Business

Will a Dollar General Ruin a Rural Crossroads?

Published

2 years ago

June 2, 2023

Will a Dollar General Ruin a Rural Crossroads?

Anne Hartley’s brick house in Ebony, Va., overlooks windswept fields, a Methodist church, a general store and the intersection of two country roads, a pastoral setting that evokes an Edward Hopper painting or a faded postcard from the South.

Now this scene is being threatened, Ms. Hartley said, by a plan to build what every small American town seems to have: a Dollar General.

A descendant of one of Ebony’s founding families, Ms. Hartley says the discount store — which would be built next to her home — will create traffic problems in the area, with people drawn to the brand’s signature yellow sign and its aisles filled with inexpensive food and household staples.

Beyond the store itself, Ms. Hartley and many others with ties to Ebony think it will open the door to additional development that will spoil the character of their tiny, rural community of about 230 people. The name of their website and the rallying cry for their campaign against the Dollar General is “Keep Ebony Country.”

“We don’t want over-commercialization to destroy the integrity of the community,” Ms. Hartley said.

Jerry Jones also has strong feelings about Dollar General. He, too, grew up in Ebony and, for several years, was Ms. Hartley’s classmate at the local public school. He went on to manage grocery stores around southern Virginia and later owned a gas station in Ebony that sold freshly baked biscuits and deep-fried baloney burgers.

Mostly retired now, Mr. Jones owns the land where the Dollar General would be built. He said the store would provide the county’s residents a convenient and affordable place to shop, while also generating sorely needed tax revenue.

“You still need to have that balance between the people with nicer things and the people who live paycheck to paycheck,” Mr. Jones said. “To me, Dollar General fits right in with that.”

The dispute in Ebony, which has been going on for more than three years, is about planning and zoning, but it also touches on a deeper issue simmering in many parts of rural America, whether the disputes are about cellphone towers or snowmobile trails. What does “country” mean to different people in a small community?

In most places, Dollar General is winning. Across the United States, the company has made an aggressive push to permeate thousands of far-flung or impoverished communities with stores that, along with low prices, are criticized for their unhealthy food offerings and low-paid employees.

An increasing number of these proposed dollar stores are leading to disputes, generating opponents in small towns and struggling cities. The retailer has been assailed by a think tank for the negative effects it has on small businesses and by the Biden administration for the unkempt condition of its stores.

Yet, a vast majority of the proposed dollar stores are being built. One in three stores that opened in the United States in 2022 was a dollar store.

Those who oppose the proposed Dollar General in Ebony are trying to buck the trend.

About 90 miles south of Richmond, Ebony sits on the edge of Lake Gaston and is a haven for second homes that serve as an important tax base. Ebony is part of Brunswick County, once a hub for tobacco farming, where the median household income is about $49,600, far below the statewide median of $80,600. More than half the county’s population is Black.

The five-member Brunswick County Board of Supervisors approved a zoning change that would allow the store to be built in a 3-to-2 vote.

The supervisors who voted to approve the store declined to comment, citing a lawsuit that Ms. Hartley and other opponents filed challenging their decision.

In a statement, Dollar General said that it offered fresh produces in thousands of stores and provided a “safe work environment” and “competitive wages.”

“We regularly hear from communities, particularly in rural areas, asking us to bring a Dollar General to their hometown,” the company added. “We understand a Dollar General would be welcomed by many Ebony residents and hope to be able to serve that community.”

Many of the opponents of the store are driven by their appreciation for Ebony’s past and what they hope can be preserved. And some relative newcomers to the community are sympathetic to their argument. Mohamed Abouemara moved to southern Virginia from New York to operate convenience stores and has run the Ebony General Store for nine years.

He said his store, where locals can socialize and buy hot food, played an important role in a rural community.

A dollar store, he said, would significantly hurt his business. “Jerry is a friend of mine,” Mr. Abouemara said of Mr. Jones. “I am not angry at him. But if he still owned his store, he would not let a Dollar General come here.”

