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Tag: billionaires

  • Retail billionaire Les Wexner says he was ‘duped’ by adviser Jeffrey Epstein: ‘I was naive, foolish, and gullible’ | Fortune

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    The billionaire behind the retail empire that once blanketed shopping malls with names such as Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch told members of Congress on Wednesday that he was “duped by a world-class con man” — close financial adviser Jeffrey Epstein. Les Wexner also denied knowing about the late sex offender’s crimes or participating in Epstein’s abuse of girls and young women.

    “I was naive, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein. He was a con man. And while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide,” the 88-year-old retired founder of L Brands said in a statement submitted to the House Oversight Committee before an interview conducted at his vast central Ohio estate. Democrats had subpoenaed him after the latest Justice Department release of Epstein-related documents revealed new details about Wexner’s relationship with the well-connected financier.

    Wexner described himself to the lawmakers as a philanthropist, community builder and grandfather who always strove “to live my life in an ethical manner in line with my moral compass,” according to the statement. He said he was eager “to set the record straight” about his ties with Epstein. Their relation ended bitterly in 2007, after the Wexners discovered he’d been stealing from them.

    As one of Epstein’s most prominent former friends, Wexner has spent years answering for their decades-long association and he sought to use the proceeding to dispel what he called “outrageous untrue statements and hurtful rumor, innuendo, and speculation” that have shadowed him.

    Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat who sat in on Wednesday’s interview, expressed skepticism in comments to reporters gathered near the proceeding.

    “There is no single person that was more involved in providing Jeffrey Epstein with the financial support to commit his crimes than Les Wexner,” he said.

    In response to allegations by the prominent late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who claimed in court documents that Wexner was among men Epstein trafficked her to, Wexner testified to utter devotion to his wife of 33 years, Abigail. He said he’d never once been unfaithful “in any way, shape, or form. Never. Any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely and entirely false.”

    Wexner’s name appears more than 1,000 times in the Epstein files, which does not imply guilt and Wexner has never been charged with any crimes. His spokesperson said the number of mentions is not unexpected given their long-running ties.

    ‘A most loyal friend’

    Epstein first met Leslie Wexner through a business associate around 1986.

    It was an opportune time for Wexner’s finances. The Ohio business owner had grown a single Limited store in Columbus into a suite of 1980s mall staples: The Limited, Limited Express, Lane Bryant and Victoria’s Secret. Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner, White Barn Candle Co. and Henri Bendel would follow.

    Wexner told lawmakers that it was several years before he turned over management of his vast fortune to Epstein, after the “master manipulator” connived to gain his trust. He gave Epstein power of attorney in 1991, allowing Epstein to make investments and do business deals and to purchase property and help Wexner as he developed New Albany from a small rural city to a thriving upscale Columbus suburb.

    Epstein had “excellent judgment and unusually high standards,” Wexner told Vanity Fair in a 2003 interview, and he was “always a most loyal friend.”

    On Wednesday, the billionaire said he didn’t circulate in Epstein’s social circle, but often heard accounts of his encounters with other wealthy people.

    Epstein “carefully used his acquaintance with important individuals to curate an aura of legitimacy,” Wexner said. He said he visited Epstein’s infamous island only once, stopping for a few hours one morning with his wife and young children while they were cruising on their boat.

    “It is interesting that Mr Wexner has already begun to clarify in his mind that somehow he and Mr. Epstein weren’t even friends,” Garcia told reporters. “We should be very clear that the two were very close, per reporting. They spent a lot of time together.”

    Epstein recalls ‘gang stuff’

    In one of the newly released documents, Epstein sent rough notes to himself about Wexner saying: “never ever, did anything without informing les” and “I would never give him up.” Another document, an apparent draft letter to Wexner, said the two “had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years” and were mutually indebted to each other — as Wexner helped make Epstein rich and Epstein helped make Wexner richer.

    Wexner spokesperson Tom Davies said Wexner never received the letter, characterizing it as fitting “a pattern of untrue, outlandish, and delusional statements made by Epstein in desperate attempts to perpetuate his lies and justify his misconduct.”

    Wexner told the congressional representatives that Epstein “lived a double life,” presenting himself to his wealthy clients as a financial guru with steady girlfriends while “most carefully and fully” hiding his misdeeds with underage girls. “He knew that I never would have tolerated his horrible behavior. Not any of it,” he said.

    Exploiting a sexy brand

    Some accusers said Epstein touted his ties to Wexner and claimed that he could help get them jobs modeling for the Victoria’s Secret catalog.

    One woman, an aspiring actor and model, told the FBI that Epstein said he was best friends with the longtime Victoria’s Secret owner and that she’d have to learn to be comfortable in her underwear and not be a prude, according to recently released grand jury testimony. Another woman said she reported Epstein to police in 1997 after he groped her during what she thought was a modeling interview for the Victoria’s Secret catalog. After Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Wexner’s lawyers told investigators that the businessman had heard a rumor that Epstein might be holding himself out as connected to Victoria’s Secret, prosecutors wrote in a recently disclosed memorandum summarizing the probe. When Wexner asked Epstein about it, Epstein denied doing so, the lawyers said, according to the memo.

    Wexner did not address the specific issue in his statement Wednesday, but repeatedly lamented being deceived by Epstein — “an abuser, a crook, and a liar.” L Brands sold off Victoria’s Secret in 2020, in one of Wexner’s final acts as chair.

    A relationship unravels

    Wexner did not publicly reveal until after Epstein’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019 that he had severed their relationship. In a Wexner Foundation letter that August, he said that happened in 2007. But the Justice Department’s newly released records show the two were in touch after that.

    Wexner e-mailed Epstein on June 26, 2008, after a plea deal was announced that would require him to serve 18 months in a Florida jail on a state charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor in order to avoid federal prosecution. He wound up serving 13 months.

    “Abigail told me the result … all I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule … always be careful,” Wexner wrote. Epstein replied: “no excuse.”

    Davies said the 2007 date Wexner cited in 2019 applied to firing Epstein as financial adviser, revoking his power of attorney and removing his name from Wexner’s bank accounts.

    Wexner also said in the 2019 letter that Epstein had misappropriated “vast sums” of his and his family’s fortune while overseeing his finances. An investigative memo from the latest document release says that Wexner’s attorneys told investigators in 2008 that Epstein had repaid him $100 million. Wexner said in Wednesday’s statement that Epstein returned “a substantial amount” of the undisclosed total.

    Garcia said that congressional investigators have identified more than $1 billion that was “either transferred, provided in stocks or given directly” by Wexner to Epstein — though Wexner “appears to be unaware” of much of it.

    Continuing fallout for Wexner

    On Wednesday, Wexner testified that he had never seen Epstein with any young girls and acknowledged the “unfathomable” pain he inflicted, even as discoveries in the Epstein files have placed new pressure on him.

    One survivor, Maria Farmer, said a redacted FBI report contained in the document release vindicated her longstanding claim that she filed one of the earliest complaints against Epstein while she was under his employ in 1996 working on an art project at the Wexners’ estate.

    Meanwhile, survivors of a sweeping sexual abuse scandal at the Ohio State University are citing Wexner’s association with Epstein to try to get his name removed from a campus football complex and university nurses also want his name scrubbed from the Wexner Medical Center.

    ___

    AP journalists Michael Sisak in New York and Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos in New Albany contributed to this report.

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    The Associated Press, Julie Carr Smyth

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  • Mark Zuckerberg is joining Jeff Bezos in Miami’s billionaire bunker: Take a look inside his portfolio | Fortune

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    Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly adding to his growing list of luxury homes with a waterfront property in the most in-demand section of one of most exclusive neighborhoods in America.

    The Meta CEO and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, are reportedly purchasing a recently completed luxury mansion on Indian Creek Island, a 300-acre, man-made island near Miami with a mere 41 lots and approximately 84 residents, The Wall Street Journal reported. Home prices on the island start at about $60 million, and the market price for a property like Zuckerberg’s ranges from $150 million to $200 million, Mick Duchon, a Miami Beach-based real estate agent with the Corcoran Group who specializes in high-end waterfront properties, told Fortune.

    Even an undeveloped property can fetch big bucks on the island—one vacant lot of roughly the same size as Zuckerberg’s sold for a reported $105 million in 2025.

    The property Zuckerberg reportedly purchased at 2 Indian Creek Island Road puts him in the most coveted area of the already exclusive island, Duchon said. On the western side of the island, where Zuckerberg’s property is reportedly located, lots are about 80,000 square feet, compared to about 50,000 square feet on the east side, according to Duchon. On this side, where Amazon founder and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos also owns two lots, residents have better access to the open water of Biscayne Bay and a more expansive view with great sunsets, he added.  

    “That side of the island is perceived to be the most appealing,” Duchon said.

    Bezos has been buying up properties on Indian Creek Island since he announced in 2023 he was leaving Seattle, Wash. for Florida. The Amazon founder first purchased a $68 million home that would end up being just a few doors down from Zuckerberg in 2023. Near the end of that year, he paid another $79 million for a neighboring property with the intention of combining the lots into a single compound—a trend Buchon said is increasingly common among wealthy buyers because of the scarcity of truly expansive waterfront properties in the area. Meanwhile, Bezos is living in a third Mediterranean-style property also on Indian Creek Island, on the east side, which he snapped up for $87 million in 2024. Last year, Bezos sold one of his Seattle homes overlooking Lake Washington for a record $63 million, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

    Indian Creek Island operates as an independent municipality with its own government and private police who patrol by air, water, and sky. Access to the island is controlled by a single gated bridge, making safety and privacy a defining feature. Most of the interior of the island comprises an 18-hole golf course and the Indian Creek Country Club, with a limited number of members due, in part, to a difficult acceptance process and a $500,000 initiation cost.

