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    Bondi Worked as Lobbyist in Recent Years, With Clients Including Amazon, G.M., Uber and Qatar

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    President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be attorney general, Pam Bondi, is a lobbyist for a powerhouse Republican firm, for which she represented major corporations and foreign governments with interests before the U.S. government.Ms. Bondi joined the lobbying firm of the Republican fund-raiser Brian Ballard after finishing her second term as Florida attorney general in January 2019.Among the clients for which she was registered to lobby were major companies, including Amazon, General Motors and Uber, as well as the Qatari government and various financial firms.Those registrations are no longer active, but Ms. Bondi is currently registered as a lobbyist for law enforcement-related clients, including an association representing some of the country’s largest sheriff’s offices and another group representing sheriffs in Florida, as well as the Florida sheriffs’ self-insurance program.A person familiar with the firm confirmed that Ms. Bondi was still affiliated with it and those clients as of Thursday.The firm’s website indicates that she is the chairwoman of its corporate regulatory compliance practice, focusing on helping Fortune 500 companies implement policies to fight human trafficking, opioid abuse and data breaches.Another veteran of Mr. Ballard’s firm, Susie Wiles, was tapped by Mr. Trump to be the White House chief of staff. Ms. Wiles will be the first woman to hold that job. Mr. Ballard helped to bring in more than $50 million for committees supporting Mr. Trump’s campaign. More

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      Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Exchange Posts About Trump on X

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      The world’s two richest men are longtime business rivals, but now one of them has the ear of the next president of the United States.A few months ago, a three-post exchange between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk on Mr. Musk’s X would have passed for petty sniping between billionaire rivals.But times have changed.“Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock,” Mr. Musk wrote Wednesday night, referring to two of his companies. He added an emoji for a snickering face, with a hand covering the mouth.“Nope. 100% not true,” Mr. Bezos responded on Thursday morning.“Well, then, I stand corrected,” Mr. Musk wrote back, with a laughing-crying emoji.With President-elect Donald J. Trump’s history of animosity toward Mr. Bezos, the posts carried an unspoken message about Mr. Musk’s growing power within the incoming administration.The exchange — brief, brassy and fairly typical of Mr. Musk’s overwhelming presence on X — could foreshadow a bumpy next few years for Mr. Bezos and the companies he started, Amazon and the rocket maker Blue Origin. It was also a reminder that the power dynamics in the longtime rivalry between the world’s two richest men changed on Nov. 5.Plenty of tech executives have drawn Mr. Trump’s wrath over the last few years. Perhaps none more than Mr. Bezos, largely because he owns The Washington Post, which has frequently written critically about Mr. Trump. (The Post did not endorse a presidential candidate this year, a decision that angered many of its readers and that Mr. Bezos publicly defended.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Amazon Is Phasing Out Its Freevee Streaming Service

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      Its shows have moved to Amazon Prime, where they will remain free.Amazon is folding Freevee, its ad-supported streaming service, into Prime Video, where its shows will remain free to viewers who don’t subscribe to Prime.The move had been expected, after Amazon started including advertisements this year on Prime Video, which already hosts free original programs and movies. All Freevee programming will be available on Prime Video for free, the company said.Freevee began in 2019 as IMDb TV, an offshoot of Amazon’s IMDb film site. Some of its original shows were hits, including the social media sensation “Jury Duty,” “Bosch: Legacy” and “Judy Justice.” The service will be phased out within weeks.Amazon already has a streaming behemoth in Prime Video, and the company decided to put all of its entertainment content on one platform “to deliver a simpler viewing experience for customers,” an Amazon spokesperson said Wednesday.An ad-supported version of Prime Video is included with Amazon’s delivery service, which costs $14.99 per month, or $139 per year. An ad-free version of Prime Video is also available for an additional $2.99 per month. A stand-alone streaming subscription costs $8.99 per month.Like most streamers, Amazon mostly declines to give viewing numbers, but Freevee had built up its audience to about 65 million monthly active users in the United States in the first half of 2022. Amazon Prime has at least 180 million users, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.“Judy Justice,” starring Judge Judith Sheindlin, known as Judge Judy, quickly became Freevee’s No. 1 original show when it debuted in 2021. Viewers watched more than 150 million hours of it over its first two years, according to Amazon data. Judge Sheindlin’s success in her first streaming show allowed her to spin off additional shows on Freevee.Freevee’s most unexpected hit, however, was “Jury Duty,” a hybrid documentary-sitcom in which an ordinary man unwittingly participates in a staged trial among actors. It became Freevee’s most-watched show after it premiered in 2023 and earned four Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding comedy series.“Bosch: Legacy,” which premiered in 2022, was based on the popular police detective book series by Michael Connelly. It became a New York Times Critic’s Pick, with the reviewer Mike Hale writing that the series came with “cleverly interlocking story lines and the general lack of pretense and contrivance.”Other free, ad-supported streaming platforms, like Pluto TV, Tubi, and Roku Channel, have enjoyed significant growth. Viewers have flocked to them as many other subscription-based streaming services raised their prices. While the free services are built on a stable of older TV programs and movies, many consumers are seeking cost savings, nostalgia and even terrible movies.There are at least 170 million ad-supported subscriptions in the United States, up from at least 93 million at the end of last year, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. More

