Guatemalan Illegal Indicted for Arson, Murder of Sleeping NYC Subway Woman

Editor 1
-
0
Guatemalan Illegal Indicted for Arson, Murder of Sleeping NYC Subway Woman

(Headline USA) The illegal immigrant accused of burning a sleeping woman to death inside a New York City subway train has been indicted on murder and arson charges, a prosecutor said on Friday, as authorities continue working to confirm the victim’s identity.

The indictment comes days after Sebastian Zapeta’s arrest and subsequent police questioning, in which authorities say he claimed not to know what had happened but identified himself in photos and surveillance video showing the fire being lit.

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told reporters the indictment will be unsealed on Jan. 7 and that Zapeta has been charged with multiple counts of murder as well as an arson charge. The top charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

“This was a malicious deed. A sleeping, vulnerable woman on our subway system,” Gonzalez said.

Zapeta, 33, is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally, federal immigration officials said.

He was initially charged in a criminal complaint with murder and arson. Such filings are often a first step in the criminal process because, in New York, all felony cases require a grand jury indictment to proceed to trial unless a defendant waives that requirement.

An attorney representing Zapeta declined to comment.

Authorities say Zapeta approached the woman, who was motionless and thought to be asleep, on a stopped F train at Brooklyn’s Coney Island station, and set her clothing on fire with a lighter on Sunday morning. He fanned the flames with a shirt, causing her to become engulfed in flames, authorities said.

Zapeta then sat on a bench on the platform and watched as she burned, prosecutors allege. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Police took Zapeta into custody while he was riding a train on the same line later that day.

Gonzalez told reporters on Friday that police and medical examiners are working to identify the woman using fingerprints and advanced DNA techniques, while also retracing her steps before the killing.

A Brooklyn address for Zapeta released by police after his arrest matches a shelter that provides housing and substance abuse support.

Federal immigration officials said he was deported in 2018 but returned to the U.S. illegally sometime after that.

The harrowing episode, along with other high-profile subway attacks, has renewed concerns about safety in the nation’s largest mass transit system, in a city where millions ride the rails every day.

Police data showed subway homicides were up, with nine killings through November versus five during the same time frame last year. That figure doesn’t include the woman who was burned to death, nor a man who was fatally stabbed at a Queens subway station the same day.

“When you have these incidents, it overshadows the success and it plays on the psyche of New Yorkers,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a televised interview earlier this week, noting that many incidents involve people with mental health issues.

Adams, a Democrat, has directed police to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s investigative team to explore criminal charges against Zapeta under the federal arson statute, according to a spokesperson for the mayor’s office.

Gonzalez told reporters Friday that the charges brought by his office could result in a more severe penalty, with the possibility that Zapeta could be sentenced to life without parole.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

‘They Hate His Guts’: Cruz Claps Back at ‘Numb Skulls’ Suggesting Dems Stop Trump from Taking Office

Julianna Frieman
-
0
‘They Hate His Guts’: Cruz Claps Back at ‘Numb Skulls’ Suggesting Dems Stop Trump from Taking Office

(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, clapped back Friday at the “numb skulls” at The Hill who wrote an article suggesting Democrats use the Constitution to stop President-elect Donald Trump from taking office.

The Hill ran the headline “Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now” by authors Evan A. Davis and David M. Schulte on Thursday.

The copy was a playbook instructing readers how Congress could pervert Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to characterize Trump as an “oath-breaking insurrectionist” unqualified to be sworn in as president.

On his Verdict podcast, Cruz took aim at the authors’ academic and legal backgrounds, calling it “screamingly funny” that Davis and Schulte referenced law publications they edited for at age 24, decades ago now that they are “grown ass adults.”

“What these two numb skulls are arguing is that Congress, when we come together on January 6, should block Trump from becoming president, and we should do so, they argue, under the 14th Amendment section three of the Constitution that says ‘No person shall hold any office, civil or military, who having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,’” Cruz said. “Now the stupidity of this argument literally leaps off of every syllable, of every word that they have written.”

Cruz told his listeners that Trump Derangement Syndrome is a “serious mental illness” that the authors and those who wish to heed to their playbook have.

“These people are freaking nuts. They hate his guts,” the senator said. “They’ve lost their minds, and at this point, understand these two numb skulls and every other Democrat who engages is in fantasy about this is an election denier and an insurrectionist.”

