Business

(Reuters) -Walt Disney Co and streaming provider FuboTV are nearing a deal to combine their online live TV businesses, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Disney will fold its Hulu + Live TV business into FuboTV, creating a new venture that will be 70% owned by Disney and the rest by FuboTV, the report said.

Disney and FuboTV did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Following the report, shares of FuboTV, which had a market value of about $480 million as of last close, surged nearly 32% to $1.90 in premarket trading. Disney was up marginally.

As part of the deal, Fubo plans to drop its legal claims against Disney, Fox Corp and Warner Bros Discovery over Venu Sports, the report said, removing a hurdle to the roll-out of their upcoming sports streaming platform.

FuboTV had sued the big media companies last February, saying Venu Sports would violate U.S. antitrust law by reducing competition and driving up prices. A district court judge found that Fubo is likely to succeed in its antitrust claims, and issued the injunction temporarily barring Venu’s launch.

The three media majors will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals to reverse the ruling that blocked Venu’s launch in a hearing on Monday.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

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A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan

The first full trading week of 2025 kicks off with markets positioning for the Jan. 20 inauguration of Donald Trump as President, lifting U.S. ‘long bond’ yields to their highest in two years and forcing Beijing to calm nervy Chinese markets.

With fiscal concerns to the fore as a new Congress convened on Friday and narrowly re-elected Republican Mike Johnson as speaker, the 30-year Treasury bond yield on Monday hit its highest level in more than two years – breaching last year’s peak to reach 4.85%.

The long bond yield is now stalking the 5% level last topped in late 2023 and the 2-to-30-year yield curve gap is at its widest in more than three months.

Reflecting the degree to which rising long-term borrowing rates are down to concerns about fiscal impact of tax cuts and long-term inflation uncertainty, the New York Federal Reserve’s estimate of the 10-year ‘term premium’ demanded by investors to hold longer term debt to maturity is at its highest since 2015.

But the brisk growth and relatively hawkish Fed picture is playing its part too, with Friday’s surprisingly upbeat U.S. manufacturing reading for December adding to the prior day’s news of a drop in weekly jobless claims to an eight-month low.

With a big week of labor market updates ahead, culminating in an expected 150,000 rise in national payrolls in Friday’s employment report, the U.S. economic surprise index has returned to positive territory after a brief dip negative last week for the first time in three months.

Adding to the inflation anxiety has been a return of U.S. crude oil prices to their highest since October – albeit off a touch first thing Monday.

As for Fed thinking, futures pricing shows markets even more hawkish than the central bank – which recently indicated just two interest rate cuts this year. Fed futures now have just one quarter-point cut priced by June only see just over a 50% chance of a second cut by year end. ]

San Francisco Fed boss Mary Daly and Fed governor Adriana Kugler said over the weekend that the job was not yet done on reining in inflation.

The brisk underlying growth picture and tax cut hopes did see U.S. stocks regain their poise on Friday after a bumpy couple of holiday-strewn weeks. Wall Street stock futures were up again ahead of Monday’s bell, with one eye on the imminent fourth-quarter earnings season.

Sailing to two-year highs last week on that interest rate picture and speculation about draconian trade tariffs from the incoming Trump administration, the dollar has dialled back a bit on Monday – with Chinese officials mobilising to steady the yuan as it plumbed 16-month lows and threatened pivotal historical levels around 7.35 per dollar.

China’s stock exchanges and central bank on Monday scrambled to defend the currency and shore up a stock market relapse that has seen the mainland Chinese stock index lose more than 5% last week.

Seeking to soothe investor concern about Trump’s return to the White House and Beijing’s ability to revive its spluttering economy in the face of new tariff threats, Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges recently held meetings with foreign institutions to reaffirm commitments to open up China’s capital markets.

But on Monday sources said the exchanges had asked large mutual funds to restrict stock selling at the start of the year.

