Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is under fire after Spirit Airlines abruptly shut down, with critics citing her claim that blocking a merger that could have saved the troubled carrier was “a Biden win for flyers.”

Spirit announced early Saturday it would cease operations immediately, canceling all flights and shutting down customer service, leaving many travelers stranded.

The collapse is reigniting debate over whether federal regulators got it wrong in blocking a proposed JetBlue-Spirit merger, with opponents now arguing the decision may have reduced competition and contributed to the airline’s downfall.

“I’ve warned for months that a @JetBlue-@SpiritAirlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares,” Warren wrote in a March 2024 post on X. “@JusticeATR and @USDOT were right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation. This is a Biden win for flyers!”

Biden administration officials made similar arguments at the time. Former Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a March 2024 statement: “The Justice Department proved in court that a merger between JetBlue and Spirit would have caused tens of millions of travelers to face higher fares and fewer choices.” He added: “Today’s decision by JetBlue is yet another victory for the Justice Department’s work on behalf of American consumers.”

Then-Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter also framed the ruling as a win for consumers: “Our win in court is a victory for US travelers who deserve lower prices and better choices.”

The US Department of Transportation, led by former Secretary Pete Buttigieg, also backed the decision earlier in the process.

In a 2023 statement, the agency said it “fully supports the Justice Department’s lawsuit… to block the proposed JetBlue-Spirit merger,” arguing the deal would “eliminat[e] the largest, most aggressive ultra-low-cost competitor” and “substantially reduc[e] competition.”

Warren defended her position following Spirit’s collapse in a new post on X.

“Spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline,” she wrote. “FWIW, JetBlue merger failed because a judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, said the deal was illegal. Republicans are desperate to shift blame from higher costs hitting families.”

Warren’s office pointed to rising fuel costs as a key factor in Spirit’s collapse in an email to FOX Business.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, wrote on X that Spirit’s restructuring plan had assumed jet fuel costs of about $2.24 per gallon in 2026, but prices had climbed to roughly $4.51 per gallon by the end of April.

A community note on X, which is written by platform users, pushed back on Warren’s claims.

“Senator Warren previously helped block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit which would have resulted in a 5th major airline and more competition against major airlines.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy criticized the earlier decision to block the merger. 

“This merger should have been allowed,” Duffy said Saturday. “This is not better for travelers. This is not better for pricing. This is not better for competition… It’s worse. We had an airline go down,” Duffy said.

Spirit’s shutdown has left travelers scrambling, with major airlines capping fares and offering limited relief options for stranded passengers, while displaced workers are being directed to hiring pipelines at competing carriers, as previously reported by FOX Business.

The Justice Department sued to block the JetBlue-Spirit deal under antitrust law, arguing it would eliminate a key low-cost competitor and raise prices on overlapping routes.

A federal judge ultimately agreed, blocking the merger after a multi-week trial.

Spirit had struggled financially for years and had previously filed for bankruptcy as it sought to stabilize its business.

The Trump administration said it explored options to keep Spirit afloat, but a proposed bailout failed to materialize before the airline shut down operations, as FOX Business previously reported, leaving ongoing debate over whether earlier regulatory decisions played a role in its collapse.

Fox News Digital’s Robert McGreevy, Sophia Compton, Michael Sinkewicz and FOX Business’ Matthew Kazin contributed to this reporting.

This story originally appeared on NYPost

University of California Regent Jay Sures asked the right question this week about free speech on campus: Does it apply to everyone equally? Or just the far left?

Specifically: If a Palestinian terrorist has free speech at UC Berkeley, why can’t a former Israeli hostage have free speech at UCLA?

Sures was reacting to the shocking appearance — via remote link — of would-be Palestinian terrorist Israa Jaabis, who tried to ignite a gas tank to kill Israelis. She ended up burning herself and a police officer.

For some reason, students at UC Berkeley thought it was important to hear her perspective. 

However twisted that may be, Sures acknowledged that students and faculty have the right to hear Jaabis. 

But equally, students and faculty have the right to hear freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, who endured over 500 days in captivity at the hands of Palestinian terrorists who starved and tortured him.

It remains stunning that UCLA’s student government would protest Shem Tov’s address to a group of Jewish students on campus.

It’s a sign of what’s wrong in higher education — especially in California’s public university system, which is struggling to defend its once-liberal values after being captured by “woke” ideologues.

Berkeley is the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. Students demanded the right to campaign for outside political causes on campus — including civil rights, and opposition to the Vietnam War.