    It’s unclear whether Zuckerberg’s deal has closed yet. Miami-Dade county property records note the owner as a land trust. One of Zuckerberg’s future neighbors, Irma Braman, the wife of billionaire car dealer Norman Braman, told WSJ Zuckerberg said he planned to move into the property by April. 

    Meta did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

    Zuckerberg is the latest billionaire to pick up a Florida property, especially as a proposed ballot initiative gains steam in California that would impose a one-time 5% “billionaires tax” for any individual worth at least $1 billion dollars retroactive to Jan. 1, 2026. (To be sure, Zuckerberg still very much calls California home, having just invested $50 million through Meta for a Sacramento downtown revitalization and AI-focused project.) Google cofounder Larry Page also recently snagged a $173 million compound in Miami consisting of two waterfront lots in the city’s Coconut Grove area.

    Indian Creek Island, in particular, is home to a number of high profile names, who, besides Bezos, include the financier Carl Icahn and former NFL quarterback Tom Brady. 

    Zuckerberg’s reported newest property is just the latest addition to the tech CEO’s growing portfolio of luxury homes across the U.S.

    Palo Alto compound

    Zuckerberg’s home base remains Palo Alto, Calif., where, according to The New York Times, he owns 11 properties in the Crescent Park neighborhood. Over more than a decade, Zuckerberg has poured $110 million into buying adjacent properties, in some cases drawing complaints from his neighbors. 

    Vegetation covers the front of Facebook Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s house in Palo Alto, California, U.S. on Saturday, July 14, 2012

    Noah Berger—Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Hawaiian estate

    On the island of Kauai, about 100 miles northwest of Honolulu, Zuckerberg also owns a $300 million property commonly known as Koʻolau Ranch, spanning roughly 1,400 acres. He quietly added about 1,000 additional acres to the compound, last year, Architectural Digest reported, bringing his total Kauai holdings to more than 2,300 acres. 

    The ranch is one of Zuckerberg’s most secretive properties. Almost anyone who passes the compound security, including builders and other workers must sign non-disclosure agreements, Wired reported. The ranch reportedly includes a 5,000 square-foot underground shelter with its own energy source.

    The island of Kauai, where Zuckerberg is reportedly creating a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter, lies about 100 miles northwest of Honolulu.

    DeAgostini—Getty Images

    Lake Tahoe retreat

    Zuckerberg created his own mountain compound in the Lake Tahoe area through the purchase of two adjacent estates in Tahoe City on the lake’s West Shore. Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada mountains between Nevada and California, has emerged as a popular destination for billionaires seeking a retreat, with both Google cofounder Sergey Brin as well as 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer owning homes there.

    Zuckerberg bought the properties—known as Carousel Estate and Brushwood Estate—for a total of $59 million, or $22 million and $37 million, respectively, according to multiple reports. The Brushwood Estate in particular, dates back to the early 1900s and has only ever had two other owners, according to SFGate. The property has six bedrooms, five full baths, and a 2,293-square-foot guesthouse.

    Zuckerberg created his own mountain compound in the Lake Tahoe area through the purchase of two adjacent estates in Tahoe City on the lake’s West Shore.

    Christian Petersen—Getty Images

    Washington, D.C. mansion

    As Meta and Zuckerberg have engaged more with policymakers in Washington, D.C. during the Trump administration, the tech CEO reportedly picked up a $23 million mansion in Washington D.C.’s exclusive Woodland Normanstone neighborhood, Politico reported. The 15,000-square-foot mansion is made of brick and limestone walls divided into three sections divided by glass enclosed “walkways.”

    Mark Zuckerberg’s Washington D.C. home is located in the Woodland-Normanstone neighborhood.

    Andrade-Rhoades—The Washington Post via Getty Images

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    Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

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  • As billionaires chase immortality, this startup cofounded by a Harvard genetics professor gets FDA approval for the first partial de-aging human trial | Fortune

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    A startup cofounded by a renowned Harvard geneticist has taken a step toward cracking the human body’s biological breakdown by securing FDA approval to test its cutting-edge gene therapy on humans.

    Life Biosciences, a biotech company cofounded by Harvard genetics professor David Sinclair, said Wednesday it had secured approval for a Phase 1 clinical trial aiming, in part, to restore vision in people with eye conditions such as glaucoma and non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) through “partial epigenetic reprogramming.” During the trial, researchers will attempt to turn back the biological clock on damaged cells in a person’s eye by directly injecting it. This allows the therapy to reach damaged retinal ganglion cells and deliver “rejuvenation instructions” directly to the target cells to help restore their function and potentially reverse vision loss.

    The company will enroll its first patients over the next couple of months, with results potentially coming by the end of the year or early next year, CEO Jerry McLaughlin told Fortune.

    McLaughlin, a pharmaceutical industry veteran who previously worked at Merck and at venture-backed biotechs such as Neos Therapeutics and AgeneBio said the approval was groundbreaking: “It’s a transformational day, I think, for science overall, for Life Biosciences, for the field of partial epigenetic reprogramming,” he said.

    The FDA approval, which McLaughlin said researchers in his industry have been waiting on for years, puts the lean Life Biosciences team (fewer than 20 people) ahead of the pack, as the longevity boom is increasingly being underwritten by billionaire money. 

    Altos Labs, one of the highest-profile bets on cell rejuvenation, launched with $3 billion in funding in 2022 and reportedly counts Amazon founder and the world’s fourth-wealthiest person Jeff Bezos as an early backer. Meanwhile, NewLimit, the longevity startup cofounded by billionaire Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong last year raised $130 million in Series B financing, to pursue epigenetic reprogramming. Even Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and the richest man in the world, has recently entered the longevity chat, saying at Davos aging is a “very solvable problem.” 

    Tackling vision loss first

    Rather than focus on full-body de-aging, Life Biosciences’ is taking a “staged approach” to de-aging, first tackling optic neuropathies, conditions in which damage to the optic nerve erodes vision. The trial aims to restore some vision in both patients with glaucoma and NAION—both of which can cause blindness. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it’s especially prevalent in adults between the ages of 64 and 84. NAION, meanwhile, is the “most common acute, optic neuropathy” in people over 50. McLaughlin said the company chose to focus on these diseases partly because of their outsized impact on patients.

    “The bad news is there’s absolutely nothing to treat [NAION], and the even worse news is that there’s about a 20-to-30% chance in the next two to three years it’s going to happen in the second eye,” he said.

    McLaughlin said Life Biosciences is already applying its epigenetic reprogramming to help treat other conditions. The company previously saw success in treating liver fibrosis, or MASH, which he said showed the company’s approach “transcends organs.” 

    While the company is first focused on helping patients with vision loss, McLaughlin isn’t ignorant about the potentially giant opportunity opening up thanks to a rapidly aging global population.

    “Our population replacement is not there in the U.S. We’re well below population replacement,” said McLaughlin. “It’s worse in other parts of the world, and with a rapidly aging population, extending healthy human lifespan is critical, from an economic standpoint, and for society overall.”

    The world’s cumulative fertility rate has been dropping for years, but the U.S. fertility rate, in particular, hit a record low in 2024, at 1.6 children per woman, below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. The country’s fertility rate is on par with other advanced economies, such as Iceland and the United Kingdom, according to data from the World Bank. Others come in even lower, like Japan, which recorded a fertility rate of 1.15 births per woman in 2024, according to a local government agency.

    The science behind Life Biosciences

    Life Biosciences cofounder and Harvard geneticist Sinclair is the key behind the company’s FDA breakthrough. Previously Sinclair, who earned a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of New South Wales, led pioneering research on partial epigenetic reprogramming, partially de-aging cells by modifying their epigenome, biochemical markers that tell genes when to turn on or off without altering the underlying DNA sequence.  

    Sinclair’s research showed that, by using three of four proteins that Nobel-prize winning Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka previously found could fully reset the age of a stem cell to pluripotency—or a blank state—researchers could rejuvenate cells without resetting them so fully that they “forget” their original function. Partially resetting the cells had more potential for therapeutic uses because these cells “maintain” their identity, as they partially de-age, unlike the fully reset cells that “forget” their function and can turn into tumors.

    Sinclair laid the foundation for his work using mice in preclinical trials, Life Biosciences then licensed the technology from Harvard and Sinclair’s lab to test on non-human primates to better match the human eye’s anatomy.

    In those studies, McLaughlin said, Life Biosciences induced a NAION-like injury and then used the treatment to reverse the vision loss and restore it to that of a healthy primate.

    Despite the increasing competition in the space, McLaughlin isn’t scared of competitors, and he said the large amount of money and activity in the longevity space is warranted. Following the FDA approval, more companies may even follow Life Biosciences’ footsteps and focus more on epigenetic reprogramming, he said, which could overall be positive for the field.

    “We believe this has some of the highest prospects, best prospects, in aging science—partial epigenetic reprogramming,” he said. “As we continue to generate evidence, evidence is only going to bring more people to the field.”

    This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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    Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

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  • Meet the self-made billionaire who bought a nearly bankrupt company off Warren Buffett for $1,000 and turned it into a $98 billion giant | Fortune

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    A small investment made at the right moment has the power to launch ordinary people to millionaire status. All it took was $1,000 and an out-there idea for Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, to set his business on a path to becoming a $98 billion behemoth.

    “I had this idea that you should be able to trade electric power, buy and sell electric power, on an exchange,” Sprecher recalled recently at the Rotary Club Of Atlanta. But there was a huge caveat: He “had no idea how to do that. I’d never worked on Wall Street, I never traded.” 

    At the time, Sprecher had heard that Continental Power Exchange—owned by Warren Buffett’s electric utility company, MidAmerican Energy—was about to go bankrupt. Despite Buffett’s business pumping $35 million into it, the company was still struggling. And so Sprecher saw this as an opportune moment to swoop in and pursue his entrepreneurial vision. 