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      Corporate America Braces for Trump 2.0

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      The race for the White House is deadlocked, but business leaders aren’t taking chances, reaching out to the former president to rebuild relations.Are business leaders already banking on a second Trump presidency?Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesDo C.E.O.s think Donald Trump will win? As the presidential race nears its end next week, the most notable public sound from many C.E.O.s and businesses on the election has been silence — and Donald Trump’s camp is increasingly interpreting that as a sign that corporate America may be preparing for him to win.New reports show that top business leaders, including Silicon Valley heavyweights, have reached out to the former president, seemingly looking to rebuild relations and protect their businesses if Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris.Business leaders are privately discussing how to prepare for a Trump return. Attendees at a gathering last week of the Business Council, an invite-only association of C.E.O.s, talked about steps to take in case Trump goes after perceived enemies, according to The Washington Post.“I’ve told C.E.O.s to engage as fast as possible because the clock is ticking,” an unidentified Trump adviser told The Post. “If you’re somebody who has endorsed Harris, and we’ve never heard from you at any point until after the election, you’ve got an uphill battle.”Big Tech leaders are among those trying to reboot relations. In recent weeks, Trump has said that he has spoken with Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet. He has also heard from Mark Zuckerberg, and CNN adds that Andy Jassy of Amazon has reached out.The reason for such outreach is clear, Trump associates told CNN: Trump has gone after many of their companies and re-establishing relations is at the least a hedge in case he wins next week. (An unidentified source told CNN that Jassy’s call, made at the company’s request, was a general exchange of pleasantries.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

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      Companies like Amazon have required a return to the office five days a week despite findings showing benefits to employers that allow some remote days.Amazon’s C.E.O., Andy Jassy, made waves last month when he demanded that all employees return to the office five days a week. The proclamation seemed to validate similar demands made by executives like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon. And it naturally raised the question of whether others might follow suit. (It appears some have.)But it also flew in the face of researchers and their studies that have found hybrid work benefits companies. Stanford’s Nick Bloom, for example, has found that employees who work two days a week at home are just as productive and less likely to quit. (Bloom, like others, speculated that Amazon’s pronouncement was really an attempt to reduce the work force without official layoffs.)So why do so many employers that say they’re data-driven seem to move counter to science?Executives are not convinced by the research. “It’s not like: ‘Aspirin definitely helps with headaches. It’s been proven again and again and again,’” Laszlo Bock, a former senior vice president for people operations at Google, told DealBook. “The academic studies that have been done, and there are not that many, show a range of outcomes — and they generally show a kind of neutral to slightly positive.”Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, said he disagreed, pointing DealBook to a meta-analysis of 108 studies.Some are just over it. Almost five years since the start of the pandemic, many C.E.O.s are ready to move on from an experiment they never wanted to start. “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy wrote in a memo about ending remote work at Amazon.Grant says C.E.O.s may not always methodically control for whether an effect was caused by remote work, the pandemic or something else, as an academic researcher would. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Lawsuit, MrBeast Reality Show Contestants Allege ‘Dangerous Conditions’

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      A group of people who participated in the reality competition show this summer are suing MrBeast’s production company.A group of contestants who participated in “Beast Games,” the reality competition show hosted by Jimmy Donaldson, better known online as MrBeast, are suing Mr. Donaldson and the production companies behind the show, accusing them of exposing participants to “dangerous circumstances and conditions.”The suit, filed by five anonymous contestants in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, made wide-ranging allegations about what occurred in July during the filming of “Beast Games,” when Mr. Donaldson’s production team and Amazon MGM Studios invited about 2,000 contestants to a football stadium in Las Vegas.In addition to including complaints about inadequate food and medical care — accusations that were first reported on by The New York Times — the heavily redacted suit also claims that the defendants provided false information to state officials in Nevada to obtain “unearned tax credits,” and that contestants had not been appropriately compensated for their participation.“I was really excited to be part of something that was going to be really big,” one of the plaintiffs, identified in the suit as Contestant 4, told The Times on Wednesday. “In the end, I just left feeling really insignificant and mistreated and traumatized. I still haven’t gotten paid. I just hope that no one else ever has to go through this.”Since her time on the show, Contestant 4 added, she has sought mental health treatment for anxiety. Another contestant in the suit, Contestant 5, said she felt “embarrassed and degraded” by the experience.A representative for MrBeast declined to comment on the lawsuit. A representative for Amazon MGM Studios did not respond to a request for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Google, Microsoft and Amazon Shy Away From Buying A.I. Start-Ups