But over time, “free speech” became “left speech.” Conservative speakers have been heckled, threatened, and literally chased away at UC Berkeley in recent years.

The same sickness has spread across other UC campuses. 

Another disturbing incident took place at UCLA’s law school, where law students — who are supposed to take pride in using words to win arguments — disrupted a speech last month by Department of Homeland Security general counsel James Percival.

Instead of taking advantage of a unique opportunity to ask Percival questions, to challenge him, or even to debate with him, the UCLA law students tried to prevent him from speaking at all.

If any of those students become attorneys in California, they will have to take an oath. They will have to vow to “support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California,” and to conduct themselves “with dignity, courtesy, and integrity.”

They have already failed.

Free speech must apply to everyone — or it does not exist at all.

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This story originally appeared on NYPost

The only thing keeping the US economy from falling off a cliff is AI spending: Without it, the nation’s growth numbers would be in the toilet, dragged down by an Iran war that’s goosing gasoline prices and sending US consumers straight to the poor house.

That, at least, is the doom-and-gloom making the rounds in the mainstream media and on some parts of Wall Street lately — with Cassandras adding for good measure that the artificial-intelligence bubble is poised to pop any day now, leaving millions out of a job amid a cataclysm of corporate bankruptcies.

Count me as skeptical.

Ditto for plenty of less voluble market watchers who are tracking numbers closely.

No — things aren’t perfect.

Average Americans are feeling the sting of higher prices at the pump and at the grocery store.

And yes — the AI build-out will end at some point, meaning the economy will have to perform on its own.

But take a little time to vet the facts and you might be given pause.

In fact, you might even see how things could get noticeably better and soon if a few things break our way.

Veteran market strategist Jason Trennert of Strategas Research Partners tells me that “If it weren’t for the war, we would be talking about a reacceleration in the economy.”

He points to President Trump’s tax cuts for business and his ban on tax increases for consumers.

The tax breaks “almost seem prophetic in anticipation of the war,” he said.

He also points to unemployment claims last week coming in below 200,000 — the “lowest since 1969 NOT adjusted for the rise in the population.”

Payrolls increased by 178,000 in March.

Corporate profits remain strong, which is why stocks keep setting records.

They’re also a forward-looking indicator of good stuff to come.

That’s not to say the glass-half-empty crowd don’t have their talking points.

Inflation just clocked in at 3.5%, and 3.2% when you take out volatile stuff like energy and food.

Joe Biden’s spending and Jerome Powell’s feckless monetary policy sparked a historic inflation surge that has moderated but has still left prices elevated.

Labor gets efficient

This column has never been a fan of how President Trump carpet-bombed the world with tariffs.

Treating Canada like China isn’t good policy, and while the White House has backed off the scale of the “Liberation Day” levies, they are still embedded in the US economy.

They serve both as a tax increase on consumers and at least initially, prove to be inflationary.

Meanwhile, Powell, the soon-to-be-gone Fed chair, says that while unemployment numbers remain low, for people looking for work it “doesn’t feel like a good labor market” as fewer new jobs are being created even with GDP growing.

That looks like a scary fact of life with the advent of AI.

OK — but here’s where the “panicans,” as our president likes to call them, start to lose me.

Take a look at the latest economic data: The 2% economic growth — even if it’s mostly AI driven — is a strong number that’s likely to get stronger because of AI.

Even when spending stops on the build-out of the technology, the benefits in terms of productivity begin once it takes hold and labor becomes more efficient.

Inventions create work

I know there is a bear case for AI — namely that it will spark a job apocalypse.

We’ve written about it extensively on these pages.

But that is true of every innovative technology. If history is any guide, other, better paying jobs are always created.

The invention of the car made buggy-whip makers miserable until they found work on the Ford assembly line.

BTW, another major reason for the AI build-out is Trump’s tax and regulatory agenda.

His “Big Beautiful Bill” is one of the best pro-growth pieces of policy in recent history with its major tax incentives for business investment.

The result: 10%-plus growth in this area, according to the last GDP report.

Yes, much of it comes from AI, but other sectors are likewise poised to seize the advantage once the business cycle turns.

While the Iran conflict is clearly an economic drag, it won’t last forever nor will higher gas prices.

Like the job creation from technology advancement, the same pattern follows when you get a peace dividend.

And the economy — here and abroad — is bound to pick up once investors realize that the world’s biggest state sponsors of terrorism, the mullahs in Iran, are completely neutered.

This story originally appeared on NYPost

An old but memorable view holds that “an ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” 

If true, the British ambassador to the United States has utterly failed to do his duty.