There were also reports the People’s Bank of China could issue more yuan bills in Hong Kong in January, a sign authorities want to absorb currency to dampen rising speculation. Financial News, a central bank publication, said the PBOC has the tools and the experience to react to yuan depreciation.

But with monetary easing being a key part of the government’s ongoing economic stimulus, the bond yield gap with the United States is now yawning – and 10-year U.S. Treasury debt spreads over Chinese equivalents topped 300 basis points for the first time on Monday.

Although calmer than last week, the CSI300 also ended in the red again earlier today.

The latest data showed China’s services activity expanded at the fastest pace in seven months in December, driven by a surge in domestic demand. But orders from abroad declined, reflecting the growing trade risks.

Elsewhere, the Canadian dollar was calm after reports Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is increasingly likely to announce his departure – even though he has not made a final decision.

The Globe and Mail reported Trudeau was expected to confirm as early as Monday that he would step down as leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party after nine years in office.

The decision throws the spotlight on this year’s election, which must be held by October, and could see a protracted hiatus at the helm of the ruling Liberals, now trailing in the polls.

It remains unclear whether Trudeau will leave immediately or stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal leader is selected.

Key developments that should provide more direction to U.S. markets later on Monday:

* Final U.S. December business survey readings from S&P Global, November factory goods orders

* Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook speaks

* US Treasury sells 3 and 6-month bills

(By Mike Dolan, editing by Ed Osmond; mike.dolan@thomsonreuters.com)

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NEW YORK (AP) — The man who drove a truck into a crowd of people in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, killing 14, had previously scouted the French Quarter and recorded video with his Meta smart glasses, the FBI said.

On Oct. 31, Shamsud-Din Jabbar recorded video with the glasses as he cycled through the French Quarter and plotted the attack, said Lyonel Myrthil, FBI special agent in charge of the New Orleans field office. Jabbar also wore the glasses, which are capable of livestreaming, during the attack, but did not activate them.

A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, declined to comment.

Here’s what the glasses are capable of:

Meta glasses, made in partnership with Ray-Ban, are frames with a built-in camera, speakers and artificial intelligence that can be controlled with your voice, buttons and some simple gestures. Some functions, such as listening to music or interacting with Meta’s AI assistant, require the device to be either paired with a phone or able to access the internet.

The wearable does not have a display built into the lens, unlike some past industry attempts at building augmented-reality smart glasses. However, Meta has said it is working on a pair of glasses that will give users a fully holographic experience.

One of the glasses’ main selling points is the ability to capture images and video using the onboard camera, then upload those files to Instagram or Facebook. You can also livestream, but only to Meta’s compatible social platforms.

You can also use the glasses to make audio and video calls, message people or listen to music.

The camera also allows Meta’s AI assistant to see what you’re seeing, allowing it to translate text into multiple languages (spoken back to you, or shown on a paired phone app), and answer simple questions, such as searching the nearest landmark to your location. The glasses are largely a hands-free experience so you will be talking to your device — and it will reply.

The glasses currently cannot perform complex tasks that other digital assistants might be able to, like booking you a reservation at a restaurant or giving you turn-by-turn directions while you’re on the move. And there’s no display in the lens, so there isn’t a viewfinder for framing photos or video.

There are also visual indicators built into the system that allow bystanders to know when you’re shooting video or taking photos. This LED privacy indicator stays on while you use the camera functions. According to Meta, you can’t disable this light to be more discreet in your actions.

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(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures edged higher on Monday, building on a late rally last week, as investors bought into technology stocks on continued optimism around AI and awaited crucial economic data that could set the tone for the U.S. monetary policy path.

At 6:16 a.m. ET (1116 GMT), S&P 500 e-minis were up 0.51%, Nasdaq 100 e-minis added 0.82% and Dow e-minis climbed 0.10%.

Tech stocks led gains again, with chipmakers getting a lift from Microsoft’s plan to invest $80 billion to develop AI-enabled data centers, as well as Foxconn’s forecast-beating fourth-quarter revenue.

