Bitcoin enthusiasts meeting in El Salvador on Friday said a recent surge in the cryptocurrency's value since Donald Trump's U.S. election win has heightened their expectations the price will rise further and it will be adopted more broadly globally.
Dozens of domestic and foreign 'bitcoiners' met at the Adopting Bitcoin conference just outside the Salvadoran capital, with the Central American country hyping its status as a hub for the promotion of digital currency trading.
Three years ago, President Nayib Bukele made El Salvador the first country in the world to establish Bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the U.S. dollar. The decision drew criticism from the International Monetary Fund, with whom the country is negotiating a $1.3 billion loan.
Bitcoin, which was trading above $90,000 on Friday, rallied to an all-time high after Trump secured his new term in office, set to begin in January. Investors see the incoming president as a cryptocurrency champion who will slash regulations.
"Trump understands what it's like to be a capitalist, he's going to get out of the way and remove regulations that are not necessary," said Charlie Stevens, a 27-year-old Irishman who has lived in El Salvador for a year and a half.
"Bitcoin is growing very, very fast, in front of the eyes of the whole world. And the whole world has its eyes on El Salvador," he added.
Bukele's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The world's biggest cryptocurrency has had a heady if volatile rise, trading at around $8,000 five years ago, and starting this year at around $42,000.
In January, Vice President Felix Ulloa told Reuters that El Salvador would remain committed to the digital currency, despite scarce use of Bitcoin among Salvadorans and some technical issues.
The Mexican government expects to transfer 136 billion pesos ($6.69 billion) to state oil producer Pemex next year to help the heavily indebted firm meet its debt and loan repayments, a budget proposal showed on Friday.
Pemex has debt payments of nearly $9 billion coming due on bonds next year, part of its $97.3 billion in financial liabilities. Ratings agencies have long criticized the firm for its reliance on government support to shore up its finances.
President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in October, has said that her government will continue to support Pemex and state-owned electric utility CFE because of the key role they play.
The transfer to Pemex is dependent on the company improving its balance sheet by the same amount, according to the budget proposal. Congress must now debate and vote on the bill.
Pemex has received around 150 billion pesos this year to meet its debt obligations.
Under the administration of Sheinbaum's predecessor, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Pemex received billions of dollars to pay down its debt, boost oil output and build a refinery that is just starting to produce fuel.
A U.S. labor board whose enforcement powers are being challenged in a series of lawsuits is set to defend itself from attacks by Amazon.com and Elon Musk's SpaceX in a conservative U.S. appeals court, as the agency also braces for a potential overhaul under President-elect Donald Trump.
Amazon, SpaceX and many other companies are going on the offensive by suing the National Labor Relations Board in order to block it from pursuing cases accusing them of illegal labor practices, part of a broader onslaught by businesses and conservative groups on the "administrative state."
The Amazon and SpaceX cases being heard by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday are among the first of more than two dozen similar lawsuits - which claim the NLRB's structure is unconstitutional - that have reached influential U.S. appeals courts.
Court rulings invalidating the agency's in-house proceedings could bring the board's work to a standstill. And they could potentially tee up review by the U.S. Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has in recent years reined in the powers of federal agencies.
The NLRB is the agency that enforces private-sector employees' rights to advocate for better working conditions, organize, and join unions. The board's general counsel issues complaints accusing employers or unions of illegal practices, which are heard by administrative judges whose decisions can be reviewed by the five-member board.
Democratic President Joe Biden has proclaimed himself the most pro-union president in U.S. history and his appointees to the board have kept pace, issuing a series of rulings that have boosted union organizing and riled trade groups.
The challenges to the board come as unions are filing petitions to hold elections and winning them at rates not seen in decades. Companies including Amazon, Starbucks and EV maker Tesla, where Musk is chief executive, have frequently been in the agency's crosshairs as they have faced the first union campaigns in their history. Some of them are now pushing back by claiming the NLRB's enforcement proceedings are unlawful.
Trump's election to a second White House term could separately hobble the NLRB as the Republican and his supporters – including Musk, who has emerged as a top adviser to Trump - have vowed to curb the powers of administrative agencies.
rump's appointees to the labor board may also be less inclined to vigorously defend it from legal attacks, including these lawsuits, and could be more likely to acquiesce to appeals courts that invalidate parts of its structure, experts said.
Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
'PLAY HARD BALL'
Amazon and SpaceX claim that the NLRB's five members appointed by the president are improperly shielded from being removed at will by the White House, and that the agency's administrative process violates the constitutional separation of powers and the companies' right to a jury trial. SpaceX also says that the president should be able to fire administrative judges who hear board cases at will.