    “I bought the company for a dollar a share, and there were a thousand shares. So I bought it for $1,000, and I used that as the basis to build Intercontinental Exchange.”

    Thanks to his quick thinking and business savvy, Sprecher now boasts a net worth of $1.3 billion. But the journey to the top was not very glamorous. 

    Living in a 500-ft studio and driving a used car while scaling the business 

    That measly $1,000 investment made back in 1997 served as the launchpad for Intercontinental Exchange, founded just three years later. A small team of nine employees set off to build the technology in 2000; setting up shop in Atlanta, Georgia, Sprecher and his staffers went all-in on building the business up from its former demise. 

    It was all hands on deck, and even as the founder and CEO, Sprecher was doing the menial labor to keep everything in order. With money being tight, the entrepreneur lived in a small apartment and drove a used car to the office to keep Intercontinental Energy afloat.

    “I bought a 500-foot, one room studio apartment in Midtown…I bought a used car that I kept and I’d go into the office from time to time,” Sprecher explained, adding that he “took the trash out, shut the lights out, answered the phone, bought the staplers and the paper for the photocopier. That was the way the company started.”

    Nearly 26 years later, the company boasts a market cap of $98 billion and a team of more than 12,000 employees—and has proudly owned the NYSE for over a decade. 

    Entrepreneurs who made a key investment at the right moment

    Some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs made their billions by spotting the perfect window to invest small and earn big. 

    Take Kenn Ricci as an example: the serial American aviation businessman and chairman of private jet company Flexjet is a billionaire thanks to his intuition to buy a struggling business four decades ago. After being put on leave from his first pilot job out of the Air Force, he turned a sticky situation into a 10-figure fortune.

    “I worked for [airline] Northwest Orient for a brief period of time. I get furloughed. Unemployed, back living with my parents,” Ricci told the Wall Street Journal in a 2025 interview, reminiscing on how he made his first $1 million.

    But instead of throwing in the towel, he spotted a golden opportunity. Ricci took a contract pilot job at Professional Flight Crews, and one of the companies he flew for was private aviation company Corporate Wings. The budding businessman was intrigued when its owners put the business up for sale at $27,500 in 1981—and jumped on the opportunity to buy it. By the early 1990s, the business was pulling in $3 million a year.

    But people don’t need to buy and scale a company to make a worthwhile investment; millennial investing wiz Martin Mignot became a self-made millionaire thanks to his ability to spot unicorn companies before they make it big. One of his biggest wins was an early investment in Deliveroo—back when the business was just a small, London-based operation. 

    “They had eight employees. They were in three London boroughs. Overall, they had a few 1000 users to date, so it was very, very early,” Mignot told Fortune last year. “They didn’t have an app. Their first website was pretty terrible and ugly, if I’m frank, but the delivery experience was incredible.”

    Lo and behold, Deliveroo grew to become a $3.5 billion company with millions of global customers. And as a partner at Index Ventures, Mignot is part of a team reaping billion-dollar rewards from forward-thinking investments in tech businesses including Figma, Scale AI, and Wiz. Aside from his day job, Mignot has also strategically put money towards iconic European start-ups including Revolut, Trainline and Personio. Before he was even 30, he solidified himself as a notable investor—and advised others that “It’s about owning equity, that is the key.”

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    Emma Burleigh

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  • New billionaire Beyoncé’s advice for success starts with saying ‘no’ more: ‘If I’m not going to sleep dreaming about it, it’s not for me’ | Fortune

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    Beyoncé’s new status as a billionaire is the ultimate endorsement of an idea she came to later in her career: stop overworking and start working smarter. Her evolution from 24/7 grind to boundary-setting strategist tracks directly to what workers and executives are discovering about burnout and sustainable success in today’s economy.​

    From grind to billionaire

    In late 2025, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter joined Forbes‘ billionaire ranks, becoming one of only a handful of musicians—alongside Jay-Z, Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen, and Taylor Swift—to cross the 10-figure threshold. Her wealth is built on stacked revenue streams: blockbuster tours like Renaissance and Cowboy Carter, high-margin merchandise, an owned catalog valued in the hundreds of millions, and Parkwood Entertainment, which lets her keep control of the products she creates.​

    That portfolio is the compound interest on two decades of disciplined reinvention—from Destiny’s Child to solo superstardom to entrepreneur—each chapter designed less around being everywhere and more around owning what matters most.​

    Her pivot: working smarter, not harder

    Beyoncé has been candid that the early years of her career were defined by saying yes to almost everything: nonstop tours, red carpets, awards shows, and press that eventually led to insomnia, exhaustion, and deteriorating mental health. She has since told GQ in an interview that she draws a hard line: if a project doesn’t obsess her when she wakes up and follow her into her dreams at night, she passes—even if it is lucrative.​

    That philosophy extends to her calendar. She structures touring around her children’s school breaks and disappears from public events between major projects so she can recover, create, and be present at home. The result is fewer appearances, but each is bigger, more meticulously produced, and more profitable—culminating in tours grossing hundreds of millions and films that extend the earning life of each era.​

    What leaders can learn about burnout

    Beyoncé’s shift mirrors a broader reckoning. In 2024, roughly 82% of knowledge workers surveyed across North America, Asia, and Europe reported at least some level of burnout, even as 88% also described themselves as highly engaged. That “burned out but locked in” paradox—employees simultaneously exhausted and deeply invested—creates a dangerous incentive to push hardest on the people already at their limit.​

    For HR leaders, the warning is clear: relying on a small cadre of “work horses” risks a toxic cycle where top performers quietly hit a wall and leave as soon as the job market improves. Beyoncé’s own playbook offers a lesson for business leaders: define the culture you actually want, clarify strategy, and invest in what you’re already good at instead of layering on more work for the same people.​

    The year of “no”

    If the early Beyoncé era was about never saying no, today’s workforce is moving the other way. Roughly 65% of employees now feel empowered to decline additional responsibilities, with workers 25 and under the most likely to say no to extra tasks. That resistance is not laziness; survey respondents describe it as a survival strategy against chronic burnout, even as many still feel guilt when they set boundaries.​

    The most effective employers, research suggests, are those that normalize these boundaries by redesigning roles and workloads rather than glorifying the martyr who always says yes. Beyoncé’s refusal to trade her time for every opportunity—even when demand is virtually unlimited—is a high-profile version of the same move.​

    A billionaire blueprint for sustainable ambition

    Taken together, Beyoncé’s trajectory and recent workplace data point to a new blueprint for high achievement:

    ​For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

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    Ashley Lutz

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  • California Might Tax Billionaires. Cue the Inevitable Tech Billionaire Tantrum

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    Taking money away from billionaires is funny, and threatening to do it can be a nice political sugar rush for anyone with even a tiny amount of class consciousness (even though it would not get close to creating “socialism” in America according to socialists like Doug Henwood). The state of California is now very much threatening to do it, and the predictable result is happening according to the New York Times: tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and ex-Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page are having their obligatory tantrum and threatening to leave.

    The political instrument involved here is not a technocratic and nuanced change to the tax code that happens to tax billionaires, but instead a one-off, 5% billionaire tax. This comes in the form of a proposed ballot measure backed by organized labor—specifically the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West.

    Anyone who lives in California as of January 1, 2026 would be subject to the proposed tax, and the math works like this: If you have $20 billion in assets, you owe $1 billion, and have five years to pay up. Estimates from the union say the state would pull in about $100 billion, basically by legally mugging the 200 most obnoxious people in the state.

    If you’ve followed the similar drama in New York City during the rise of Zohran Mamdani, you already know this next part by heart. According to the Times, Peter Thiel is now weighing an out-of-state office for Thiel Capital, and figuring out how to spend less time in California. Larry Page, listed by Forbes as the second richest person in the world as of this writing, has begun moving three LLCs to Florida, the Times says.

    David Lesperance, a tax advisor for billionaires, told the Times, “almost all of my clients are taking steps as quickly as possible both to sever California residence and to move assets outside of the state.” 

    Billionaire tech and healthcare investor Chamath Palihapitiya also played the hits, with the following X post quoted by the Times: “The inevitable outcome will be an exodus of the state’s most talented entrepreneurs who can and will choose to build their companies in less regressive states.” The post the Times is quoting here doesn’t seem to exist anymore, perhaps because of Palihapitiya’s bizarre, Opposite Day use of the term “regressive.”

    Palihapitiya’s X activity shows that he’s been on a tear with this topic for days, however:

    But do the American rich actually flee a state that has decided to tax them? Maybe, but it doesn’t seem like it so far. The state of Massachusetts passed something a little different: a more widespread income surtax for people making more than $1 million, and after two years, more tax-eligible millionaires are reportedly in the state, not less.

    So yes, Billionaires, we know that if this ends up on the ballot and actually gets voted into law, most of you are going to characterize Californians with less money than you as ungrateful and naive children, and some of you will even make good on your threat to leave. The question would be this: will a fun state with great weather that also happens to manufacture new billionaires all the time actually regret making you cough up some of your money in the long run? Who knows, but I kinda doubt it. 

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    Mike Pearl

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  • Billie Eilish Calls Elon Musk A ‘F**king Pathetic P***y Bitch Coward’! See Why! – Perez Hilton

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    Billie Eilish does not give a F**K!

    Just weeks after the Birds of a Feather songstress took to the stage of the WSJ Innovator Awards, she’s calling out the world’s richest people again — this time going right to the top and targeting Elon Musk in particular!