He emphasized that The Hill’s “angry leftists” told its readers that they do not care about the voice of voters, nor are they concerned with the seven battleground states that swung the election in Trump’s favor.

“They fully accept, yes, the American people came to vote and want Donald Trump, but we know better than they do, and so take a stand and take a stand to block what the voters want,” Cruz said. “Why? Because we are Democrats, and we hate democracy.”

Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.

Chicago Mayor Declares ‘Transfemicide Emergency’

Matt Lamb
-
0
Chicago Mayor Declares ‘Transfemicide Emergency’

(Matt Lamb, Headline USA) Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson mandated that city resources go to investigating “transfemicide” and “transmisogyny.”

The leftist Chicago mayor declared the “emergency” on Monday and plans to convene a working group to investigate the killing of transgender women, meaning biological males who identify as the opposite sex.

“We are committed to protecting our trans community through collaboration with those most impacted,” the mayor wrote on X.

Johnson’s new directive focuses on a sliver of the total population and victims of murder.

There have been 564 murder victims in Chicago as of Dec. 18, according to the Chicago Tribune.

In comparison, there have been a total of 30 murders of transgender individuals in the entire United States as of Dec. 20, according to the pro-LGBT magazine the Advocate.

However, according to Johnson, resources are “insufficient to deal with the current threat of harm and death faced by the transgender and gender-diverse community.”

The working group, set to begin by February 2025, will formulate policies “related to hate incidents and hate crimes that impact the BIPOC transgender and gender-diverse community by formulating gender-, racial-, and ethno-inclusive trauma-informed practices.”

In several places, the order said it will specifically focus on the expertise and experience of “Black, Indigenous, Latine, and People of Color,” meaning everyone but white people.

The working group will involve two groups that Johnson has previously tried to decrease funding to – the Cook County Sheriff’s office and the Chicago Police Department.

As a commissioner in Cook County, Johnson advocated for moving funding away from the sheriff’s department.

“There is no correlation between the money spent on the criminal justice system and the safety of our residents,” Johnson said at the time. “In fact, as spending on police and incarceration has gone up over the last decade, black and brown people actually feel less safe.”

He has recently proposed cutting money to the city’s police department and removing school resource officers from Chicago Public Schools.

The decision to focus on a small group of people came as Johnson faces criticism for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on illegal immigrants while citizens in his city say they should be helped instead.

POLL: Biden’s Job Approval, Satisfaction w/ Direction of Country Continue to Crater

Editor 1
-
0
POLL: Biden’s Job Approval, Satisfaction w/ Direction of Country Continue to Crater

(, The Center Square) Americans remain unsatisfied with the job President Joe Biden is doing and the direction in which he is leading the country.

As Biden prepares for the end of his term, Americans’ assessment of his performance shows that just 39% approve of the job he is doing as president, while only 19% expressed satisfaction with the country’s trajectory, according to Gallup’s latest survey.

Since “at least 2010, the nation has been in a public opinion rut,” Gallup said. “Presidential job approval has rarely exceeded 50%, and congressional job approval hasn’t exceeded 36%.”

Biden’s approval rating fluctuated in his early days in office, with slightly positive scores above 50%. However, those swiftly declined due to various economic challenges and policy issues, including his administration’s failure to address rapid rises in inflation, as well as his failed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Biden’s approval ratings settled in the high 30s to low 40s leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

According to the poll, Congress’s job approval rating was just 17% in December, remaining under 20% for most of 2024.

The Gallup poll also stated that only 20% of Americans were currently satisfied with the nation’s course, a figure that stayed relatively unchanged in recent surveys.

Approval has not been above the 50% mark since December 2003, two years into the George W. Bush presidency.

“[E]xcept for a brief period before the start of the pandemic in 2020, less than 40% have been satisfied with the direction of the country,” Gallup noted.

It reached its lowest point in October 2008, with only 7% approving of the country’s direction after the economic meltdown that fueled the so-called Great Recession and all but secured the election of Barack Obama over GOP rival John McCain.

Obama’s lowest point—11% in September 2011—equalled that of his successor, Donald Trump, following the U.S. Capitol uprising in January 2021. However, the public’s satisfaction with the direction of the country then was likely impacted somewhat by Biden’s inauguration, as well.

By contrast, the highest number recorded during Obama’s presidency, 37%, came in November 2016, the month that Trump was elected.

