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• A real estate agent who rents her Hamptons home got caught up in an Airbnb scam.
• Photos of her property were used for a fake listing, The Real Deal reports.
• The agent only learned about the scam when a prospective renter called her.

A Corcoran real-estate agent and East Hamptons homeowner was caught up in an Airbnb scam when a fake listing for her property showed on the rental platform, The Real Deal reports.

And she only found out about it when someone called asking about the request to wire $25,000 for the phony rental.

According to the Real Deal, Sarah Stewart rents her Hamptons home in the spring and summer, but not through Airbnb.

The five-bedroom property — which is "moments" from the ocean and comes complete with two outdoor showers — is available now through Corcoran for $175,000 for the month of August through Labor Day.

Stewart told The Real Deal she had no idea her house had been listed in the scam until she got the phone call. The prospective renter was asking about the scammer's apparent request to send thousands of dollars off-platform to rent the house.

Stewart contacted Airbnb to have the fraudulent listing taken down. She declined to comment to Business Insider through a Corcoran spokesperson.

Airbnb initially removed the listing, but it reappeared a few hours later, according to The Real Deal.

Then, after her complaint rose through the ranks of Airbnb service reps, Stewart was advised to communicate with the "host" directly — and to include her contact information, The Real Deal reports. Stewart objected to the request, concerned about what might happen to her personal information.

In the end, Airbnb took down the listing after Corcoran sent the rental platform a copyright takedown notice for improperly using their photos, according to The Real Deal.

Though Stewart got the scam pages taken down, she told The Real Deal the ordeal was "terribly upsetting."

In a statement to BI, an Airbnb spokesperson said: "Fake listings have no place in our community, and following investigation, we removed the user and listing from the platform. Issues like this on Airbnb are rare, we continually invest in strengthening our defenses through measures like listing verification, and we protect guest bookings through safeguards like our secure payment processes, policies and Aircover support."

In September, Airbnb said it was cracking down on faux listings, noting it had removed 59,000 so far that year and prevented an additional 157,000 from ever appearing on its platform.

CEO Brian Chesky said fake listings were a big risk to the company's reputation, and Airbnb said at the time it would start to verify all listings in its top five markets using AI technology.

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• Google's search chief Prabhakar Raghavan warned staff about a changing landscape, CNBC reported. 
• He said life won't always be "hunky-dory" as rivals seek to challenge its search dominance.
• Microsoft has been enhancing its search experience with AI-infused features as competition heats up.

It's time to brace for a new chapter, Google search chief Prabhakar Raghavan has reportedly warned staff.

He told Googlers in an all-hands meeting last month that "things have changed" and they're "not like they were 15, 20 years ago," CNBC reported, citing a recording of the meeting it obtained.

"It's not like life is going to be hunky-dory, forever," Raghavan also said, per the outlet.

Search remains a crucial part of Alphabet's business, with "search and other" accounting for revenues of $48 billion in the final three months of last year — more than $5 billion higher than the same period in 2022.

Raghavan's warning to employees comes as rivals such as startup Perplexity AI seek to take on Google's dominance by developing their own search engines.

CEO Aravind Srinivas announced Tuesday that it's raised about $63 million in a new funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion. Perplexity's backers include Jeff Bezos and Nvidia.

Raghavan also addressed new competitors in the meeting, CNBC reported. "They may have a new gizmo out there that people like to play with but they still come to Google to verify what they see there because it is the trusted source and it becomes more critical in this era of generative AI."

Google Search has changed little for more than 20 years, but the AI boom has forced its hand. Google said last year it was "supercharging" and "improving" users' search experience with a generative AI-powered version called Search Generative Experience (SGE).

SGE is still in its infancy, but Google started testing "AI overviews" about a month ago by giving some US and UK users an AI-generated summary of search results.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been stepping up its search ambitions. It started rolling out new AI features on Bing last year, including allowing users to search visually.

Microsoft said it was "reinventing" search when it introduced the new AI-infused Bing last February. CEO Satya Nadella said at the time" "AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all — search."

Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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• Former New York Rep. George Santos suspended his campaign to return to Congress.
• The disgraced politician, running as an independent, said he didn't want to siphon off Republican votes.
• But he also reported zero campaign finance contributions and no spending.

Former New York Rep. George Santos announced that he was dropping out of his bid to return to Congress, saying he didn't want to siphon off Republican votes by running as an independent.

But Santos may have been motivated by another factor: his campaign has reported zero fundraising and zero expenditure with the FEC.

Santos was expelled from the House in December, ending a short and scandal-ridden time as the representative for New York's third district.

He was just the sixth member of Congress to be expelled in the House's history.

As a Congressman-elect, multiple reports emerged of Santos fabricating aspects of his personal biography, including a claim to be Jewish and details in his education and employment background.

Even so, the disgraced politician announced his intention to run again — this time in New York's first congressional district — during President Joe Biden's State of the Union address earlier this year.

A couple of weeks later, Santos ditched the GOP, saying he would be running as an independent.

But on Tuesday, Santos posted on X saying that he was suspending his campaign, writing: "Staying in this race all but guarantees a victory for the Dems in the race."

While criticizing the voting record of Republican candidate Nick Lalota, he said: "I don't want to split the ticket and be responsible for handing the house to Dems."

As of the end of March, Lalota's campaign reported around $1.5 million in contributions for 2024.

Santos, who has maintained a gadfly status since being ousted from office, said he would continue to contribute to discussions on public policy and suggested his political ambitions are not over.