A sense of place.

Ms. Hartley is a meticulous keeper of family and Ebony history. Her family has owned land in the area for generations, and her great-grandfather named the community in the late 1800s after a black horse called Ebony.

The family also ran a local store. When Ms. Hartley was growing up in Ebony in the 1960s, her father operated a business, which had a butcher shop, a barbershop and a mill in the back. Ms. Hartley helped her parents in the store when she was still a child, and she remembers her father working long hours, from early in the morning until late in the evening. “It was the center of our family life,” she said of small-town retailing.

Ms. Hartley attended the University of North Carolina, where she majored in math and later worked as a computer programmer, a rare position for a woman in the 1970s and ’80s and a point of pride for her.

She now owns her family’s house in Ebony, where family photos, spanning many generations, cover the walls and side tables.

Ms. Hartley’s primary residence is in Chapel Hill, N.C., about 90 miles south, but she regularly visits the house in Ebony.

Ms. Hartley says she is intent on protecting a rural intersection from a box store for the good of a community and local economy, which is seeking to boost tourism

Her lawsuit argues that the county has violated its own comprehensive plan that calls out the importance of the area’s scenic landscapes. The county has said in court papers that the plan is merely meant as a guide for development.

Dozens of local residents and people with roots in Ebony have mobilized against the development as part of the Ebony Preservation Group. They have raised donations to support their legal fight and lobbied the state to have the community considered to be part of the National Register of Historic Places.

Elizabeth Nash Horne, whose parents and grandparents are buried in a cemetery next to the proposed store, said a chain retailer in Ebony was “just unnecessary.” There are already three existing dollar stores only a few miles from Ebony.

Some say they recognize that the county needs tax revenue. “But are we going to sell our soul for anything that comes along?” said Bobby Conner, who grew up in Ebony and now works on tourism initiatives for Brunswick County.

The main route into Ebony from the interstate is Route 903, a two-lane road lined by billboards advertising real estate that eventually opens up into farm fields and pine groves.

Route 903 comes to an intersection in Ebony where there is a gas station on one side of the road and, on the other, the Ebony General Store, a dimly lit warren of canned vegetables and soda bottles where the smell of fried catfish mingles with that of steaming hot dogs.

Sid Cutts, a home builder who has developed properties on Lake Gaston, said Ebony and other historic-looking crossroads were becoming increasingly rare in the South.

“I use the term rural elegance,” Mr. Cutts said in describing Ebony.

Mr. Cutts said his clients from larger cities who were building lake houses were important to the community because they spent money at the local businesses. But they are seeking the down-home charm they can find at the long-running Ebony General Store, he said, not another Dollar General.

‘I am pure country.’

Mr. Jones says he, too, has Ebony’s best interest at heart in seeking to bring a Dollar General to the community.

Mr. Jones’s father and grandfather bought land in Ebony in the 1950s and many members of his family still live in Ebony. Several of them are neighbors of Ms. Hartley.

Mr. Jones did not go to college, but he worked his way up through A.&P., managing several stores in Virginia.

In the 1990s, Mr. Jones built a gas station and convenience store across from the Ebony General Store.

He sold his store in 2005 and now lives in a nearby town, though he regularly farms land in Ebony. Mr. Jones said he didn’t understand how putting a third business in a well-trafficked intersection would destroy Ebony’s rural character.

“What character do they really want to save?” he said. “I am still going to be out there on my tractor. None of that is going to change one iota. I just won’t have to drive as far to get a cold drink or a Pop-Tart.”

Mr. Jones’s aunt Betty Lett lives across the street from where the store would be built. She thinks a dollar store would bring new excitement to Ebony.

“I am pure country,” Ms. Lett said one afternoon while sitting across from Mr. Jones in her living room. An antique doll perched on a swing hung from the ceiling.

Mr. Jones shrugged off the criticisms of dollar stores — that their aisles and dumpsters outside are a mess and that their employees underpaid. He pointed out that the hourly minimum wage in Virginia is $12.