The number rose to 45% in February 2020, which also marked the conclusion of congressional Democrats’ first impeachment attempt against Trump. Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted on Feb. 5 of that year to acquit Trump of pressuring new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate the Biden family’s corruption involving the Burisma energy company.

Roughly a month later, the first cases of COVID-19 reached the U.S. and Europe, prompting the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic emergency and public satisfaction to once again plummet.

As the nation prepares for a leadership transition when Trump is sworn in again on Jan. 20—this time as the 47th president of the United States—these steady yet subdued ratings offered insight into the challenges faced by the outgoing administration and underscored the public’s cautious outlook on the future.

The recent Gallup poll was conducted from Dec. 2 to Dec. 18. Biden’s final job approval reading is expected in January.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Study Sheds Light on How Gold Reaches the Earth’s Surface

Money Metals News Service
-
0
Study Sheds Light on How Gold Reaches the Earth’s Surface

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Did you know gold is more plentiful than lead when you analyze the bulk composition of the earth?

You’re probably thinking, ‘Wait a minute, I thought gold was rare!’

Well, you’re right!

Confused?

Let me explain.

Most of Earth’s gold is locked up in the mantle, the thick, middle layer of the planet located between the crust and the outer core. Pure gold in the mantle tends to stay there. In other words, the gold is there, but it is inaccessible.

But some of the gold is constantly working its way to the surface where miners can reach it.

This process is something of a mystery, an international team of researchers has used mathematical modeling to reveal the specific conditions that lead to the enrichment of gold-bearing magma.

This information could help mining companies streamline exploration efforts and cut costs.

Exploration accounts for 10 to 20 percent of the costs associated with mining gold. Startups and junior miners allocate more toward exploration than larger, more established companies. As of the first quarter of 2024, the average cost of mining an ounce of gold was just under $1,500.

Here’s how Forbes summarized the findings:

“A specific kind of sulfur existing under a very specific set of pressures and temperatures as found at a depth of 50 to 80 kilometers (or 30 to 50 miles) beneath active volcanoes causes gold to be transferred from the mantle into magmas that eventually move to the Earth’s surface.”

In a nutshell, when gold in the mantle is exposed to a fluid containing sulfur, the gold bonds to the sulfur molecules, creating a gold-trisulfur complex. This compound is highly mobile in molten sections of the mantle and can be driven to the surface by geological activity such as volcanoes.

This activity is prominent in what are known as “subduction zones,” areas where one tectonic plate is diving under another.

“On all of the continents around the Pacific Ocean, from New Zealand to Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Russia, Alaska, the western United States, and Canada, all the way down to Chile, we have lots of active volcanoes. All of those active volcanoes form over or in a subduction zone environment. The same types of processes that result in volcanic eruptions are processes that form gold deposits,” study co-author Adam Simon said.

“These results provide a really robust understanding of what causes certain subduction zones to produce very gold-rich ore deposits. Combining the results of this study with existing studies ultimately improves our understanding of how gold deposits form and can have a positive impact on exploration.”

According to the World Gold Council, an estimated 212,582 tonnes of gold have been mined throughout history. If every ounce of this gold was melted into a cube, it would only measure around 22 meters on each side.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are about 50,000 tonnes of minable gold in the ground.

So, while gold is plentiful in the earth, it is extremely rare at ground level. That scarcity is one of the characteristics that makes gold so valuable.

Continue

‘A Tired Charade’: Fox News Commentator Takes Heat for Defense of Beyoncé

Julianna Frieman
-
0
‘A Tired Charade’: Fox News Commentator Takes Heat for Defense of Beyoncé

(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren took heat Thursday after she called for conservatives on social media to stop their “faux outage” at pop star Beyoncé’s Christmas NFL halftime show.

Beyoncé, who failed to sing despite making a paid appearance at Vice President Kamala Harris’s Oct. 25 campaign rally in Texas, was pelted with online criticism for taking the stage at the Netflix-streamed football game on Wednesday.

From being branded as an “all-white Diddy” acolyte to claims she is “satanic” and “overrated,” Beyoncé could not catch a break from those who thought her performance was “flat out embarrassing.”

Lahren chimed in on the conversation with an unexpected defense of the Cowboy Carter singer.

“Can we stop with the faux outrage about Beyoncé? I’m not her biggest fan either, but she put on a good performance and she is immensely talented,” the Fox News contributor wrote on X. “As conservatives, we don’t have to be outraged by everything, it’s a tired charade.”

