Bankrupt retailer Big Lots said Friday it struck an 11th-hour deal to save hundreds of its stores via a sale to Gordon Brothers and Variety Wholesalers.
Why it matters: The Columbus, Ohio-based company had about 27,700 employees and more than 1,300 stores in 48 states when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September.
Elon Musk condemned a segment of the MAGA movement as "contemptible fools" who should be purged from the Republican Party in a social media post Friday.
Why it matters: A virtual right-wing civil war has broken out over race, class, immigration and the future of President-elect Trump's movement, and Musk is increasingly at odds with Trump's historic base.
Nearly 200 ski patrollers and mountain safety personnel on Friday launched a strike at Park City Mountain in Utah to protest alleged unfair labor practices.
Why it matters: The post-Christmas job action threatened to disrupt operations at the largest ski resort in the U.S. during one of the busiest weeks of the season.
Sriram Krishnan has become a MAGA lightning rod since President-elect Trump named him as a senior adviser on artificial intelligence, due to both anti-Indian racism and Krishnan's pro-immigration views.
The big picture: Krishnan is an unlikely candidate for controversy, known throughout Silicon Valley for his affability and to the broader world as co-host of a podcast with his wife, tech entrepreneur Aarthi Ramamurthy.
An erupting civil war in MAGA world over foreign workers has shone a fresh spotlight on a visa scheme that has become the backbone of the country's highly skilled tech industry.
Why it matters: The brewing conflict has underscored the schism between one of President-elect Trump's cornerstone pledges — cracking down on immigration — and his Silicon Valley supporters, many of whose businesses depend on attracting foreign workers.
A handful of conservative critics of Elon Musk are alleging censorship and claiming they were stripped of their verification badges on X after challenging his views on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.
Why it matters: The H-1B issue and an X post by Musk ally Vivek Ramaswamy about America's culture of "mediocrity" have sparked an online MAGA civil war over immigration and race. Some supporters of President-elect Trump are now turning on Musk and the tech bros Trump has tapped for key administration roles.
American adults are nearly as likely to blame insurance denials for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as they are to blame the person who shot him, according to new poll data.
The big picture: The reaction to Brian Thompson's killing — and the veneration by some of suspect Luigi Mangione — has revealed a deep distrust of the health insurance industry and its treatment of patients in need of critical care.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Thursday vehemently denied President-elect Trump's claims of Chinese interference in the Panama Canal.
Why it matters: Trump has accused Panamanian authorities of charging "exorbitant" shipping rates and cited the increasing dominance of China's government in trade throughout the Americas as a reason to take control of the Panama Canal, one of the world's most crucial pieces of infrastructure that the U.S. ceded in 1999.
NFL's Christmas Day double-header games were the most-streamed NFL games in U.S. history, according to preliminary Nielsen figures that don't include international viewership.
Why it matters: Once international figures and additional U.S. data is calculated, the league expects both games will have averaged around 30 million viewers each, a source told Axios, representing a massive win for Netflix's live sports ambitions.
A MAGA-world civil war erupted over Christmas when a social media post on American culture turned into a pitched battle over race, immigration and billionaires versus the working class.
Why it matters: The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions: It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants.
Elon Musk showed off a trimmer figure in a holiday social media post on Wednesday while revealing that he has been taking an anti-obesity drug to shed pounds.
Why it matters: Musk's post highlighted just how mainstream weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have become in recent years as public figures openly admit to using them, helping transform perceptions and conversations around weight loss.
About two-thirds of Americans have recently felt the need to limit their political news consumption, according to a recent poll.
Why it matters: The reluctance to consume political news is reflected in TV ratings. Americans of all parties, and Democrats in particular, are tuning out politics.
Medicare's $2,000 prescription drug cap will take effect at the start of the new year.
Why it matters: The yearly limit on out-of-pocket payments, under the Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to lower millions of seniors' medical costs. It will have a particularly significant impact for patients taking expensive drugs to treat cancer and other serious conditions.
Apple is closing in on a $4 trillion stock market valuation, powered by investors cheering progress in the company's long-awaited AI enhancements to rejuvenate sluggish iPhone sales.
Why it matters: The company has pulled ahead of Nvidia and Microsoft in the race to the monumental milestone, thanks to an about 16% jump in shares since early November that has added about $500 billion to its market capitalization.
Beyoncé performed a medley of hits from her record-breaking "Cowboy Carter" album during Netflix's first-ever NFL Christmas Gameday halftime show on Wednesday.
The big picture: Guests at the show in Houston, Texas, during the break at the Houston Texans-Baltimore Ravens game included Post Malone, Shaboozey, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer and Tiera Kennedy, and Beyoncé's elder daughter, Blue Ivy Carter.
President Biden on Wednesday denounced Russia's large-scale Christmas Day attacks on Ukraine that damaged critical energy infrastructure and vowed to continue a U.S. surge in weapons deliveries to Kyiv.
The big picture: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X called the attacks "inhumane," while Russia's Defense Ministry said the "long-range precision weapons and strike drones on critical energy infrastructure facilities" in Ukraine had achieved the goal of Russian leader Vladimir Putin's forces.