Shares of Nvidia rose 2% in premarket trading, while those in Advanced Micro Devices, Micron Technology and Broadcom rose between 1.3% and 3.4%.

U.S. stocks rebounded sharply on Friday after a string of losses in December and the first few sessions of the new year when concerns about high valuations, rising Treasury yields and thin liquidity saw traders pullback after a strong run in 2024.

In a week packed with economic data and speeches from Federal Reserve officials, investors will look for clues on the pace of monetary policy easing this year.

Focus will be on Friday’s monthly payrolls data, which is expected to show U.S. job growth slowed in December compared with the previous month, while unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to take the oath of office on Jan. 20. While Trump’s proposals – which include cutting corporate taxes, easing regulations and imposing tariffs – could boost corporate profits and energize the economy, they also run the risk of placing upward pressure on inflation.

Among other stocks, Lyft rose about 5% after Benchmark upgraded the ride-hailing firm’s stock to “buy” from “hold.”

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is moving to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, a last-minute effort to block possible action by the incoming Trump administration to expand offshore drilling.

Biden, whose term expires in two weeks, said he is using authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from future oil and natural gas leasing.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement.

“As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” he said.

Biden’s orders would not affect large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, where most U.S. offshore drilling occurs, but it would protect coastlines along California, Florida and other states from future drilling.

Biden’s actions, which protect more than 625 million acres of federal waters, could be difficult for President-elect Donald Trump to unwind, since they would likely require an act of Congress to repeal. Trump himself has a complicated history on offshore drilling. He signed a memorandum in 2020 directing the Interior secretary to prohibit drilling in the waters off both Florida coasts, and off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina until 2032.

The action came after Trump initially moved to vastly expand offshore drilling, before retreating amid widespread opposition in Florida and other coastal states.

Trump has vowed to establish what he calls American “energy dominance” around the world as he seeks to boost U.S. oil and gas drilling and move away from Biden’s focus on climate change.

Environmental advocates hailed Biden’s action, saying new oil and gas drilling must be sharply curtailed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. 2024 was the hottest in recorded history.

“This is an epic ocean victory!” said Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the environmental group Oceana.

Gordon thanked Biden “for listening to the voices from coastal communities” that oppose drilling and “contributing to the bipartisan tradition of protecting our coasts.”

Biden’s actions build on the legacy of Democratic and Republican presidents to protect coastal water from offshore drilling, Gordon said, adding that U.S. coastlines are home to tens of millions of Americans and support billions of dollars of economic activity that depend on a clean environment, abundant wildlife and thriving fisheries.

In balancing multiple uses of America’s oceans, Biden said it was clear that the areas he is withdrawing from fossil fuel use show “relatively minimal potential” that does not justify possible environmental, public health and economic risks that would come from new leasing and drilling.

A spokeswoman for Trump mocked Biden, saying, “Joe Biden clearly wants high gas prices to be his legacy.”

The spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, called Biden’s action “a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”

Biden has proposed up to three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, but none in Alaska, as he tries to navigate between energy companies seeking greater oil and gas production and environmental activists who want him to shut down new offshore drilling in the fight against climate change.

A five-year drilling plan approved in 2023 includes proposed offshore sales in 2025, 2027 and 2029. The three lease sales are the minimum number the Democratic administration could legally offer if it wants to continue expanding offshore wind development.

Under the terms of a 2022 climate law, the government must offer at least 60 million acres (24.2 million hectares) of offshore oil and gas leases in any one-year period before it can offer offshore wind leases.

Biden, whose decision to approve the huge Willow oil project in Alaska drew strong condemnation from environmental groups, has previously limited offshore drilling in other areas of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Sunday plans to sign into law a measure that boosts Social Security payments for current and former public employees, affecting nearly 3 million people who receive pensions from their time as teachers, firefighters, police officers and in other public service jobs.