Commenters closed in on Lahren by insisting their disdain for Beyoncé was genuine.

“Sorry but I’m not praising what I see as crap. I can appreciate talent in genres I don’t particularly care for, but that wasn’t it,” one X user replied. “Showed me she’s a 100% studio creation. Her live voice is weak, the choreography any jr high cheerleader could do.”

Trump supporter @themericanmeme called Beyoncé’s performance “abyssal,” while X user @Ravensbrook1k told Lahren critics loathe what the pop star represents.

One Beyoncé fan was stunned by Lahren’s defense of her idol, saying, “Beyonce shifted us into another dimension cause what the hell is happening? A conservative defending Beyonce?”

An apparent Trump supporter told the OutKick host, “You lost your conservative card.”

“I think it’s NOT about the performance. It’s IS about the promotion of what’s she’s representing,” one user added. “Too many Diddy connections to be ignored.”

Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.

CNN Panelist’s Both-Sides Jab at Trump Collapses in Spat on Biden’s ‘Failed’ Presidency

Julianna Frieman
-
0
CNN Panelist’s Both-Sides Jab at Trump Collapses in Spat on Biden’s ‘Failed’ Presidency

(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) CNN panelist Solomon Jones’s attempt to equate President-elect Donald Trump’s first term to President Joe Biden’s “failed” administration collapsed in an argument Thursday against commentator Scott Jennings and Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.

On NewsNight, Jennings told host Abby Phillip’s fellow guests that Biden was leaving office as a “disgrace” to the presidency.

He noted how the Democrat committed the sentences of 37 “evil, killer” death row inmates before getting off for a holiday vacation in St. Croix.

“This is a failed, disgraced president and he has never, ever owned up to what happened in Afghanistan and the role that played in destroying those families’ lives and destroying his own presidency,” Jennings said before Jones jumped in.

Jones hastily proposed that Trump “needs to say ‘I’m sorry’” for the people who died during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the incoming Republican president told people to “shine light in their bodies to disinfect” during his first term, which Jennings pointed out was false.

The CNN panelists bickered before Phillip chimed in saying she would fact-check the claim. Crosstalk ensued before Lawler dropped a truth bomb on the dispute.

“People told us to stand six feet apart and wear masks and that didn’t exactly solve anything,” the GOP congressman said. “So, look, at the end of the day here, Joe—you can make this all about Donald Trump. Donald Trump got reelected because Joe Biden was such a disaster on so many fronts.”

Lawler circled back to the tragedy of the 13 U.S. servicemembers killed in Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris has yet to meet with the affected families.

“That is the legacy of this administration. And everything that follows from the Russia invasion of Ukraine to the terrorist attack on Israel, the threats in the Indo-Pacific from China, the elicit oil trade to the tune of $200 billion between China and Iran, that funds Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis,” he said. “That is their legacy, and Joe Biden owns that.”

Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.

Will AI Cause Mass Deflation?

Money Metals News Service
-
0
Will AI Cause Mass Deflation?

(Peter St Onge, Money Metals News Service) Forbes Magazine warns AI will set off “The Great Deflation Bomb.”

Will we be buying eggs for fractions of a penny, houses for a song?

The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the economy is heating up as AI begins to seep from its original killer app of cheating on college essays and porn.

According to layoff firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in the last year, AI has accounted for one in ten layoffs in the tech sector and one in 50 layoffs overall.

Small potatoes compared to the panicked warnings of a few years ago.

But as Ray Kurzweil says, 1% in an exponential process is halfway there. And AI’s economic impact is likely to be exponential — so small you can barely see it, then it blows up and takes over everything.

AI and Jobs

The question of whether AI is a blessing or a curse very much depends on how hard it is to create new jobs.

If it’s easy to create new jobs, AI isn’t a job crisis at all — it’s a ladder.

Think Silicon Valley in the 90s, when the new jobs paid much better than whatever Palo Alto townies were doing before tech showed up.

On the other hand, if it’s hard to create new jobs, think Detroit in the 1970’s. A hellscape. The old jobs are gone, nothing to replace them. Minimum wage at best, riots over universal basic income at worst.

AI and Deflation

Still, setting aside the job dynamics, one thing we can be sure of is AI will radically reduce prices — deflation.

This is because, across the board, AI replaces things that were more expensive — especially when you consider AI combined with robots.

