President Donald Trump said Netflix and Paramount Skydance have called him about their fight over Warner Bros. Discovery — but he says he’s staying out of it.
“I’ve been called by both sides,” Trump told “NBC Nightly News.” “It’s the two sides, but I’ve decided I shouldn’t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.”
This is a shift from what Trump said in December of last year.
“They have a very big market share, and when they have Warner Bros., you know, that share goes up a lot so, I don’t know,” Trump said after Netflix made its bid for Warner Bros. Discover. “I’ll be involved in that decision, too. But they have a very big market share.”
The fight for Warner Bros. Discovery, and its well-known IP, has been contentious.
In November of last year, formal bids for the media behemoth were submitted, including those from Netflix and Paramount Skydance — which previously signaled interest in buying Warner Bros. Discovery.
Netflix announced in early December that it would acquire parts of WBD — the studio and streaming — for an equity value of $72 billion ($27.75 per share).
“The seismic cash-and-stock deal, which has a total enterprise value of $82.7 billion, will bring together Netflix’s streaming platform with Warner Bros.’ century-old studio, HBO, HBO Max, and some of the most iconic franchises in film and television,” Business Insider reported when the deal was announced.
Paramount Skydance came in days later with a hostile, all-cash offer of $30 per share for all of WBD, including its cable assets, making its appeal directly to shareholders.
The battle has continued with Netflix revising its deal with an all-cash offer at the same price per share, Paramount Skydance saying Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison was backing its offer, and WBD telling its shareholders to reject the Paramount deal.
No matter how the saga ends, the bids will need to clear regulatory hurdles for the merger — and for now Trump said he’ll leave that to the DOJ.
President Donald Trump’s monthslong and contentious search for a new commissioner to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be ending.
On a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump announced that he intends to nominate Brett Matsumoto, a longtime agency economist, to lead the BLS.
The BLS commissioner role has been vacant since August, when Trump fired Erika McEntarfer after the release of a jobs report showing weak employment growth. Trump alleged, without providing evidence, that the data had been politically manipulated. The allegation and removal have since undermined public trust in one of the federal government’s most closely watched statistical agencies, which is supposed to remain nonpartisan.
The agency has roughly 2,000 employees, and the commissioner is its only appointed position. The commissioner’s role carries a four-year term and requires Senate confirmation.
Before Matsumoto, the White House previously nominated EJ Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist, for the job, but later withdrew the nomination after it became clear Antoni lacked sufficient support for Senate confirmation.
Who is Brett Matsumoto?
Matsumoto is a career economist with deep ties to the agency he would lead if confirmed.
Based on Matsumoto’s LinkedIn profile, he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Delaware before earning his doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina in 2015. Since then, he has been working at the BLA as a supervisory research economist. Multiple academic papers under his name can be found covering issues such as consumer expenditure and inflation measurement. Over the past year, he has been on assignment at the Council of Economic Advisers.
Matsumoto is not very active on social media. A Facebook account under his name shows that his profile picture used to be a photo with Ivanka Trump back in August 2020. His most recent profile photo features him alongside a tabby cat.
In a post on Truth Social late Friday, Trump said he was confident Matsumoto had the expertise to “QUICKLY fix the long history of issues at the BLS on behalf of the American People.”
Several economists posted online that they believe Matsumoto could be the right choice.
Claudia Sahm, Chief Economist at New Century Advisors, posted on X that Matsumoto is an “excellent choice” for the commissioner position.
Skanda Amarnath, Executive Director of Employ America, echoed the sentiment on X and said that Matsumoto is “a very thoughtful person who understands the nuts and bolts of data measurement and estimation.”
President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to impose 100% tariffs on all Canadian goods and products exported to the US should Ottawa make a trade deal with China.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump warned Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whom he called “Governor Carney,” against making a “drop off” deal with Beijing or face the levies.
“If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump wrote.
“China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life,” he added.
Carney made an official visit to China last week — the first by a Canadian leader since 2017 — meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss economic and trade opportunities between the two countries.
