Last month, President-elect Donald Trump entered a sold-out Madison Square Garden to attend the mixed martial arts extravaganza UFC 309. Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” played and the crowd erupted in cheers, chanting “USA! USA!”

The incoming 47th president was flanked by UFC president Dana White and a cortege of Trumpworld insiders tapped for the new administration, including Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.

Also present was Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel, head of the Endeavor Group and the CEO of UFC’s parent company, TKO.

Inside the arena, Trump approached the Octagon-side “promoters table” where White and UFC commentator Joe Rogan sit and where he was seen briefly chatting with Emanuel.

Their meeting at the UFC bout was the second time the pair had spoken since Trump’s 2024 presidential run, said a person close to Emanuel who was not authorized to comment. Emanuel, Trump’s former agent, called him last summer after he was shot at a campaign rally to ask how he was doing, and Trump appreciated the call, said the source.

As Hollywood begins to grapple with how to navigate Trumpworld 2.0, few are better positioned to navigate the new administration than Emanuel.

The brash power player has staunch Democratic bona fides: He has hosted fundraisers for the party and donated to a number of its candidates over the years. During this presidential cycle he gave nearly $1 million to Kamala Harris’ PAC and campaign. And his brother Rahm was President Obama’s first chief of staff, later the mayor of Chicago and Biden’s ambassador to Japan.

Nonetheless, Ari Emanuel has cultivated multifaceted ties to Trump and many of his associates over the years, among them Elon Musk, UFC’s White and WWE’s Vince McMahon. One of William Morris Endeavor’s literary agents represented Vice President-elect JD Vance when he sold his 2016 bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” (Emanuel interviewed Vance at an employee book club series in 2018 in Cleveland).

Emanuel, who has publicly castigated Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blasted President Biden and his aides for not dropping out of the presidential race earlier, says that he will not be shy about voicing his concerns to Trump, telling The Times, “If I really disagree with something that I think he would do, I will definitely pick up the phone.”

‘The King of Hollywood’

Back in 2010, Emanuel became Trump’s agent, just months after the Hollywood power broker engineered a stunning takeover of the famed William Morris Agency. The New York real estate developer turned reality TV star was hosting “Celebrity Apprentice,” and he called Emanuel as he played golf during his firm’s annual off-site in Palm Springs.

“Ari, this is Donald Trump. Did you make that Conan deal? I want you to be my agent,” Trump told him, according to someone close to Emanuel.

The NBC show was flagging in the ratings — despite Trump insisting otherwise — and he wanted what he always craved: a better deal.

Endeavor had extracted some major concessions from NBC after the network axed Conan O’Brien as host of “The Tonight Show,” including a $32.5-million payout.

The deal caught Trump’s attention and he wanted the man he’d taken to calling “the King of Hollywood” representing him.

Five years later, Trump announced his first run for president. After he called Mexicans “rapists” who brought drugs and crime into the country, NBC cut ties with him. Trump bought out NBC’s interest in the Miss Universe Organization and then sold Miss Universe to Emanuel’s Endeavor for an undisclosed sum. In November 2016, Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States.

Although Emanuel has not represented Trump since the latter announced his first candidacy, he was photographed meeting Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., after the 2016 election. Emanuel has downplayed the visit to those around him.

Three years later, Emanuel’s name surfaced in a trove of some 100 documents from Trump’s transition that was leaked to the political news site Axios, indicating he had been vetted for an unspecified role in the administration. A spokesperson for Endeavor declined to comment at the time.

Trump, who has called Emanuel “a very good friend of mine,” said at the start of his first administration: “Even though he’s not political, he’s political. He gets it.”

Elon Musk: The Trump whisperer

Over the years, Emanuel’s relationship with Elon Musk took shape, and its contours deepened as the uber-agent transformed Endeavor from a talent agency into a global sports and entertainment powerhouse. In March 2021, a month before Endeavor went public on the New York Stock Exchange, Musk was tapped to join the company’s board (he resigned in 2022).

