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President Donald Trump’s administration said Wednesday it was putting a hold on roughly $18 billion to fund a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey and the city’s expanded Second Avenue subway project because of the government shutdown. The White House budget director, Russ Vought, said on a post on X that the step was taken due to the Republican administrations belief the money was based on unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion principles. In a statement, the U.S. Transportation Department said that it had been reviewing whether any unconstitutional practices were occurring in the two massive infrastructure projects but that the government shutdown had forced it to furlough the staffers conducting the review. “This is another unfortunate casualty of radical Democrats reckless decision to hold the federal government hostage to give illegal immigrants benefits,” the statement reads. The suspension of funds is likely meant to target Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, whom the White House is blaming for the shutdown. In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, Schumer said he and then-President Joe Biden were both giddy over the rail tunnel project, adding that it was all they talked about in the presidential limousine as they rode to the site. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, reacting to the development at a news conference about the federal government shutdown, told reporters, The bad news just keeps coming, adding that “theyre trying to make culture wars be the reason why. Thats what a partnership with Washington looks like as were standing here. Weve done our part. Were ready to build. Its underway, she said. And now we realize that theyve decided to put their own interpretation of proper culture ahead of our needs, the needs of a nation. The Hudson River rail tunnel is a long-delayed project whose path toward construction has been full of political and funding switchbacks. Its intended to ease the strain on a 110-year-old tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey. Hundreds of Amtrak and commuter trains carry hundreds of thousands of passengers per day through the tunnel, and delays can ripple up and down the East Coast between Boston and Washington The Second Avenue subway was first envisioned in the 1920s. The subway line along Manhattans Second Avenue was an on-again, off-again grail until the first section opened on Jan. 1, 2017. The state-controlled Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working toward starting construction on the second phase of the line, which is to extend into East Harlem. Josh Boak, Associated Press Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summerthe median existing home went for $435,000 in JunePresident Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free. Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would benefit working families by eliminating all taxes on the sales of family homes. But most Americans who sell their homes already do so tax-free. And the households that would gain most under Trumps proposals are those with the most valuable real estate. As a legal scholar who studies how taxes affect racial and economic inequality, I see this proposal as part of a familiar pattern: measures advertised as relief for ordinary families that mostly benefit the well-off. Most families already sell their homes tax-free Right now, according to the Internal Revenue Code, a single person pays no tax on the first $250,000 in gain from a home sale, while married people can exclude $500,000. All told, about 90% of home sales generate less than $500,000 in gains, so the overwhelming majority of sellers already owe no tax. The minority who would see new benefits from the proposed tax change are those with more than $500,000 in appreciation, typically owners of high-priced homes in hot real estate markets. Yales Budget Lab estimated the average benefit for these tax-free sales was $100,000 per qualifying seller. Homeownership itself isnt equally distributed across the U.S. population. About 44% of Black Americans are homeowners, compared with 74% of white Americans. That racial gap has only widened over the past 10 years. Similarly, single womenparticularly but not exclusively women of colorface additional barriers. A broader trend of upward wealth transference Though still just a proposal, the tax-free home sales bill is part of a broader set of Republican tax plans that would have regressive effectsthat is, where the vast majority of benefits go to high-income people and very few to low-income peopleunder a pro-worker banner. Trump floated the tax-free home sales idea less than three weeks after he signed a large package of tax and spending measures in July 2025. That bill generated strong public criticism because of its emphasis on tax savings for the rich at the expense of almost a trillion dollars in cuts for federally funded healthcare for the poor and disabled. The home sales idea follows the same scriptand echoes the distributional pattern established by his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That tax reform increased racial wealth and income disparities and provided 80% of its benefits to corporations and high-income individuals. In fact, my research shows that white households received more than twice as many tax cuts as Black households from that law. The same dynamic plays out in this new tax-fueled housing policy. Eliminating capital gains taxes on home sales would primarily benefit the 29 million homeowners who already have substantial equitya group that skews heavily white, male, and upper middle class. Meanwhile, Americas millions of renters, disproportionately people of color and women, would receive no benefit while potentially losing access to social programs Congress must cut to fund these tax breaks. Beverly Moran is a professor emerita of law at Vanderbilt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow is facing mounting legal battlesincluding a lawsuit Tuesday brought by the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Zillow paid rival Redfin $100 million to exit and stop competing in the online apartment rental listings market. The FTC claims the arrangementframed publicly as a partnershipwas in fact an unlawful anticompetitive agreement that eliminated Redfin as a meaningful competitor in the online rental space. According to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the February 2025 deal required Redfin to terminate its advertising contracts, step away from competing in multifamily property advertising for up to nine years, and act solely as a syndicator of Zillows rental listings. The FTC alleges the arrangement not only harmed Redfin employeeshundreds of whom were laid offbut also renters and property managers, who now face reduced competition, higher costs, and fewer innovations in rental search platforms. Paying off a competitor to stop competing against you is a violation of federal antitrust laws,” wrote Daniel Guarnera, Director of the FTCs Bureau of Competition, in a press release published on September 30. Zillow paid millions of dollars to eliminate Redfin as an independent competitor in an already concentrated advertising marketone thats critical for renters, property managers, and the health of the overall U.S. housing market. The FTC will do our part to ensure that Americans who are looking for safe, affordable rentals receive all the benefits of robust competition between internet listing services like Zillow and Redfin. The suit is the fourth major legal challenge filed against Zillow in just over three months, underscoring growing scrutiny of the companys business practices: June 23, 2025: Compass filed an antitrust lawsuit alleging Zillows ban on private listings was anticompetitive and harmed brokerages. July 30, 2025: Commercial real estate giant CoStar sued Zillow for copyright infringement, seeking more than $1 billion in damages. September 19, 2025: A class-action lawsuit was filed against Zillow, accusing the company of hiding agent fees within its Flex referral program. September 30, 2025: The FTC filed its suit alleging Zillows $100 million agreement with Redfin was designed to suppress competition in rental advertising. The rapid-fire succession of lawsuitsspanning copyright, antitrust, consumer protection, and federal enforcementhas put Zillow under one of the most intense legal spotlights in its corporate history. The outcomes could ripple well beyond Zillow itself, potentially influencing how much choice, transparency, and information consumers have when navigating the housing market. This will be something to watch in 2026 and beyond.