Instead, Sir Christian Turner told a very unfortunate truth about Great Britain and its tattered ties with America.

His words became public just as King Charles and Queen Camilla arrived in Washington to try to mend relations with President Trump, who has publicly bashed Prime Minister Keir Starmer for refusing to support the US war effort in Iran. 

According to parts of a recording published by the Financial Times, Turner waded into trouble when he told visiting British students in February that he didn’t like the term “special relationship” to describe the link between the two countries. 

The phrase, said to have been coined by Winston Churchill after the Allied victory in World War II, was meant to describe the bond between the US and the UK that had endured over the centuries and through two world wars.

Since then, it has also survived the Cold War and two Gulf Wars. 

But Turner, who had just taken his post in Washington, was recorded as saying he wasn’t fond of the phrase because it was “quite nostalgic” and “backwards-looking,” while also suggesting it no longer applied.

He did tell the students, who were 16 and 17 years old, that UK-US ties were “strong” and that, “Particularly on defense and security, we are intertwined.”

Yet his government rebuked him when it said in a statement to CBS News that his remarks about the special relationship “are certainly not any reflection of the UK Government’s position.”

Perhaps, but there has been little that could be called “special” about the current state of bilateral relations.

Starmer has foolishly made common cause with anti-Trump leaders in France, Spain and Germany, almost as if he and they are as willing as Trump to break up the troubled NATO marriage. 

Nonetheless, it was something else that Turner said to the students in February that carries far greater significance for today and the near future.

As such, it commands our attention.

Almost casually, Turner said it seemed to him that the only country that has a “special relationship” with the United States these days is “probably Israel.” 

Whoa, Nellie. 

From a historic perspective, that is a remarkable statement about the state of the West and the world as a whole.

And yet, I see no evidence that Turner’s observation is wrong. 

Instead, his view accurately reflects the reality of the relationship between America and Israel, especially during the overlapping tenures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Europe’s failures 

Their shared views about the need to confront Islamist governments and terrorists became apparent in Trump’s first term, when the two men worked to thwart Iran’s regional reach through its terror proxies. 

Former President Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his red line in Syria, and his craven courting of Iran’s mullahs and their nuclear fever dreams, along with Palestinian hardliners, all served to incentivize the worst of the worst. 

Trump took office in 2017 determined to change that failed course, and did so in dramatic ways.

He withdrew from Obama’s weak-tea nuclear pact, and his droning execution of Iran’s terror chief, Qasem Soleimani, was coupled with clear pro-Israeli changes. 

He fulfilled America’s long-standing promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, making him the most popular American president ever in Israel. 

He finished the term by birthing the Abraham Accords, which expanded the Jewish state’s security and trade relationships with Muslim and Arab neighbors.

The opening of a Kosher restaurant in Dubai marked a historic moment.

Trump’s first term was also marked by his rock-solid belief that our European partners in NATO had not been paying anywhere near a fair share of the costs of the defense pact. 

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As angry as he was at them, he also correctly faulted his presidential predecessors who had let the Europeans get away with failing to contribute enough of the costs of a system designed to keep the Soviet Union, and now Russia, at bay. 

Although Trump has succeeded in getting most members to pay much more of the costs, there is also another key factor. 

It involves how Germany, France and the UK, among other European allies, have hobbled themselves militarily and economically to build expansive and massively expensive welfare states. 

To complicate matters even more, they opened their doors to as many as 25 million Muslim immigrants. Not surprisingly, the surge of antisemitism and violence against Jews continues across the continent. 

One outgrowth is that European governments have become increasingly estranged from Israel, as if they fear the loudest domestic voices.

The public celebrations after the Hamas savagery on Oct. 7, 2023, along with the condemnations for Israel daring to defend itself in Gaza, made it sickeningly clear where much of Europe stood.

Powerful partnership

Although Joe Biden made a show of supporting Israel against Hamas, much of the Democratic Party was more sympathetic to the Palestinians, as if Israel had no right to defend itself and eliminate the attackers. 

The overwrought charges of genocide, amplified by leftist media, fanned the coals of Jew-hatred and also cast doubt on America’s commitment to Israel’s survival. 

Thankfully, Trump’s 2024 election stopped that trend, and although recent polls show declining support for Israel across the political spectrum, Republicans and conservatives remain the most resilient supporters. 

For Israel, the very notion that it alone has a “special relationship” with America marks a breakout moment in its young history.

Its birth in 1948 and survival are testaments to a remarkable people who endured an effort to exterminate them and war after war when they reclaimed their ancient homeland. 

