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Trump signed an executive order banning large institutional players from buying stand-alone homes.SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty ImagesTrump signed an executive order seeking to curb Wall Street firms from buying single-family homes.The Treasury Department has a month to develop a definition of "large institutional investors."Exceptions include build-to-rent properties that were designed to be rental communities.President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday seeking to limit large Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes, as part of his push to make essentials more affordable for Americans.The order details a multi-pronged plan targeting large investors. It includes measures that would restrict institutional investors from buying homes that individuals could purchase, combat speculation in the single-family housing market, and conduct antitrust reviews of acquisitions.The order comes with an important exception: build-to-rent properties that were designed and constructed as rental communities. The order also says there may be other "narrowly tailored exceptions."Per the order, the Treasury Department has a month to develop definitions of "large institutional investors" and "single-family homes." Relevant federal agencies have 60 days to look at ways to prohibit the buying of single-family homes by large entities."Neighborhoods and communities once controlled by middle-class American families are now run by faraway corporate interests. People live in homes, not corporations," Trump said in the order.Trump first proposed the order in a Truth Social post earlier this month. "For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream," Trump wrote. "That American dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans."A day later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Trump's proposal would not force large entities to sell their current holdings."These big institutions buy housing, then rent them out, and they're able to depreciate it. They hide their earnings, pay lower taxes," he said."The idea here is bygones are bygones," Bessent added. "We're not going to have a forced sale here."After Trump's Truth Social post earlier this month, shares of asset manager Blackstone fell 5.6%. Blackstone, which manages $1 trillion in assets, oversees one of the largest rental housing portfolios in the US, with several hundred thousand single-family homes and apartments. Other stocks similarly fell.Critics say firms like New York-based Blackstone put pressure on the housing market, reducing the availability of homes and driving prices up.The institutional players, meanwhile, say lack of housing supply — not big-business ownership — is pushing prices up.Among Trump's efforts to address affordability concerns, the president also called for a one-year cap of 10% on credit card interest rates, arguing that consumers are being "ripped off" by rates that he said can be as high as 20% or 30%. Banks and business leaders said that the rule would ultimately curtail the availability of credit for borrowers who rely on it.Read the original article on Business Insider

Amazon CEO Andy JassyREUTERS/Brendan McDermidAmazon CEO Andy Jassy said tariff-driven price hikes are beginning to show.Vendors are running out of pre-tariff inventory and "don't have endless options," says Jassy.Jassy said in June 2025 that prices didn't "appreciably go up," but he is changing his tone now.Tariff price hikes are starting to show up in your Amazon shopping cart.The CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, told CNBC in an interview with reporter Becky Quick at the World Economic Forum in Davos that vendors are running out of stockpiled goods imported ahead of Trump's tariffs, and that consumers will be "starting to see more of that impact.""So you start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the prices, some of the items," said Jassy, "And you see some sellers are deciding that they're passing on those higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, some are deciding that they'll absorb it to drive demand, and some are doing something in between."Jassy also said that though the company is striving to "keep prices as low as possible," price hikes may sometimes be inevitable."At a certain point, because retail is, as you know, a mid-single digit operating margin business, if people's costs go up by 10%, there aren't a lot of places to absorb it," Jassy added. "You don't have endless options."While Amazon's shopping business has its own products, it mainly serves as an ecommerce platform for other independent sellers, so it cannot control price hikes. Earlier in Trump's tariff push, a rumour that Amazon would start displaying exactly how much tariffs contributed to the cost of an item drew the president's ire. Amazon said it never made such plans.In June 2025, Jassy told CNBC in an interview that many of Amazon's third-party selling partners "forward deployed a lot of inventory" to avoid "issues with the uncertainty around where tariffs are going to settle," adding that at that point, he did not see "prices appreciably go up."The bulk of Trump's tariffs have been enacted under presidential emergency powers, including the 10% baseline levy on almost all imports. His right to impose such duties is being reviewed by the US Supreme Court after multiple small businesses filed lawsuits.If SCOTUS rules these tariffs unconstitutional, Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury, said in a court document that the government could be on the hook to refund $1 trillion to businesses that paid. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, 96% of the new revenue collected by the US Customs is being paid by American consumers, while foreign exporters only shouldered 4% of the burden.Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Read the original article on Business Insider

Sam Altman (left) and Elon Musk (right) have taken their legal battle to the court of public opinion, trading barbs in posts on X.Getty ImagesSam Altman and Elon Musk escalated their long-running feud on Tuesday in a series of posts on X.Each of the tech giants traded barbs about deaths and safety concerns tied to each other's products.The pair is in the middle of a lengthy legal battle over OpenAI's status as a for-profit entity.Sam Altman and Elon Musk are at it again, with each of the tech titans taking aim at the other in a series of heated posts on X.Musk appeared to start the latest escalation early on Tuesday morning, when he posted "Don't let your loved ones use ChatGPT" in response to a post that said that use of OpenAI's chatbot had been linked to the deaths of nine children and adults since it was released in 2022.Altman fired back, first in defense of ChatGPT and OpenAI's desire to protect its users, and then blasting Tesla's Autopilot technology, calling it unsafe."It is genuinely hard; we need to protect vulnerable users, while also making sure our guardrails still allow all of our users to benefit from our tools," Altman said.Altman continued, calling out Autopilot."I only ever rode in a car using it once, some time ago, but my first thought was that it was far from a safe thing for Tesla to have released," he wrote. "I won't even start on some of the Grok decisions."Altman added: "You take 'every accusation is a confession' so far."There have been at least eight wrongful-death lawsuits filed against OpenAI that allege use of ChatGPT has contributed to worsening mental health conditions, leading to instances of suicide and murder, including among children and young adults.Safety concerns around Tesla's self-driving technology have also been central to multiple wrongful-death lawsuits, including one surrounding a 2019 crash in Florida that left a 22-year-old woman dead. A jury determined Tesla was 33% liable for the crash and awarded the plaintiffs $329 million in total damages, Business Insider previously reported.Representatives for Musk and Altman did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.The social media feud comes as the pair is stuck in the middle of a long-running legal battle over OpenAI's status as a nonprofit company. Musk sued Altman, and other leaders of OpenAI, alleging that they misled him when they decided to pursue a for-profit structure, moving the company away from its original nonprofit mission.Musk said he donated $38 million to OpenAI when it was originally founded as a nonprofit.Read the original article on Business Insider