"It's only goodbye for now, I'll be back," he wrote.

Santos has pleaded not guilty to 23 fraud-related charges made in October, in which he is accused of identity theft, stealing donors' credit card details, and lying to the FEC. He is currently awaiting trial.

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• The number of Americans who are ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — is increasing.
• The ALICE population is largely Gen Z, boomers, and single parents.
• ALICE workers often are in retail, healthcare, and food services but struggle to afford necessities.

Some Americans increasingly find themselves in an economic paradox: They make too much money to qualify for help but still can't afford basic necessities. They're a group that's fallen into gaping holes in America's creaky safety net, and their ranks are growing.

Those Americans are known as ALICE — or Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. The term, created by United Way's United For ALICE program, describes the Americans who may not qualify for services like food stamps or other benefits but still aren't making enough money to get by. They're above the poverty line but still in a tight economic position.

Part of that is due to a poverty line that's out of touch with how much Americans need to survive. Poverty rates have been falling across America, but the share of ALICE is on the rise in many states — and the share of Americans above the ALICE threshold is similarly falling. And Americans who are otherwise economically marginalized tend to fall into the ALICE bucket.

Each state has at least 32% of its population below the ALICE threshold, which includes both ALICE and those in poverty. The South has the highest concentration of states with about 50% of residents below the ALICE threshold. About 29% of the US population is ALICE, while 13% are below the poverty line.

So who is the typical ALICE? They're either the youngest or oldest workers in the workforce, often single parents, and full-time workers — but they're still not making ends meet.

ALICE Americans are the youngest and oldest in the workforce and more likely to be Black and Hispanic

The ALICE population is most pronounced for Gen Z aged 16 to 25 at 36% and boomers or older at 39%. The percentage of ALICE millennials and Gen Xers are both 24%.

Married adults with children tend not to be ALICE, as 80% reported being above the ALICE threshold. However, for single parents with children, the ALICE share jumps to 35% for moms and 36% for dads. About 27% of single Americans under 65 without kids are ALICE.

Though ALICE makes up over a quarter of all racial groups, the percentage is lowest for Asian Americans at 26% and white Americans at 28%. The percentage is highest for Black and Hispanic Americans both at 41%.

"There is a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic households, people with disability, younger and older households are more likely to be below the ALICE threshold, as are single-parent households with children versus married parent," Stephanie Hoopes, national director at United For ALICE, told BI.

ALICE Americans are all across the country and in both rural and urban areas

ALICE Americans exist everywhere from the isolated countryside of the US to the country's biggest cities. The breakdown between urban and rural ALICE is somewhat consistent — the ALICE population makes up 30% of the rural population and 28% of the urban population.

Nationwide, no state has more than 73% of its workforce making enough for their household survival budget. Just 52% of workers in Florida make enough to meet their needs, compared to 55% in California and 59% in New York and Texas. Many Midwest states have percentages close to or above 70%, led by Iowa.

ALICE Americans are working full-time in fields like retail and food service

Just 61% of all full-time workers earn enough to match their household survival budget, assuming one adult and one child. This statistic is highest for white workers at 69%, followed by Asian workers at 64%. However, only 43% of Hispanic workers make enough, compared to 46% of Black workers.

Nearly half of workers below the ALICE threshold are millennials, while 18% are Gen Z. Just over a quarter have a college degree, while 17% have less than a high school diploma.

Many workers below the ALICE threshold work in retail, healthcare, and food services. The average full-time hourly wage for these ALICE workers is $12.64 for retail, $15.99 for construction, and $11.09 for accommodation and food services, according to United For ALICE.

Still, just over half of ALICE workers put in full-time hours, and another 13% of ALICE who are not working are looking for work. That speaks to the conundrum the ALICE population faces: They are, for the most part, doing the things they're supposed to be doing to achieve financial stability. But, even so, they're flailing.

"Most of those jobs don't pay enough to cover the costs. So it's a mathematical equation and it's a structural problem. It's not that folks aren't trying hard," Hoopes said.

Are you an ALICE or working while still struggling to afford daily life? Contact these reporters at nsheidlower@insider.com and jkaplan@insider.com.

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• Many Americans have started a business in recent years.
• They're increasingly likely to be women, immigrants, and doing it as a side hustle. 
• The newest entrepreneurs are both young and old and looking to grow their wealth through their businesses.

Part of the American dream is the whisper that maybe, just maybe, you could make it striking out alone. And for many Americans, the siren call of entrepreneurship is one that's hard to resist.

But entrepreneurship isn't always attainable for everybody and it has its own systemic barriers to entry. The tides, however, might be changing a bit. Today's new entrepreneurs are coming from different backgrounds — and different parts of the country.

To be sure, many new businesses don't survive in the long run. Of the more than 700,000 US private sector businesses formed in March 2018, about 52% were still operating five years later, in March 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Still, Americans are increasingly embracing entrepreneurship: According to an annual report by Babson College published in August 2023, 19% of working-age US adults were in the process of starting a business or had done so over the prior three-and-a-half years. That was the highest level since the survey began in 1999.

So who are the newest entrepreneurs? They're a more diverse group than ever before, and for the most part, think self-employment is going well — but they might also see it as a financial lifeline.

New entrepreneurs are increasingly likely to be women, immigrants, and live in the Midwest

Women are increasingly taking the plunge into entrepreneurship, according to a survey of more than 1,300 entrepreneurs who started their businesses in 2023 conducted by the human-resources tech company Gusto.