And now, as Ambassador Turner noted, Israel has a unique connection to the most powerful nation in human history and an American president who largely shares its worldview. 

The future is not guaranteed, of course, especially with both nations having important elections this year. 

More immediately, the tag-team partnership against Iran has done enormous damage to the mullahs’ fantasies of destroying the “little Satan” and the “great Satan” but has not yet succeeded in its three main objectives: ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions and ballistic missile programs, while also stopping its support for terror proxies.

The one certainty so far is that Israel has proved itself worthy of being the lone nation to have a “special relationship” with America.

Its resourcefulness, courage and commitment have made the two-country alliance extraordinarily powerful — and uniquely righteous.

Long may it endure and prevail.

This story originally appeared on NYPost

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The folksy wisdom and jokes that were a staple of the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting for decades when Warren Buffett was leading the show will be missing Saturday, but shareholders still started lining up at midnight outside a Nebraska arena to listen to new CEO Greg Abel.

Attendance is down significantly this year with the arena only a little over half full as the meeting started. That’s much different from the past few years when more than 40,000 attended to listen to the 95-year-old Buffett and — before his death in 2023, Buffett’s longtime partner Charlie Munger was always part of the fun. Buffett gave up the CEO title in January, but he remains chairman and will be sitting with the rest of the Berkshire board on the floor to listen at the meeting.

Saturday’s meeting began with a video tribute to Buffett filled with clips from the previous 60 years of annual meetings. The first clip showed the standing ovation Buffett received last year after he surprised shareholders by announcing that he would step down.

Abel then announced the symbolic move of retiring jerseys with Buffett’s and Munger’s names on them that will hang in the rafters of the arena.

Buffett took the microphone briefly to praise Abel and recognize Apple CEO Tim Cook, who attended the meeting. Buffett said Abel has done a tremendous job so far, and Cook helped Berkshire’s initial $35 billion investment in Apple grow to be worth $185 billion today. Cook even got a longer round of applause than Buffett did when he was introduced.

“Greg is doing everything I did and then some,” Buffett said, so his decision to step down has worked out great so far.

Abel has been on stage next to the legendary investor at the annual meetings for several years, but this year is his first time running the show. Investors expect the conversation to focus more on how the dozens of companies Berkshire owns are doing. The conglomerate owns major insurers like Geico, several major utilities like Pacificorp, BNSF railroad and an assortment of manufacturers, retail and service businesses.

Signs of the transition are peppered throughout the 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall where shareholders buy products from Berkshire companies. A caricature of Abel playing his favorite sport of hockey is front and center on commemorative boxes of See’s Candy with Buffett and Mrs. See in the background in hockey gear. At the Pilot Travel Center booth pictures of Abel and Buffett are plastered on the windshield of a semitrailer truck, but Abel is in the driver’s seat. And this year Jazwares created a Squishmallow version of Abel to go with the latest versions of Buffett and his longtime partner Charlie Munger as stuffed dolls that shareholders lined up to buy.

“Sadly we miss Warren and Charlie and that show which was fun, but it’s a business meeting for a lot of us and hearing what the businesses are doing is what it’s all about,” investor Chris Bloomstran, who is president of Semper Augustus Investments Group said.

Abel opened the meeting that way with a detailed discussion of how Berkshire’s biggest businesses are performing. He gave a granular explanation about the performance of Berkshire’s insurers, its railroad and its utilities. And he emphasized the way Berkshire is using artificial intelligence “to solve problems at our companies.”

But also many people travel to Omaha primarily to meet up with like-minded value investors, who practice the approach that Buffett employed, and attend some of the investment conferences and meetings that are scheduled around Berkshire’s shareholder meeting.

“That’s why I’m really here, really here is to network with other people,” said Bob Robotti, who runs his own investment company. He doesn’t expect surprises from Abel and the other Berkshire executives at the meeting. “They shouldn’t say anything that would be shocking and surprising because they’re consistent with what they do.”

Many investors are watching closely for any changes Abel might make, but there’s not a lot of reason expect anything big. After all, Abel has been with Berkshire for more than 25 years, and he had already been managing all of the conglomerate’s noninsurance businesses for nearly eight years by the time he was promoted.

Abel did make a few administrative changes to establish a team to help support him, but he has promised to maintain Berkshire’s culture that allows the CEOs of all of its businesses to largely run their day-to-day operations while consulting with headquarters on any major investments and sending any extra cash to Omaha.