    In case you didn’t hear, late last month the 23-year-old was accepting her Music Innovator Award, where it was announced she was donating $11 million of her own money to charity. In her speech, she took a moment to slam the ULTRA rich, calling them to be more charitable with their wealth:

    “… Love you all, but there are a few people in here who have a lot more money than me. If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but give your money away, shorties.”

    Of course, names like Taylor Swift (because of other whispers of beef) arose. And Mark Zuckerberg because he was in the actual room! But now she’s naming names, and clearly Elon is at the front of her mind on this. In her Instagram Stories on Thursday, the Ocean Eyes singer reposted a post saying what Elon “could do with” his TRILLIONAIRE status. Yes, you read that right — the man is the first in history to reached trillionaire status with his latest Tesla deal… Wild.

    Related: Elon Getting DESTROYED On Twitter By Author Joyce Carol Oates!

    The post shared some things he could be donating towards and helping with his mega trillions instead of keeping the cash for profit, including ending world hunger, saving endangered animal species, and rebuilding Gaza amid the attacks from Israel.

    See for yourself (below):

    (c) Billie Eilish/Instagram
    billie eilish elon musk instagram stories
    (c) Billie Eilish/Instagram
    billie eilish elon musk instagram stories
    (c) Billie Eilish/Instagram
    billie eilish elon musk instagram stories
    (c) Billie Eilish/Instagram

    Billie’s final Stories post is what REALLY showed her thoughts on the Tesla founder, though. She wrote her own big finale:

    “etc…. f**king pathetic p***y bitch coward”

    billie eilish elon musk instagram stories
    (c) Billie Eilish/Instagram

    DAMN!!

    She’s not afraid to stand up for what she believes in, that’s for sure! Even if it means making an enemy of the richest man alive!

    Thoughts, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments (below).

    [Image via MEGA/WENN]

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    Perez Hilton

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  • Elon Musk is officially on the trillionaire path as Tesla shareholders approve an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package | Fortune

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    It’s official: Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.

    Tesla shareholders approved a new executive pay package Thursday afternoon that would give Musk nearly $1 trillion in stock over the next decade, a record-shattering deal for the world’s richest man.

    The total award depends on whether Musk can meet ambitious performance targets for the struggling electric-vehicle company, including growing Tesla’s market cap to $8.5 trillion—a more than 500% increase from today’s valuation. The goals also include delivery of 20 million Tesla vehicles and 1 million bots in addition to 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation.

    “While we believe Elon is the only person capable of leading Tesla at this critical inflection point, changing the world is neither an overnight process nor the work of a single person,” Tesla’s Board wrote in a letter to shareholders in August. “So, we also want your help in securing the team and strategy needed to achieve goals that others will perceive as impossible but that we know are possible for Tesla.”

    Musk’s net worth is estimated at about $473 billion. 

    Reining Musk back in

    If all goes to plan, Musk’s stake in Tesla will rise from about 13% to nearly 29%—a level of control he’s long sought.

    Having voting control in the “mid-20s” percent range would help secure a “strong influence,” but gives shareholders enough control to fire him if he goes “insane,” Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call last month.

    “It’s called compensation, but it’s not like I’m going to go spend the money,” Musk added. “It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army, not current control, but a strong influence? That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”

    Tesla’s stock fell as much as 43% between January and March as Musk devoted much of his time to leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Since stepping back, shares have recovered to being up 16% year-to-date.

    Many shareholders hope the new incentives will keep Musk focused on Tesla.

    Ron Baron, the founder and CEO of Baron Capital, which holds a 0.39% stake in Tesla, said in a post on X that he supported the plan because without Musk, Tesla wouldn’t exist.

    “Elon is the ultimate ‘key man’ of key man risk,” Baron wrote. “Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla.” 

    From Pope Leo to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Musk’s pay package had its haters

    Not every Tesla investor was on board with the extravagant deal.

    Glass Lewis and ISS, two proxy advisory services, urged Tesla shareholders to vote against the proposal, with the latter group citing “unmitigated concerns” with its magnitude and design. Musk then fired back during Tesla’s October earnings call, calling them “corporate terrorists.”

    Meanwhile, Norges Bank Investment Management, the group behind Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund which holds a 1.14% stake in Tesla, said it voted against the pay package.

    “While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk — consistent with our views on executive compensation,” the group said in a statement this week.

    Pope Leo XIV, though not a Tesla investor, also recently expressed his concern for the message sent by Musk becoming a trillionaire—and the growing divide between the rich and the poor.

    “CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving,” the pontiff told Catholic news site Crux in an interview released in September.

    “Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”

    A recent report from Oxfam found that the 10 richest Americans—which include Musk as well as Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Amazon cofounder Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—gained $69.8 billion over the past year. That’s 833,631 times more than what the typical American household takes home. 

    While Musk still trails John D. Rockefeller’s $630 billion inflation-adjusted fortune, hitting his new performance targets could make him the richest person in modern history.

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    Preston Fore

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  • Kendra Scott says she launched her billion-dollar business from her bedroom with just $500—when she was pregnant with her first son | Fortune

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    When Kendra Scott launched her jewelry business in 2002, she had no investors, no retail experience, and just $500 to her name. What she did have was a spare bedroom in her Austin, Texas home, a newborn baby, and the kind of determination that turns impossible odds into billion-dollar success stories.​

    “I built it out of my bedroom,” Scott said in a recent interview with The School of Hard Knocks, which has 5.6 million followers on TikTok. “Extra bedroom in my house, on a card table. 500 bucks, baby. That’s it.”

    Scott designed her first jewelry collection while pregnant with her first son, hand-wiring each piece with semi-precious stones. For years, she made jewelry as gifts for her friends, but in the retail space, she’d always felt like there was expensive, or low-quality, but nothing in between. So she set out to make high-quality jewelry at accessible price points.

    Just three months after giving birth, she put her first samples in a tea box, strapped her infant son into a baby carrier, and walked store to store through Austin, writing down orders from local boutiques.​

    “He was actually sitting on my lap and went to my first sales calls, going store to store with me. He was my little sales rep,” Scott said. “Babies do sell product, you know, babies and puppies. Bring them on your sales call. It works.”

    The early days tested her resolve. At the last boutique she visited on that first sales trip, Scott had to sell all her original samples to buy enough materials to fulfill the orders she had just secured. She sold her car, took out personal loans, and funneled every dollar back into her fledgling business. As a single mother, rent negotiations with her landlord became routine.​

    “Failure wasn’t an option. I had to succeed,” Scott told Entrepreneur in 2015.​

    Scott told The School of Hard Knocks she had “a scary relationship” with debt. She said she put up everything she owned up as collateral in order to secure loans. “I knew that if I didn’t make those loan payments or if I didn’t sell the product, I was gonna get that loan called. And that meant I was gonna be B-R-O-K-E,” she said. But that pressure forged discipline. “It made me be a very disciplined business owner. Even today, with a billion-dollar brand, every single dollar we spent, I look at it and make sure it’s gonna work for us.”

    Growth after crisis

    The 2008 financial crisis nearly brought everything to a halt. Scott’s business had grown beyond Austin, with showrooms in Dallas and New York and partnerships with major department stores. But when the recession hit, wholesalers disappeared overnight and her bank called in a line of credit that would have drained the company. After countless rejections from other banks, she found a lifeline at a local Texas bank, where a female president looked beyond the numbers and saw Scott’s potential.​

    “She gave me the loan. She kept my business alive,” Scott wrote in an article for Thrive Global in 2019.​

    That crisis forced a pivot that would define the brand’s future. In 2010, despite having sworn off retail after a failed hat business years earlier, Scott opened her first jewelry store in Austin. It was a hit: Customers could touch and try on pieces freely rather than viewing them behind glass, and they could customize jewelry in real time, choosing from more than 50 styles and 30 stone colors, with pieces assembled on-site within minutes.​

    “It was unlike any jewelry shopping experience that had ever existed. It was like a nightclub,” Scott told Foundr in 2022.​

    Lines formed around the block. Revenue exploded from $1.7 million in 2010 to $24 million in 2013. By 2016, when Boston-based private equity firm Berkshire Partners acquired a minority stake in the company, Kendra Scott was valued at more than $1 billion. Scott remained the majority shareholder and CEO—one of only 16 women in the United States at the time to hold the title of founder of a billion-dollar company.​

    Tom Nolan, CEO of Kendra Scott Design, told Fortune earlier this year the company operates about 150 retail stores with plans to open 25 more by year’s end. The company generates several hundred million dollars in annual revenue, grew 20% year-over-year in 2024, and employs more than 2,600 people—over 95% of whom are women, according to Scott. The company has also expanded its product lines beyond jewelry into fine jewelry, home décor, beauty products, and a new Western-inspired lifestyle brand called Yellow Rose.

    ​Advice for entrepreneurs

    When asked about retail’s future, Scott was emphatic. “Oh, honey, retail is so alive. And brick-and-mortar is not dead. Four walls are a place where you build community and build brand awareness. We need human touch. It can’t just be digital, and you’re able to do that in brick-and-mortar. Build brick-and-mortar for experience first. Connection over transaction. The transaction will follow.”

    The jewelry business margins, she noted, “are really good. They’re good margins.”

    But her most important advice had nothing to do with business strategy. “Leave your fingerprint. You’ve got one chance at this life. Your life is a grain of sand. Make it matter, whatever you do in your life. You have a reason that you are here. You have a reason to affect people in a positive way. Figure out what that is. And if you can do that through business like I’m doing, awesome, but leave your mark.”