Advocates say the Social Security Fairness Act rights a decades-old disparity, though it will also put strain on Social Security Trust Funds, which face a looming insolvency crisis.

The bill rescinds two provisions — the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — that limit Social Security benefits for recipients if they get retirement payments from other sources, including public retirement programs from a state or local government.

The Congressional Research Service estimated that in December 2023, there were 745,679 people, about 1% of all Social Security beneficiaries, who had their benefits reduced by the Government Pension Offset. About 2.1 million people, or about 3% of all beneficiaries, were affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in September that eliminating the Windfall Elimination Provision would boost monthly payments to the affected beneficiaries by an average of $360 by December 2025. Ending the Government Pension Offset would increase monthly benefits in December 2025 by an average of $700 for 380,000 recipients getting benefits based on living spouses, according to the CBO. The increase would be an average of $1,190 for 390,000 or surviving spouses getting a widow or widower benefit.

Those amounts would increase over time with Social Security’s regular cost-of-living adjustments.

The change is to payments from January 2024 and beyond, meaning the Social Security Administration would owe back-dated payments. The measure as passed by Congress says the Social Security commissioner “shall adjust primary insurance amounts to the extent necessary to take into account” changes in the law. It’s not immediately clear how this will happen or whether people affected will have to take any action.

Edward Kelly, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said firefighters across the country are “excited to see the change — we’ve righted a 40-year wrong.” Kelly said the policy was “far more egregious for surviving spouses of firefighters who paid their own quotas into Social Security but were victimized by the government pension system.”

The IAFF has roughly 320,000 members, which does not include hundreds of thousands of retirees who will benefit from the change.

“Now firefighters who get paid very little can now afford to actually retire,” Kelly said.

Sherrod Brown, who as an Ohio senator pushed for the proposal for years, lost his reelection bid in November. Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees labor union, thanked Brown for his advocacy.

“Over two million public service workers will finally be able to access the Social Security benefits they spent their careers paying into,” Saunders said in a statement. “Many will finally be able to enjoy retirement after a lifetime of service.”

National Education Association President Becky Pringle said the law is “a historic victory that will improve the lives of educators, first responders, postal workers and others who dedicate their lives to public service in their communities.”

And while some Republicans such as Maine Sen. Susan Collins supported the legislation, others, including Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, voted against it. “We caved to the pressure of the moment instead of doing this on a sustainable basis,” Tillis told The Associated Press last month.

Still, Republican supporters of the bill said there was a rare opportunity to address what they described as an unfair section of federal law that hurts public service retirees.

The future of Social Security has become a top political issue and was a major point of contention in the 2024 election. About 72.5 million people, including retirees, disabled people and children, receive Social Security benefits.

The policy changes from the new law will heap more administrative work on the Social Security Administration, which is already at its lowest staffing level in decades. The agency, currently under a hiring freeze, has a staff of about 56,645 — the lowest level in over 50 years even as it serves more people than ever.

The annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released last May said the program’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2035. The new law will hasten the program’s insolvency date by about half a year. ___

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Incoming first lady Melania Trump will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Brett Ratner and distributed by Amazon Prime Video. The streaming arm of the tech giant got exclusive licensing rights for a streaming and theatrical release later this year, the company said Sunday.

Filming is already underway on the documentary. The company said in a statement that the film will give viewers an “unprecedented behind-the-scenes look” at Melania Trump and also promised a “truly unique story.”

The former and now future first lady also released a self-titled memoir late last year. Her husband takes office on Jan. 20.

The film is the latest connection between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. The company in December announced plans to donate $1 million to the President-elect’s inauguration fund, and said that it would also stream Trump’s inauguration on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1 million.

The two men had been at odds in the past. During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against the political coverage at The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. But he’s struck a more conciliatory tone recently as Amazon and other tech companies seek to improve their relationship with the incoming president.

In December, Bezos expressed some excitement about potential regulatory cutbacks in the coming years and said he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second term.