The Gusto survey, conducted between January and March 2023, found that 49% of new business owners were women, compared to 45% of men — some respondents declined to identify as male or female or disclose their gender. Gusto compared these figures to Census Bureau data from 2019, when 29% of new entrepreneurs were women.

Broadly, self-employed workers are still more likely to be male — especially compared with the larger workforce, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Sixty percent of new entrepreneurs were white, 14% were AAPI, 13% were Hispanic, and 6% were Black, per Gusto. The share of new Hispanic entrepreneurs rose from 8% in 2022 to 13% in 2023, Gusto found.

America's entrepreneurs are also increasingly likely to be born outside the US, according to a 2022 report published by the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Citing current population survey data, the report found that in 2021, over 28% of new entrepreneurs were foreign-born — up from about 13% in 1996.

From March 2023 to March 2024, business formation applications were up in the Midwest, per the Census Bureau. New Hampshire saw more aspiring entrepreneurs, with applications up 20.7% — the highest year-over-year rate among all states. Similarly, in Minnesota, business applications were up 15.3%, and Montana saw applications up 16.4%.

But the South is seeing a new entrepreneurship boom. According to the Census Bureau's March 2024 business formation data, the South saw 195,341 business applications; the Northeast saw a fraction of that 64,355 — and that's with business applications in the South ticking down from February.

"The center of gravity of entrepreneurship is also shifting from coastal cities in the Northeast and West to the Southeast US and Mountain West," Gusto economist Luke Pardue wrote in a July 2023 analysis. That might be part of a larger shift as the center of the US economy — and the country's population — moves South.

Many young people have entered the ranks of entrepreneurs in recent years. Among US adults between 18 and 34 years old, 27% were actively engaged in starting or running a new business, per the Babson report, That was nearly twice as high as the 35-to-64 age group, at 14.5%.

However, the Kauffman Foundation report found rising entrepreneurship rates among older workers. In 2021, nearly 23% of new entrepreneurs were between the ages of 55 and 64, up from about 15% in 1996. Still, the largest share of new entrepreneurs, about 26%, came from the 20 to 34-year-old age cohort.

Entrepreneurs are also clustered in certain industries: In 2022, the most common industry for new entrepreneurs was wholesale, retail, and hospitality, which accounted for about 28% of new business formations, per the Babson report.

Why Americans want to be entrepreneurs — and how it's going

Having more work-life flexibility, becoming financially stable, and supplementing income were the top motivations new entrepreneurs gave for starting their businesses, according to the Gusto survey.

More than half of new entrepreneurs said they relied on personal savings to start their businesses. Eight percent took out a private business loan, 7% got a loan from family or friends, and 3% got a Small Business Administration-backed loan. Thirty-one percent said no funding was needed to start their businesses.

Fifty-six percent of new entrepreneurs said they didn't have another job when they started their business, compared to 25% who had a full-time job and 19% who had a part-time job.

Once they get their businesses up and running, self-employed workers feel pretty good about their gigs, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,902 Americans conducted in February 2023. Compared to workers who are not self-employed, the Americans working for themselves report finding their jobs more enjoyable and fulfilling — and they're not as stressed. Those self-employed workers still tend to be overwhelmingly male — 64% of self-employed respondents were men, compared to 53% of all workers — and nearly 70% are white.

And newfound business owners are receptive to different ways of working. Many new entrepreneurs are open to using AI tools and hiring remote workers, per the Gusto survey. Twenty-two percent said they were already incorporating generative AI tools into their operations, while 16% said they're open to using them, but not yet actively doing so.

More than half of new entrepreneurs surveyed by Gusto said they hired employees who worked remotely all or some of the time. Thirty-five percent said their businesses were fully remote, while 22% were hybrid. According to the Pew report, 60% of self-employed workers who can do their work from home are indeed clocking in from their houses.

Entrepreneurship isn't always enough to pay the bills, though. The share of entrepreneurs who started a business while juggling another gig rose from 27% in 2022 to 44% in 2023.

The Babson report found that most US entrepreneurs, 71%, were motivated by the prospect of boosting their wealth through their businesses. However, the share who said they were motivated by "necessity" rose from roughly 46% in 2021 to 54.5% in 2022.

"Perhaps job insecurity experienced during the pandemic and the nature of the job market as unemployment eased led many to venture into entrepreneurship as a viable career choice," the report said.

Have you started a business in recent years? Are you willing to share your story? If so, reach out to these reporters at jzinkula@businessinsider.com and jkaplan@businessinsider.com.

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• A former Chick-fil-A worker said the chain asked her to stop posting videos of her staff meals on TikTok.
• Miriam Webb had posted more than 40 videos of her staff meals. Some had over 1 million views.
• Webb has now quit her job to pursue content creation.

A former Chick-fil-A worker said that the fried-chicken chain asked her to stop posting videos of her staff meals on TikTok because she was breaking company policy.

Miriam Webb, known on TikTok as @mirithesiren, posted her first review of a free meal she had on shift in December.

Since then, Webb has posted more than 40 videos in her Chick-fil-A uniform showing viewers her free employee meals, including sandwiches, nuggets, waffle fries, and mac and cheese, many of which have hundreds of thousands of views.

But Chick-fil-A has now put a stop to that, Webb said in a video in mid-April.

"I was reached out to by Chick-fil-A upper management and PR to let me know that my videos actually break a rule in our employee handbook," she said. "Unfortunately, Chick-fil-A is not willing to make an exception for me or collab with me."

