Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Palantir Technologies has secured a $1 billion contract with the Department of Homeland Security, a deal that sent its stock surging and drew sharp attention from institutional investors and civil liberties advocates alike. The agreement deepens Palantir’s role in federal data analytics tied to immigration enforcement, arriving at a moment when the company’s financial results…
Lucid Group is cutting 12% of its U.S. workforce, a move that will eliminate hundreds of jobs at the electric vehicle startup as it struggles to reach profitability. Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff disclosed the reduction in an internal memo, sparing hourly production workers but targeting salaried and corporate roles. The layoffs land less than a…
PayPal shares fell back toward levels last seen around the company’s 2015 spin-off from eBay after the payments giant reported fourth-quarter 2025 results that investors viewed as disappointing, disclosed a CEO transition, and warned investors to expect lower earnings in 2026. The twin shocks of a leadership vacuum and slowing growth in PayPal’s core branded…
Illinois is being discussed as a potential multibillion-dollar claimant in the growing national battle over tariffs collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) after the Supreme Court struck down the legal authority behind them. However, the specific figure of an $8.7 billion Illinois claim has not been documented in the sources linked below,…
President Trump’s 25% tariffs on imported automobiles and parts threatened to add billions in costs for Detroit’s Big Three automakers, but a series of White House amendments and executive orders have carved out targeted relief that softens the blow. The escape is real but narrow: automakers assembling vehicles in the United States can claim offset…
Ford Motor Co. is moving to unwind its BlueOval SK battery joint venture in Kentucky and says it is investing $1.9 billion to overhaul its Louisville Assembly Plant to build an electric midsize pickup. The twin moves, unfolding against the backdrop of a $19.5 billion corporate writedown and a recently decided utility rate case, leave…
The European Data Protection Board forced Meta to stop using contract and legitimate interest as legal grounds for behavioral advertising across the entire European Economic Area, a direct ban that marked one of the sharpest regulatory strikes against a major tech platform’s data practices. Yet even as European regulators tighten the screws, the United States…
South Carolina’s aggressive courtship of data center operators is delivering generous tax breaks to some of the world’s largest technology companies while many local retailers and service businesses continue to operate under the standard tax rules. A layered system of state sales tax exemptions, county-level property tax deals, and a recent legislative pause on certain…
More than 200 S&P 500 companies stripped the words “diversity” and “equity” from their annual reports in 2025, yet many of those same firms quietly replaced them with softer terms like “inclusion” and “belonging.” One year after the federal government began dismantling its own DEI infrastructure, the central tension for corporate America is not whether…
The federal government tracks every late arrival, lost bag, and bumped passenger on major U.S. carriers, and the data paints a clear picture of which airlines deliver and which ones consistently frustrate travelers. Using operational performance records spanning more than two decades alongside independent customer satisfaction surveys fielded through early 2025, a ranking of the…