Amazon is seeking to block the NLRB from ruling on whether it must bargain with the first union in its history at a New York City warehouse. SpaceX is fighting an NLRB case accusing it of firing engineers critical of Musk. Each company has filed a second lawsuit against the NLRB stemming from separate board cases, which are also likely to end up at the 5th Circuit.
Amazon and SpaceX, which have denied wrongdoing in the underlying board cases, did not respond to requests for comment.
NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a Biden appointee, said in a statement that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the agency's structure nearly 90 years ago and that despite the legal challenges, the board would continue to carry out its mission.
"While the current challenges require the NLRB to expend scarce resources defending against them, we’ve seen that the results of these kinds of challenges is ultimately a delay in justice, but that ultimately justice does prevail," Abruzzo said.
A growing number of similar cases challenging the NLRB's structure has been filed in courts nationwide. But an outsized proportion of them, including the Amazon and SpaceX cases, had their start in federal courts in Texas. Those courts, overseen by the 5th Circuit, have become a favored destination for companies and conservative groups challenging the powers of U.S. agencies.
Critics, including the NLRB, call the practice "judge shopping" and have sought to curb it, including by asking judges to transfer cases out of Texas. Many of those same critics have accused companies suing the NLRB of seeking to distract from their violations of workers’ rights to advocate for better working conditions.
The 5th Circuit is widely considered the most conservative federal appeals court, with 12 of its 17 active judges appointed by Republican presidents, and has issued several rulings in recent years curbing federal agencies' powers.
"It's been this signal for employers that if you want to play hard ball, you go to the 5th Circuit," said Andrew Strom, a lawyer with a New York City-based affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.
Three Texas judges who recently blocked NLRB cases all cited a 5th Circuit decision in 2022 against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has a similar structure to the labor board. The pending appeals will give the court a chance to extend that ruling, which has been rejected by other appeals courts, to the NLRB.
Even if the lawsuits ultimately fail, Amazon, SpaceX and other companies have already succeeded in indefinitely delaying board cases involving an array of alleged unlawful conduct, and more lawsuits are likely to follow.
Challenges to the NLRB have been less successful outside of Texas, with at least six judges in other states and Washington D.C., rejecting claims about the agency's structure.
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in their first meeting that China hoped Japan would "properly handle" major issues such as history and Taiwan, according to Chinese state media on Saturday.
Xi called for the two Asian neighbours to safeguard the global free trade system, as well as stable and unimpeded production and supply chains, as they met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Lima, Peru.
Ishiba told Xi he wanted to build a "constructive and stable" relationship but asked him to reverse an import ban on Japanese seafood and strengthen safety measures for Japanese nationals in China after recent fatal stabbings, and expressed concerns about Chinese maritime activities.
According to a Japanese readout of the meeting, Ishiba asked Xi to release Japanese nationals detained in China.
It was the first meeting between Ishiba, who took office in October, and the long-ruling Chinese leader.
The leaders of Japan, South Korea and the United States met on Friday, seeking to cement diplomatic progress before Donald Trump takes office in an administration that many fear could upend alliances worldwide.
In recent months, Chinese and Japanese officials have moved to resume several consultative talks for the first time in years, signalling a possible steadying of testy relations.
China and Japan have been at odds in recent years over issues including territorial claims, trade tensions and Beijing's anger over Tokyo's decision to release treated water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, which triggered the seafood ban.
Also raising concerns about anti-Japan sentiment in China have been two recent attacks in China - a stabbing that killed a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy in Shenzhen in September, and June stabbing that killed a Chinese woman trying to shield a Japanese mother and her child from an assailant.
Netflix was down for thousands of users in the U.S. late on Friday, according outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
There were more than 12,000 incidents of people reporting issues with the platform, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
New York House Republicans plan to attack congestion pricing from “every avenue,” with the aim to kill the contentious toll program that president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to “TERMINATE” from the White House.
“We’re looking at every avenue from the executive, to the legislative, to the judiciary, to kill this because it’s bulls–t,” Hudson Valley Rep. Mike Lawler told The Post Friday. “It’s a scam.”
The promised full court press in Congress, the courts and federal bureaucracy against congestion pricing follows Gov. Kathy Hochul’s announcement Thursday that she’d revive the program charging cars to enter Manhattan below 60th Street a $9 toll starting in the New Year.