In the comments, Webb said she wasn't able to publicly share which policy she had violated.

She told Business Insider in an interview that the owner of her store was "gracious" and explained the policy "very kindly." He said she could continue to make Chick-fil-A review videos not wearing her uniform, she added.

"I'm not angry with Chick-fil-A," Webb said in a video. "I still love the company."

Chick-fil-A has allowed her to keep her current videos on her profile, she said in a video.

Webb told BI that she handed in her notice on Monday after spending just over a year working at a Chick-fil-A in Los Angeles County to focus on content creation instead. "I love my team," she said, speaking about her time at the company.

Chick-fil-A did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Food reviews are hot stuff

Restaurant reviews and food rankings are popular topics for TikTok videos. Some creators monetize their content through paid partnerships, and viewers have been pushing them to declare whether they paid for their meals themselves or got them provided by the restaurant.

Webb started her staff meal videos with the same intro: "It's a great day at Chick-fil-A and today I'm gonna show you what I get on my employee meal."

One from February has been viewed 3.5 million times on TikTok. Some of the videos show her trying out "menu hacks," such as making what she describes as boba milk tea and strawberry frosted lemonade using ingredients her restaurant has in stock. In other videos, she mixes together various Chick-fil-A sauces to create new flavors.

The videos appear to be filmed in a quiet part of the restaurant's dining room or a staff room. Some are recorded in the restaurant's outdoor seating area.

Webb's last Chick-fil-A video before the company's PR team contacted her, which has 3.4 million views, shows her reviewing the four drinks in its limited-edition Cherry Berry range. Though she wore her Chick-fil-A uniform in the video and appeared to be filming in the restaurant, Webb said she paid for the beverages herself rather than getting them through her meal allowance.

Webb's TikTok account also features videos of her reviewing her staff meals at Aldi, where she also has a job.

In her video announcing the end of her Chick-fil-A staff meal videos, Webb said that other brands wanting to collaborate with her should reach out.

On Sunday, Webb posted what appeared to be her first piece of sponsored content — a review of various Shake Shack sandwiches. Webb gave the meal a "10 out of 10" rating.

Commenters on the video said they were glad to see Webb score a paid partnership. "You deserve it!! The other company missed a blessing," one commenter wrote.

Other collaborations are on the way, Webb told BI, including one with a "very large" chicken company.

"We have been in meetings back-to-back," she said.

Are you a fast food superfan? Contact this reporter at gdean@insider.com.

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• The FTC is fighting for workers' ability to leave their employers for rival companies.
• The agency voted on Tuesday to ban noncompete agreements nationwide.
• The ban won't come without a fight though.

The FTC wants to give Americans the freedom to job-hop without pesky noncompete contracts getting in the way.

The Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 on Tuesday to approve a nationwide ban on noncompete agreements, the agency announced in a press release. The move could help American workers make $300 billion more a year, the FTC has previously said.

Employers often require staff to sign noncompetes, which prohibit them from working at competing companies even after they leave their jobs.

The FTC said these "exploitative" practices affect around 30 million workers, often forcing them to either stay in jobs they hate or else relocate when they don't want to, move to a lower-paying field, leave the workforce altogether, or face expensive litigation.

"This would be an immediate shock that would allow millions of workers to be free to take a better job in their industry," Evan Starr, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, told The New York Times. "I would expect the labor market to increase almost overnight."

Under the new rule, which goes into effect in about 120 days, nearly all those existing noncompetes will become void. Companies can keep existing contracts for some senior executives, but that will only affect about 0.75% of workers, the FTC said. And employers will be banned from requiring any new noncompetes, even for senior executives.

"Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned," FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said in the agency's press release.

"The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market," Khan added.

But ensuring this new rule actually goes into effect is another issue.

The US Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies on behalf of businesses, clapped back against the new rule in a press release on Tuesday, announcing that it intends to sue the FTC over what it calls an "unlawful" and "blatant power grab" amounting to government "overreach."

"This decision sets a dangerous precedent for government micromanagement of business and can harm employers, workers, and our economy," the Chamber of Commerce's President and CEO Suzanne P. Clark said in a statement.

The FTC believes the new rule will help workers and the economy, estimating that it will lead to a 2.7% increase in new businesses every year, increase the average worker's wages by $524 a year, and help lower the cost of healthcare by up to $194 billion over the next decade.

Some states, including California, Massachusetts, and Illinois, have already banned noncompetes at the state level. A top lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board has said that not only do noncompete clauses infringe on workers' rights, they are also usually illegal.

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• Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to recognize that he had total legal immunity as president.
• He wants to toss Jack Smith's case over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
• The Supreme Court has recognized immunity before — but never in the sweeping fashion Trump requests.

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday will have his highest-stakes legal battle for his highest-stakes criminal case.

His lawyers are facing off against the Justice Department, trying to persuade the Supreme Court that Trump should have total immunity from criminal prosecution — even for trying to overturn the results of an election.

The indictment, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in Washington, DC, federal court, accuses Trump of obstructing Congress by conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election. By facilitating fake electors, pressuring public officials, and directing his supporters to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, where they rioted, Trump attempted to rob Americans of rightful votes, the indictment alleges.

Trump is asking the Supreme Court to grant him a sweeping immunity mandate as he runs to recapture the presidency. If the court rules his way and he wins again in November, he could push the bounds of presidential criminality.

Former President Richard Nixon famously declared to the journalist David Frost,"[W]hen the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition." Trump and his lawyers' views may put that to the test.