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In a joint statement following the meeting, Ottawa and Beijing said they had committed to expanding bilateral trade and investment, as well as building cooperation in areas such as energy and agriculture.
Carney also announced that Canada would now allow up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market on the “most-favoured-nation tariff rate of 6.1%.” In return, he said Canada expected China to lower tariffs on Canadian canola seed to around 15% by March 1.
Trump had initially said that the deal was what Carney “should be doing” and that it was “a good thing for him to sign a trade deal.”
Trump’s changing tone comes days after Carney delivered an impassioned speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he opined on the changing face of global politics since Trump’s election.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney, who did not explicitly name Trump, said, adding that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
Trump did not miss the opportunity to snap back at Carney during his own speech at Davos, saying the prime minister “wasn’t so grateful.”
“Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements,” he added.
President Donald Trump knows he’s aligning himself with the progressive left when it comes to credit cards.
During an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen in Davos on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that his call for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates isn’t a standard conservative policy.
In fact, he joked that it’s something that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, might have come up with.
“I know it’s sort of like… it sounds like the mayor of New York maybe came up with that,” Trump said with a laugh.
Following Mamdani’s election in November, the two met in the Oval Office and appeared to share some common ground in remarks to the press afterwards.
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“I’m conservative, but I think I’m common sense, you know?” Trump said on Wednesday. “People say, ‘Are you a conservative?’ I say, ‘Yeah, but I’m a common-sense person.’ I mean, I do things that aren’t necessarily that conservative sometimes.”
Trump said he respected credit card companies but that consumers can’t afford to pay high rates.
“Whatever happened to usury? They can’t pay 28%,” Trump said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump called on Congress to pass a bill capping credit card interest rates at 10% for one year.
Key Republicans in Congress have been cool to that idea, with House Speaker Mike Johnson telling reporters last week that Trump “probably had not thought through” the potential downsides of the policy and that credit card companies may “just stop lending money” or “cap what people are able to borrow at a very low amount.”
Many business leaders have also been critical of the idea.
Yet Trump’s call has also been met with agreement from some progressives, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, whom Trump called last week.
In Congress, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri have introduced a bill that would do just what Trump said, capping credit card rates at 10% for a year.
Business Insider will be in the room when he speaks. We’ll share real-time updates on what he says and how World Economic Forum attendees react.
After an issue with Air Force One, Trump landed in Switzerland on a replacement plane just after 12:30 p.m. local time, and is scheduled to speak at 2:30 p.m.
Follow along here for real-time updates, reaction, and on-the-ground commentary from Business Insider’s staff in Davos.
Robot drivers will ultimately outperform humans on safety, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on Tuesday in Davos.
“If you think about the world 20 years from now, your Uber is going to be driven largely not by a human being, but by a robot driver — a piece of software on top of a car,” Khosrowshahi said, adding that vehicles are becoming increasingly sophisticated and more like “computers on wheels.”
Robot drivers will ultimately outperform humans on safety, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on Tuesday in Davos.
“If you think about the world 20 years from now, your Uber is going to be driven largely not by a human being, but by a robot driver — a piece of software on top of a car,” Khosrowshahi said, adding that vehicles are becoming increasingly sophisticated and more like “computers on wheels.”
Khosrowshahi said autonomous systems have clear advantages over human drivers. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the robot driver can be safer than a human driver,” he said. Robot drivers don’t get tired or distracted, don’t text while driving, and can operate continuously while improving over time, he added.
The key question, Khosrowshahi said, is what level of safety is “enough” for robot drivers — whether matching human performance is sufficient or whether autonomous vehicles should be held to a higher standard.
In the longer term, he said, human driving could resemble horseback riding today, becoming a niche activity done for enjoyment.
“There’s no doubt that 10 years from now, there will be questions as to whether humans are safe enough,” he said.
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Trump says the US will impose new tariffs on European countries until Denmark hands over Greenland.