The CEOs of Dairy Queen, See’s Candy, Jazwares and Brooks Running all said very little has changed since Abel was promoted other than they now report to NetJets CEO Adam Johnson who is overseeing 32 retail and service businesses.

“I think this is a very deeply rooted culture that Warren has created, and I believe the transition to Greg is going to be rooted in those values that Warren has for 60 years instituted and will continue,” Brooks CEO Dan Sheridan said.

For years Buffett always said he was having too much fun running Berkshire to ever retire, but once the shock of his announcement in the final minutes of last years meeting wore off the company’s executives quickly agreed this plan for the transition was better so Buffett can still be around to advise Abel.

“Berkshire is as strong today as it’s ever been and Warren is still part of it,” DQ CEO Troy Bader said as his staff sold Dilly Bars to shareholders. “Warren is still present. So that’s the greatest combination right now, to be able to have that transition in leadership where Greg and Warren can still work together.”

Abel is known to be a more demanding and hands-on boss than Buffett ever was, but he does that by challenging Berkshire’s CEOs to strengthen their competitive advantages while taking care of their customers. Abel asks tough questions and offers advice that his CEOs appreciate, but he doesn’t tell them exactly what to do.

And with Buffett remaining Berkshire’s chairman and its largest shareholder it’s unlikely that Abel will make any drastic changes. So shareholders shouldn’t expect Berkshire to start paying a dividend or that Abel will suddenly split the company up. Instead, Abel will continue building on the foundation Buffett established over 60 years.

Robotti said the performance of Berkshire’s businesses should be much more important to shareholders than the entertainment value of the annual meetings.

“My hope and expectation are they’re picking people who have competency in running a business and not necessarily public speakers and presenters,” Robotti said.

Berkshire said Saturday morning that its profits more than doubled in the first-quarter to $10.1 billion, or $7,027 per Class A share, as the value of its investments grew and most of its businesses improved.

The paper value of Berkshire’s investments always has a major impact on its bottom line, and it did record a $5.8 billion gain on the stocks it did sell. The value of the portfolio did slip to just over $288 billion.

Berkshire’s massive cash pile continues to grow, and it hit $397.4 billion at the end of the first quarter.

Most of Berkshire’s varied businesses reported better operating earnings this year. The insurance unit that includes Geico and a number of other companies reported an underwriting profit of $1.7 billion, up from $1.34 billion last year. Profits also grew somewhat at BNSF railroad and Berkshire’s utility and manufacturing companies.

But Abel acknowledged there is more improvement needed — especially at BNSF.

“We see a lot of opportunity here to continue to get better,” Abel said about the railroad.

This story originally appeared on NYPost

We are constantly told that the internet has made us more isolated, polarized and selfish. But as a data editor at Google, my job is to glean insights from the mountain of search data, and I can tell you that the database of our actual intentions proves the exact opposite. 

It is arguably the biggest publicly available dataset in existence and can reasonably claim to represent humanity across the world. When disasters strike, human beings reliably follow a strict cognitive path — first, we seek to understand the threat, and second, we take action to help others. 

Our baseline setting in a crisis is compassion. To see this in action, we can simply look at how people search in response to a major natural disaster.

During the initial stages of an event, there is a rapid evolution in search queries. As a threat approaches, we first see a rise in informational queries — people seeking to understand what is happening and the scale of the danger.

But as the seriousness of the situation dawns, something shifts. We search for “how” — shifting from passively gathering information to actively responding. We saw this during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, where people battening down the hatches and stockpiling emergency supplies paused to search for something personal, understandable and very human: “How to calm a dog in a storm.” At its core, this is very simple: first, information; second, action. Once we’re engaged, we assume we can do something about it and we want to know how. It’s how search Trends move from “what is a hurricane?” to “how to calm a dog in a storm.”

We can track exactly how this looks geographically, comparing those inside a disaster zone to those outside the epicenter. For those in the path of destruction, searches are understandably about survival and protecting the vulnerable. In September 2024, when Hurricane Helene made landfall, the affected states all saw spikes in searches related to keeping pets safe — “pet friendly hurricane shelters near me” in Florida and “how to calm a puppy down” in Georgia, for example.

But outside the epicenter, the response is overwhelmingly about finding ways to assist. Disastrous things happen and we want to do something to help, even when the events are man-made. On the day of Orlando’s Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, blood donations spiked +1,550% across the US. This was not just because people were lined up to give blood to the victims, but also reflected a desperate desire from the wider public to contribute however they could.