    You can watch the entire interview with Kendra Scott and The School of Hard Knocks below:

    @theschoolofhardknocks She built a BILLION DOLLAR BRAND 🤯 I interviewed @Kendra Scott on how she turned just $500 into a Billion Dollar company! Since she started her business when she was pregnant, I asked her how it was possible! I also asked her about the margins in her business and whether or not she thinks the future of retail is dead. Lastly, I asked her the best advice she’d give to the younger generation. #wealth #entrepreneur #financialfreedom #motivation ♬ original sound – The School of Hard Knocks

    For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

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    Dave Smith

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  • Meet the billionaire couple who not only signed The Giving Pledge but actually delivered—donating nearly half their fortune while still alive | Fortune

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    The Giving Pledge was designed to hold the world’s richest people accountable for donating at least half their fortunes in their lifetimes or wills–but so far, only John and Laura Arnold have actually done it.

    From well-known Wall Street energy trader to philanthropist, John Arnold began his career trading natural gas at Enron and later ran a hedge fund, Centaurus Partners. By 2012, he had retired and fully pivoted to philanthropy at 38 years old. 

    The Arnolds have donated over $2 billion to date, and more than $204 million in 2024, according to Forbes. Currently, their net worth is around $2.9 billion, meaning their donations amount to about 42 percent of their wealth. 

    In addition, John Arnold has a Forbes philanthropy score of 5 out of 5. The score is based on those who have donated more than 20% of their wealth. 

    Since launching their foundation, “Arnold Ventures,” in 2008, their philanthropic efforts have expanded to 150 employees across offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Houston. 

    How the Arnolds donate 

    John and Laura Arnolds’ approach to giving is data-driven, aiming to deliver real, measurable results from what they offer, and has been fundamentally focused on research. Their efforts include a variety of public policy issues, including health care, higher education, criminal justice, infrastructure, and more. 

    Emphasizing research and measurable outcomes, their philanthropy also reflects a broader belief that wealth should be used in real time—not preserved for future generations. In fact, John Arnold has previously noted that The Arnolds will not have a legacy foundation after their deaths.

    Most recently, “Arnold Ventures” joined the American Institute for Boys and Men to issue a call for new research on the long-term consequences of online sports betting as states continue to legalize the practice. 

    The Giving Pledge

    Launched in 2010 by Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, the Giving Pledge invites the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to publicly commit to giving away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetimes or in their wills. 

    Some of the signers include Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott (but not Jeff Bezos), Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, George Lucas, and Mark Zuckerberg.

    Despite hundreds of billionaires signing the Giving Pledge, they haven’t necessarily followed through. The pledge is a moral commitment rather than a legally binding contract—participants sign an open letter explaining their reasons for giving. They can choose which causes and charities to support.

    The Institute for Policy Studies’ 2025 report, The Giving Pledge at 15, highlights that Laura and John were the only participants technically in compliance with the pledge since signing in 2010. 

    “The Arnolds should be commended, they’ve boldly decided to give and to study how philanthropy can actually move money out the door instead of sequestering wealth. They’re among the most significant players in the Giving Pledge class when it comes to pushing real charity reform,” report co-author Bella DeVaan told Fortune in an interview.

    Among the 22 deceased U.S. Pledgers, only eight met their pledge before death—just one, Chuck Feeney, gave away his entire fortune while alive. 

    Furthermore, of the original 57 U.S. signers in 2010, 32 remain billionaires, with their net worth increasing by almost 300% since signing. Only 11 of the original group are no longer billionaires—but it’s mainly because their net worth dropped, not because they gave it away.

    “Wealth is accumulating incredibly quickly for the wealthiest people in America,” DeVaan added. The Giving Pledge is one of the few public commitments they make in lieu of stronger federal regulation or taxation—so its fulfillment is really important.” 

    John Arnold recently defended The Giving Pledge on X following a Fortune report about Peter Thiel saying he encouraged Elon Musk to abandon it due to concerns that his wealth would be donated to “left-wing nonprofits.”

    “The multitude of billion-dollar fortunes, whether in the 1s, 10s, or 100s, have the potential to be put to enormous benefit,” Arnold wrote. “I won’t offer unsolicited advice as to what I think someone should do with their money. I’d only suggest that figuring out what to do with it in a productive fashion can be as important as trying to make more.” 

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    Jessica Coacci

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  • Marc Benioff’s ideas for fixing San Francisco keep getting worse

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    Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free.

    This week’s newsletter includes stories on:

    • The anticlimactic end of the wild legal fight over Charlottesville, Virginia’s new zoning code.
    • Federal housing reform miraculously passed out of the Senate on a bipartisan basis during the shutdown.
    • Democrats’ bad idea of letting furloughed government workers skip paying rent during the shutdown.

    But first! Our lead item is on how Marc Benioff continues to pingpong between equally bad ideas on how to clean up San Francisco’s streets.

    Marc Benioff Continues To Be Wrong About Homelessness

    This past week, Benioff, the billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce, courted endless controversy when he told The New York Times that President Donald Trump should send in the National Guard to assist San Francisco’s understaffed police department in cleaning up the streets.

    The remarks did not go over well in liberal San Francisco, where Benioff is from and his company is headquartered.

    In the wake of the Times interview, liberal donor Ron Conway resigned from the Salesforce Foundation’s board in protest, comedians have canceled their scheduled performances at the company’s upcoming conference, and Benioff walked back his comments in a post on X.

    (San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has since put out a video saying he is ready and willing to work with federal law enforcement on enforcing drug laws, but is opposed to National Guard deployments.)

    In addition to being controversial, Benioff’s support for sending in the troops is unusual and more than a little ironic, given his last major foray into San Francisco city politics.

    In 2018, Benioff was the primary funder and a fierce public advocate for Proposition C—the ultimately successful ballot initiative that hiked the city’s gross receipts tax by $300 million a year on large tech companies to pay for homeless housing and services.

    The proposed tax attracted a lot of opposition from the business community and the city’s political establishment, including then-Mayor London Breed and state Sen. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco).

    All warned that such a steep tax increase (the largest in San Francisco history) on such a narrow base of businesses would drive companies out of town. Moreover, there was a lot of concern that dumping a lot of money into San Francisco’s notoriously opaque homelessness bureaucracy without a clear spending plan was a recipe for waste.

    Benioff shrugged off these objections, saying that the new revenue was necessary to deal with the crises of “cleanliness” and “inequality” in the city. In a very public social media spat with Jack Dorsey, he accused billionaire opponents of Prop C of benefiting from city tax breaks while doing nothing to support the homeless.

    Seven years on from Prop C’s passage, it seems like the measure’s critics had a point that even Benioff is tacitly conceding.

    A number of large companies did leave town in response to the tax hike, including Stripe and Block, and the homeless population continued to increase.

    More notably, the city’s last biennial homeless census in 2024 counted 8,323 homeless people in San Francisco—a 7 percent increase from the 2022 count.

    Despite a cumulative $821 million in Prop C–funded spending—including half a billion on permanent supportive housing and homeless prevention—the number of people sleeping on the streets or in shelters has only grown.

    The tax has spent a cumulative $164 million on mental health services, and yet surveys show that mental illness rates among the homeless population have “skyrocketed.”

    The situation is bad enough that Benioff, who championed the left-coded Prop C as a way of getting San Francisco’s homelessness and public order crises under control, is now demanding a very right-coded federal military intervention to address the same problem.

    One could posit a number of reasons why Prop C–funded programs haven’t arrested the rise of San Francisco’s homeless population.

    Inefficient spending is a plausible one. Past controversies include a Prop C–funded program running a “safe camping” site for the cost of $61,000 per tent, per year.

    One could argue that the initiative put too much priority on providing permanent supportive housing over emergency shelter. Lurie’s latest budget redirected some Prop C funds from housing to shelter programs.

    I think the bigger reason is that any approach to homelessness is going to fail so long as San Francisco’s housing costs remain as high as they are.

    It’s no coincidence that San Francisco has some of the nation’s highest housing costs, lowest rates of new housing construction, and highest rates of homelessness. City regulations have stifled new housing construction for decades, which has spiked the price of housing and resulted in more and more people ending up on the streets.

    Unless something changes about that basic set of facts, enough people will continue to be homeless, and become homeless, in San Francisco to overwhelm whatever services the city provides—be that shelter beds, rental assistance, permanent supportive housing, mental health services, or whatever else.

    More efficient spending or even higher taxes might increase the city’s capacity to handle the homeless population for a time, but it won’t end the basic dynamic of high housing costs begetting more and more people sleeping on the streets.

    The upshot for the present moment is that the National Guard can’t fix this basic dynamic either. Unless Trump wants to direct them to build new apartment buildings, there’s not a lot they’ll be able to do to address San Francisco’s homelessness crisis.

    Benioff, fresh from supporting one failed big intervention, is now demanding another that will also certainly fail.

    The Wild Legal Fight Over Charlottesville’s Zoning Reforms Comes to an Anticlimactic End

    The nearly two-year whirlwind, occasionally comical legal fight over Charlottesville, Virginia’s zoning reforms—during which time the city has gone from saying it has no zoning code to stopping consideration of new construction—appears to be at an end.

    On Monday, the Charlottesville City Council voted to accept a settlement agreement that would end a lawsuit challenging the legality of zoning amendments it adopted in December 2023, which broadly allowed smaller multifamily projects (“middle housing”) in single-family areas and larger apartments in new areas of town.

    Under the settlement agreement, Charlottesville will send a traffic analysis of the new zoning code to state transportation officials in exchange for plaintiff property owners agreeing to drop their legal challenge against the new code.

    It’s a rather anticlimactic result, considering some of the twists and turns of the lawsuit.

    Back in January 2024, a collection of Charlottesville property owners sued the city, alleging that the zoning reforms passed the previous month had failed to follow various state laws about the need to consider various environmental and infrastructure impacts when passing zoning.

    The case wound through the courts for the next year and a half until last summer. That’s when an attorney representing the city missed a major filing deadline. That led the judge hearing the case to issue a default judgment invalidating the new zoning code.