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and his wife Usha Vance arrive to speak at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minn.Alex Brandon/APJD Vance, Donald Trump's vice president, is a former senator from Ohio.Vance met his wife, Usha Vance, while they were both students at Yale Law School.They wed in both Christian and Hindu ceremonies in 2014 and are expecting their fourth child.When Fox News asked Usha Vance in June 2024 how she felt about her husband, JD Vance, being considered as Donald Trump's running mate, she told host Lawrence Jones that she was "not raring to change anything about our lives right now."But it appeared she came around — she spoke at the Republican National Convention as her husband was officially nominated to join the ticket and appeared alongside him at Trump campaign's victory party on election night.JD Vance, the former junior senator from Ohio and bestselling author of "Hillbilly Elegy," and Usha Vance, a litigator whose résumé includes a Supreme Court clerkship, met as students at Yale Law School and wed in 2014.Since becoming vice president and second lady, the Vances have taken several international trips together, including a visit to the US military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland in March 2025.On Tuesday, the Vances announced that they are expecting their fourth child, making Usha Vance the first second lady in US history to be pregnant while in office.Here's a look inside the relationship of the newest GOP power couple who serve as vice president and second lady.Born in Ohio and raised by his grandparents in Kentucky, JD Vance joined the Marines and graduated from Ohio State University.Gaelen Morse/Getty ImagesJD Vance served as a public affairs Marine in Iraq, liaising between service members and members of the press. After his military service, he majored in political science and philosophy at Ohio State University.Usha Vance studied history at Yale and taught American history in Guangzhou as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow.FILE - Usha Vance, wife of Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, listens as he speaks at a campaign event, Aug. 7, 2024, in Eau Claire, Wis.Alex Brandon, File/APUsha Vance grew up in a suburb of San Diego. Her parents are Indian immigrants.Usha Vance told Fox News in June that her parents' Hindu faith was "one of the things that made them such good parents, that make them very good people."She was a registered Democrat until 2014.The couple met while they were students at Yale Law School.U.S. Senate Republican candidate JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, embrace after casting their ballots in the midterm elections in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S., November 08, 2022.Gaelen Morse/ReutersIn law school, Usha Vance served as executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, according to a bio on the website of her former employer, Munger, Tolles & Olson, that has since been removed.She also worked pro bono with the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic, the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.Usha Vance told NBC News in 2017 that she and JD Vance took all of their classes together and were friends before they started dating. When they were assigned to work on a brief together, Usha Vance said she was impressed by his diligence."I've never seen anybody so starstruck," their law school professor, Amy Chua, said of JD Vance in an interview with NBC News. "It was love at first sight."They wed in 2014 and held both Christian and Hindu ceremonies.CINCINNATI, OH - MAY 3: Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance embraces his wife Usha Vance after winning the primary, at an election night event at Duke Energy Convention Center on May 3, 2022 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Vance, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, narrowly…

Instagram is testing switching "following" counts to "friends" on user profiles.Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesInstagram is testing out replacing "following" counts with "friends" counts.What's a friend, according to Instagram? Glad you asked. It's someone who follows you back.Meta confirmed to Business Insider that it is running a "small global test" of the change.Friends … followers … where is the line?Instagram is testing out new tweaks that emphasize friends. It also has a new definition of friends: People who mutually follow each other.The Instagram test involves changing a user's "following" count on a profile to a "friends" count. That means if you follow thousands of people, but maybe only a few hundred of those people follow you back, that'll show up as your "friends" count.For those of you who care about those precious follower-to-following ratios, get ready for a potentially even more telling public ratio: How many of those Instagram followers are friends?Instagram is quietly running this as a "small global test," a Meta spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider, adding that the platform is trying to understand how users respond to seeing more content from friends in the app."Friends are central to the Instagram experience, so we're exploring ways to make these connections more visible and meaningful," a Meta spokesperson said. "We're running a small test to highlight Friends throughout Instagram."As part of the test, Meta is also labeling some content in the feed as "friends" instead of "posts" or "following."Is Instagram for friends anymore?As influencers, brands, and now AI slop have invaded Instagram's feed, it's felt less and less like a space to share content with your friends.That's part of the reason Instagram has doubled down on its "Close Friends" features over the years, focused on direct messaging (where friends and family often share content), and added more friend-focused features.For instance, Instagram rolled out a feature called "Blend," which lets you and a friend share a mutual feed of reels.Last year, Instagram also introduced features like a social mapping experience similar to Snapchat's map, as well as a "Friends" feed in the reels tab, where you can see content your friends (by Instagram's definition) are engaging with.Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, said in an August post that he wants Instagram to be somewhere where users can "actually engage with and connect with the people that you care about."Read the original article on Business Insider