This desire to step in is a recurring feature of our collective brain. Searches for “How to help . . .” have never been higher than they are right now in the world of the mid-2020s. What is striking about the data is that often the searches are not about helping ourselves, or even our friends, but helping others.

When there’s a natural disaster, we search for how to help or donate to a cause. In the days after the devastating 2023 wildfire on the Hawaiian island of Maui, the top-trending search on donations across all of Google was “Maui fire donation.” We see this pattern repeat itself every time there is a huge global event — from the top-trending donation search for the Noto earthquake in Japan in 2024, to the massive surge in searches to “Donate to Ukraine” in 2022.

This desire to help is known as mutual aid, and I think it reflects a long-standing practice of supporting each other. The data tells me we want to help because we can identify with someone who’s going through something. We search for details about a crisis because we can see ourselves suffering in the same way. That is empathy. We even see this in our everyday searches for loved ones: in both the US and the UK, the top-searched query in this category for the last decade has been “How to help someone with depression,” followed closely by anxiety and panic attacks.

The things we care about day to day are changing constantly. Minute by minute, second by second, our attention is both utterly ephemeral and utterly focused at exactly the same time. But when it matters, that is when we search to help.

We may appear to be more polarized than ever before, yet this theme of trying to help others comes through again and again in the data.

Terrible things happen in the world every day. But when they do, our response is often the simplest one: to want to help, fix things and improve the world around us. The data strongly contradicts the idea that human beings are only interested in looking after themselves.

Rogers is the author of What We Ask Google: A Surprisingly Hopeful History of Humankind (Plume, out now.) 

This story originally appeared on NYPost

GameStop is preparing an offer for eBay as CEO Ryan Cohen pursues plans to boost the struggling videogame retailer’s market value more than tenfold, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Shares of eBay, which has a market capitalization of about $46 billion, jumped about 10% in extended trading. GameStop gained 7%. The company has a market value of nearly $12 billion.

GameStop has been quietly building a stake in eBay’s shares ahead of a potential offer, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. It could submit an offer for eBay as soon as later this month.

If eBay is not receptive, Cohen could decide to take the offer directly to the e-commerce company’s shareholders, the Journal said. Details of the potential offer could not be learned, the report added.

The companies and Cohen did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

GameStop in January unveiled a compensation package worth roughly $35 billion for Cohen, hinging on a turnaround that requires him to lift the struggling videogame retailer’s market capitalization to $100 billion and hit $10 billion in cumulative performance EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).

GameStop’s shares have slumped from all-time highs hit in 2021, when it became a retail investor darling during the pandemic-era meme-stock rally.

This story originally appeared on NYPost

The zombies are everywhere.

They’re staring at their phones as they carelessly cross the road.

They’re constantly watching videos, sound-on and loudly, on airplanes or in store check-out lines.

And they’re not Gen Z screenagers — now, the kids’ aging grandparents are quickly becoming the biggest screen addicts of all.

You can see it in their glazed-over eyes, distracted driving and the worst sin of all, ignoring the grandkids.

Even more concerning, though, are the worsening financial and safety repercussions to seniors’ excessive phone time.

Last month Wired reported that a med student in India used AI to create a character named Emily Hart — a pretty blonde “MAGA influencer” who claimed to enjoy posing in a stars-and-stripes bikini — and profited handsomely from the deception.

In March the equally fake Jessica Foster, billed as a US Army service member, was exposed as a money-spinning AI fiction in a similar scam.

Youngsters can spot AI from a mile away; it wasn’t Gen Z sending over cash.

And while losing a little money to an attractive but completely fake woman online is bad enough, some older internet addicts lose far more.

Abigail, 66, recently admitted to Fox News that she had given away her life savings of $81,000 to an online scammer who romanced her using AI to pretend to be actor Steve Burton.

“I looked at it, and I knew right away,” Abigail’s daughter said. “Mom, this is not real. This is AI.”

Her mother couldn’t tell.

Last year, The Post reported the tragic story of 76-year-old Thongbue Wongbandue of New Jersey, who traveled to New York City to meet a woman he met on the internet.

On the way there, the frail Wongbandue fell and hit his head.

He died three days later; the woman was AI-generated and didn’t exist.

And as online financial rackets keep rising, older internet users are increasingly in fraudsters’ crosshairs: They are “certainly more likely to fall for scams — and lose more money — than their younger counterparts,” warns attorney Steve Cohen.

Older Americans have long ranked as the happiest age cohort, and studies consistently show that real-life activities — like regular church attendance, volunteering and joining a club — increase quality of life and feelings of joy.