Contrast with the 1990’s internet, which reduced some prices — say, buying things from Amazon or downloading an mp3 or movie. But a lot of the benefit from the internet was quantitative — meaning stuff got better. It didn’t necessarily get cheaper.

After all, the 1990s internet couldn’t run a factory. Or a chicken farm. It couldn’t drive you to work, deliver your supply chain, or produce historical documentaries with a one-sentence prompt.

So, yes, we could conceivably get eggs for pennies.

The Fed and Deflation Phobia

Now, there is one caveat. Because our Federal Reserve has a giant money printer, and they fear deflation more, apparently than they fear World War 3.

Meaning that as soon as AI and robots start bringing down prices — which is a good thing — the Fed’s immune response will kick in, and they’ll do everything they can to print money. Potentially for years on end.

Aside from what easy money does to the economy, that will make assets boom.

So, eggs for pennies, houses for millions.

What’s Next

Putting it together, if we did the jobs thing right, AI is a utopia, up there with the mechanization of agriculture — or fire itself — as one of the most amazing things to happen to humanity’s quality of life.

We might expect a ten-fold plus increase in standard of living — roughly the difference between Switzerland and Botswana.

But if we did the Detroit thing on jobs, making it hard to create jobs with regulation, licensing, and taxes, we become a continent-sized Detroit of former middle-managers warming their hands in steel drums made of rusted-out windmill turbines.

A tiny AI-enabled elite at the top. A huge underclass below.

Clamoring, no doubt, for Universal Basic Income.

AI’s impact will take a while, and the first decade might look closer to the internet — qualitatively better but similar prices.

But when it hits in full, I think we’re looking at something akin to the industrial revolution.

Continue

Biden Admin. Hides Abuse of Tax Dollars for Union Activity Under Guise of Website Revamp

Editor 1
-
0
Biden Admin. Hides Abuse of Tax Dollars for Union Activity Under Guise of Website Revamp

(Casey Harper, The Center Square) President Joe Biden has nixed a federal union accountability website, despite his administration’s promises that it would be back.

Biden administration officials had previously said the site was simply being improved, but nearly all the accountability info from the site was removed and hasn’t returned.

“Federal union executives have taken advantage of the four years under the Biden administration, which adopted a ‘whole of government’ approach towards promoting and entrenching unions in the federal bureaucracy, to attempt to insulate themselves from a second Trump term,” Max Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told the Center Square.

As the Center Square previously reported, the Office of Personnel Management has for years updated a website to track unions’ “official time.”

Official time is a practice protected by federal law that allows federal employees to do certain union activities while being paid by the federal government, and therefore, on the taxpayer dime.

To make sure that workers and unions do not abuse this provision, OPM has maintained a public accountability site tracking how that time has been used.

Biden’s administration removed the accountability website with promises to refurbish the online presence of the information.

In 2023, an OPM spokesperson told the Center Square that “previous reports on official time are not currently available because OPM is reorganizing our website to improve navigation and customer experience.”

Now, however, about two years later, the site is still gone. Lawmakers have blasted OPM for the change.

OPM claims it has a new location online for reports. However, there is only one report on the new site, and it is from 2019, before Biden took office.

OPM told lawmakers in a letter, first reported by the Center Square, that it is not legally required to keep those kinds of records and publish reports.

“As part of modernizing and consolidating our webpages, we routinely remove or migrate information to ensure our web content is up to date and to improve the customer experience,” the letter said.

“In the course of updating our website, official time reports were taken down from their original location,” it continued. “The most recent of those reports, from 2019, was migrated along with numerous other documents to the Agency Reports page of OPM’s website.”

Critics say it is about maintaining transparency.

“I am disappointed that OPM will not commit to publishing future reports critical to government oversight of taxpayer dollars,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told the Center Square earlier this year. “Americans have a right to know if federal workers are using their hard-earned dollars responsibly and not to advance the interests of President Biden’s labor union cronies.”

Nelsen said his public information requests on the matter have not borne any fruit.

“Undoing Biden’s work will be difficult, but with an earlier start, President Trump may be able to have a more significant impact on reforming the federal bureaucracy than in his first term,” Nelsen said.

Thousands of Store Closures on Tap for 2025

Money Metals News Service
-
0
Thousands of Store Closures on Tap for 2025

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) The economy appears to be plugging right along, but there are some foul currents running under the surface that should raise concern as we move into 2025.

Major retailers plan to close thousands of stores in the next year.

