments in clean energy, the positive benefits of jobs, technology and infrastructure all became important drivers of offshore wind for the states. Tax incentives, including from the Inflation Reduction Act, now in doubt, have supported the initial financing for projects and helped to lower costs.
Its a long-term investment, but once clear of the regulatory processes, with infrastructure built out and manufacturing in place, the U.S. offshore wind industry would be able to grow more price competitive over time, and states would be able to meet their long-term goals.
The Trump order creates uncertainty, delays and likely higher costs in the future.
Barbara Kates-Garnick is a professor of practice in energy policy at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
If youre in charge of selecting a leadership development solution for your organization, your budget might feel dwarfed by the goals and needs the program must address. And while the money you have to spend is limited, the options you have to choose fromcoaching, learning platforms, content libraries and moreare not.
All of those factors can make it difficult to identify the option that will deliver the best ROI.
An affordable subscription to a vast digital library of leadership videos and courses is no bargain if it doesnt deliver the results you need. On the other hand, premium coaching for a few key executives might feel extravagant at first but ultimately create a huge ripple effect across the organization.
Its not that content libraries are bad, and coaching is good. The right solution for one company could be a waste of time and money in another. So how do you make the best choice based on your goals and your budget?
Before you contact a single provider or even start reviewing the options available to you, consider the questions below. As a CEO focused on transforming leadership development through technology, I can tell you that the organizations that are clear on their answers get the best results from leadership development, no matter what their budget is or the specific programs they choose.
What are your specific goals?
Leadership development is too expensive (U.S. companies spend more than $81 billion on it per year) to be merely a feel-good purchase or a box to check for the year. Your investment in a program will pay off only when you know exactly what you want it to achieve. So think about your companys priorities right now. A few examples:
Does your CEO want to create a coaching culture?
Has low performance by new managers surfaced as a problem?
Is innovation one of your priorities this year?
Is your organization worried about the state of your leadership pipeline?
If your goals seem way out of alignment with your budget, you may have to determine which goals need immediate attention and which ones can be acted on later. For instance, if your mid-level managers are jumping ship to your competitors, developing your current leadership bench needs attention right away. On the other hand, a broader initiative to build leadership capabilities across all departments could wait.
How many people do you need to target?
Is a company-wide program necessary to achieve your goals? Or would it be more effective to focus on a particular department or type of employee, such as first-time managers or a new executive team?
Your answer can help you start narrowing down options. For example, if your top priority is developing a new executive team, coaching could be the right choice. Its highly customized and effective. But your focus is on a larger grouplike new managerscoaching might be out of your budget, and a digital learning platform could be a better fit. Similarly, perhaps you can send all first-time managers to a conference or bring in a facilitator for a weeklong program, but you cant afford these options for every employee whos interested in leadership development.
Whats going on right now with the employees you want to develop?
The capacity of the participants is often overlooked as a key factor in whether a leadership development solution succeeds. So, once youve identified the employees wholl be part of your program, think about what might be affecting their current bandwidth to learn, grow and change.
Lets say youre considering a program that would bring in a facilitator for a week of daylong classes with your managers. That might sound like an amazing development opportunity, and for some organizations, it is. But if your managers are already overextended with their workloads, this opportunity could become just another source of stress. Instead of paying attention and learning from the facilitator, the managers might be covertly multitasking through sessions just to stay afloat. And what if program participants dont work onsite full time? Will a fully remote employee get the same experience as in-person participants? Will hybrid employees resent an extra day in the office?
In such cases, a program that empowers your managers to learn on their own schedule might be a better solution. You could provide them with a micro-learning app or access to a learning library. (With those options, just be sure to also give them customized learning paths. Busy, stressed managers dont have time to sort through piles of content to figure out what they need, either.)
Thinking through these questions will help you zero in on what your company really needs from leadership development and the type of program that best fulfills those needs. I know the vast array of options out there can seem dizzying, but this variety also means that you have a better chance of finding a program that truly aligns with what you need and can afford. The more clarity you can bring into the selection process, the more likely you are to avoid costly mistakes and choose a leadership development program that delivers the results you need.
Major world leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected as tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry.Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit from Monday.High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing.“We’re living a technology and scientific revolution we’ve rarely seen,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2.France and Europe must seize the opportunity because AI “will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better, and it’s up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings,” he said.
Vance’s debut abroad
The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio’s junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate.Vance was joined by his wife Usha and their three childrenEwan, Vivek, and Mirabelfor the trip to Europe. They were greeted in France on Monday morning by Manuel Valls, the minister for Overseas France, and the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires, David McCawley.Before the trip, Vance made it clear that he intended to use the opportunity for frank discussions with European allies.