The toll will be increased to $12 by 2028, and spike to the originally-planned $15 after 2031, according to the governor’s office.
New York Republicans, including Rep. Mike Lawler, have double-downed on efforts to kill congestion pricing.Steve WhiteSkip Ad
Lawler’s all-out effort against the tolls has also extended to the internet: the potential 2026 gubernatorial candidate launched the website “congestionpricingsucks.com” Friday that argued Hochul is asking motorists to “bail out the MTA for their crappy budgeting.”
“This congestion pricing scheme is nothing more than a massive new tax on working families, daily commuters, college students, and local residents who just want to travel within the city they call home,” the site states.
A senior GOP aide said if Hochul’s plan forges ahead before the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2025, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are prepared to immediately introduce and pass legislative fixes to withhold federal funds to New York.
“I would expect it to happen in the first six months of the year,” the aide said, pointing out it “could be sooner” but that would depend on whether Trump takes any executive action.
The governor’s announcement was met by praise from congestion pricing supporters unhappy with her last-minute decision in the summer to put the plan on “pause,” as well as a thunderous renewed outcry from opponents, including Trump.
Trump previously vowed to “TERMINATE” congestion pricing, but whether he will or how remains unclear.via REUTERS
He lambasted Hochul for resurrecting the “most regressive tax known to womankind (man!)” — but notably didn’t say whether he’d follow through on his past promise to “TERMINATE” the program during his first week in the White House. His team simply supplied his Thursday statement in response to The Post’s request for comment Friday.
But politicians and other operatives The Post spoke to said the courts may well be the best route for opponents to kill congestion pricing — before Trump even takes office Jan. 20.
A judge could delay the tolls’ anticipated Jan. 5 start by granting an injunction in the high-profile anti-congestion pricing lawsuit from Staten Island lawmakers and the United Federation of Teachers.
Failing that, both Lawler and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island) told The Post they believe a Trump Department of Transportation would be able to undo the Biden administration’s sign-off on the tolling program unilaterally.
Such a step would require Hochul and proponents to mount a court challenge to keep the sign-off in place.
“I do believe there’s plenty of grounds for the Trump administration to revoke it,” Lawler said. “And let Governor Hochul take it to court. If she believes so strongly in this brilliant strategy and policy then fine, take it to court and own it.”
Congestion pricing is slated to begin in January.Christopher Sadowski
“I think a lawsuit is probably most effective because they violated federal law by not requiring a full and thorough environmental impact statement as required under [The National Environmental Policy Act],” Malliotakis said. “The Biden Administration just rubber stamped this without requiring them to comply with NEPA.”
The Biden administration in 2021 gave New York City and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority the go-ahead to conduct an environmental assessment of congestion pricing’s impacts in a less stringent review than what critics wanted.
The Trump administration could try to claim the full environmental impact statement was warranted as a way to ignite another court fight to derail the toll after he takes office.
Hochul and MTA officials, however, are keenly aware that the plan would be subject to fierce challenges from the administration and other opponents.
The governor’s revamped plan to impose a $9 toll instead of a $15 one isn’t a wholesale change, and the MTA board’s upcoming Nov. 18 vote likely will adopt an “update” to congestion pricing rather than an entirely reworked proposal itself.
Toll proponents view this as a strategy to make the first-in-the-nation toll program more resilient to legal and administrative challenges.
Hochul’s revived plan would see $9 tolls for cars entering certain areas of Manhattan.REUTERS
“The reactivation of congestion pricing is being done in a way to make it as tight and sensible as possible from legal challenge and that includes things like making it a phase-in where we do get to the $15 rate that was signed off on by the feds in June,” Rachael Fauss, senior policy advisor at the pro-congestion group Reinvent Albany told The Post.
“It was structured that way to make it as tight as possible against a legal challenge,” Fauss said.
A House GOP aide familiar with the matter told The Post Friday that it’s “safe to say there have been a bunch of conversations” about killing congestion pricing.
“Our letter to the president-elect plus Hochul rushing immediately after the letter to implement it has shown that this was always about politics on her end,” the aide added.
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer,who called Hochul’s revival “insane,” has said he would work with anyone in the GOP to end the fees that he argued will saddle Garden State motorist commuters with another $2,500 a year in tolls.
But Congress could end up being a dead end in the fight to nix congestion pricing.
“I don’t see [House Speaker Mike] Johnson wasting floor time on a New York City congestion bill in Trump’s first year,” another congressional aide said, noting this was likely a decision for the incoming transportation secretary, who hasn’t yet been named publicly.
