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New York Citys congestion pricing program has only been in place for a few months, but it’s already reduced traffic, increased public transit ridership, led to fewer delays for school busesand drawn the ire of President Donald Trump. Trump has taken steps to kill the program, but on Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked that effort, keeping the toll program alive until at least early June. Congestion pricingwhich implements tolls on drivers who enter specific (and often gridlocked) areas of Manhattan in order to reduce traffic, lessen air pollution, and raise money for public transitwent into effect on January 5. In the first three months of the program, congestion pricing collected $159 millionfunds that will go toward badly needed transit upgrades, including infrastructure repairs and accessibility additions. It was the first program of its kind in the U.S., though congestion pricing has already been successful in cities like London, Stockholm, and Singapore. When Trump took office, his administration quickly took aim at congestion pricing. In February, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said he was revoking federal approval for the initiative. (Congestion pricing was approved under President Joe Biden.) The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which oversees congestion pricing, sued to block that move. Duffy then told New York Governor Kathy Hochul in April that if the state didnt end congestion pricing, it could see serious consequences, including withholding funding and approvals for highway projects beginning May 28. But a federal court judge in Manhattan has ruled to keep the program runninguntil at least June 9. U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman issued a temporary restraining order to the Trump administrations efforts. Liman ruled that the Trump administration could not immediately kill congestion pricing, nor could it retaliate against the state by withholding DOT funding. Weve wonagain, Hochul said in a statement. Though Hochul delayed the implementation of congestion pricing in the summer of 2024, she has since become a supporter of the program, especially as it has come under attack by Trump. Congestion pricing, she says, is the solution for clearing up traffic, cleaning city air, and investing in public transit. So heres the deal: Secretary Duffy can issue as many letters and social media posts as he wants,” she added, “but a court has blocked the Trump administration from retaliating against New York for reducing traffic and investing in transit. The MTA’s lawsuit against the Trump administration will now decide the future of congestion pricing. Judge Liman, a Trump appointee, said in Tuesday’s ruling that New York “would suffer irreparable harm” without a restraining order against the Trump administration’s efforts to kill congestion pricing, the New York Times reported. Liman may issue a longer-term protective order beyond the June 9 date, per the Times. Congestion pricing imparts a $9 toll on drivers during peak hours in a zone that covers most of Manhattan below 60th street. In just one month of the program, the impact was undeniably positive, transit officials said. During afternoon peak hours, drivers in the entire congestion relief zone are seeing travel times drop up to 59%. As of February, weekday bus ridership had already grown 6%, while weekend ridership was up 21%, compared to January 2024. In May, a New York Times analysis looked at the impact further, citing how local buses, and school buses, were less delayed, car crash injuries were down, parking violations were down, and fire response times were also slightly down. Public support for congestion pricing has also been on the rise. Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance, a nonprofit that supports public transit in New York City, echoed the governors statement that Judge Limans ruling was a victory for the city, and for transit riders specifically. Congestion relief is perfectly legal and thoroughly vetted. Opponents exhausted all plausible arguments against the program and now the increasingly outlandish theories are falling flat too, he said in a statement. “We are eager to keep saving time on the bus and look forward to more reliable and accessible subways thanks to this policy that continues to win support.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Nvidia’s earnings have become some of the most closely watched numbers on Wall Street. The company makes up about 6.5% of the Nasdaq 100, and 5.5% of the S&P 500, so a good quarter can send the Nasdaq index soaring. A marginal or poor one can send it tumbling. On Wednesday May 28, after the market close, the innovative chip giant will report its fiscal first quarter results for 2025 and expectations are once again high. Analysts expect Q1 revenue to grow 66% year over year to $43.28 billion, according to LSEG. That’s not the 262% increase it had in Q1 of last year, but its still an impressive advance. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $0.73 per share. Nvidia stock (Nasdaq: NVDA) is already on the rise in advance of earnings, gaining more than 3% as of 3:00 p.m. ET, with shares topping $135. Year to date, shares of NVDA are down 2%. Despite the high hopes, though, Nvidia is facing some substantial obstacles and investors will be looking to see what sort of impact those will have. Last month, the Trump administration put export limits on Nvidia’s H20 chip. That led the company to announce a Q2 write-down of $5.5 billion, related to inventory and purchase commitments for the chip. The longer-term impact of those restrictions could be worse. David OConnor, of BNP Paribas, wrote in a note Tuesday This inventory write-off implies a $15 billion H20 revenue hit on a rolling 12-month basis. The limitations on sales to China could wreak some havoc in the near-term for Nvidia. Bank of America analysts warned that guidance for the second quarter could be “messy,” saying “[Nvidia] could guide [second fiscal quarter revenue] to as low as $41 billion, below recently lowered ~$46 billion consensus.” Earnings per share consensus (an average of analyst expectations) could be lowered significantly as well in the second fiscal quarter. While the short term could be rocky, analysts are more interested in the back half of the year and will be listening to what the company has to say about the third and fourth quarters. Nvidia is reportedly working on a new chipset for China which would be compliant with the most recent regulations. And big contracts beyond China could potentially help make up any near-term shortfall. A Saudi savior Analysts have remained positive in advance of earnings. Piper Sandler, on Tuesday, reiterated its overweight rating on the company (meaning a belief that NVDA stock will outperform its peers or the market over the next 6 to 12 months), saying in a note, We advise investors to weather the uncertainty and stay long the stock as this is likely largely the last wave of negative news for NVDA this year. And despite its warning, Bank of America maintained its “buy” rating and price target for Nvidia. It raised that target from $150 to $160 last week following the announcement of a deal with Humain, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabias Public Investment Fund that is building a massive AI data center. (This deal seems less likely to face restrictions as the Trump administration has given its blessing to the arrangement, with AI czar David Sacks calling it a “game-changer in the global AI race.”) Nvidia is set to receive an estimated $7 billion in direct contracts from that deal. Phase 1 includes 18,000 Blackwell GPUs valued at roughly $700 million. Bank of America expects several hundred thousand of NVIDIAs most advanced GPUs to be shipped over the next five years. Collectively, 87% of the analysts who cover NVDA stock have a buy rating on the company. The share price has increased more than 600% in the past three years, and the company is the second largest public company in the world by market cap (behind Microsoft) with $3.3 trillion. There are some bears, though. Michael Burry, who rose to prominence by predicting the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, has purchased put options on the company, essentially betting against it. And other critics question how much longer the robust growth can continue, as competitors, such as Huawei, attract clients and cloud companies, like Microsoft and Google, work to create their own AI chips.
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E-Commerce
As the global migrant crisis continues to dominate our airwaves, Welcome.US has triggered a dramatic impact on U.S. immigration, resettling 800,000 refugees across all 50 states. The organizations co-founder and CEO, Nazanin Ash, shares how her team developed an effective and efficient model, unlocking a nonpartisan community of 2 million volunteers, supported by corporate partnerships with the likes of Meta, Google, and Uber. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You’ve said that newcomers resettling can bring big economic benefits to the U.S. economy. That’s kind of the opposite of a lot of political rhetoric, people worried about their jobs, and the cost of supporting newcomers. What are you looking at differently? Wow, so many indicators. I mean, let’s start at the top. Over 50% of our billion dollar companies were founded or co-founded by newcomers, many of them refugees. Scaled immigration pathways of the last three years are estimated to contribute $9 trillion to our economy over the next decade. You have thousands of communities, rural and semi-rural communities, across the country that have been losing population year over year, and are eager to reverse that decline. There are enormous needs. I mean the Census Bureau estimates that we require net immigration of nearly one and a half million a year just to sustain our economy. So, we not only have the capacity to welcome, we have a need to welcome. You’ve gotten support from corporate partners, Meta, Google, Uber, others. What’s been the role of business in Welcome’s efforts? Yes. So this has been an extraordinary public-private partnership. We partnered with the private sector to build the civic infrastructure that would scale these new pathways. That included designing a campaign. We did that with assets from Accenture’s Droga5 partnership. We did that with resources from Goldman Sachs. It was carried with airtime from Comcast, and then distributed to our target audience with Google Ads. They provided massive technological support for our sort of many to many, our B2C strategy, that allowed us to