“At the AI Summit, the main reason I’m going is actually to have some private conversations with the world leaders who are also going to be there,” Vance told Breitbart News. “I think there’s a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, franklybring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically thereand so we’re going to be focused on those meetings in France.”On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the agenda. Vance, like the U.S. president, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the broader approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Within six months of taking office, Trump promised to end the fighting.Vance also addressed what he views as a concerning trend in Europe regarding free speech, a topic he raised last year during his attendance at the Munich Security Conference.“Unfortunately, you’ve seen in Europe a really significant, and I think, frankly, an evil trend towards censorship,” he said. “And you hear a lot about America’s moral leadership. One of the things that America’s moral leadership is going to be about during President Trump’s term is free speech. We want people to be able to speak their minds, and we believe that free and open debate is actually a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of our European friends have gone the wrong direction there.”Later this week, Vance will attend the Munich Security Conference again, where he may meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He plans to revisit themes he raised last year, including the need for NATO allies to take on a greater share of responsibility.Leaders in Europe have been carefully watching Trump’s recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out of Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict endsan idea that’s been flatly rejected by Arab allies.
Fostering AI advances
The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment, and culture.A global public-private partnership named “Current AI” will be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest.The Paris summit “is the first time we’ll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI,” said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. “I see it as a norm-setting moment.”Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by “moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead.”However, it remains unclear if the United States will support such initiatives.“There’s a lot of complicated questions to resolve” around issues like the ability to control AI systems, Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, founder of Google’s DeepMind research lab, said. “But also I think even more complicated are maybe the geopolitical questions about things like regulation.”French organizers are also looking for the summit to ignite major investment announcements in Europe, positioning the region as a viable contender in an industry increasingly shaped by a growing U.S.-China rivalry.France plans to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as “the equivalent” of Trump’s Stargate AI data centers project.In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun expressed opposition Monday to any moves to restrict access to AI tools. The release of DeepSeek has prompted calls in the U.S. Congress to limit its use for security reasons.“We oppose drawing ideological lines and oppose overstretching national security concepts and politicizing economic and trade issues,” Guo said.He said that China advocates for open-source AI technology and promotes the accessibility of AI services to share the benefits of artificial intelligence with all countries.
India’s Modi is cohosting the summit
Modi is cohosting the summit with Macron in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”Macron will also travel on Wednesday with Modi to the southern French port city of Marseille to inaugurate an Indian Consulate there and visit the ITER nuclear research site.France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on New Delhi purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in India said that discussions are at the final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks.
Kelvin Chan in Paris, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi, contributed to this report.
Sylvie Corbet and Aamer Madhani, Associated Press
The head of the U.N. AIDS agency said Monday the number of new HIV infections could jump more than six times by 2029 if American support of the biggest AIDS program is dropped, warning that millions of people could die and more resistant strains of the disease could emerge.In an interview with the Associated Press, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said HIV infections have been falling in recent years, with just 1.3 million new cases recorded in 2023, a 60% decline since the virus peaked in 1995.But since President Donald Trump’s announcement the U.S. would freeze all foreign assistance for 90 days, Byanyima said officials estimate that by 2029, there could be 8.7 million people newly infected with HIV, a tenfold jump in AIDS-related deathsto 6.3 millionand an additional 3.4 million children made orphans.“We will see a surge in this disease,” Byanyima said, speaking from Uganda. “This will cost lives if the American government doesn’t change its mind and maintain its leadership,” she said, adding that it was not her place to criticize any government’s policy.Byanyima pleaded with the Trump administration not to abruptly cut off funding, which she said has resulted in “panic, fear, and confusion” in many of the African countries hardest hit by AIDS.In one Kenyan county, she said 550 HIV workers were immediately laid off, while thousands of others in Ethiopia were terminated, leaving health officials unable to track the epidemic.She noted that the loss of U.S. funding to HIV programs in some countries was catastrophic, with external funding, mostly from the U.S., accounting for about 90% of their programs. Nearly $400 million goes to countries like Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania, she said.“We can work with (the Americans) on how to decrease their contribution if they wish to decrease it,” she said. Byanyima described the American withdrawal from global HIV efforts as the second biggest crisis the field has ever facedafter the yearslong delay it took for poor countries to get the lifesaving antiretrovirals long available in rich countries.Byanyima also said the loss of American support in efforts to combat HIV was coming at another critical time, with the arrival of what she called “a magical prevention tool” known as lenacapavir, a twice-yearly shot that was shown to offer complete protection against HIV in women, and which worked nearly as well as for men.Widespread use of that shot, in addition to other interventions to stop HIV, could help end the disease as a public health problem in the next five years, Byanyima said.She also noted that lenacapavir, sold as Sunlenca, was developed by the American company Gilead.International aid, Byanyima said, “helped an American company to innovate, to come up with something that will pay them millions and millions, but at the same time prevent new infections in the rest of the world.” The freeze in American funding, she said, didn’t make economic sense.“We appeal to the U.S. government to review this, to understand that this is mutually beneficial,” she said, noting that foreign assistance makes up less than 1% of the overall U.S. budget. “Why would you need to be so disruptive for that 1%?”Byanyima said that so far, no other countries or donors have stepped up to fill the void that will be left by the loss of American aid, but that she plans to visit numerous European capitals to speak with global leaders.“People are going to die because lifesaving tools have been taken away from them,” she said. “I have not yet heard of any European country committing to step in, but I know they are listening and trying to see where they can come in because they care about rights, about humanity.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Maria Cheng, AP Medical Writer
Chess.com has a new subscription option for chess families and tight-knit players: a friends and family plan.
