Block, the parent company of Cash App and Square, announced Thursday it will be laying off more than 4,000 employees — a move that sent the company’s stock up 25% in after-hours trading. For most companies, laying off nearly half the workforce would send stockholders into a panic, tanking the stock within minutes of the announcement. But in 2026, investors in Block appear to have the opposite perspective — viewing humans as a liability in the modern economy, thanks in large part to the AI revolution. Block CEO Jack Dorsey said in a statement on X that the layoffs did not happen “because we’re in trouble,” but rather because “something has changed.” “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company [sic]. and that’s accelerating rapidly,” Dorsey said. Dorsey viewed job cuts resulting from AI implementation as inevitable and chose to rip off the band-aid. “i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now [sic]. i chose the latter,” Dorsey said. “repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead [sic].” The layoffs are part of a broader shakeout in tech, where companies including Salesforce, CrowdStrike, Pinterest, and Chegg are shedding workers as AI absorbs key functions. In a letter to shareholders, Dorsey predicted that, within the next year, “the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.” Block’s Q4 numbers were otherwise in the green, with gross profit increasing 24% year-over-year. Block CFO Amrita Ahuja told investors that the cuts are necessary “for our next phase of long-term growth.” “We are choosing to shift how we operate at a time when our business is accelerating and we see an opportunity to move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work,” Ahuja said.

Liverpool’s club circuit in the early 1960s gave The Swinging Blue Jeans their runway, and the group’s sound and look quickly aligned with what became known as Merseybeat. They are identified as a four piece 1960s British Merseybeat band, and they became best known for hit singles released on the His Master’s Voice label, including “Hippy Hippy Shake,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” and “You’re No Good,” all issued in 1964. The band’s later single activity did not match that early impact, although their 1966 recording of “Don’t Make Me Over” did reach the UK Singles Chart at number thirty one. The post Top 10 Swinging Blue Jeans Songs appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Classic NBA Seasons feature signature retro basketball styles. Explore three iconic years & their lasting influence on culture, trends & on-court aesthetics. The post 3 Classic NBA Seasons That Defined Retro Basketball Style appeared first on The Retro Network.

Outdoor play through swing sets, jungle gyms, and seesaws offers superior child development benefits. Learn how these classic toys provide physical activity. The post 3 Throwback Outdoor Toys That Rivaled Classic Video Games appeared first on The Retro Network.

We celebrate the 30th anniversary of Seinfeld by looking back at our favorite episodes of the iconic television series. The post Our Favorite Episodes of Seinfeld appeared first on The Retro Network.

Discover classic PC games that shaped gaming culture forever. Explore influential titles like Myst, Doom, and SimCity that defined entire gaming genres. The post 3 Classic PC Games That Defined a Generation appeared first on The Retro Network.

Learn how retro merchandise drives 200% revenue growth. Discover proven vintage branding strategies, nostalgic design tactics, and customization methods. The post 3 Surprising Retro Merchandise Trends Today appeared first on The Retro Network.