Presidents already have some protections. A sitting president cannot be indicted under Justice Department guidelines that date back decades. The Supreme Court also previously extended former presidents protection from civil lawsuits in a case brought by a former Air Force contractor against Nixon. Trump wants to extend this shield even further if a former president can argue that the action in question fell under the scope of their official duties.

Beyond the presidency's future, the court's decision may have ramifications not only for the election interference case, but "really all four of the criminal cases" Trump currently faces, as one of his lawyers has said.

Another indictment, in Georgia, over Trump's attempt to overturn his election result there, features an overlapping set of facts. And Smith has brought a different criminal case in Florida, for Trump taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after he left the presidency and refusing to return them.

Trump won't be at the Supreme Court hearing. He's currently on trial in New York, on yet another set of charges, which allege he messed with a different election.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office say Trump violated business record-keeping laws 34 times by disguising hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who says she had an affair with him, to keep her quiet ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Todd Blanche, his lead lawyer in the Manhattan trial — who is also Trump's lead counsel in the Mar-a-Lago case and a defense attorney in the DC case — said the Supreme Court hearing "comes back to the multiple different indictments" when he requested that his client be allowed to attend the Supreme Court hearing.

But criminal defendants are required to be in court during their trial proceedings, and the Manhattan judge presiding over the case refused to allow Trump a break to attend oral arguments.

Tabloid executive David Pecker, the first witness at the trial, was on the stand Tuesday.

Trump wants total immunity

In the DC-based election interference case, Trump argued that presidential immunity — a doctrine typically understood to provide legal protections to US presidents over the course of their duties — shields him from prosecution.

He also said the cases should be dismissed under double jeopardy grounds, since the US Senate failed to convict him when he was impeached for his election interference.

And while the Supreme Court has previously ruled that presidents can't be immune to criminal proceedings related to the "outer perimeter" of their duties — it forced Trump to comply with a subpoena for the Manhattan criminal case in 2021 — Trump's lawyers now argue he "is categorically immune from federal criminal prosecution for any act conceivably within the outer perimeter of his executive responsibility."

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, denied Trump's motion to dismiss the case, ruling being a former president "does not confer a lifelong 'get-out-of-jail-free' pass," and that while the prosecution was "unprecedented," so were his alleged crimes.

Trump's lawyers pressed on. In an appeals court hearing, his lawyers said that a president could even order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and come away unscathed as long as Congress was OK with it.

A three-judge appellate court panel backed up Chutkan's decision, writing that Trump "is answerable in court for his conduct."

"For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant," the appellate judges wrote. "But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution."

The Supreme Court has agreed to weigh whether impeachment counts as double jeopardy with a criminal prosecution and "whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from a criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office."

In a brief to the high court, Smith noted that the US Constitution doesn't give the president any role in certifying elections, much less the power to "defraud the United States in the certification of presidential-election results, obstruct proceedings for doing so, or deprive voters of the effect of their votes."

Trump's lawyers have warned that a decision to allow former presidents to be prosecuted would unleash chaos. The threat of criminal charges from a politically motivated Justice Department "will hang like a millstone around every future President's neck," they argued.

"Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist," Trump's lawyers wrote in one brief.

Trump's arguments were ahistorical, lawyers on Smith's team wrote in their own briefs. They point to the fact that Nixon accepted President Gerald Ford's sweeping pardon, which Ford reportedly viewed as an admission of guilt. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski weighed indicting Nixon. Independent Prosecutor Robert Ray also came close to charging former President Bill Clinton with lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

"Since Watergate, the Department of Justice has held the view that a former President may face criminal prosecution, and Independent and Special Counsels have operated from that same understanding," Smith's team wrote. "Until petitioner's arguments in this case, so had former Presidents."

Donald Ayer, a former Justice Department official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, said the case was a test for the US as a democracy.

"This may indeed be the most important US Supreme Court case in the history of our country," he told journalists at a panel organized by the Defend Democracy Project. "Because our election this year is not just about who will be president, it's also about whether our country still believes in democracy and has a functioning rule of law."

The Supreme Court is weighing another case over the Justice Department's decision to charge hundreds of January 6 rioters with obstructing "an official proceeding" — one of the four counts Smith brought against Trump.

At a hearing last week, the justices reportedly appeared inclined to rule that prosecutors had viewed the statute too broadly, raising the possibility that Trump could score a win and get that charge dropped even if his case goes to trial.

Trump likely won't go to trial again before the November election

Chutkan originally scheduled the trial to begin at the beginning of March. But, tied up in appeals, it's now unlikely to take place before the November election.

The Supreme Court will likely issue a decision in late April. At that point, Chutkan can resume the pre-trial process. If she continues to follow the previous timeline she had planned for pre-trial hearings, jury selection likely would not begin until late October at the very earliest. Given Trump's candidacy, it's hard to imagine her insisting that he spend the final days of the election in a courtroom.

If Trump becomes president again, he may try to pardon himself or pressure the Justice Department to withdraw the case.

The Mar-a-Lago case, too, would likely be on the chopping block in a Trump presidency. Neither it nor the Georgia prosecution have trial dates scheduled yet, and they will likely not be tried before 2025 at the earliest.

Some former government officials who served under Trump have urged the Supreme Court not to grant him immunity. One group of ex-military officials filed a brief arguing that giving presidents "absolute immunity" would allow them to use the armed forces for "criminal ends" and "threaten to inject chaos into military operations." A group of founding-era historians have also filed a brief saying the concept of limitless presidential immunity contradicts what the US Constitution's framers intended.

Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff when he tried to overturn the 2020 election results, and a co-defendant in the Fulton County criminal case in Georgia, also filed a brief with the Supreme Court. He asked that, if the court finds that Trump can be liable in the case, it ensures that lower-ranking employees like himself could still have immunity protections.

Norm Eisen, a former White House lawyer in Barack Obama's administration, said that the Supreme Court could keep the case moving quickly by deciding only whether Trump deserves immunity in Smith's case — and set aside more abstract questions about the doctrine.

"Donald Trump has articulated an outrageous, unprecedented, and ahistorical assertion of absolute immunity," he said at the Defend Democracy Project panel. "The Supreme Court need not stray into other questions just because Trump has made it easy for them. They should decide this case."

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• A tattooed content creator sparked a debate about hiring biases after being rejected by T.J. Maxx.
• Experts say tattoos can impact hiring decisions, especially in customer-facing roles.
• But overall, personality and cultural fit are more important.

TikToker Ash Putnam was frustrated after T.J. Maxx denied her application — and she thinks her tattoos were to blame.

Some of her visible designs include a skull with horns on her neck, solid black patches on her arms, and a pattern on her forehead. Putnam, 23, also has multiple facial piercings, including a large silver ring hanging from her septum.

"I hate that my tattoos are such a defining factor for me getting a job or not," she said in a recent TikTok. "Just because I have tattoos doesn't mean I'm not going to be a good worker."

Putnam, from California, said she went into the store to ask why she hadn't gotten the job, and the hiring manager told her she didn't have enough experience. The hiring manager also denied that her tattoos played any role in the rejection. T.J. Maxx did not respond to a request by Business Insider for comment.

Putnam wasn't convinced and took to TikTok to complain. Many commentators claimed her attitude may have been to blame, rather than her tattoos. Others thought her body art likely played a role in the rejection.

While the jury is out over whether tattoos can damage your prospects of being hired, experts told BI that the personality of a prospective candidate is likely more important for recruiters.

Putnam's story went viral

Putnam's video amassed 7.4 million views, and it struck a nerve.

"HR supervisor here," one person commented. "There is no way any company would put you in front of customers like T.J. Maxx."

Another commenter, who said they used to be a hiring manager for the store, said: "I will tell you it's the facial piercings and tattoos."

Some fellow content also creators criticized Putnam's approach.

Ivy Johnson, for example, who also has many tattoos, said she had worked in corporate America as a hiring manager before starting up her apothecary business.

"Your tattoos are very aggressive," she said. With customer-facing positions, she said, "that doesn't go over well."

Johnson said she also thought Putnam had "a really bad attitude."

"If you had come into my business after an interview, or even applying and chatting on the phone, even if I didn't even know that you're a heavily tattooed person, I'd be like, bye, there's the door," she said.

"You have to put your best foot forward in an interviewing circumstance, no matter what you do, what you're applying for, or what you look like."

It depends on the role

Almost a third (32%) of people in the US have a tattoo, and 22% have more than one, according to Pew Research Center.

Some studies have suggested that tattoos can affect someone's career progression. In 2018, a LinkedIn survey found that 40% of respondents said they had rejected a candidate for a job because they had a visible tattoo. 88% of recruiters and HR professionals who responded said they thought tattoos limited a candidate's prospects.

However, research from the University of Miami that same year found tattooed job-seekers were no less likely to be employed than those without.

The stigma of tattoos is lessening every day, with many employers no longer having an issue with hiring tattooed employees, according to Indeed.

There may still be a line, though, and some viewers argued that Putnam crossed it. Putnam didn't comment on the record for this article, but she told the UK publication The Daily Star: "I am not going to change who I am for minimum wage jobs."

Adam Collins, the founder and CEO at Ignite SEO, told BI that as someone who hires people to work at his company, "tattoos can make a big impact on how a candidate is perceived."

"I wouldn't say that tattoos make or break an interview because it depends on the role," he said. "A candidate applying to be an account manager for our clients and is supposed to speak to our clients directly should definitely appear trustworthy and clean-cut, so face and neck tattoos would affect that."

On the other hand, with someone who isn't directly working with clients, appearance is less important.

In technical and operational roles, for example, "it's not a big deal," he said.

Michelle Enjoli, a career coach, told BI the visibility and type of tattoos someone has can make a difference.

"Tattoos are personal and typically represent something for that person," she said. "People represent companies, and therefore, if a tattoo represents something that a company would not want to be associated with, it can definitely be an issue for a hiring manager."

How likely it is that a tattoo will make or break an interview depends on how visible they are and what they may represent, Enjoli added. Tattoos are nowhere near as much of a taboo as they used to be, but some people still hold judgment over them.

In Putnam's case, her tattoos were considered extreme, Enjoli said, and "seemed to be a big part of her identity."

"In other cases where someone might have a smaller tattoo on their arm or visible area, it might not matter as much as it is less obvious," she said.

"I think a company demanding that an employee not have any tattoos regardless of visibility or meaning is definitely outdated as they have become a big part of the modern culture."

Personality matters more

Justina Raskauskiene, the HR team lead at Omnisend, told BI as tattoos have become more common, it's likely recruiters and hiring managers barely pay attention to them "unless they are offensive or distracting."

"Sometimes hiring managers may even prefer an employee with a tattoo because it can be evidence of an interesting personality," she said.

"Discriminating against those people would mean missing out on some talented people in the industry."