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E-Commerce
TikTok is a one-stop-shop for recipe inspo, viral dance trends, tin-foil-hat conspiracies, and, increasingly, political commentary. Now, its also where one in five Americans are getting their news. Thats according to a Pew Research Center analysis published last week, which has tracked a dramatic uptick in news consumption on the platform, up from just 3% in 2020. During that span, no social media platform weve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption, Pew noted. In Pews survey, 43% of adults under 30 said they regularly get their news on TikTok, up from 9% five years ago. But it’s not just younger people. A quarter of adults between the ages of 30 and 49 also regularly turn to TikTok as a news source, compared to just 2% in 2020. This analysis is based on Pews survey of 5,153 U.S. adults between August 18 and 24. While the researchers focused only on adult TikTok users, overall more than half of TikTok users (55%) now say they regularly get news on the platform, up from 22% in 2020. TikTok is now on par with several other social media sites including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Truth Social in the share of its adult users who regularly get news there, researchers wrote. The tide on TikTok has been turning for some time, with more and more media outlets and independent journalists adapting to reach new audiences and doubling down on vertical video. These days, snappy, shareable content, delivered in 30 seconds or less, is far more likely to hook audiences shrinking attention spans than long form reporting. The quality of this news content is another story. Since much of this content comes from individual creators, or newsfluencers, rather than established news organizations, fact and opinion can often be presented interchangeably, and misinformation can spread quickly. News delivered directly to the FYP, courtesy of a highly individualized algorithm, has the problem of sinking people further and further into echo chambers of their own creation. It then begs the question: What kind of news are we each consuming?
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E-Commerce
Factory activity shrank in much of the world last month, private surveys showed on Wednesday, as signs of a slowdown in U.S. growth and the anticipated impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs added to pressure from weak Chinese demand. Euro zone manufacturing slipped back into contraction as new orders fell at their fastest rate in six months, with export markets acting as a particular drag, signalling that the recovery in the region’s industrial sector was fragile. The HCOB Eurozone Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), compiled by S&P Global, fell to 49.8 in September from August’s 50.7, which was the first reading above the 50.0-point line denoting growth since mid-2022. “The drop in the PMI is showing up across the board, with respective figures for consumer goods, capital goods and intermediate goods all down on the month,” said Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank. Surveys revealed a split across the currency union with the Netherlands leading the expansion with activity at a 38-month high while growth continued in Greece, Ireland and Spain. Meanwhile, the bloc’s three largest economies Germany, France and Italy all registered contractions. In Britain, outside the European Union, activity shrank at the fastest pace in five months, reflecting subdued domestic demand and fewer export orders, painting a more downbeat picture than recent official data. In Asia, the stress on manufacturers highlights the challenge policymakers face in protecting their export-reliant region from higher U.S. levies, a key policy of the Trump administration that has upended the global trade order and put the brakes on economic growth. Export powerhouse Japan and global tech hub Taiwan saw manufacturing activity shrink in September, the surveys showed, leaving businesses in Asia heavily dependent on the U.S. market on a fragile footing. Worryingly, China, a key engine of the global economy, also remained in the doldrums. An official survey released on Monday showed manufacturing activity in the world’s second-biggest economy contracted for a sixth month in September, dragged down by weak consumption and the squeeze from U.S. tariffs. The prolonged slump underlines the twin pressures on China’s economy: Domestic demand has failed to mount a durable recovery in the years since the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump’s tariffs have squeezed Chinese factories as well as overseas firms that buy components. “The September PMI readings for most countries in Asia remained weak and we continue to expect manufacturing activity in the region to struggle in the near term,” said Shivaan Tandon, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics. “With growth set to soften and inflation likely to remain contained, we expect central banks in Asia to loosen policy further.” The S&P Global Japan Manufacturing PMI fell to 48.5 in September from 49.7 in August, staying below the 50.0 threshold. It shrank at the fastest pace in six months due to steep falls in output and new orders, the survey showed. Taiwan’s manufacturing PMI fell to 46.8 last month. Factory activity also shrank in the Philippines and Malaysia, the private surveys showed. By contrast, South Korea’s factory activity expanded for the first time in eight months underpinned by improving overseas demand. The manufacturing PMI in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, released by S&P Global, rose to 50.7 in September, moving above the 50-mark for the first time since January 2025. The outlook for South Korea’s exporters, however, hinges on negotiations to formalise a July deal aimed at reducing U.S. tariffs on Korean goods imports including automobiles to 15% from 25% in return for South Korea’s investment of $350 billion in the U.S. The talks have stalled due to Seoul’s concerns over foreign exchange implications. India’s manufacturing sector expansion lost some momentum and slipped to its weakest pace in four months, suggesting Washington’s punitive 50% tariffs on its goods could be starting to hurt Asia’s third-largest economy. Jonathan Cable and Leika Kihara, Reuters
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E-Commerce
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