In the past our seniors, with more freedom and fewer responsibilities, have had the time for such activities, and they’ve benefited greatly from them.

But get them on the same dopamine-seeking loop that younger people have fallen for, and that all goes south very quickly.

The uptick in what tech writer Charlie Warzul has dubbed “Phone-Based Retirement” is at odds with how other age groups are starting to see screen usage.

Millennials and Gen Xers are the ones putting up the fight to get phones out of schools.

When I ask my podcast guests to give listeners a tip for better living, the answer more often than not is the same: “Get off your phone.”

We know it’s bad for us.

Even teens and 20-somethings are starting to understand that their overuse of screens has been a net negative in their lives.

They’re picking up “analog” hobbies like knitting and scrapbooking, installing social-media blocking devices and urging each other to “touch grass” — that is, to consciously choose to get out in the real world and spend less time off their phones.

While my own kids could certainly use less screen time, they’re noticeably judgmental toward peers they see as screen-addicted.

“He’s an indoor kid,” my 10-year-old recently told me as he described a schoolmate.

We can’t let “indoor grandma” become a thing.

We all know how important it is to monitor our kids’ screen usage, but it’s long past the time to encourage Pop-Pop and Gama to log off too.

These are the best years of their lives; do they really want to spend them with scam artists and AI bots?

Put down the Candy Crush, Grandpa, and follow the kids outside.

Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.

This story originally appeared on NYPost

Spirit Airlines, the infamous yellow budget airline that competed against major carriers for over three decades, turned off its engines for the final time early Saturday morning.

Company officials announced that the airline, which employed more than 17,000 people, has gone out of business and ceased operations “effective immediately” after it was unable to secure enough funding from the federal government. 

“It is with great disappointment that on May 2, 2026, Spirit Airlines started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately,” the company wrote in a statement to its website.

“To our Guests: all flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available. We are proud of the impact of our ultra-low-cost model on the industry over the last 34 years and had hoped to serve our Guests for many years to come,” the now defunct airline added.

Spirit’s website was revamped to correspond with the announcement, showing no flight information, changing its link to SpiritStructuring.com, and advising ticketed passengers to stay home.

“Spirit Guests should not go to the airport,” a warning reads.

Approximately 277 Spirit flights scheduled for Saturday had been cancelled, with a majority out of Southeast, according to FlightAware.

Spirit Airlines Flight 1833, one of the last flights for the company before operations were shut down, had traveled from Detroit, Mich., before landing at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport at 12:17 a.m.

“It was a pleasure working with you guys, and I wish you the best,” a DFW official told the pilots of the flight, according to audio shared on Reddit.

Spirit first began operations as a Michigan-based trucking company before turning to the sky and taking flight in the 1980s. The company had become synonymous with its bright yellow planes and very cheap seating.

Spirit was hanging onto hope that the Trump administration would bail out the company with a $500 million deal, but the embattled low-cost airline couldn’t get enough backing.

The troubled company had a rough time turning a profit since it was hit hard by the dramatic decrease in travel from Covid restrictions in 2020.

Travelers were also less likely to fly with Spirit, as the airline had flown about 1.7 million passengers in February, down half a million from February 2025.

Seating capacity had also been reduced to half as many seats as it had back in May 2024, the Associated Press reported.

Spirit had filed for bankruptcy twice in less than a year and the rising fuel costs associated with the ongoing Iran war were most likely the final nail in the coffin.

The abrupt closure of operations will leave tens of thousands of workers jobless and scrambling for employment.

The airline had employed approximately 17,000 personnel by the end of 2025, NBC News reported.

As the potential for a shutdown loomed over the airline industry earlier Friday night, passengers began to worry about the future of air travel.

“I think that if without spirit or without like cheaper airlines, the price of other airlines is going to shoot up, and I think that’ll be a big problem, especially for me, because I fly a lot,” Detroit Metro Airport traveler Lucas Trivedi told CBS News Detroit.

“I mean, I’d probably have to pick the next cheapest way. I don’t even know what I’m going to do, probably look at Expedia and find the cheapest option,” student Mariel Vargas-vonBreymann said.

Passengers at LAX became frustrated hours before the 2 a.m. announcement as their flights began to be cancelled.

“There’s no workers here, so everybody’s just lost,” one traveler told NBCLA, in front of an empty ticket counter.

“Nobody’s there, and I’m kinda confused. I’m not gonna talk to an AI to figure out what I needed to do,” Rayeed Abubaker told the outlet.