    In a brief, highly ironic twist, city officials said that the default judgment left the city with no zoning code whatsoever.

    “The old [zoning] ordinance had to be repealed in order for the new one to be adopted. The void of the new one leaves us without one temporarily,” said City Manager Sam Sanders to the local press, adding that without the zoning code, the city couldn’t enforce use restrictions.

    The idea of a lawsuit challenging a zoning code that allows a little more housing leading to complete zoning abolition was a fun development. But it wasn’t to last.

    In a follow-up statement to Reason, the city said that Sanders’ comments about the city having no zoning code were “mistakenly conveyed” and that the city’s new zoning code was still in effect until the judge overseeing the case issued a written order.

    Rather than a development free-for-all, the city said that it would actually be pausing consideration of “zoning-related applications,” including “new construction, additions, site modifications, and changes in use” until more legal clarity about the status of the zoning code was reached.

    Eventually, this past September, the city was able to overturn the default judgment against its new zoning code.

    The case was set to go to trial in September 2026. A city staff report says that while they’re confident the city would prevail at trial, the settlement is a cheaper means of ending the lawsuit.

    The city says that the plaintiffs have agreed to accept the settlement as well. Provided that happens, after all the legal back-and-forth, Charlottesville’s new zoning code allowing a little more housing will be in effect, and plaintiffs will get a little more information about what the traffic impacts of that new housing will be.

    ROAD to Housing Act Passes Senate; Criticism Mounts

    The ROAD to Housing Act, the big, bipartisan amalgam of housing policy tweaks and changes, has miraculously managed to pass through the U.S. Senate during the ongoing government shutdown.

    The bill was folded into this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is now being taken up by the House of Representatives.

    As Rent Free has previously covered, the bill included a long list of relatively modest changes to federal grant and loan programs, mostly aimed at increasing housing production and diversifying the types of housing being produced.

    It managed to pass unanimously out of the Senate Banking Committee, where it was first introduced. Its attachment to the NDAA eased its passage through the full Senate.

    Santi Ruiz’s Statecraft podcast from last week contains good background on the political machinations that have seen the bill move as fast as it has on a bipartisan basis.

    There have been a number of conservative criticisms of the bill. The American Enterprise Institute’s Tobias Peter has argued the bill needlessly expands the federal government’s role in housing policy.

    More recently, Lyman Stone, writing at the Institute for Family Studies, argues the bill is “anti-family” by focusing its supply-side interventions on boosting the supply of smaller multifamily housing.

    That point got a lot of pushback on X from other housing wonks who argue that more one-bedroom apartments lower demand for family-sized units, and thus lower costs for everyone.

    Senate Democrats Propose Eviction Moratorium for Federal Workers During Shutdown

    Last week, I covered a bill authored by Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii) and supported by 17 of his fellow Democrats that would relieve federal workers and contractors from a long list of civil obligations during the shutdown, including the need to make rent and mortgage payments.

    As I argue in my post, the eviction protections in the bill are mostly performative and unnecessary. Few landlords would see any upside to evicting an otherwise good tenant because they fall behind on their bills during a shutdown.

    Nevertheless, I do find Schatz’s bill concerning, given the mentality it represents; whenever there’s some sort of economic shock, normal property rights governing the landlord-tenant relationship must be suspended.

    That attitude led to the pandemic’s disastrous eviction moratoriums. One would hate to see that thinking become policy come the next national calamity.

    Quick Links

    • A U.S. district court judge has blocked the Trump administration’s effort to lay off thousands of federal workers during the government shutdown, including several hundred employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The administration has vowed to comply with the order.
    • The New York Times covers Portland’s efforts to fight Immigration and Customs Enforcement by dinging the privately owned facility it’s operating out of in the city with a bunch of zoning violations.
    • Pittsburgh City Council members spar over whether to adopt a citywide “inclusionary zoning” ordinance. Read Reason‘s past coverage here.
    • New York’s mayoral candidates sparred over housing policy during their debate last week.

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    Christian Britschgi

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  • Oracle founder Larry Ellison has pledged to give away 95% of his $393B fortune—but sudden leadership changes fuel a mystery | Fortune

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    Oracle founder and potential TikTok overlord Larry Ellison’s current net worth is estimated at $393 billion, making him the second-richest person in the world in 2025, only behind Elon Musk. His fortune has grown rapidly due to massive gains in Oracle’s stock, driven by the AI boom, and a significant stake in Tesla.

    Ellison pledged to donate 95% of his wealth as part of the Giving Pledge in 2010. Since then, he’s distanced himself from traditional nonprofits and says he’s opting to give away wealth on his own terms. He founded the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), a for-profit philanthropic organization at The University of Oxford.

    But Ellison’s EIT has recently been destabilized by leadership changes, according to a report in The New York Times. In 2024, he hired scientist John Bell to head the research. But in August, Ellison announced he had hired former University of Michigan President Santa Ono to “collaborate” with Bell. Just two weeks later, Bell announced his departure from the “very challenging project.”

    The Times reports there are tensions over “how best to commercialize Mr. Ellison’s scientific research, along with persistent questions about how much the institute could trust Mr. Ellison to deliver on his financial commitments.”

    Here’s what we know—and don’t—about Ellison’s plans to give away his fortune eventually.

    Net worth (2025)

    Philanthropy and plans for giving

    Amounts already given and future commitment

    Ellison’s net worth has reached record highs in 2025, and though he has pledged to give away almost all of it, his giving is uniquely structured—focusing on large self-driven projects such as the Ellison Institute, rather than broad public charity.

    For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

    Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.

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    Ashley Lutz

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  • Bill Gates Calls US Aid Cuts a ‘Paradox’ Amid Historic Global Health Progress

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    Bill Gates says recent breakthroughs could save millions—but only if governments maintain support. Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images

    Funding for global health is shrinking rapidly amid steep foreign aid cuts by the Trump administration. At the same time, however, scientific breakthroughs are making today’s health innovations more promising than ever. These two realities amount to “the paradox of this moment,” Bill Gates wrote in an op-ed for Time Magazine published yesterday (Sep. 18).

    At such a critical juncture, the Microsoft co-founder is doubling down on global health through the Gates Foundation—while urging governments not to abandon their commitments. “The choices they make now—whether to go forward with proposed steep cuts to health aid, or to give the world’s children the chance they deserve to live a healthy life—will determine what kind of future we leave the next generation,” wrote Gates.

    Gates has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s pullback from global health programs, including cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and HIV relief initiative PEPFAR. Earlier this year, he denounced the role of Elon Musk, then head of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), for contributing to “the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”

    The retreat comes at a time of unprecedented progress. In 2000, more than 10 million children died before the age of five, Gates noted in the op-ed. That number has since fallen by half, and the philanthropist believes it could be halved again within two decades—if funding is sustained or increased.

    The Gates Foundation is committing heavily to that future. In May, Gates announced the foundation, with an endowment of $77 billion, will wind down by 2045 after distributing $200 billion in grants. Much of that money will target preventable maternal and child deaths, as well as diseases like polio, malaria and guinea worm. Since its launch in 2000, the foundation has already given away more than $100 billion, much of it to health initiatives.

    But philanthropy alone can’t replace government support. “The fact remains: we won’t get there without rich countries giving a small fraction of their budgets,” said Gates.

    He has spent much of this year lobbying lawmakers and the Trump administration to protect aid programs. In recent testimony to Congress, he warned that a sharp reduction in U.S. funding could cause the deaths of an additional eight million children by 2040. He has also personally met with Trump, urging him to scale back the severity of cuts. “If you make a very modest cut, we’ll make sure that the money is well spent and there’s no additional deaths,” Gates told TIME in an interview, which was also published yesterday. “But if you have the kind of cuts that are, in fact, the reality today… there will be millions of additional deaths.”

    The urgency will soon be tested. In November, the Global Fund, a financing partnership founded in 2002 to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, will hold its next replenishment conference. The U.S. has contributed $27.6 billion to the fund to date, making it its largest donor. Gates said his foundation will announce its own contribution next week.

    The upcoming conference will show “just how high of a priority this is for countries,” Gates wrote. “I’ll be interested to see what governments bring to the table.”

    Bill Gates Calls US Aid Cuts a ‘Paradox’ Amid Historic Global Health Progress

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  • Ray Dalio calls for ‘redistribution policy’ when AI and humanoid robots start to benefit the top 1% to 10% more than everyone else | Fortune

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    Legendary investor Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has issued a stark warning regarding the future impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and humanoid robots, predicting a dramatic increase in wealth inequality that will necessitate a new “redistribution policy”. Dalio articulated his concerns, suggesting that these advanced technologies are poised to benefit the top 1% to 10% of the population significantly more than everyone else, potentially leading to profound societal challenges.

    Speaking on “The Diary Of A CEO” podcast, Dalio described a future where humanoid robots, smarter than humans, and advanced AI systems, powered by trillions of dollars in investment, could render many current professions obsolete. He questioned the need for lawyers, accountants, and medical professionals if highly intelligent robots with PhD-level knowledge become commonplace, stating, “we will not need a lot of those jobs.” This technological leap, while promising “great advances,” also carries the potential for “great conflicts.”

    He predicted “a limited number of winners and a bunch of losers,” with the likely result being much greater polarity. With the top 1% to 10% “benefiting a lot,” he foresees that being a dividing force. He described the current business climate on AI and robotics as a “crazy boom,” but the question that’s really on his mind is: why would you need even a highly skilled professional if there’s a “humanoid robot that is smarter than all of us and has a PhD and everything.” Perhaps surprisingly, the founder of the biggest hedge fund in history suggested that redistribution will be sorely needed.