The site, where players around the world can face off against live opponents, play bots, and solve chess puzzles, introduced its group tier in January, offering a players a discount on its top-tier offerings with the aim of winning the long-term loyalty game.
For $199.99 a year, Chess.com’s “Friends and Family” Diamond Premium plan offers up to four people access to feature’s like an ad-free site experience, chess lessons, game reviews, and insights into how to improve their skills that would run an individual subscriber $120 a year.
Its good for consumers, because it brings down the average cost of the membership, says Erik Allebest, founder and CEO of Chess.com. But then its also good for the business and for retention, because people tend to stick together and stay members together. Who wants to cancel a membership and then have all their friends lose their benefits?
Squaring the economics
Chess.com’s subscriptions are more easily compared to music streamers that video platformswith companies like Netflix and Max taking action to curb password sharing. Like an avid music fan who doesn’t want a friend or family member’s taste throwing off their recommendations, Chess.com users guard their ratingand passwordsfiercely.
Nobody wants to share their chess login[someone could] play a game and mess up their rating, Allebest says. It becomes more important to have a friends and family plan, because you dont just get to share your password and do it that way.
Music streamers also offer an example of how the group subscription economics could play out. In 2016, Spotify delighted customers by dropping their family plans price to just $14.99 per month.
The move kept them competitive with Apple, but over time, the price has crept upit now sits at $19.99 per month. That hasn’t had a negative affect on the number of people signing up for it, though. On its most recent quarterly earnings call, Spotify co-president and chief business officer Alex Nordstrom noted that its family plan is “making up a big proportion of [our] subscriber base.”
Allebest estimates that with its current all-time high of approximately 1.5 million paying subscribers, Chess.com’s premium accounts make up about 80% of the sites revenue. The new friends and family plan could eat into that bottom line in the short term, but sees long-term loyalty as something worth an early revenue hit.
If its $199 for up to four people, maybe six people in the future, youre getting fewer dollars per person, Allebest says. The bet is that youll get lower dollars-per-user, but youll get a longer lifetime subscription.
Seeing what works
Allebest says the site is no stranger to experimenting with different ways to attract and retain players. The company offers gift subscriptionsan effort he calls “moderately successful”and micro-tests a variety of new features among Chess.com’s Beta Club of power users.
Were not innovating dramatically here, Allebest says. But we are testing it. We tried a lower price. Were going to try adding more seats to it.”
Their metric of success will be subscriber turnover, or “churn” rates. Allebest says that he’s “constantly monitoring” the company’s churn, though he declined to share a specific churn rate. Itll take a year, he estimates, until they know just how successful the program is.
But Allebest is confident that the program will work out, as they continue to fine-tune it to be the best value. I feel like paying a subscription for a service that provides utility in your life is fair, he says. “[Were] trying to find the right balance.”
A U.S. judge will consider on Monday the fate of President Donald Trump’s buyout offer to two million federal workers as Trump presses ahead with an unprecedented effort to dismantle government agencies and downsize the federal workforce.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole in Boston will hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by federal workers’ unions which claim the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer to government civilian employees is illegal because the U.S. Congress has not approved funding for the scheme.
Trump has tasked Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, with overseeing the purge of employees through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The actions of DOGE, which is not a government department, have sown panic in Washington and triggered public protests and a flood of calls from angry voters to Congress worried about the access Musk’s team has been given to sensitive information in government computer systems that contain data on government payments to Americans and personal details of federal workers.