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      Google, Microsoft and Amazon have made deals with A.I. start-ups for their technology and top employees, but have shied from owning the firms. Here’s why.In 2022, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas left their jobs developing artificial intelligence at Google. They said the tech giant moved too slowly. So they created Character.AI, a chatbot start-up, and raised nearly $200 million.Last week, Mr. Shazeer and Mr. De Freitas announced that they were returning to Google. They had struck a deal to rejoin its A.I. research arm, along with roughly 20 percent of Character.AI’s employees, and provide their start-up’s technology, they said.But even though Google was getting all that, it was not buying Character.AI.Instead, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license the technology, two people with knowledge of the deal said. About $2.5 billion of that sum will then be used to buy out Character.AI’s shareholders, including Mr. Shazeer, who owns 30 percent to 40 percent of the company and stands to net $750 million to $1 billion, the people said. What remains of Character.AI will continue operating without its founders and investors.The deal was one of several unusual transactions that have recently emerged in Silicon Valley. While big tech companies typically buy start-ups outright, they have turned to a more complicated deal structure for young A.I. companies. It involves licensing the technology and hiring the top employees — effectively swallowing the start-up and its main assets — without becoming the owner of the firm.These transactions are being driven by the big tech companies’ desire to sidestep regulatory scrutiny while trying to get ahead in A.I., said three people who have been involved in such agreements. Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft are under a magnifying glass from agencies like the Federal Trade Commission over whether they are squashing competition, including by buying start-ups.“Large tech firms may clearly be trying to avoid regulatory scrutiny by not directly acquiring the targeted firms,” said Justin Johnson, a business economist who focuses on antitrust at Cornell University. But “these deals do indeed start to look a lot like regular acquisitions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NBA Agrees to Massive Rights Deals With Disney, Comcast and Amazon

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      The agreements, set to begin after next season, could potentially pay the league about $76 billion over 11 years.The National Basketball Association’s Board of Governors has approved a set of agreements for the rights to show the league’s games, Commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday, moving one step closer to completing deals that would reshape how the sport is watched over the next decade.Mr. Silver declined to discuss any financial details or even the companies involved, though there have been reports for months that Disney, Comcast and Amazon were close to deals with the league. TNT, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, but its prominent on-air personalities like Charles Barkley talked during the playoffs about how they worried that the network would lose the rights after next season, the last covered by the current nine-year TV deal.The companies are expected to pay the N.B.A. a total of about $76 billion over 11 years. On average, ESPN would pay the N.B.A. about $2.6 billion annually, NBC around $2.5 billion and Amazon roughly $1.8 billion, according to three people familiar with the agreements, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the financial details.The Board of Governors voted to approve the deals at its yearly meeting in Las Vegas. The N.B.A. must now present the deals to Warner Bros. Discovery, and once that happens, the company will have five days to match one of them to remain in the mix.“We did approve this stage of those media proposals, but as you all know there are other rights that need to be worked through with existing partners,” Mr. Silver said.Warner Bros. Discovery was expected to try to match Amazon’s offer, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the negotiations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Erin Moriarty Is a Woman Among ‘The Boys’

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      The actress in the hit superhero satire mulled her role in an age of online bullying and token feminism: “Thank God there are characters like this.”Erin Moriarty just stopped a stranger in his tracks. But it wasn’t because he recognized her as a star on one of TV’s most popular shows, or because he was taken by her charm.We were tucked into a quiet corner table on an outdoor patio in West Hollywood, where an attentive server had been mid-stride when he overheard Moriarty, a star of the hit Amazon show “The Boys,” describe her belief that feminism had become an “obligatory thing for studios to exhibit.” He tentatively performed the briefest of check-ins and scurried away.“I love how he hears the word ‘feminism’ and his approach starts to slow,” she said with a laugh. She took a sip of black iced coffee and resumed her thoughts.“I think it’s dangerous,” she said. “I feel like we’re putting a Band-Aid on systemic diseases that we’re not inoculating against.”As the highest-billed actress on “The Boys,” Moriarty, 29, has had to think a lot about performative feminism lately, and whether the show that made her famous is really part of the solution. On one level, the series, which returned for Season 4 on Thursday, is satire, centered on the exploits of a team of morally depraved superheroes known as the Seven.The show targets the steroidal conventions of the genre, along with the corporate pandering and exhibitionist feminism that often accompany it. Much of that critique is focused through Moriarty’s character, Annie January, better known as Starlight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More