Rachel Pelta, the head writer at virtual work experience platform Forage told BI that overall, hiring managers are looking at skills and abilities.

"The thing is, everyone who's interviewing probably has the skills and abilities I'm looking for," she said. "So, then it comes down to, how well are you selling yourself in the interview? Are you making the case for why you're the best person for the role? If you're not doing that, you won't get the job."

As for tattoos, piercings, or anything else that could be considered unusual, such as bright hair colors, hiring managers "shouldn't evaluate a candidate on their appearance," Pelta added.

But some companies are traditional or conservative, and for them, these things could be a "big deal."

"Unless you're willing to cover or remove them, you'll have to keep searching until you find a company that accepts you as you," she said. "And they are out there, it just may take you a bit longer to find one."

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America has long had a plastic problem. It's an urgent question — what do we do with the 40 million tons of plastic waste we produce annually? One year of plastic waste is roughly enough to smother the entirety of Manhattan a meter deep, and it has to go somewhere. For years, the answer was simple: Make a lot of it, dump most of it in the landfill, and make the rest of it someone else's problem — the US regularly exported 7 million tons a year to China alone. Some of it was melted into lesser plastic; the rest was incinerated or buried.

But then, in 2018, China cut off plastic imports.

Now, America is coming to terms with a hard truth: Plastic was never designed to be recycled and there's no profitable way to recycle 91% of it. The environmental impacts have been disastrous. About 430 million tons of plastic are produced globally every year, accounting for 14% of global oil demand. The refinement of plastic alone emits up to 235 million tons of greenhouse gases a year. Most of that plastic breaks down into microplastics that make their way into the air, rain, and our bodies. Almost 95% of America's water supply contains plastic fibers.

While the US, the UK, and other European countries responded to China's ban by sending their waste to places like Thailand and Malaysia, those countries then followed China in cutting off waste imports. The message was clear: The Global South would no longer be a dumping ground for the West.

America is now scrambling to find alternatives. One approach peddled by oil corporations like Chevron and Exxon has been to turn plastic into crude oil, which they say extends the life of plastic that would've otherwise ended up in a landfill. As these companies look to replace projected lost revenue from the phasing out of fossil fuels, they're lobbying to blanket the country with 150 plants that specialize in pyrolysis, a form of chemical recycling that melts plastic down into crude oil to be used for fuel and petrochemicals, as well as to make lesser-quality plastics. While advocates champion these facilities for breaking down hard-to-recycle plastics that other recyclers toss aside, critics condemn them for emitting toxic particles, relying heavily on government subsidies, and acting as a greenwashed alternative to addressing the plastic problem.

As they're pitched as an innovation set to bring us a "circular economy" of plastic that allows us to stop making new plastic and just reuse what we have, marketing for pyrolysis and recycling overlooks a glaring fact: Plastic production doubles every 15 to 20 years.

This isn't sustainable, Tim Miller, a vice president at the Ohio plastic-recycling center Royal Paper Stock, told me, adding: "But I don't know how to stop it." Pyrolysis is another sign of America's plastic paralysis.

In the years after World War II, plastic flooded the marketplace as a cheap alternative to otherwise scarce and finite materials. It was hailed as a democratic harbinger of a new, utopian age of capitalism, fueling the subsequent decades of cheap consumerism that became synonymous with the American dream.

"The continuous flow of oil fueled not just cars but an entire culture based on the consumption of new products made of plastics," Susan Freinkel wrote in her book "Plastic: A Toxic Love Story."

Plastic went from being practically nonexistent in 1940 to being consumed at a rate of 30 pounds a person each year by 1960. Just as quickly, it became a target of environmental movements protesting litter, garbage-filled oceans, and landfills brimming with plastic. Oil and chemical companies responded by looking into whether recycling was realistic or, more importantly, profitable. It wasn't. So companies shifted the blame for the pollution onto consumers. The "Crying Indian" commercial, funded by beverage and packaging corporations, aired in 1971, showing a Native American character crying at the sight of litter.

The messaging worked. As companies expanded plastic into every facet of life, recycling became the due diligence needed to sustain our hyperconsumption. We didn't worry about plastic bottles because the recycling truck carried them off to a new life. Companies like Coca-Cola and Nestlé slapped "100% recycled" and "100% recyclable" labels on their packaging to appear sustainable. Just last year, the Plastics Industry Association launched a million-dollar ad campaign, "Recycling Is Real," claiming that it's "not only real, but feasible and economical."

While recycling is real, the vast majority of plastic isn't recycled, mostly due to how expensive it is to clean and sort it effectively. A 2022 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found only 9% of all plastic ever produced had been recycled; 72% ended up in landfills or the environment. Unlike aluminum or glass, the plastic that can be recycled rarely results in replacing one recycled water bottle with another.

Instead, it's a process of downcycling — turning plastic into lesser plastics like plant containers or bins before they are relegated to a landfill. By downcycling a tiny portion of plastic waste, companies can genuinely reuse a relatively small share of plastic, while convincing consumers that the industry has created a circular economy of infinitely recycled plastic. Never mind that products advertised as being made from recycled plastic are made almost entirely out of new plastic or that almost all the 300 pounds of plastic every American consumes each year (10 times as much as in 1960) ends up in a landfill, in the ocean, or incinerated.

Larry Thomas, a former president of what's now called the Plastics Industry Association, told NPR in 2020: "If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment." And if they aren't worried about the impact of plastic on the environment, they won't threaten the plastics industry.

