Business
Supreme Court to hear TikTok case before ban deadline
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear TikTok’s challenge to a law that would ban the popular social media app next month unless its Chinese owner sells it.
The case is set for Jan. 10, nine days before TikTok is scheduled to be shut down in the U.S.
In announcing its decision, the court instructed lawyers for TikTok and the government to prepare arguments around the question of whether the impending ban, which lawmakers feel is needed to block potential meddling by Chinese authorities, would violate the 1st Amendment.
With time running out before the ban takes effect Jan. 19, the justices agreed to decide the TikTok case on a fast-track basis, scheduling two hours of oral argument.
“We’re pleased with today’s Supreme Court order,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement. “We believe the Court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights.”
The legal battle over TikTok poses a conflict between the American tradition of wide-open free speech versus the potential national security threat of a Chinese-owned company that collects the personal data of its users.
TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been uncertain since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut down the short-form video app, which people use to share dance routines, news stories, recipes and funny videos.
Trump and others raised the prospect that ByteDance, which owns TikTok, could assist the Chinese government by sharing data it collects from its American users; embedding malicious software in the app; or helping to spread disinformation.
That set off years of back-and-forth between TikTok and the U.S. government. In April, President Biden signed a law that required ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations to a non-Chinese entity or be shut down.
The companies responded by suing the U.S. government in May, saying a ban would violate 1st Amendment rights. They also said that the new law “offers no support for the idea” that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses national security risks.
“Speculative risk of harm is simply not enough when First Amendment values are at stake,” TikTok and ByteDance said in their filing.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the law two weeks ago, paving the way for a Supreme Court showdown.
In a 3-0 decision, the D.C. Circuit Court rejected TikTok’s free-speech claim, saying the government is not opposed to the content on the social media platform, but to the owner of it.
Judge Douglas Ginsburg cited testimony from the government’s security experts who concluded that they “did not trust” TikTok’s owners to protect the privacy of Americans. That is not a problem of social media in general, he said.
“TikTok is the only global platform of its kind that has been designated by the political branches as a foreign adversary controlled application,” Ginsburg wrote in the Dec. 6 decision.
Like the appellate court, the Supreme Court justices could be wary of overturning the judgment of Congress and two presidents on a matter of national security.
In the spring, a few notable names announced their interest in buying the U.S. portion of TikTok, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said he was assembling an investor group. Since the law passed, however, there has been little public indication of a possible sale.
On Wednesday, another interested buyer, former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, said he expected the Supreme Court to uphold the law and reiterated his plans to make an offer along with other investors.
The group’s proposal, McCourt said in a statement, would “migrate this vibrant community to an American-made tech stack that gives people control of their data and embraces a transparent approach to content recommendation and moderation.”
Free speech organizations have warned that enforcing the ban would set a bad precedent.
“We should be concerned about this law as Americans who engage with one another on social media, but we should also be concerned about the global system of free expression,” said George Wang, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.
If the law is upheld, he said, it’s “hard to see where the stopping point is.”
“Future bans of social media platforms are possible, but maybe also other forms of media,” Wang said. “It really blesses the government’s ability and authority to shut down entire platforms for speech on pretty vague national security justifications.”
TikTok on Monday said that its estimates showed that small businesses on the platform would lose “more than $1 billion in revenue and creators would suffer almost $300 million in lost earnings in just one month” unless the ban was halted.
TikTok’s lawyer before the high court, Noel Francisco, is a familiar figure for the justices, having served as U.S. solicitor general during Trump’s first term.
Chang reported from Los Angeles and Savage from Washington.
Business
Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
Business
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Business
How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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