That same year, Musk was among a clutch of intimates (along with Brian Grazer and Larry David) who attended Emanuel’s 60th birthday party at Ivy on the Shore in Santa Monica. In the summer of 2022, when Emanuel married fashion designer Sarah Staudinger, Musk joined a select group of A-listers (Mark Wahlberg, David Zaslav) invited to their wedding in St. Tropez, France. Months later Musk was photographed yachting off the coast of Greece with the newlyweds.

Behind the scenes, Emanuel has played a quiet role in some of Musk’s notable businesses.

When Musk attempted to back out of his $44-billion takeover of Twitter in 2022, causing a rift with its board, Emanuel reached out to Egon Durban, a Twitter board member and co-CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake, then Endeavor’s largest shareholder.

Emanuel urged the company to “find a solution” to the legal battle ahead of the scheduled trial. Musk and the board ultimately sealed the deal and the billionaire took the social platform private, later renaming it X.

As Emanuel played peace broker between Musk and the Twitter board, he sent Musk a three-paragraph proposal on the encrypted text platform Signal offering to run Twitter with Endeavor for a fee of $100 million, saying he would cut costs, create a better culture and manage relationships with advertisers and marketers.

Emanuel’s overture, unearthed in Walter Isaacson’s flattering biography of the Tesla mogul, never moved forward.

Jared Birchall, Musk’s right-hand man, called it “the most insulting, demeaning, insane message.”

The scuttled offer apparently did little to ruffle feathers. In January 2023, Axios revealed that Endeavor had acquired a small stake in X. As for Emanuel, he has been spotted around town driving a glossy black Cybertruck.

Dana White: Trump’s strongman champion

UFC President Dana White has long championed Trump.

(Getty Images)

In 2016, the same year that Endeavor acquired the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) for more than $4 billion, its president, Dana White, a bombastic former mixed martial arts (MMA) manager, took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and gave a fulsome endorsement of the GOP presidential nominee. “I’ve been in the fight business my whole life,” he said, and Trump, he noted, was a “fighter.”

Trump had thrown White a lifeline years ago. In 2000, New Jersey legalized MMA and Trump reached out to White offering to hold fights at his now-defunct Trump Taj Mahal casino and hotel in Atlantic City. Trump himself showed up for events, raising UFC’s profile.

Since then, White has been one of Trump’s staunchest supporters outside of politics. He has invited Trump to UFC events even as Trump faced a spate of criminal, civil and other legal challenges.

As White became known as MAGA’s frontman, he and Emanuel forged a successful business partnership turning the UFC into the world’s largest MMA promotion.

“Now with Ari, he and I end up being perfect partners together. It’s really cool,” White told the website MMA Fighting. “You think of a guy like Ari, if you watch ‘Entourage’ — Ari Emanuel has no ego when he deals in business and he’s a f—king killer and I love that about him too.”

Emanuel has heaped praise on White too, crediting him with helping to save Endeavor’s sprawling empire during the pandemic.

White implemented an aggressive plan to continue to hold fight events on Yas Island in the United Arab Emirates, dubbed “Fight Island.”

The Emanuel-White alliance reached its apex last fall when Endeavor officially merged UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) into TKO Group Holdings, a publicly traded $21.4-billion fighting sports and entertainment giant.

Vince and Linda McMahon: Trump’s fight squad

For years before he acquired TKO, Ari Emanuel represented WWE led by Vince McMahon, left, with his wife, Linda McMahon, who was Trump’s Small Business Administration head.

(Jessica Hill / Associated Press)

Emanuel has deep connections with another figure who has close ties to Trump: Vince McMahon.

Last April on CNBC, Emanuel sat next to McMahon and announced the UFC-WWE merger, insisting that McMahon was a driving force and paramount to the deal.

McMahon was named executive chairman of the newly created TKO Group Holdings as a condition of the deal, according to SEC filings.

McMahon boasted that the new company was a “live sports and entertainment powerhouse with a collective fan base of more than a billion people.”