    Five big forces

    “There certainly needs to be a redistribution policy,” Dalio told host Steven Bartlett, without directly mentioning universal basic income. He clarified that this will have to more than “just a redistribution of money policy because uselessness and money may not be a great combination.” In other words, if you redistribute money but don’t think about how to put people to work, that could have negative effects in a world of autonomous agents. The ultimate takeaway, Dalio said, is “that has to be figured out, and the question is whether we’re too fragmented to figure that out.”

    Dalio’s remarks echo those of computer science professor Roman Yampolskiy, who sees AI creating up to 80 hours of free time per week for most people. But AI is also showing clear signs of shrinking the jobs market for recent grads, with one study seeing a 13% drop in AI-exposed jobs since 2022. Major revisions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that AI has begun “automating away tech jobs,” an economist said in a statement to Fortune in early September.

    Dalio said he views this technological acceleration as the fifth of five “big forces” that create an approximate 80-year cycle throughout history. He explained that human inventiveness, particularly with new technologies, has consistently raised living standards over time. However, when people don’t believe the system works for them, he said, internal conflicts and “wars between the left and the right” can erupt. Both the U.S. and UK are currently experiencing these kinds of wealth and values gaps, he said, leading to internal conflict and a questioning of democratic systems.

    Drawing on his extensive study of history, which spans 500 years and covers the rise and fall of empires, Dalio sees a historical precedent for such transformative shifts. He likened the current era to previous evolutions, from the agricultural age, where people were treated “essentially like oxen,” to the industrial revolutions where machines replaced physical labor. He said he’s concerned about a similar thing with mental labor, as “our best thinking may be totally replaced.” Dalio highlighted that throughout history, “intelligence matters more than anything” as it attracts investment and drives power.

    Pessimistic outlook

    Despite the “crazy boom” in AI and robotics, Dalio’s outlook on the future of major powers like the UK and U.S. was not optimistic, citing high debt, internal conflict, and geopolitical factors, in addition to a lack of innovative culture and capital markets in some regions. While personally “excited” by the potential of these technologies, Dalio’s ultimate concern rests on “human nature”. He questions whether people can “rise above this” to prioritize the “collective good” and foster “win-win relationships,” or if greed and power hunger will prevail, exacerbating existing geopolitical tensions.

    Not all market watchers see a crazy boom as such a good thing. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Alman himself has said it resembles a “bubble” in some respects. Goldman Sachs has calculated that a bubble popping could wipe out up to 20% of the S&P 500’s valuation. And some long-time critics of the current AI landscape, such as Gary Marcus, disagree with Dalio entirely, arguing that the bubble is due to pop because the AI technology currently on the market is too error-prone to be relied upon, and therefore can’t be scaled away. Stanford computer science professor Jure Leskovec told Fortune that AI is a powerful but imperfect tool and it’s boosting “human expertise” in his classroom, including the hand-written and hand-graded exams that he’s using to really test his students’ knowledge.

    For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

    Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.

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  • Here’s How US Billionaires Got Rich, From Tech to Finance | Entrepreneur

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    Some of the richest people in the world — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg — made their fortunes in Silicon Valley. However, a new report in the Wall Street Journal suggests that most U.S. billionaires did not amass their wealth in tech. Instead, it’s the banking and finance fields that have produced most of the country’s super-rich.

    According to data shared with the WSJ from wealth intelligence company Altrata, there were 1,135 billionaires in the U.S. last year, up from 927 in 2020. Approximately 300 billionaires made their money in banking and finance, while an estimated 110 came from the tech sector. Meanwhile, 75 billionaires earned their money in real estate.

    Many, of course, got a head start by inheriting wealth. One-third of U.S. billionaires received some or all of their wealth from an inheritance, per Altrata.

    Related: This 30-Year-Old Billionaire Says Life ‘Hasn’t Really Changed That Much’ After Making Billions. Here’s Where She Spends Money.

    The data shows that U.S. billionaires are worth $5.7 trillion in total. Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg alone comprise about $1 trillion, or nearly one-sixth, of that wealth.

    Altrata also found that billionaires tend to live in one state above all others: California. The highest percentage of them, about 255 people, live in the Golden State. However, they have primary businesses in nearly every U.S. state, except for Wyoming and Alaska.

    The list of U.S. billionaires includes some recognizable names, including Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as well as some more private individuals, like Diane Hendricks, co-founder of ABC Supply, North America’s biggest distributor of building products.

    Hendricks, who is the richest self-made woman with a net worth of $22.3 billion, is one of 150 female billionaires based in the U.S., joining stars like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. Most of the list, 86%, is comprised of men.

    Related: Is Selena Gomez the Next Beauty Billionaire?

    When it comes to philanthropy, Altrata data shows that billionaires have donated or pledged to donate about $185 billion to charitable organizations over the past decade. Among them is Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, who donated a record $6 billion to different foundations in June.

    Nearly half of all overall donations from billionaires, $90 billion, went towards two causes: education and medical research. Some of the most popular organizations that received donations were the Central Park Conservancy in New York City, which received funds collectively worth about $100 million from 89 individuals, and Johns Hopkins University, which received donations from about 30 individuals totaling $7.5 billion.

    However, charitable giving isn’t a priority for all billionaires. One in four has donated less than a million dollars each since 2015.

    Some of the richest people in the world — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg — made their fortunes in Silicon Valley. However, a new report in the Wall Street Journal suggests that most U.S. billionaires did not amass their wealth in tech. Instead, it’s the banking and finance fields that have produced most of the country’s super-rich.

    According to data shared with the WSJ from wealth intelligence company Altrata, there were 1,135 billionaires in the U.S. last year, up from 927 in 2020. Approximately 300 billionaires made their money in banking and finance, while an estimated 110 came from the tech sector. Meanwhile, 75 billionaires earned their money in real estate.

    Many, of course, got a head start by inheriting wealth. One-third of U.S. billionaires received some or all of their wealth from an inheritance, per Altrata.

    The rest of this article is locked.

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  • ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ and anti-Nazi protests in downtown Indianapolis

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    People gathered outside the Indiana Statehouse as part of another national demonstration critical of the current administration and President Donald Trump.

    Indiana State Police estimated about 1,000 people attended the 2-hour protest on Labor Day. Organizers said only about 250 people officially registered online.

    The volunteer-led 50501 movement — which stands for 50 protests in 50 states on 1 day — has organized several national protests since February. The group is responsible for the April 5 “Hands off!” demonstration and the June 14 “No Kings” protest. They collaborated with other organizations like Indiana Resistance Alliance for the Sept. 1, 2025 event, marching around the statehouse multiple times with chants.

    The protest’s theme, “Workers over billionaires,” focused on keeping pressure not only on the Trump administration, but also on the billionaires who support or benefit from his policies.

    Workers Over Billionaires nationwide protests

    Around 1,000 people marched around the Indiana Statehouse downtown for the Labor Day protests against President Donald Trump and his administration on Sept. 1, 2025.

    Labor unions and community activists gathered for mass protests on Labor Day, hoping to remind Americans of the power of the working class at a time when billionaires are playing an outsized role in national politics, according to USA Today.

    Although signs in Indianapolis expressed different topics like deportation, the Epstein list, women’s rights, and even opposition to Nazism, Ryleigh Beckett, a leader with the 50501 movement, said the primary message was about labor rights.

    ‘It’s gonna get worse if we don’t do something…’

    Around 1,000 people marched around the Indiana Statehouse downtown for the Labor Day protests against President Donald Trump and his administration on Sept. 1, 2025.

    Around 1,000 people marched around the Indiana Statehouse downtown for the Labor Day protests against President Donald Trump and his administration on Sept. 1, 2025.

    “We want to recognize the history that has come with Labor Day and how the Trump administration is dismantling a lot of the labor rights that we have fought and earned for with blood, sweat, and tears, namely the weakening of unions, which is a sign of fascism,” Beckett said.

    John Steenbergen, 71, said he attended the protest because Trump is different from any president he’s seen in his 50 years of following politics. While he disagreed with Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, he believed they cared about doing what they thought was best for the United States.But Trump is “cruel” and a “wannabe dictator,” Steenbergen said, pointing to the president’s mass deportation campaign as an example. The Indianapolis resident said he’s worried for his children and grandchildren.“It’s gonna get worse if we don’t do something about it,” he said.

    Morrigan McCoy, 23, led the marches around the Indiana Statehouse and gave the introductory speech before the marches. He has strong opinions about Trump, including “attempts to gerrymander our election.”

    Beckett said she feels in the current climate in Indiana, people feel isolated, but the new goal for the movement is to have people and organizations come together for a common goal and connect people with their neighbors.

    “I think this is the beauty of American culture. We come from all different walks of life, and we may not know our neighbors’ points of view, but we come together and we see that we’re really not alone.”

    The event, which was planned until 3 p.m., ended at 2 p.m. since another protest was planned on Monument Circle.

    People protest Nazis, carry guns

    Just weeks after a small group marched around Monument Circle with Nazi flags, Hoosiers returned to the Circle the afternoon of Sept. 1 to respond with an “anti-Nazi rally.”

    The protest was put together over the past week, organizers told IndyStar. A handful of people carried guns, a reference to the weapons the pro-Nazi protesters had carried, but most appeared unarmed.

    “Left, right and center, I think we can all come together and agree that Nazis aren’t welcome in Indianapolis,” organizer Max Haddad said while speaking to the crowd.

    Among the protesters was a family of four, including two children. Parents Andrew Bodiker and Steph Piercefield, who both wore firearms across their body, told IndyStar they came to the protest to support marginalized communities. The weapons, they said, served as a symbolic response to pro-Nazi protest.

    “We’re just trying to stand up for everybody,” Piercefield said.

    Jesse Kearly, another speaker, said the idea of using the Second Amendment was not popular, but it’s to show that they can protect themselves from people who might have ill intentions.

