Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates as expected last month. But minutes from their December meeting suggest that the decision was a close call — and that there is no guarantee policymakers will lower rates again anytime soon. The minutes of the central bank’s Dec. 17-18 meeting, released on Wednesday, showed that most Fed officials…
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, spoke on Wednesday in Paris of the challenges already posed to U.S. alliances by the imminent return of Donald J. Trump to the White House, and said they believed that an American takeover of Greenland was an impossible idea. But they also asserted…
The United Automobile Workers union is seeking approval from federal labor regulators for a union election among workers at a Ford Motor battery plant in Kentucky, providing an important test of organized labor’s strength after the election of Donald J. Trump. The union petitioned the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday to let workers at…
Ports on the East and Gulf Coasts could close next week if dockworkers and employers cannot overcome their big differences over the use of automated machines to move cargo. The International Longshoremen’s Association, the union that represents dockworkers, and the United States Maritime Alliance, the employers’ negotiating group, on Tuesday resumed in-person talks aimed at…
When Laura Loomer, a far-right activist, regained control of her Twitter account in late 2022, she knew whom to praise for her reinstatement. “Thank you, Elon!” she wrote to Elon Musk, who had recently bought the social network. In another post, Ms. Loomer, who had been booted from the platform in 2018 for writing an…
Christian Ulloriaq Jeppesen remembers how this all started. In 2019, during Donald J. Trump’s first term as president, Mr. Trump floated the idea of the United States buying the island of Greenland. At the time, most people in Greenland (and Denmark, the European country that controls it) thought his suggestion was a joke. “Everyone said,…
Meta said on Tuesday that it was ending its longstanding fact-checking program, a policy instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps, in a stark sign of how the company was repositioning itself for the Trump presidency and throwing its weight behind unfettered speech online. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and…
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s suggestion on Tuesday that the United States might reclaim the Panama Canal — including by force — unsettled Panamanians, who used to live with the presence of the U.S. military in the canal zone and were invaded by American military forces once before. Few appeared to be taking Mr. Trump’s threats…
President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages being held by Hamas are not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times during a wide-ranging news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “If they’re not back by the time I get…
Meta would like to introduce its next fact-checker — the one who will spot falsehoods, pen convincing corrections and warn others about misleading content. It’s you. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced Tuesday that he was ending much of the company’s moderation efforts, like third-party fact-checking and content restrictions. Instead, he said, the company will…