Emanuel had a long-standing relationship with McMahon. They met in the late 1990s, soon after Emanuel launched his own talent agency. He convinced McMahon to let Endeavor represent the WWE for endorsement opportunities and media rights.

By then, McMahon had already developed close ties to Trump.

During the 1980s, Trump became a WWE fixture and the two men grew friendly. Trump hosted WrestleMania extravaganzas at his hotels and made numerous appearances at matches. In 2013, Trump was inducted into the WWE’s Hall of Fame.

In 2007 and ’09, WWE made payments of $4 million and $1 million, respectively, to the Trump Foundation, according to the foundation’s tax filings. The foundation was dissolved by court order in 2018 after the New York attorney general found that it had illegally used charitable funds for political purposes.

McMahon exited TKO in January after former WWE employee Janel Grant, sued the company, McMahon and the former head of talent relations alleging sexual assault, trafficking and emotional abuse. This followed previously disclosed revelations that McMahon had paid millions in hush money to multiple women to quash allegations of sexual misconduct between 2006 and 2022. McMahon has denied the accusations of wrongdoing.

The allegations triggered investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, raising questions as to how or if the Trump DOJ will handle the government probes.

Emanuel has periodically stayed in touch with McMahon, who is no longer involved in the running of TKO and WWE.

The McMahon family appears to be in good standing with Trump.

In 2017, Trump named McMahon’s estranged wife, Linda, to run the Small Business Administration. Two years later, she resigned to become chairwoman of America First Action, a pro-Trump super-PAC; more recently, she co-headed his transition team. Last month, Trump nominated McMahon to serve in his cabinet as his education secretary.

An Apple employee has sued the company, alleging it improperly requires access to personal data that employees store on the tech behemoth’s iCloud.

The lawsuit, filed by Amar Bhakta, who has worked in advertising technology for Apple since 2020, also alleges the company’s policies illegally restrict discussions about wages and working conditions among workers.

While Apple provides employees with iPhones and other equipment, it is common for employees to use their own devices or to link company-issued products to their personal iCloud accounts, according to the lawsuit. When they do so, the lawsuit alleges, Apple demands as part of its terms of employment that employees allow the company to install software that makes it possible to search a device or iCloud account. In addition, the company “actively discourages” the use of work-only iCloud accounts, the lawsuit said.

According to the lawsuit, Apple forbade Bhakta from speaking publicly about his work in digital advertising and required him to remove information about his work from his LinkedIn profile.

These moves “limited his visibility and attractiveness in the job market” the lawsuit said.

“If you use your personal account on an Apple-managed or Apple-owned iPhone, iPad or computer, any data stored on the device (including emails, photos, video, notes and more), are subject to search by Apple,” company policy states, according to the lawsuit.

Taken together, Apple’s policies have a chilling effect on employees’ willingness to be whistleblowers on internal issues and on their freedom of movement in the job market, the lawsuit said.

Bhakta filed the suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court this week under the Private Attorneys General Act, a unique California law that allows employees to sue on behalf of the state for labor violations.

“All California employees have the right to speak about their wages and working conditions,” said Jahan Sagafi, an attorney at Outten & Golden LLP, the firm that represents Bhakta, in a Monday news release. “Apple’s broad speech suppression policies create a danger of discrimination going unchallenged.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Times. In a statement to the Verge, Apple spokesperson Josh Rosenstock disputed the claims in the lawsuit.

“Every employee has the right to discuss their wages, hours and working conditions and this is part of our business conduct policy, which all employees are trained on annually. We strongly disagree with these claims and believe they lack merit,” Rosenstock said.

Bhakta said that he hopes Apple will change its approach.

“Being able to speak openly about my work is so important to me,” Bhakta said in the release. “It’s disappointing that Apple, whose ethos is privacy and confidentiality, would try to monitor and censor me.”

Other Apple employees have raised similar concerns of privacy violations and overly broad policies restricting discussion of pay.