The president said the tariffs would start at 10% and increase to 25%.
Trump has repeatedly used tariffs as leverage on what he calls national security issues.
President Donald Trump has turned to his favorite form of leverage in his fight to annex Greenland.
Trump said on Saturday he would impose a 10% tariff on Denmark, which controls Greenland, as well as Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland, unless they agree to a deal to hand over Greenland to the United States.
The president said he would raise those tariffs to 25% in June if they did not comply. All of those countries have already been paying a 10% tariff rate since Trump’s Liberation Day levies went into effect in August 2025.
“This tariff will be due and payable until such time a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase,” he said in a Truth Social post. Trump’s threat comes as world leaders and CEOs gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. The president is expected to address the conference on Wednesday.
Trump has had Greenland on his mind since his first term, but has ramped up the rhetoric since the US raid in Venezuela that netted Nicolás Maduro.
The president says US control of Greenland is a national security issue.
Hours after President Donald Trump toured a Ford pickup truck assembly plant, the big news story wasn’t about manufacturing jobs or the economy. It was about a Ford worker who heckled him and was later suspended.
The incident raised questions about the limits of free speech in the workplace — and when companies can discipline workers for political protest.
Business Insider spoke to five experts, including four employment lawyers and an HR executive, to find out.
Their conclusion was blunt: an employee’s words can quickly become fireable offenses.
‘An employer has the ability to discipline an employee for speech’
All four lawyers said workers retain legal free speech rights under the Constitution, but those rights rarely protect speech in their workplace.
“With very few exceptions, employees in the private sector don’t have free speech rights at work,” Mark Kluger, a co-founding partner at New Jersey-based law firm Kluger Healey, told Business Insider.
Jessica Childress, a managing attorney at Washington, DC-based The Childress Firm, said workers often confuse who the First Amendment actually applies to. The best way to think about it, she said, is to divide government action from a private company’s authority.
“The First Amendment’s right to freedom of speech only applies to government actors, not private employers, such as Ford,” she said. “A private company can — with certain exceptions — limit what their employees say.”
That distinction has played out in real-world cases before.
Juli Briskman, a former government contract worker, was fired from her job after a photograph lensed her flipping off Trump’s motorcade.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
In 2017, Juli Briskman, a former marketing analyst for a government contractor, was fired from her job after professional photographers caught her giving Trump’s motorcade the middle finger.
Even though her action happened outside of the office, her lawsuit against her employer was tossed.
“Employers are legally allowed to regulate behavior that disrupts the workplace,” said Jared Pope, an employment law attorney and CEO at Work Shield. “That is why most organizations apply their codes of conduct consistently, even when speech happens off the clock or references public figures.”
Still, lawyers said workers generally have more protection if they express their political belief off-the-clock.
“If you are so inclined to protest, do it off-duty, off-premises, and off-company networks,” Eric Kingsley, a partner at Kingsley Szamet Employment Lawyers, told Business Insider. “An employer has the ability to discipline an employee for speech in matters of politics when it becomes misconduct.”
Ford decided to suspend the worker initially, not fire them. The UAW said it’s looking into the situation, while Ford said it doesn’t comment on personnel matters.
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Why Ford likely suspended — not fired — the worker initially
Each lawyer we talked to said that Ford was well within its rights to suspend the employee, T.J. Sabula.
In fact, some said the automaker may have displayed restraint by not outright firing the factory employee after the decision.
“It implies Ford is buying time,” Kingsley added. “Suspending the employee gives them a chance to investigate and make a decision that may not be as rash as laying off an employee.”
On Wednesday, the United Auto Workers, the union representing the workers in Sabula’s plant, confirmed his suspension. Sabula, who has said he doesn’t regret heckling Trump and is set to receive over $800,000 in crowdfunded support, has not responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Laura Dickerson, a vice president for the UAW, said the union was reviewing Ford’s actions and said workers “should never be subjected to vulgar language or behavior by anyone — including the President of the United States.”