Bezos in October did not allow the Post to endorse a presidential candidate, a move that led to tens of thousands of people canceling their subscriptions and to protests from journalists with a deep history at the newspaper. This weekend, a cartoonist quit her job after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before the president-elect.

The film also marks the first project that Ratner has directed since he was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, including actor Olivia Munn, in the early days of the #MeToo reckoning in November 2017. Ratner, whose lawyer denied the allegations, directed the “Rush Hour” film series, “Red Dragon” and ’’X-Men: The Last Stand.”

Fernando Sulichin, an Argentine filmmaker, is executive producing the film, which began shooting in December.

Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s third wife, has been an enigmatic figure since her husband announced he was running in the 2016 election. She had sought to maintain her privacy even as she served as first lady, focusing on raising their son, Barron, and promoting her “Be Best” initiative to support the “social, emotional, and physical health of children.”

While she appeared at her husband’s campaign launch event for 2024 and attended the closing night of the Republican National Convention this summer, she has otherwise stayed off the campaign trail, though the demands of again being first lady may dictate a higher public profile after Inauguration Day.

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This story has been updated to correct the director’s first name in the headline.

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By Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Even as Nippon Steel faced skepticism of its doomed $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel from the Biden administration, it was also contending with headwinds from an unlikely source: the CEO of a rival bidder for the firm who repeatedly cast doubt on the deal’s prospects to investors.

    Lourenco Goncalves, CEO of steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs, which made a failed $7 billion bid for U.S. Steel in August 2023, participated in at least nine calls assuring investors that President Joe Biden would scuttle the Nippon Steel merger months before he did so on Friday, according to summaries of investor calls included in a Dec. 17 letter from lawyers for Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) and confirmed to Reuters by two participants in the calls. 

“I can’t force U.S. Steel to sell to me, but I can work my magic to make a deal that I don’t agree with not to close,” he told investors on a March 13 call hosted by JP Morgan, the letter quoted Goncalves as saying.

“It’s not closing, and Biden hasn’t spoken yet. He will.”

The next day, Biden announced his opposition to the tie-up.

CFIUS, which reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security risks, could not reach consensus on whether to greenlight the Nippon Steel transaction and referred the matter to Biden in late December, setting the stage for his Friday block.

Goncalves declined to comment and a representative from Cleveland-Cliffs did not respond to a request for comment. Nippon Steel and the Treasury Department, which leads CFIUS, also declined to comment. U.S. Steel said the company will continue to fight for this deal in response to questions for this story. The White House said neither Goncalves nor his comments played a role in Biden’s decision to kill the deal. It said on Friday that the proposed purchase presented national security concerns.

JP Morgan declined to comment, but a note to clients summarizing its March 2024 industrials conference mentions the event with Goncalves, saying “management reiterated its expectation that the deal will not close.” A participant in the call confirmed Goncalves’ forecast Biden would soon take aim at the deal.

While Goncalves made similar comments about the deal to analysts on three earnings calls this year, his private remarks made throughout 2024 about the deal process show the extent of his effort to cast doubt on Nippon’s bid for U.S. Steel. His comments sometimes preceded drops in the U.S. Steel share price, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel told CFIUS.

Cleveland-Cliffs has previously expressed interest in making another bid.

The steelmaker, which has been led by Brazilian-born Goncalves for over a decade, made the unsolicited bid for U.S. Steel with support from the United Steelworkers union, arguing the companies combined would “create a lower-cost, more innovative, and stronger domestic supplier.”

But U.S. Steel raised concerns a tie-up with Cleveland-Cliffs risked being shot down by antitrust regulators because it would consolidate the supply of steel to U.S. automakers and put up to 95% of U.S. iron ore production under the control of one company. U.S. Steel’s board rejected the offer.

Nippon Steel’s December all-cash offer was valued at twice Cleveland-Cliffs’ price, and Nippon later promised to revitalize U.S. Steel’s aging mills with investment from an allied nation.