Musk aides have taken senior positions at key government agencies while the billionaire has pushed for the dismantling of others, including USAID, America’s humanitarian and development aid agency, and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog set up in 2010 after the global financial crisis.
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON NEXT
Opposition Democrats and federal employee unions have decried the power Trump has bestowed on South African-born Musk, who appears largely unaccountable except to Trump himself. Trump says Musk does not operate unilaterally but only with his blessing.
Musk and his team of young staff appear to be far exceeding the mandate given to them by an executive order Trump signed when he took office on January 20, in which DOGE was asked to provide recommendations on how to modernize technology used by the federal government.
Last week Judge O’Toole temporarily paused the Thursday deadline for workers to accept Trump’s buyout plan, which offers employees pay through September if they resign now.
While unions have urged members not to accept the offer, saying the Trump administration cannot be trusted to honor it, more than 65,000 government employees have so far opted to take it as of Friday. Reuters has been unable to independently verify that number, which does not include a breakdown of workers from each agency.
O’Toole could decide on another temporary pause to the program, bar it outright, or allow it to proceed.
A CFPB employee sounded downbeat on Sunday, saying even if the judge blocks the buyout program, he and fellow staff believe they will likely lose their jobs anyway.
Russell Vought, Trump’s new acting director of the CFPB, sent an email to workers on Saturday night ordering them to cease virtually all work. On Sunday, workers received another email telling them the agency would be closed for a week starting on Monday.
A labor union that represents CFPB workers filed a lawsuit late on Sunday to block Vought’s actions, arguing that he was violating Congress’s authority to set and fund the agency’s mission.
The agency regulates consumer financial products and has long incurred the ire of conservatives, who view its existence as government overreach.
On Friday, the same day his staff were reported to have entered the agency, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on X, his social media platform.
Trump said on Sunday he expected Musk to find billions of dollars of waste in military spending once he instructs the billionaire to turn his sights on the Pentagon.
The aggressive moves by Trump and Musk are bringing new lawsuits on an almost daily basis.
An effort to hollow out USAID is partially on hold after a judge’s ruling, and Trump’s effort to freeze trillions of dollars in federal loans, grants and other financial assistance has also been paused in a separate case.
On Saturday a judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing government systems used to process trillions of dollars in payments at the Treasury Department.
Tim Reid and Nate Raymond, Reuters
President Donald Tumps recent declaration that he has ordered the Treasury Department to stop minting new pennies has raised legal and constitutional questions.
Lets rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if its a penny at a time, he said in a post on Truth Social, adding that pennies literally cost us more than 2 cents.
While Trump has touted the move as a necessary cost-saving measure, his authority to unilaterally eliminate a form of U.S. currency is far from clear.
Elon Musk, who is somehow infiltrating American policy now, has targeted the penny through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). According to a post on X, DOGE claims the penny costs over 3 cents to make, with taxpayers shouldering a $179 million bill in 2023 alone.
The U.S. Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in fiscal year 2023, accounting for nearly 40% of the 11.4 billion coins minted for circulation.
The role of Congress in currency decisions
The power to regulate coinage and currency specifications is explicitly granted to Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Historically, decisions about the size, composition, and discontinuation of U.S. coins have required congressional approval.
For example, the elimination of the half-cent coin in 1857 was enacted through legislation, not an executive order.
The Coinage Act of 1792, along with subsequent amendments, sets clear parameters for the issuance of currency, including the penny. The Act grants Congressnot the presidentthe power to establish and modify coinage.
Any fundamental changes to the pennys production, including discontinuation, would likely require an act of Congress rather than a directive from the White House.
Executive authority over the U.S. mint
The U.S. Mint operates under the Department of the Treasury, which falls within the executive branch. The president has the ability to direct executive agencies, but those directives must align with existing laws passed by Congress. While Trump may have the power to temporarily pause the production of pennies through administrative discretion, outright elimination of the coin would require legislative action.
If Trump attempts to proceed without congressional approval, the move could be contested by lawmakers who view it as an overreach of executive power.
Broader implications of discontinuing the penny
Beyond the legal debate, Trumps announcement raises larger questions about the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. If a president can unilaterally end production of a coin, what other aspects of federal monetary policy could be subject to executive whims?
While many economists have long argued that eliminating the penny makes sense from a financial perspective (given that its production cost exceeds its face value), the process for doing so has proven has proven elusive for decades. If Trump wishes to end penny production permanently, he will likely need to convince Congress to pass the necessary legislation.