“I never even made it to $10 an hour,” said Ms. Lett, who retired in 2007, after four decades of factory and distribution center work. “I should go back to work,” she joked.

Shaunton Taylor, who stopped to fill up on gas at the Ebony General Store one afternoon, said she would still shop there even if a dollar store came along.

Ms. Taylor lives in a home on a family homestead, three miles from the site of the proposed Dollar General. The homestead was first inhabited by her great-grandparents, who were farmers.

“I am open-minded about new things, especially in a rural area,” said Ms Taylor, who works at a nursing home and also writes poetry. “You have to accept anything new.”

This year, Ms. Hartley asked for the Virginia Supreme Court to hear the case, arguing that the issue of how a county interprets its comprehensive plan would “affect all Virginians for years to come.” She is confident that her group will eventually prevail.

In the meantime, Ms. Hartley reached out to Mr. Jones with an offer: She told him that a supporter of her group would match whatever the developer of the Dollar General store would pay Mr. Jones for the property — about $88,000, Mr. Jones said.

But Mr. Jones declined. His idea and the preservation group’s idea for what should happen with the land, he said, “just don’t match.”

Business

RFK Jr. Sought to Stop Covid Vaccinations 6 Months After Rollout

Published

2 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

RFK Jr. Sought to Stop Covid Vaccinations 6 Months After Rollout

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s health agencies, formally asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of all Covid vaccines during a deadly phase of the pandemic when thousands of Americans were still dying every week.

Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the F.D.A. in May 2021 demanding that officials rescind authorization for the shots and refrain from approving any Covid vaccine in the future.

Just six months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the Covid vaccines a miracle. At the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults were receiving their shots. Schools were reopening and churches were filling.

Estimates had begun to show that the rapid rollout of Covid vaccines had already saved about 140,000 lives in the United States.

The petition was filed on behalf of the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy founded and led, Children’s Health Defense. It claimed that the risks of the vaccines outweighed the benefits and that the vaccines weren’t necessary because good treatments were available, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which had already been deemed ineffective against the virus.

The petition received little notice when it was filed. Mr. Kennedy was then on the fringes of the public health establishment, and the agency denied it within months. Public health experts told about the filing said it was shocking.

John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, called Mr. Kennedy’s request to the F.D.A. “an appalling error of judgment.” Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, likened having Mr. Kennedy lead the federal health agencies to “putting a flat earther in charge of NASA.”

Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, described Mr. Kennedy’s effort to halt the use of Covid vaccines as a “massive error.”

Mr. Kennedy’s transition spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment, but has said recently that he does not want to take vaccines away.

Asked in November by an NBC reporter about his general opposition to Covid vaccines — and whether he would have stopped authorization — Mr. Kennedy said he was concerned that the vaccines did not prevent transmission of the virus.

“I wouldn’t have directly blocked it,” he said. “I would have made sure that we had the best science, and there was no effort to do that at that time.”

Mr. Kennedy’s early opposition to Covid vaccines has alarmed public health experts, many of whom contend that it should disqualify him from overseeing health agencies with the power to authorize, monitor and allocate funding for millions of vaccines each year.

They are also concerned about how he might handle a possible bird flu pandemic, which could necessitate a rapid deployment of vaccines.

As Mr. Kennedy prepares for his confirmation hearings before two Senate committees, he and his allies have insisted that he is not anti-vaccine.

In fact, in mid-2023, he told a House panel that he had taken all recommended vaccines — except for the Covid immunization.

At his confirmation hearings, he’ll most likely face scrutiny of his broader statements on vaccines, including that the polio vaccine cost more lives than it saved.

Mr. Trump has stepped forward in recent weeks to defend Mr. Kennedy after The New York Times reported that one of Mr. Kennedy’s lawyers had previously petitioned the F.D.A. to revoke approval or pause distribution of several polio vaccines over safety concerns.

“I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think,” Mr. Trump said last month.