But the offer became politicized, with both Biden and Republican President-Elect Donald Trump pledging to kill the deal as they wooed voters in the swing state of Pennsylvania where U.S. Steel is headquartered.

Trump and Biden both asserted the company should remain American-owned after USW President David McCall expressed his opposition to the tie-up.

Biden’s objections led to “impermissible undue influence” from the White House on CFIUS’s national security review of the tie-up, the companies alleged in a letter obtained by Reuters last month that also contained the summaries of the investor calls with Goncalves.

Goncalves previously disputed CFIUS was considering the merits of the deal.

In a March 15 call with a top investor in U.S. Steel confirmed by a participant in the call, he said, “[T]here’s no process. This is not going to be a process. CFIUS is just cover for a President to kill a deal. CFIUS is a bunch of bureaucrats, second and third level, inside the cabinet…It means the President can do whatever he wants.”

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Anna Driver)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband former President Bill Clinton, daughter Chelsea Clinton and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House ceremony.

“For the final time as president I have the honor bestowing the Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor, on a group of extraordinary, truly extraordinary people, who gave their sacred effort, their sacred effort, to shape the culture and the cause of America,” Biden said in his opening remarks.

“Let me just say to each of you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all you’ve done to help this country,” Biden said Saturday.

Four medals were awarded posthumously. They went to George W. Romney, who served as both a Michigan governor and secretary of housing and urban development; former Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy; Ash Carter, a former secretary of defense; and Fannie Lou Hamer, who founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Kennedy is father to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary. Biden said, “Bobby is one of my true political heroes. I love and I miss him dearly.”

Romney is the father of former Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, one of Trump’s strongest conservative critics.

Biden has days left in the Presidential office and has spent the last few days issuing awards and medals to valiant military veterans, courageous law enforcement officials and exceptional Americans.

The White House said the Medal of Freedom recipients have made “exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”

Major philanthropists receiving the award include Spanish American chef José Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen charity has become one of the world’s most recognized food relief organizations, and Bono, the front man for rock band U2 and a social justice activist.

Soros’ son Alex Soros accepted the medal on his father’s behalf. In an emailed statement, Soros said: “As an immigrant who found freedom and prosperity in America, I am deeply moved by this honor.”

Sports and entertainment stars recognized include professional soccer player Lionel Messi, who did not attend the event; retired Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend and businessman Earvin “Magic” Johnson; actor Michael J. Fox, who is an outspoken advocate for Parkinson’s disease research and development; and William Sanford Nye, known to generations of students as “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

Other awardees include conservationist Jane Goodall; longtime Vogue Magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour; American fashion designer Ralph Lauren; American Film Institute founder George Stevens Jr.; entrepreneur and LGBTQ+ activist Tim Gill; and David Rubenstein, co-founder of The Carlyle Group global investment firm.

Lauren is the first fashion designer to receive the honor.

Last year, Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 19 people, including the late Medgar Evers, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina and actor Michelle Yeoh.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded 654 times between 1963 and 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service. Notable Medal of Freedom recipients from the past include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou and Mother Teresa.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — By blocking a Japanese company’s takeover of U.S. Steel, President Joe Biden said he was protecting good jobs in the American heartland. He may be putting them at risk instead.

In making its nearly $15 billion bid for the storied Pittsburgh-based steelmaker, Nippon Steel had promised to invest $2.7 billion in U.S. Steel’s aging blast furnace operations in Gary, Indiana, and Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley. It also vowed not to reduce production capacity in the United States over the next decade without first getting U.S. government approval.

“They were going to invest in the Valley,’’ said Jason Zugai, an operating technician and vice president of the United Steelworkers union local at a U.S. Steel plant in the Mon Valley. “They committed to 10 years of no layoffs. We won’t have those commitments from anybody.’’