Passengers who had tickets for the now-cancelled flights will receive automatic refund payments back into their accounts, the airline said Saturday.

Those who used a travel agent were told to go through their liaison, while others who had used another method of booking, including vouchers or Free Spirit points will have to wait as repayment will be determined in bankruptcy court, the company said.

Southwest Airlines has stepped forward to assist travelers who were impacted by Spirit’s cessation of operations, offering special access fares.

It was not immediately known what will happen to the company’s properties, including its jets, following Saturday’s shutdown

This story originally appeared on NYPost

A manufactured crisis plays out daily in the parking lots of LA’s Home Depot stores. Day laborer centers, seven city-contracted hubs often nestled on private commercial property, have become battlegrounds.

And, no surprise, the NGOs now want more of your hard-earned dollars.

Nonprofit organizations like CARECEN demand millions in local taxpayer dollars not to help workers find jobs, but to shield illegal aliens from lawful federal enforcement by ICE.

LA City Hall bears primary responsibility for escalating this needless conflict. Mayor Karen Bass’ administration included these day laborer centers in her preliminary budget at flat funding levels, then meekly responded to advocates’ outrage by promising to “work with the City Council on any potential solutions to support immigrant communities further.”

This is classic Bass equivocation: maintaining the status quo while signaling openness to the very demands that undermine federal enforcement. She knows full well that immigration policy is the exclusive domain of the US government.

Yet she continues to operate and fund these centers on a patchwork of public, state, and private land, many adjacent to Home Depots.

This is not compassionate outreach; it is brazen obstructionism, subsidized by Angelenos. At a time when Bass proposes a $14.9 billion budget that already strains under homelessness, crime, and basic services, groups like CARECEN have the audacity to testify before the City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee, begging for a $2 million boost, from $1 million to $3 million, to install cameras, reinforce doors, and train staff on “making it harder” for US Border Patrol to enforce immigration law.

This is not public service. It is a direct subsidy for evading the Supremacy Clause.

Ironically, the fact that these centers exist is likely why ICE goes right to Home Depots across the Southland.

CARECEN and its allies frame these centers as lifelines for “exploited day laborers.” In reality, they are the exploiters, and operate their centers as de facto safe zones for individuals who have no legal right to work in the United States.

Home Depot never asked for this role. Yet CARECEN’s own executive director, Maegan Ortiz, used the April 2026 Los Angeles budget hearing to call for boycotting the company while simultaneously demanding more city money to “defend” against raids.

This is not advocacy; it is extortionate hypocrisy.

These nonprofits do not merely provide know-your-rights pamphlets or job matching. They lobby openly for expanded funding to deter federal agents, turning taxpayer-supported facilities into obstacles to the rule of law.

Jorge Nicolas of CARECEN demands City Hall hand over more of Angelenos’ hard-earned dollars so they can better frustrate the federal government’s sovereign authority over immigration.

Even more culpable are the elected officials who actively platform and amplify this agenda.

Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, presides over hearings where CARECEN and IDEPSCA (another NGO) openly testify for raid-defense dollars.

Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, a vocal member of the same committee and longtime ally of these groups, has joined coalitions explicitly linking day-laborer funding to “protecting immigrant communities” amid ICE actions.

Hernandez and her colleagues treat federal raids as an attack on the city rather than the lawful exercise of national authority. By entertaining these requests in public budget deliberations, complete with calls to boycott a major local employer like Home Depot, they do not resolve exploitation; they manufacture it.

Instead of enforcing rules that would protect vulnerable U.S. citizens and legal residents, City Hall subsidizes the very system that perpetuates the problem. The ordinance that conscripted Home Depot’s parking lots into this fight only deepens the resentment: A private company complying with local permitting rules now finds its property turned into a federal enforcement hotspot, while nonprofits profit from the chaos they help create.

This is fiscal malpractice wrapped in moral posturing.

By pouring local money into “defense” against lawful raids, CARECEN and others are not defending the exploited; they are exploiting public sympathy and public coffers to prolong an immigration crisis.

LA City Hall’s complicity turns a straightforward federal matter into a local culture war. Mayor Bass, Chair Yaroslavsky, Councilwoman Hernandez, and the rest of the council have a choice: Respect the constitutional line between local services and national sovereignty or continue funding activist nonprofits that treat ICE enforcement as the enemy.

The day laborer centers were never about humane job matching. They became, under this leadership, taxpayer-financed outposts of “resistance.”

Enough. It is time to defund the defiance and let federal law prevail.

Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based in San Francisco.

This story originally appeared on NYPost