After the Times report, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy expressed their support for the polio vaccine.

If confirmed by the Senate as secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, Mr. Kennedy would assume oversight of $8 billion in funding for the Vaccines for Children program and would have the authority to appoint new members to a panel that makes influential vaccine recommendations to states.

At the time Mr. Kennedy challenged the Covid vaccines, some of his objections touched on wider concerns about their rapid development. Emergency-use authorization — a preliminary form of approval — for immunizations was unusual. Others argued that a public health emergency dictated a speedier rollout.

Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, said it would be reasonable to debate whether Covid vaccines should have been subject to additional study.

But she profoundly disagreed with Mr. Kennedy’s views, saying that “the idea that in early 2021 that you could be saying that people over the age of 65 don’t need Covid vaccines — that’s just nuts.”

Vaccines have rare side effects, and there have been cases of injury from the Covid shots. Government officials weigh the harms against the potential to save lives. An estimate released in early 2024 found that the Covid vaccines and mitigation measures saved about 800,000 lives in the United States.

Another study found that in late 2021 and 2022, Covid death rates among unvaccinated people were 14 times the rates of those who had received a Covid booster shot. Researchers also estimated that from May 2021 through September 2022, more than 230,000 deaths could have been prevented among people who declined initial Covid inoculations.

From the start of the Covid vaccine campaign, Mr. Kennedy’s view that the Covid vaccines were dangerous put him at odds with Mr. Trump, whose Operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccines was one of his policy triumphs. And Mr. Kennedy went on a concerted campaign against the vaccine.

Mr. Kennedy told Louisiana lawmakers in late 2021 that the Covid vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”

He has remained a plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Biden and others, contesting efforts by government officials to limit his ability to suggest on social media that Covid vaccines were not safe.

In January 2021, Mr. Kennedy suggested on Facebook that the death of the baseball legend Hank Aaron, 86, was related to a Covid vaccine he had received 17 days earlier. It was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths” following Covid vaccines, he claimed. A doctor who was vaccinated alongside Mr. Aaron and the county medical examiner dismissed the claim.

In May, when Mr. Kennedy petitioned the F.D.A. to “immediately remove Covid vaccines from the market,” he was joined by Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board and a physician in Maine.

Her medical license was initially suspended on an emergency basis in early 2022 for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to patients with severe cases of Covid, including one who was intubated, Maine medical board records show.

She later sued the board, claiming that it retaliated against her for exercising her right to free speech. The case is pending.

In 2022, Mr. Kennedy and others filed a lawsuit against the F.D.A. on behalf of Children’s Health Defense and parents who said they were concerned that their children would be given Covid vaccines without their knowledge or consent. The amended lawsuit, filed in July 2022, sought a court order requesting that the agency reconsider granting authorization for Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines for children.

A Texas appeals court dismissed the case in early 2024, concurring with a lower court that the plaintiffs did not face a “concrete or imminent” risk of harm. In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.

Mr. Kennedy also sent letters to the F.D.A. threatening legal action if vaccine authorizations for children were granted.

Covid vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna for infants and children 6 months to 11 years old remain in use under emergency authorization, according to the F.D.A. Spokesmen for Pfizer and for Moderna said the companies are pursuing full approval for all ages.

Mr. Kennedy claimed in the censorship case that top Biden administration officials had coerced social media platforms to silence him, mostly during the summer of 2021. At the time, vaccine rates were stalling. People who were not vaccinated began to die at higher rates. Some who died were young; their loved ones said they were confused by conflicting messages on social media — or regretted that they had not gotten the vaccine.

Records in the lawsuit outline a briefing that summer with Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary at the time, and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, both of whom criticized social media companies for allowing the spread of misinformation that was influencing people against vaccination.

“And we can’t wait longer for them to take aggressive action because it’s costing people their lives,” Dr. Murthy said on July 15, 2021.

Mr. Biden expressed outrage the following day, telling reporters that social media companies that hosted vaccine misinformation were “killing people.”