    Jade Jackson is a Public Safety Reporter for the Indianapolis Star. You can email her at Jade.Jackson@IndyStar.com and follow her on X, formerly Twitter @IAMJADEJACKSON. Contact Marissa Meador at mmeador@gannett.com or find her on X at @marissa_meador.

    This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indianapolis protesters fight for labor protections, against Nazis

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  • Hundreds turn out for ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests on Treasure Coast

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    Several hundred people gathered in Vero Beach and Port St. Lucie the morning of Sept. 1 for Labor Day protests dubbed “Workers Over Billionaires,” planned nationwide and calling for an end to what organizers called the “billionaire takeover” impacting working-class individuals.

    “A lot of people recognize that freedoms are being stripped away from the population, and things are getting scary. It is time for the people to step up and make their voices heard,” St. Lucie County Democratic Party Executive Board Chair Andi Poli said.

    Two events took place on the Treasure Coast: at 58th Avenue and State Road 60 in Indian River County, and along U.S. 1 in St. Lucie County in front of the MidFlorida Credit Union Event Center.

    The demonstrations are targeted to unify working-class people against billionaires who “are stealing from working families, destroying our democracy and building private armies to attack our towns and cities,” according to the May Day Strong website that organized the rallies.

    In case you missed it: Public welcomes Heart in the Park sculpture to Port St. Lucie

    Killer released: Judge frees Brooks Bellay from life term imposed for killing 4-year-old girl in 1979

    “He’s (President Trump) just dismantling our democracy, one institution at a time.” Vero Beach resident Pat Holland said. “Every time we have a demonstration, I hope that it gets bigger because people are not putting up with it.”

    May Day protests kicked off on May 1, followed by the “No Kings Day” and “Good Trouble Lives On” protests in June and July, respectively. The Labor Day rally continues the movement.

    Gianna Montesano is TCPalm’s trending reporter. You can contact her at gianna.montesano@tcpalm.com, 772-409-1429, or follow her on X @gonthescene.

    Kaila Jones is a visual journalist for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers. You can reach her at kaila.jones@tcpalm.com and can view some of her recent work here.

    This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Hundreds turn out for ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests

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  • Why are people protesting in NY today? What to know about ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ rallies

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    Over 30 “Workers Over Billionaires” Labor Day protests are planned throughout New York state on Monday, Sept. 1.

    The same organizers behind the May Day protests that took place across the country on May 1 — May Day Strong — are continuing their movement on Monday, Sept. 1.

    Here’s what to know.

    What are the ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests about?

    The “Workers Over Billionaires” movement is is targeted to unify working-class people against billionaires who “are stealing from working families, destroying our democracy, and building private armies to attack our towns and cities,” according to the May Day Strong website.

    “Labor and community are planning more than a barbecue on Labor Day this year because we have to stop the billionaire takeover,” the website reads. “Just like any bad boss, the way we stop the takeover is with collective action.”

    The nationwide organization promoting the event is calling for the following:

    • Stop the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration.

    • Protect and defend Medicaid, Social Security and other programs for working people.

    • Fully funded schools, and healthcare and housing for all.

    • Stop the attacks on immigrants, Black, indigenous, trans people and all communities.

    • Invest in people not wars.

    Where are the ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests in New York?

    The Good Trouble protest in downtown Mount Kisco July 17, 2025.

    Protests are taking place across the state. Some of the key locations include:

    Finger Lakes region

    • Hamlin: 1658 Lake Road North, 2-4 p.m.

    • Rochester: Alexander Street and East Avenue, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

    • Avon: 100 Park Place, 11 a.m.-noon

    • Canandaigua: Main Street and Eastern Boulevard, 10 a.m.-noon

    • Geneva: 35 Lake Front Drive, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.

    Hudson Valley region

    • Saugerties: Market Street and Main Street, noon-1 p.m.

    • Amenia: NY 22 and NY 343, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.

    • Goshen: 255 Main St., noon-2 p.m.

    • Yonkers: 1025-1043 Warburton Ave., 5:30-6 p.m.

    Donald Trump’s approval rating: Recent polls show mixed reviews for second term

    Map of the ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests in New York

    You can view the full national protest map and more information on local events at: mobilize.us/mayday/map/.

    Emily Barnes reports on consumer-related issues for the USA TODAY Network’s New York Connect Team, focusing on scam and recall-related topics. Follow her on X and Instagram @byemilybarnes. Get in touch at ebarnes@gannett.com.

    This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests in NY: What to know

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  • Alpha School Uses AI Teaching, Offers Staff Six-Figure Pay | Entrepreneur

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    A new network of schools is disrupting the status quo with AI-generated lessons, six-figure pay for teachers, and the approval of hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

    Alpha School is a nationwide private school network that uses AI to customize learning for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The typical Alpha School day consists of two hours of AI-generated academic learning for core subjects, followed by four hours of hands-on activities. The school claims that students learn twice as much as those following a standard system, per The Wall Street Journal. There is no homework, and parents receive daily data about how well their children are learning in school.

    Related: ‘Now Accepting Applications’: Elon Musk Is Opening a New Preschool in Texas Called Ad Astra. Here’s How to Apply.

    Ackman, who has a net worth of $8.28 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, posted about Alpha School on X last week, promoting the system and calling it a “truly breakthrough innovation.” He mentioned in his post that children in the Alpha school system “love school and have incredible outcomes.”

    The schools charge tuition between $40,000 and $75,000, depending on the location.

    The school was co-founded by MacKenzie Price, a Stanford graduate who created the two-hour learning model after her daughters told her that school was boring. Her vision was to create a way for students to pursue core academics in just two hours a day, leaving the rest of the time open to experiential learning.

    Teachers, who earn a minimum of $100,000, are referred to as “guides” because they “don’t do academic teaching,” Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt explained on an episode of the “Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy” podcast released on Tuesday. Instead of teachers outlining concepts on a board, students learn from devices assisted by AI.

    For example, a job opening for a high school guide at Alpha School in Austin, Texas, asks for an individual who can teach students “how to grow authentic social media followings” and “connect students with relevant influencers,” instead of someone with a teaching degree.

    Related: Y Combinator Helped Launch Reddit, Airbnb, and Dropbox. Here’s What I Learned From Its Free Startup School.

    Liemandt said on the podcast that Alpha School keeps students motivated by leaning into game-like lesson plans created by AI. For example, students can “unlock” afternoon activities, like a five-mile bike ride, by finishing their two hours of classwork.

    Students can also earn money by completing their coursework and use it to fund their interests, like investing. It’s unclear how much they can earn.

    “Your kid can earn money by doing academics, so they can fund their passion projects,” Liemandt said on the podcast.

    Alpha School is up and running in Texas, California, and Florida, with plans to launch schools in New York, Arizona, North Carolina, and Virginia later this year.

    A new network of schools is disrupting the status quo with AI-generated lessons, six-figure pay for teachers, and the approval of hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

    Alpha School is a nationwide private school network that uses AI to customize learning for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The typical Alpha School day consists of two hours of AI-generated academic learning for core subjects, followed by four hours of hands-on activities. The school claims that students learn twice as much as those following a standard system, per The Wall Street Journal. There is no homework, and parents receive daily data about how well their children are learning in school.

    Related: ‘Now Accepting Applications’: Elon Musk Is Opening a New Preschool in Texas Called Ad Astra. Here’s How to Apply.

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  • Billionaire CEO Daniel Lubetzky Shares Morning Routine, Tips | Entrepreneur

    Billionaire CEO Daniel Lubetzky Shares Morning Routine, Tips | Entrepreneur

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    Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Snacks with a personal net worth of $2.3 billion, admits that his morning routine used to be exhausting.

    “I used to have horrible habits,” he said in an interview with Entrepreneur.

    Lubetzky founded Kind Snacks in 2004 and sold it for $5 billion in 2020; he is now the founder and chairman of Camino Partners, a $350 million fund he started in January 2023, and a regular cast member on ABC’s “Shark Tank.”

    Lubetzky shared that he spent years going to sleep at 2 a.m. because he wanted to clear his inbox completely. Instead of going to sleep, he would spend hours checking and responding to emails. The next morning, he wouldn’t make his scheduled workout because he needed the extra half hour of sleep.

    Daniel Lubetzky. Photo Credit: Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images

    “I had terrible exercise habits and sleeping habits,” Lubetzky said.

    In the past two months, the 56-year-old entrepreneur has deliberately made some changes to his bedtime and morning routine.

    “I conquered that,” he said. “I’m not going to sleep and waking up at the same time. It’s just transformed my life.”

    Lubetzky now falls asleep around midnight and wakes up by 7:30 a.m. or 8 a.m., setting a new habit. His morning routine consists of stretching, something he says gives him “so much enjoyment.”

    Related: Daniel Lubetzky Took Kind Snacks From Idea to $5 Billion. Here’s His Best Advice For Anyone Who Wants to Start a Business.

    Productivity hack

    Lubetzky also shared his top tip for productivity: When you’re working on a task, finish it.

    “Don’t just leave things halfway, because then you have to start from scratch,” he said. “You’re being very unproductive.”

    He recommended thinking about attention as a dot. Every time you read an email, that’s one dot virtually placed on the email. The goal is to minimize the number of dots, or points of attention, commanded by an email or document so that you’re not revisiting the same issue over and over again.

    Book recommendation

    Lubetzky recommended reading “The Daily Stoic” by Ryan Holiday, a book of 366 meditations. The book focuses on insights from Stoicism, a philosophical system that encourages focus on what can be controlled and acceptance of what can’t.

    Related: Here’s What It Takes to Land an Investment From the Founder of Kind Snacks, Who Sold His Company for $5 Billion

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    Sherin Shibu

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