quickly scale. And then the framework of technology that they helped us create was not only our matching platform and our online sponsorship hubs, but it was also the framework that allowed us to scale flight credits, and housing credits, and matching grants, and rideshare credits from Lyft and Uber. It wasn’t a, “Write us a check and go away,” partnership. It was a deep collaboration that was about bringing our collective efforts to build a seamless infrastructure and journey that wrapped around sponsors and newcomers, and provided them the support they need, and empowered them to do this work. How did you build these relationships with all of these organizations? I mean, I know you have something called the Welcome.US CEO Council. It’s got like 40 of the biggest name CEOs. Is that where you started? Do you start at the top of these organizations? How did all that come together? We launched in the crucible of the Afghan evacuation. When the U.S. faced this extraordinary challenge of resettling 80,000 Afghan newcomers on a government resettlement infrastructure that had resettled just 11,400 refugees the year before. So, that’s when we developed this public-private partnership with government. We were like, “This is a problem that’s way too big for government to solve alone.” But we felt like if we tapped into innovations of the private sector, willingness of the American people, we could find much more capacity. And indeed, when we went to these CEOs, and asked them to help, not a single one said no. These leaders know exactly what the challenges are. Peter Zaffino, CEO of AIG, wrote about this in 2015. He talked about unmanaged migration as one of the top five things CEOs should be concerned about as risks. He talked about the benefits if it’s managed, and the risks if it’s not, and he’s talking about global instability, and security, rise of authoritarian regimes. David Risher looked at our methodology, and he was like, “Oh, I see what you’re doing. This is like what Airbnb, and Lyft, and Uber did. You are not trying to reform government systems from the inside. It’s a whole new business model that you’ve built alongside.” And now, those are lessons we can carry into the traditional system. I think they were deeply inspired to see how communities engaged, right? Like the social cohesion, the bridge building, the community-driven aspect of this work is so important for the moment we’re in. So what’s at stake for Welcome.US right now? We feel passionately about continuing to grow this extraordinary movement of welcomers. So, we are pivoting our technology, our campaign, our systems, our infrastructure, to help Americans volunteer, and serve as citizen guides for the 8.5 million green card holders who are eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship, but haven’t done it yet. There’s paperwork you have to file, you have to pass an English test, you have to pass a civics test, you have to pay a fee. Those are barriers that can be overcome if you have a friend, and a guide, and a welcomer who’s walking alongside you, and helping you through it. So, we’re excited to get the word out. We’re excited for all these policymakers to be educated on what their communities have been experiencing, and we feel really confident that these are the solutions that should rise, and will rise. Can I ask you, why do you do this? I do this work for a number of reasons. My parents came here from Iran as exchange students, and they intended to pursue their education and return. They had me accidentally, they were still undergraduates when they had me. The Iranian Revolution happened in the last year of my dad’s PhD program, and so they decided to stay. And if you look at what is happening with women in Iran today, you know what my future would’ve been otherwise. So, that led to a career of trying to remove those barrier of human potential for others. And I have deep faith in the American people. I come to this with a tremendous amount of patriotism, because we were the first nation with a written constitution that conferred human rights and human dignity on the basis of personhood, and not on the basis of citizenship. You get emotional about this. I mean, you really feel it. Yeah. We’re built on this idea that we’re a place for strivers. We’re a place for people seeking freedom, and opportunity, and self-determination. And our sponsors talk about how their experience as welcomers reintroduced them to that value. One of our sponsors shared a story once, it’s Leslie Sperry. She’s part of a sponsor group in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and she sponsored a Congolese family who had spent three generations in a refugee camp, and she was walking the father, Meshack, after she had visited the family to see how they were doing. And she tells the story of how he threw out his arms and said, “I’m free.” And for her, it was this shock, and reminder that, yeah, that’s what we have to offer, freedom. And how incredible to be able to offer that to the next generation of new Americans. These welcomers are having a generational impact in someone’s lives. They’re putting them on a completely different trajectory. Just as my life was put on a completely different trajectory. What an amazing thing to do as a country, and as Americans.
Category:
E-Commerce
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