In legal filings, Mr. Kennedy said that he had been named one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by a prominent advocacy group — and that he was one of the people the White House was targeting. Exhibits in the lawsuit show that White House officials leaned on social media companies to take down misinformation.

Within a month, a senior Facebook executive reported to Dr. Murthy that it had removed a number of pages or groups, including Mr. Kennedy’s, court records show.

The Supreme Court dismissed an associated case last summer, and an appeals court dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s case late last year. Lawyers representing Mr. Kennedy and others are still working on obtaining depositions of about 30 people, mostly Biden administration officials.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.

Business

Supreme Court upholds law that could force TikTok to shut down in U.S.

Published

2 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

Supreme Court upholds law that could force TikTok to shut down in U.S.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that calls for the shutdown of the U.S. operations of social media app TikTok due to privacy and security concerns related to its Chinese owner.

The justices in a unanimous opinion said the 2024 law does not violate the 1st Amendment or its protection for freedom of speech. The ruling means 170 million Americans may lose access to the popular social media platform as soon as Sunday.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court said in an unsigned opinion. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. .. we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ 1st Amendment rights.”

The decision appears to leave the U.S. fate of TikTok to either a last-minute sale by its Chinese owners, or a reprieve from President Biden or President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump takes office on Monday, the day after the shut-down law is due to take effect. Recently, Trump has said he will try to work out a deal that keeps TikTok in operation, presumably by separating it from Chinese government control.

Last year, the House and Senate by large bipartisan votes approved the shut-down law, citing national security fears that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was gathering data on tens of millions of Americans.

Congress decided TikTok must separate itself from its ownership by a “foreign adversary.”

In defense of the law, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that TikTok and ByteDance “collect vast swaths of data about tens of millions of Americans,” which China “could use for espionage or blackmail.”

In its 20-page “per curiam” opinion Friday, the court said the case turned on the ownership and control of TikTok, not free speech.

While TikTok is “operated in the United States by TikTok Inc., an American company incorporated and headquartered in California,” its “ultimate parent company is ByteDance Ltd., a privately held company that has operations in China. ByteDance Ltd. owns TikTok’s proprietary algorithm…and is subject to Chinese laws that require it to ‘assist or cooperate’ with the Chinese government’s ‘intelligence work’ and to ensure that the Chinese Government has ‘the power to access and control private data’ the company holds.”

Second, the court said the shut-down law is not targeted at speech or expression. The 1st Amendment protects against the government’s efforts to control the “content” of the speech, but that is not at issue in this case, the court said.

The law “does not regulate the creators…and directly regulates ByteDance and TikTok only through the divestiture requirement.”

The free-speech advocates who sued to block the law “have not identified any case in which this court has treated a regulation of corporate control as a direct regulation of expressive activity or semi-expressive conduct. We hesitate to break that new ground in this unique case.”

Biden and his administration tried and failed to make progress on a separation agreement. Government lawyers told the court they did not find ByteDance to be trustworthy.

But Trump may see it differently. Though he originally supported efforts to ban TikTok in the U.S., he recently changed his position. “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said last month.

One provision of the law allows the president to give TikTok a 90-day extension if it is determined there has been “significant progress” toward arranging a “qualified divestiture” from its foreign owners.

Business

Musk and Zuckerberg Reflect New Blows Against D.E.I. Policies

Published

9 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

Musk and Zuckerberg Reflect New Blows Against D.E.I. Policies

The war on D.E.I. intensifies

Even before Donald Trump won in November, the conservative backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion policies was going strong.

But new revelations about the next Trump administration’s efforts to constrain what’s commonly known as D.E.I. — and corporate titans’ willingness to put such programs aside — suggest just how strident the pushback will be.

Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative is eyeing big cuts to federal diversity programs, according to The Washington Post. The nongovernmental panel, the Department of Government Efficiency, is said to be considering a report by a right-wing civil rights group that claims to have identified more than $120 billion in potential cuts in D.E.I.-related programs.