A 2021 report by the Verge revealed concerns about data privacy among Apple workers required to link their personal accounts and devices to their jobs.

And last month Apple was accused by the the National Labor Relations Board of trying to prevent employees from discussing pay equity by enforcing broad rules that prohibited workers from discussing financial incentives the company uses to reach sales goals by asserting that the topic included “confidential and proprietary information.”

Now that Donald Trump will be headed to the White House, it is all but certain that he will pursue significant new taxes on imported goods. Although a widely criticized policy, there is little stopping him from doing this due to trade powers that Congress has given the executive branch over the years. Before President Biden leaves office, his administration and the current Congress should consider scaling back the president’s power to unilaterally enact tariffs. This restraint would protect households from large tax increases, prevent economic harm and ease relations with our major trading partners.

President-elect Trump has promised to enact significant new tariffs on imports. Last week he stated that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all imported goods from Mexico and Canada, as well as import taxes on Chinese goods as high as 60%. Others are likely to follow. Trump could also pursue more targeted tariffs on certain goods in the same way he did during his first administration.

Contrary to what Trump and many of his supporters claim, these taxes would end up placing a significant burden on American households. Just a 10% across-the-board tariff plus a 60% tariff on Chinese imports could raise more than $2.8 trillion over a decade for an average tax increase of $1,820 per household, according to estimates from the Tax Policy Center.

Although these tariffs would have significant implications for the federal budget and household finances, there is little to stop Trump from unilaterally enacting these taxes under current law. Generally, the Constitution states that Congress has the authority to “lay and collect” taxes and regulate commerce with foreign nations. However, Congress outsourced much of the power to enact tariffs to the executive branch throughout the 20th century. As a result, the president now has broad authority to levy taxes on imported goods. In many cases, the administration only needs to determine there is a national emergency or a national security threat.

These unilateral tariff powers were used to great effect in the past by Trump and other presidents. During Trump’s first term he enacted tariffs on steel from most countries by claiming this served national security. Biden utilized powers from the Trade Act of 1974 to increase tariffs on Chinese imports. Decades earlier, President Nixon used existing authority to impose a 10% tariff on all imported goods coming into the United States.

The current Congress and Biden should step in and enact legislation that ensures that Trump is unable to impose such significant trade measures without congressional approval. They could do this much the same way Congress stepped in to block tariffs proposed by President Carter in 1980.

Scaling back these powers would have benefits besides protecting Americans from tax increases.

First, shifting the power to lay and collect tariffs back to Congress would mean that major tariff proposals are properly debated. Congress is currently required to debate and pass legislation to make even small changes to income or payroll taxes. This should be true for tariffs as well, especially proposals that involve trillions in additional federal revenue. Trump should have to convince Congress that enacting across-the-board tariffs would be consistent with his geopolitical goals and would be worth the economic costs.

Second, handing the reins back to Congress would reduce market uncertainty. Simply the risk of tariffs can have a negative effect on the economy. Businesses that expect tariffs may be less likely to pursue investments that may be subject to taxation at some point in the future. Shifting tariff power back to Congress means that proposals to raise and repeal tariffs would be more predictable.

Third, it would help improve relations between the U.S. and its trading partners. Trump’s approach to trade policy has proved to worsen relationships between the United States and its most important trade partners. Even prior to Trump’s election, the European Union had already announced that it would hit back at the United States if Trump enacted tariffs on EU products. Trade wars with our allies run counter to Trump’s goal of countering geopolitical foes such as China and magnify the economic damage of Trump’s tariff policies.

Although legislation limiting the president’s tariff power could prevent Trump from unilaterally enacting tariffs, it may not prevent them entirely. Reports suggest that the Trump administration and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, are discussing ways in which to incorporate tariffs into next year’s tax bill. This would be a mistake, but at the very least it would be debated before being enacted.

While there are few tax issues that the Democratic Senate, Republican House and President Biden agree on, they should be able to unite behind preventing significant, unlegislated tax increases on American households.

Kyle Pomerleau is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies federal tax policy.