MAGAISM/BRO CULTURE CRONYISM/CEOs RULE!/ELONISM I am deeply ashamed': Larry Summers to step back from public commitments after new Epstein emails Senator Elizabeth Warren: “[Summers] cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers and institutions — or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.” And an unidentified Trump administration official told Politico that companies and organizations should end their association with Summers. The former Treasury secretary, along with Bill Clinton and the Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, are among the Democratic figures whom the Justice Department is investigating over Epstein ties — at President Trump’s behest. Economist Warns That Trump’s Investments in the Tech Industry Could Crash the Whole Economy Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato, a University College London economics professor: “I think the kind of capitalism Trump has is crony capitalism.” “I would describe crony capitalism as Mafia-like. You’re showing your upper hand. You’re handing out favors to some. But then divide and conquer. Picking and choosing without a particular strategy.” She argues that the Intel deal is poorly designed because it doesn’t have any conditions to incentivize the company to be build new products, while the government simply acts as a passive investor. All SNAP recipients required to reapply as Trump admin cracks down on fraud: 'Business as usual is over' SEC to Allow Companies to Block Shareholder Proposals The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it will not express opinions to requests from companies asking to exclude shareholder proposals from their proxy voting materials during the 2025-2026 proxy season, effectively allowing companies to avoid voting on issues proposed by investors such as climate, sustainability and diversity at annual meetings. Elon Musk is set to make more than every U.S. elementary teacher combined Washing Post: Bezos White nationalist talking points and racial pseudoscience: welcome to Elon Musk’s Grokipedia: World’s richest person wanted to ‘purge’ propaganda from Wikipedia, so he created a compendium of racist disinformation STAKEHOLDERS RULE! ‘We’ve probably made housing unaffordable for a whole generation of Americans’: top real-estate CEO on the real cost of Covid economic firefighting Sean Dobson, CEO of The Amherst Group Ford CEO says he has 5,000 open mechanic jobs with 6-figure salaries from the shortage of manually skilled workers: ‘We are in trouble in our country’ CEO James D. Farley, Jr: $24,861,866; 253:1. Ford Family Executive Chair William Clay Ford, Jr. 20,379,912; 207:1 $519,845 for personal use of aircraft $1,394,538 for security E Only 16% of Large Companies on Track for Net Zero Missing at U.N.’s Climate Meeting: American Executives WOKE DATA Disney ditches 'diversity' and 'DEI' in business report for the first time since 2019 Nearly half of LGBTQ characters AXED from TV amid Trump-era rollback of woke DEI initiatives According to Deadline, around 41% of the 489 LGBTQ characters that were on the small screen this year will not return due to series cancellations and endings. AI Jeff Bezos is putting $6.2 billion—and himself as co-CEO—behind a new AI startup Project Prometheus Vik Bajaj: Stanford OpenAI accused of ‘consistent and dangerous pattern’ rushing product to market that is ‘inherently unsafe or lacking in needed guardrails’ The nonprofit Public Citizen is now demanding OpenAI withdraw Sora 2 from the public, writing in a letter to the company and CEO Sam Altman that the app’s hasty release so that it could launch ahead of competitors shows a “consistent and dangerous pattern of OpenAI rushing to market with a product that is either inherently unsafe or lacking in needed guardrails.” Sora 2, the letter says, shows a “reckless disregard” for product safety, as well as people’s rights to their own likeness and the stability of democracy. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In the age of AI, CEOs quietly signal that layoffs are a badge of honor People Are Having AI “Children” With Their AI Partners Eli Lilly CEO says he has 'at least 1 or 2 AIs running' during every meeting he's in David Ricks: Ricks said he doesn't like OpenAI's ChatGPT for science-related questions — "It's too verbal," he said. Instead, he prefers Anthropic's Claude and xAI's Grok. Still, he has to be careful to watch for hallucinations, an issue the frontier model companies are still trying to tamp down. The CEO of $2.2 billion AI company Turing can’t live without ChatGPT, swears by his Kindle, and has only taken 2 weeks of vacation in 7 years Jonathan Siddharth; Stanford STUPID The CFO Centre names Natalie Garfield as new CFO Heinz goes all-in on Thanksgiving leftovers with squeezable turkey gravy