The union also said Sabula “believes in freedom of speech, a principle we wholeheartedly embrace, and we stand with our membership in protecting their voice on the job.”
Ford declined to comment on the suspension, saying it was “a personnel matter.”
“Ford is navigating a high-profile, politically charged moment,” Lauren Winans, CEO of the HR consulting firm Next Level Benefits, said. “The union’s involvement likely influenced Ford’s decision to suspend (not fire), because unilateral termination could lead to grievances and arbitration.”
For workers wondering if they can get fired for speaking their mind at work, Kluger made it clear the answer is yes.
“Try telling your boss what you really think of them and see how long you remain employed,” he said.
Do you think Ford should fire the employee? Let us know by taking our survey:
President Donald Trump isn’t backing down from his criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, even as an increasing number of fellow Republicans express a desire to cool tensions.
“Well, he’s billions of dollars over budget,” Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday morning before departing for a trip to Michigan. “So, he’s either incompetent or he’s crooked. I don’t know what he is, but he certainly doesn’t do a very good job.”
On Sunday, Powell released an extraordinary video statement, confirming that he is under a criminal investigation for testimony he gave before Congress about renovations to the Fed’s headquarters. Powell said that the probe was being conducted in retaliation for his repeated defiance of Trump’s wishes regarding the independent central bank’s setting of interest rates.
“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell said in a nearly two-minute video released by the Fed.
Powell and the Fed have repeatedly denied that there is anything untoward about the cost overruns for the $2.5 billion renovations. In July, Powell accompanied Trump on a tour of the site where the pair sparred in front of reporters about the project.
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“You just added in a third building is what that is,” Powell said in July after Trump cited a figure that was higher than other estimates. “It was built five years ago.”
An FAQ on the Fed’s website said the project has been costlier than expected due to a number of factors, including changes to the design, a larger-than-expected amount of asbestos, and the increase in the cost of materials.
Trump told NBC News he had no knowledge of grand jury subpoenas being sent to the Fed. Amid a firestorm, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said that the Justice Department had no alternative but to subpoena the information.
“The United States Attorney’s Office contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process—which is not a threat,” Pirro said in a statement posted on X on Monday night.
In 2017, Trump nominated Powell, who was already a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, to lead the central bank. Since then, Trump has soured on Powell and at times has mused about firing the Fed chair, though legal experts have disputed whether any president would have the power to do so.
The criminal probe into Powell could prove costly for the White House. Powell’s term as chair is up in May. For months, Trump has conducted a public search for his replacement. In a closely-divided Senate, Trump cannot afford to lose Republican support for any potential nominee.
After Powell’s statement was released, Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said he would not support any Trump nominee until the investigation “is fully resolved.” Tillis serves on the Senate Banking Committee, where Republicans hold a 13-11 majority. If Tillis remained opposed, the committee could deadlock — likely stalling the nomination or, at the very least, requiring Republicans to take the rare step of changing the chamber’s rules.
Beyond Tillis, a handful of other Republicans on Capitol Hill have also decried the criminal probe. All three living former Fed chairs, including Reagan appointee Alan Greenspan, have lined up behind Powell, as have the current leaders of central banks around the world.
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President Donald Trump asks tech companies to “pay their own way” for their data centers.
Data centers drove up utility bills in at least 13 states, Business Insider previously reported.
Trump says that Microsoft will be the first to work with the White House to keep utility bills down.
President Donald Trump said on Monday that even though data centers are “key” to the AI boom, tech companies must “‘pay their own way,'” so that Americans don’t have higher utility bills.
“First up is Microsoft, who my team has been working with, and which will make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for their POWER consumption, in the form of paying higher Utility bills,” Trump said on Truth Social, hinting at additional announcements “in the coming weeks.”
Data centers drove up utility bills in at least 13 states, Business Insider previously reported.
Over the past year, Microsoft has been planning for data centers in Wisconsin, Atlanta, Texas, and Michigan.
The White House and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story; check back for updates.