Among them, according to The Post, are ending programs to benefit Black farmers and businesses, as well as a Biden-era executive order reserving 15 percent of federal contracts for minority-owned businesses. (Separately, the F.B.I. confirmed that it had closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, prompting Trump to express anger that it had existed at all.)

The Times shed more light on Mark Zuckerberg’s move to unwind D.E.I. at Meta. In a meeting with Stephen Miller, the influential Trump aide, Zuckerberg signaled that he would do nothing to obstruct the president-elect’s agenda of cracking down on corporate D.E.I. culture. The tech mogul said new guidelines were coming — and soon after announced a rollback of content moderation rules and an end to Meta’s D.E.I. efforts.

Moreover, Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg, his former longtime lieutenant who was known for cultural advocacy programs like Lean In, for encouraging employee self-expression in the workplace, The Times adds. (The revelation stoked outrage online.)

The news underscores how defenses of D.E.I. are faltering. Many companies had already been rethinking their commitment to diversity programs before Trump’s victory, especially after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action at universities. But several corporate giants, including Amazon and McDonald’s, have ended or scaled back such programs post-election.

For some corporations, work on diversity will still take place, using language that isn’t as politically charged. But as corporate leaders respond to pressure from ascendant right-wing activists and seek to get on Trump’s good side, the pressure on D.E.I. isn’t going away.

In related news: Meta’s chief technology officer said the company had mishandled how it rolled out changes to diversity policies and content moderation. And for some workers whose careers haven’t advanced how they like, diversity programs may have simply been an excuse to sugarcoat the real reason they were passed over, according to a Wall Street Journal column.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

Israel’s security cabinet meets to approve the cease-fire deal. The vote is taking place after Israeli and Hamas negotiators resolved remaining disputes, with ministers expected to clear the agreement this weekend. If approved, Israel would withdraw eastward and both sides would release hostages or prisoners, potentially paving a path to ending the 15-month war.

China’s economy grows, but its population shrinks again. New data showed that the Chinese economy grew 5 percent last year, with increased exports and investment in manufacturing offsetting a slump in construction. But Beijing also disclosed that China’s population fell for a third straight year, despite an unexpected rise in births, portending a longer-term challenge to economic growth.

The Biden administration files a final flurry of regulatory actions. Regulators including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department struck settlements with companies including American Express, Block, General Motors and Toyota, and recommended charges against the parent of Snapchat. They’re a last burst of oversight actions before the Trump administration, which is expected to take a lighter hand in regulating business, takes office next week.

Markets feel reassured by Bessent

Bitcoin, stock futures and government bonds — all are rallying modestly on Friday, the final trading day of the Biden era.

Their fortunes appear to be buoyed by renewed bullishness for the next Trump administration, with investors feeling relieved about what they’ve heard from the president-elect’s Cabinet picks on how they intend to operate.

Markets were especially heartened by Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary pick, Scott Bessent. In his confirmation hearing on Thursday, Bessent played down the inflationary risks of Trump’s agenda.

Here are the highlights:

Bessent called for renewing and extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts to avert “economic calamity.” But while he said cutting fiscal spending was also important, he was noncommittal about repealing the country’s debt ceiling and said entitlement programs like Medicare would be safe.
He said tariffs should be imposed on select countries to fix trade imbalances or used as leverage to negotiate favorable trade deals. A new round directed at China seems inevitable. In response, China is zeroing in on American chipmakers.
Bessent said that Fed independence is key to American fiscal stability. But he warned that Trump, who has long grumbled about high interest rates, was still “going to make his views known.”
He demurred on the idea of the Fed creating a digital currency. Still, Bloomberg reports that Trump is expected to designate crypto as a national priority. Speculation is also growing that Trump will greenlight a federal Bitcoin reserve.

Other confirmation hearings raised questions about how the second Trump administration was shaping up. Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, the choice for interior secretary, criticized renewables as part of a wider national “electricity crisis.” The country needed to refocus on fossil fuels to maintain its global lead in energy-intensive sectors like artificial intelligence, he added.

But Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, dodged questions about Trump’s repeated vows to roll back or scrap the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate legislation.

And Scott Turner, the former N.F.L. player tapped to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, offered little detail about how he would address a housing crunch. His lack of clarity came as new Freddie Mac data showed mortgage rates hitting an eight-month high.

The surge is pricing some prospective buyers out of the market — despite the Fed having lowered borrowing costs — in a trend that has alarmed some market watchers.

The TikTok countdown continues

As TikTok nears a potential ban in the United States, elected officials are racing to find ways to delay a crisis that many of them helped stoke by backing the law behind the punishment.

Here’s where things stand.

President Biden is trying to make it Donald Trump’s problem. An administration official told NBC News that the White House was “exploring options” to forestall the app from going dark. Biden also does not plan to fine the companies that host the TikTok app, like Google and Apple, according to NBC News.

That would leave it up to Trump to enforce any punishments against TikTok and its partners. The president-elect has been weighing an executive order to let the app keep running until a U.S. buyer is found, though it is unclear how effective that would be.

Senate Democrats scrambled to arrange a delay. Lawmakers led by Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Cory Booker of New Jersey have sought to pass a bill giving TikTok more time to find a buyer. But Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, objected, citing concerns about dangers posed by the app.

A spokesperson for Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, told The Wall Street Journal that the minority leader spoke with Biden on Thursday about creating a delay.

TikTok’s C.E.O. is continuing to court Trump as well. In addition to sitting on the dais for the inauguration with top Cabinet picks and other tech moguls, Shou Chew is hosting a party for pro-Trump creators Sunday night, which will cost TikTok about $50,000 to throw.

Chew is also expected to attend a Trump victory rally on Sunday at the Capital One Arena, sitting in the suite of Raul Fernandez, a Trump donor and a partner at Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the sports team owner.

Musk’s gaming rank

Elon Musk has famously and unapologetically clashed with regulators and heads of state. But he is coming up against opponents who appear to have touched a nerve: gamers who have questioned his claims to video game mastery.

A recap: Musk has boasted lately on X lately about his gaming prowess, including soaring to the top of the global leader boards in Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2. Such feats require skills, sure, but also a lot of screen time, leading skeptics to question how the C.E.O. of six companies and a key adviser to Donald Trump finds the time.

Online sleuths increasingly believe they have found the answer: They’ve accused Musk of paying others to use his accounts and put in the hours to boost his rankings.

A popular YouTube gaming personality named Asmongold in particular accused Musk of being disingenuous about his rapid rise to the top.

Musk has taken those charges personally. The billionaire has shared videos of himself in action as a way to prove he’s the real deal. Musk also fired back at Asmongold, saying of the YouTuber, “he is NOT good at video games.”

Others came to Asmongold’s defense, using X’s Community Notes feature to annotate Musk’s posts.

Given the level of discussion online, this spat feels like it’s far from over.

THE SPEED READ

Deals

Rio Tinto and Glencore reportedly held talks last year about a deal, which would have combined two of the world’s biggest miners, though discussions aren’t currently active. (Bloomberg).
Junior investment bankers beware: Artificial intelligence tools can write 95 percent of an I.P.O. prospectus in minutes, according to David Solomon, Goldman Sachs’s C.E.O. (FT)

Politics, policy and regulation

Meet Ken Howery, the tech investor and friend of Elon Musk who will spearhead any deal talks with Denmark over Greenland. (NYT)
A group representing Capitol Hill staffers who work for progressive lawmakers is pushing for a 32-hour workweek. (Politico)

Best of the rest

A SpaceX rocket broke up on Thursday during a test flight, forcing the F.A.A. to divert several commercial flights to avoid the debris. (CNBC)
David Lynch, the director behind classic movies and TV shows including “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive” and “Twin Peaks,” has died. He was 78. (NYT)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.