Since 2018, the fossil-fuel and plastics industries have faced two harsh realities: Oil is being phased out in favor of clean, renewable energy, and plastic waste can no longer be exported to developing nations in the South. To replace their fuel losses, oil companies are going all in on plastic. The International Energy Agency predicted in 2018 that petrochemical products like plastic would outpace trucks, aviation, and shipping in oil demand by 2050. In a recent report, ExxonMobil predicted that petrochemicals used largely for plastics and fertilizer would account for nearly all of the oil industry's growth by 2050, replacing industrial fuel demand, which is projected to decrease. To keep expanding plastic production, however, it needs to look sustainable.

Akron, Ohio, which hosts about one-quarter of the country's polymer companies, is ground zero for this push. Designated by the Biden administration as the only "tech hub" in Ohio, the city has received tens of millions of dollars from the CHIPS Act, which it hopes to use to create a circular economy around plastic.

In 2012, Alterra Energy opened America's first large-scale plastic-pyrolysis facility. According to its website, Alterra converts "plastics back into their original building blocks to produce new plastics and other valuable products." The crude oil produced by the Akron facility is shipped to petrochemical companies around the globe to be purified and made into new plastics. But it's unclear how effective this process is.

A study published in 2023 by researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the economic and environmental impact of turning pyrolysis oil back into plastic was actually far worse than it was to make brand-new plastic. As a result, they said, pyrolysis oil is "typically reintegrated into the petrochemical industry where only a small fraction is used for closed-loop recycling."

"It has had, let's say, limited success," Miller, the Royal Paper Stock vice president, said about pyrolysis. "No one yet in the United States that I know of is just cranking in plastic and pumping out oil." He pointed to a pyrolysis facility in Oregon that just announced it would shut down after tens of millions of dollars in losses.

Residents in Akron are split on the impacts of the Alterra facility. On the one hand, pyrolysis melts plastic to be reused instead of sending it to the landfill or incinerator. On the other, it emits cancerous pollutants such as mercury, benzene, and arsenic, and props up the very fossil-fuel companies that are driving the climate crisis.

"Akron's going for 'the green city on the hill,'" Kelley Sayre, a fourth-generation Akron resident, told me, "but it's really 'the greenwashing city.'"

Vicky Abou-Ghalioum, the lead petrochemicals organizer of Buckeye Environmental Network, has been working with Akron residents concerned about the environmental and health impacts of chemical recycling, but it's proved challenging in a city ruled by polymers. "People are afraid to talk about plastic," she told me. Her organization has been pushing the EPA to address the influx of planned pyrolysis facilities in Ohio, arguing that they're bad for the environment and people, and aren't even profitable.

In a statement to Business Insider, Alterra Energy said its Akron facility is profitable and diverts over 100,000 pounds of plastic each day from landfills. "We operate in a heavily regulated industry and are in compliance with those requirements," the company said in response to concerns about toxic emissions. It also said one of its customers uses Alterra's oil product exclusively for making new plastic.

Despite the problems of pyrolysis, many manufacturers hail it as a sustainable miracle. Companies such as Eastman Chemical Co. see chemical recycling as the solution to recycling or composting 50% of their plastic packaging by 2025, and the American Chemistry Council claims the growing industry is necessary for fostering what it calls "plastics circularity." But these companies face an uphill battle. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York City launched an $85 million campaign in 2022 to stop over 120 proposed petrochemical facilities. "Petrochemical plants poison our air and water — killing Americans and harming the health of entire communities," Bloomberg said in a statement.

In the plastic-recycling industry, pyrolysis is seen as a well funded but failing experiment. A 2023 report by Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network found that the 11 pyrolysis facilities in operation in the US required massive public subsidies, most couldn't operate at full capacity, and only two of the plants sold the crude oil to be used exclusively for plastic production. Most of it was sold to make fuels and chemicals. Based on their findings, they argued that pyrolysis was ultimately "a public relations distraction to prevent plastic regulation and prop up the profits of the petrochemical/plastics industry."

Though the conundrum of plastic grows more dire by the day, there are signs of hope. In early 2022, the UN adopted a resolution that could send shock waves throughout the entire plastic-disposing world. Heads of state, environment ministers, and UN representatives agreed to end all plastic pollution with a legally binding international plastic treaty to be officially adopted later this year. "Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic," Espen Barth Eide, Norway's then-minister for climate and the environment, said in the announcement. "With today's resolution we are officially on track for a cure."

The resolution would establish an agreement addressing plastic at every level, from production to recycling, in an attempt to reduce plastic pollution worldwide. Organizations such as the international coalition Break Free From Plastic have said that cutting the production of plastic has to be on the table. "The oil and gas industry sees plastic as its primary growth market and is investing billions of dollars in new and expanded facilities," the organization wrote in a 2022 statement. The group recommended bans on single-use plastics, a plastic tax, and regulations that prioritize plastics that can be recycled.

"Reduction in the production of plastic is entirely possible," Abou-Ghalioum of Buckeye Environmental Network told me. She pointed to the more than 500 cities and 12 states that have banned plastic bags, reducing the number of bags used by the billions. "It's talked about how we rely on plastic for so many things, and it just feels like a marketing ploy to make us reluctant to shift away from it," she said. "We had everything we ever needed before plastic."

The tough reality is that the 9.5 billion tons of plastic with us will be here for hundreds of years. But how many millions of more tons are added will be determined by the types of solutions we arrive at today.

Taylor Dorrell is a writer and photographer based in Columbus, Ohio.

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