Zugai and some other Mon Valley steelworkers supported the Nippon deal in defiance of the union’s national leadership, which pressured the Biden administration to kill it.

Losing the Nippon-U.S. Steel deal “will be a disaster for Pennsylvania,’’ said Gordon Johnson, who follows U.S. Steel stock on Wall Street as founder of GLJ Research. “I really don’t understand. This is not in the interest of the workers. It’s not in the interest of the shareholders of U.S. Steel.’’

On Friday, Biden said he was stopping the Nippon takeover — after federal regulators deadlocked on whether to approve it — because “a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry represents an essential national security priority. … Without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure.’’

U.S. Steel stock dropped 6.5% on the news Friday.

The decision, announced less than three weeks before the president leaves the White House, reflects a growing bipartisan shift away from free trade and open investment.

President-elect Donald Trump had already come out against the Nippon takeover. “As President,” he wrote last month on his Truth Social platform, “I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”

In a joint statement, Nippon and U.S. Steel called Biden’s decision “a clear violation of due process and the law’’ and suggested they would sue to salvage their deal: “We are left with no choice but to take all appropriate action to protect our legal rights.’’

U.S. Steel was founded in 1901 in a merger that involved American business titans J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie and instantly created the largest company in the world. As the U.S. grew to world dominance in the 20th century, U.S. Steel grew with it. In 1943, at the height of the World War II manufacturing boom, U.S. Steel employed 340,000 people.

But foreign competition — from Japan in the 1970s and ‘80s and later from China — gradually eroded U.S. Steel’s position and forced it to close plants and lay off workers. The company now employs fewer than 22,000 in an industry dominated by the Chinese.

The U.S. government has sought over the years to protect U.S. Steel and other American steelmakers by imposing taxes on imported steel. During his first term, Trump slapped 25% tariffs on foreign steel, and Biden kept them or converted them into import quotas. Either way, the trade barriers kept the price of American steel artificially high, giving U.S. Steel and others a financial boost.

U.S. Steel is profitable and is sitting on $1.8 billion in cash, though that is down from $2.9 billion at the end of 2023.

United Steelworkers President David McCall declared Friday that U.S. Steel had the financial resources to go it alone. “It can easily remain a strong and resilient company,’’ he told reporters.

But U.S. Steel has said it needs the cash from Nippon Steel to keep investing in blast furnaces like the ones in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

“Without the Nippon Steel transaction, U. S. Steel will largely pivot away from its blast furnace facilities, putting thousands of good-paying union jobs at risk, negatively impacting numerous communities across the locations where its facilities exist,’’ U.S. Steel warned in September. The company also threatened to move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh.

On its own, U.S. Steel seems poised to focus on newer electric arc furnaces, such as its Big River plant in Arkansas, which can make high-quality steel products more efficiently and at lower prices compared to blast furnaces, said Josh Spoores, the Pennsylvania-based head of steel Americas analysis for commodity researcher CRU.

“I don’t know if they don’t have the will, but they seem to have seen that it’s a much better investment, a much better rate of return if they look to invest in an electric arc furnace rather than a blast furnace,” Spoores said. He noted that no steelmaker has built a blast furnace in North America for decades.

One possibility is that another company will step in and make a bid for U.S. Steel.

In 2023, arch-rival Cleveland-Cliffs offered to buy U.S. Steel for $7 billion. U.S. Steel turned the offer down and ended up accepting the nearly $15 billion all-cash offer from Nippon Steel, which is the deal that Biden nixed Friday. Perhaps, analysts say, Cleveland-Cliffs will try again.

In a statement, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro warned U.S. Steel management against “threatening the jobs and livelihoods of the Pennsylvanians who work at the Mon Valley Works and at U.S. Steel HQ and their families.’’

Shapiro also said companies that put in bids to buy U.S. Steel in the future must make the same commitments to “capital investment and protecting and growing Pennsylvania jobs that Nippon Steel placed on the table.’’

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Marc Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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