Analysts say “shifting spending patterns” and “rising costs” are driving the closures. Many major retailers are shutting down underperforming locations to cut costs and boost sales, and several companies have gone bankrupt.

What Is Driving the Closures?

Persistent price inflation continues to grind down consumers and retailers alike.

Consumers have turned to credit cards to maintain spending as prices continue to increase. Outstanding consumer debt surged to over $5 trillion in 2024, with credit card balances rising to record levels.

The double whammy of rising debt and interest rates exacerbates the debt problem. The average annual percentage rate for credit cards remains over 20 percent despite recent interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

Debt is also a big problem for corporations. Many companies binged on low-interest loans during more than a decade of easy money. As those loans come due, they are being forced to refinance at much higher rates, adding significant interest costs to their operations.

Increasing producer prices are also putting the squeeze on retailers. The Producer Price Index rose by 0.4 percent month-on-month in November and 3 percent on an annual basis. Rising producer prices are considered a leading indicator of price inflation. Ultimately, producers pass those higher costs on to their customers, driving the CPI higher.

According to estimates by MasterCard SpendingPulse, retail sales rose 3.8 percent during the holiday season. However, price inflation is also inflating those retail sales numbers.

Since retail sales data isn’t inflation-adjusted, it captures both sales volumes and price changes. In other words, just because dollar widget sales increase doesn’t mean people bought more widgets. It could be that they bought fewer widgets but paid a lot more for them. Conversely, falling sales could reflect price drops and don’t necessarily mean people purchase fewer widgets.

Lower-Income Consumers Feeling the Pain

According to an article by the Wall Street Journal, higher-income consumers are driving retail sales, while lower-income Americans are struggling to make ends meet as they continue to feel the squeeze of rising food prices, childcare, and other monthly expenses.

Newell Brands CEO Chris Peterson told the WSJ, “We started to notice this trend where there was a real bifurcation in the market between the $50,000-and-below consumer in the U.S. market and the $100,000-and-above consumer.”

The company produces Sharpie pens, Graco strollers, and Oster kitchen appliances. As an example of this bifurcation, Peterson said the company anticipates stronger demand for its high-end blenders costing $100 or more but dwindling demand for entry-level blenders priced in the $20 range.

“As we head into next year, 100 percent of our innovation will be at the medium and higher price point. We’re not innovating at all against the lower price points anymore.”

Shutting It Down

As we move into the new year, many retailers aren’t innovating at all. They’re shutting down stores. Some companies are simply trying to streamline operations and eliminate underperforming stores, but many are on the verge of bankruptcy or have already entered the process.

Here are just a few of the big companies that plan to shutter locations in the coming year.

Macy’s – The department store is expected to shut down 65 locations by the end of 2024 as part of a plan to close 150 “unproductive” stores by the end of 2026.

Walgreens – The drugstore chain announced plans to close 1,200 stores, with about 500 locations shuttering in 2025

CVS – Here, we have another big drugstore chain shutting down hundreds of stores.

Starbucks – The coffee giant hasn’t announced numbers but says it will close several stores next year to “optimize operations.” The company has been dealing with labor unrest, leading to barista strikes in several cities.

Party City – The company has filed for bankruptcy and is closing all of its locations after 40 years in business. Company officials say inflation, debt, and other factors led to its demise.

Foot Locker – The shoe store began closing low-performing locations last year. It plans to shut down 400 stores, primarily in shopping malls, by 2026.

Advanced Auto Parts – The auto parts retailer plans to close more than 700 locations by the middle of next year. The company is in trouble and plans to introduce a three-year financial plan to revive its business.

Big Lots – The discounter started by announcing the closure of hundreds of underperforming locations, but that wasn’t enough. After a purchase agreement with Nexus Capital Management fell apart, the company announced plans to go out of business.

American Freight – The discount furniture and mattress company filed for bankruptcy and will close all its locations. The company’s demise reflects the declining spending power of lower-income consumers.

Family Dollar – Another discounter struggling along with the customer demographic, the chain is hoping that closing 1,000 locations will streamline its operation and boost sales.

Buybuy Baby – This retailer plans to close all of its physical locations, shifting to an online-only model.

Denny’s – The restaurant chain plans to shutter 150 of its lowest-performing locations, hoping to turn around sagging sales.

Wendy’s – The fast food chain is closing 140 underperforming restaurants.

Continue
1...860861862...3,839Page 861 of 3,839