Colorado Democrats have filed a bill that could make it the first state to decriminalize prostitution, and critics warn that the bill would make the Centennial State the “Wild West” for purchasing sex and lead to an increase in human trafficking. “We have a billion-dollar budget shortfall here in Colorado, and so there’s a lot of talk about budget and affordability and cost of living,” Jarvis Caldwell, the Republican minority leader in the state House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “This isn’t the Republicans’ idea of making things more affordable, by making it easier to sell yourself for sex,” he quipped. While some rural areas have legalized prostitution in Nevada, the entire state has not done so. Similarly, Maine decriminalized the selling of sex, but not the buying. Caldwell noted that Colorado had the tenth highest rate of human trafficking in the United States (both in the raw number of cases and as a per capita rate) in 2023, according to the Colorado-based Common Sense Institute. He also cited a 2012 study from the London School of Economics finding that foreign countries that legalized or decriminalized prostitution had higher rates of human trafficking. Caldwell argued that legalization involves setting “rules and guidelines” to regulate a practice, while a “full-on decriminalization” like this bill offers, “just makes it really the Wild West.” “It’s a no-holds-barred, no one has to worry about it whatsoever, which is obviously going to drive up demand on the buyer side, and … if you don’t have enough ‘sex workers’ for the demand side, that’s where you get your human trafficking increase,” Caldwell said. Decriminalizing Prostitution The bill, SB26-097, requires the statewide decriminalization of “commercial sexual activity among consenting adults.” It decriminalizes both the selling and the purchasing of sex statewide, and preempts cities and localities from criminalizing the world’s oldest profession. The bill repeals state laws imposing criminal penalties for prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, and a prostitute displaying herself in public. It preserves two criminal penalties: those for using intimidation or menacing to convince someone to become a prostitute and for pimping. The American Civil Liberties Union has called for the decriminalization of prostitution, which it calls “sex work,” claiming that criminalizing prostitution makes it harder for prostitutes to access health care and other services and “feeds an out of control mass incarceration system.” The Daily Signal reached out to the bill’s Democrat sponsors in the Senate—Nick Hinrichsen and Lisa Cutter—and the House—Lorena Garcia and Rebekah Stewart—for comment, and they did not respond by publication time. Concern for the Children Erin Lee, the co-founder and executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, agreed with Caldwell’s concerns. Lee sued her daughter’s Fort Collins school for allegedly violating her parental rights by encouraging her daughter to transition behind her back. “I’ve been working really hard to fight child sex trafficking because my girl got put on the conveyor belt of gender trafficking and then it opened my eyes to how many child victims there are in this state,” Lee told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. The bill would decriminalize “holding a place of prostitution and window displays, so talk about normalizing this practice on Main Street for children,” she said. “It just becomes a normal facet of life for children walking down main street to see a place of prostitution, Amsterdam-style.” (Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands, is known for its red light district.) “Given OnlyFans culture—these kids are already being brought up to think that it’s normal to sell yourself and everything is highly sexualized for teenagers—I believe it’s a step on the run towards pedophilia,” Lee warned. Macy Petty, a legislative strategist with Concerned Women for America, told The Daily Signal that Colorado legislators seek to “normalize the buying and selling of humans.” She warned the legislation “places prostituted women in dangerous situations, increases the risk of violence and exploitation, and reduces women to commodities for sexual purchase.” Colorado a ‘Testing Ground’ for Radical Bills Caldwell, the minority leader, noted that Reps. Garcia and Stewart previously sponsored HB25-1312, a bill that would have removed kids from parents’ custody if the parents refused to honor the children’s transgender identities. While the bill ultimately passed, Democrats substantially amended it following national outrage. Chase Davis, lead pastor at The Well Church in Boulder and leader of the Christ Over Colorado movement, told The Daily Signal that the Centennial State has “become their testing ground for bills like this.” Davis recalled the HB25-1312 debate last year, in which Colorado Democrats compared concerned parents who opposed transgender ideology with the Ku Klux Klan. Davis warned that many Colorado Democrats “just want to punish Christians.” He recalled the saga of Jack Phillips, the Colorado Christian baker who faced discrimination claims when he refused to craft a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding. “Last year, they compared anyone who doesn’t believe in radical gender ideology as equivalent to the KKK,” he noted. “They have no interest in partnering with evangelicals—they have nothing but contempt for them.” When asked if he would describe the bill as groundbreaking, Davis said, “It is groundbreaking only in the sense it’s going to open portals to hell … letting out demons in our state.” The post Colorado’s First-in-the-Nation Bill to Decriminalize Prostitution Would Increase Human Trafficking, Critics Claim appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Most Americans share President Donald Trump’s view that illegal immigrants should be deported, but generally disapprove of his immigration tactics, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found. The six-day poll, concluded on Monday, illustrates both the broad appeal of Trump’s focus on immigration enforcement and the widespread disapproval of his tactics. Some 61% of respondents – including 92% of Republicans and 35% of Democrats – said they “support deporting unauthorized immigrants.” Trump’s stand on the issue helped him win the 2024 presidential election as he accused Democratic politicians of favoring “open borders.” Sixty-three percent of Democrats said they do not support deporting illegal immigrants, compared with 7% of Republicans. During Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Trump tried to reclaim the narrative on immigration. Trump on Tuesday said his focus was on criminals, noting, “We’re getting them the hell out of here fast.” Some 60% of Americans – including a fifth of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats – think immigration agents have gone too far, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Among people who do not identify with either party, 65% think authorities have gone too far. These independent voters could be a critical swing group in November when Republicans will try to maintain their thin majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate. Disapproval of Trump’s tactics is particularly high among Black and Hispanic Americans, two slices of the electorate that Trump made progress with in the 2024 election. Seventy-four percent of Black respondents and 72% of Hispanics said they did not like how the administration was handling deportations, compared with 51% of white respondents. Since February 2025, Trump’s overall approval rating among Hispanic Americans has dropped by seven percentage points to 29% in the latest survey. Among Black Americans it has ticked 2 percentage points lower to 14%. Among white Americans it is down 4 points to 49%. Significant internal divisions have opened in both political parties over immigration enforcement. Among Republicans who support deportations, 23% said they were uncomfortable with the current tactics employed by immigration officers. Democrats, besides being divided on whether illegal immigrants should be deported at all, also disagree on whether to disband the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security, known as ICE, a central enforcement body.  Some 63% of Democrats said ICE should be abolished, while 30% disagreed. The share in favor was a significant increase from a 2018 Reuters/Ipsos survey that showed 44% of Democrats supporting the idea. The latest survey showed only a third of independents back getting rid of ICE, little changed from 2018. Only a handful of Democratic congressional candidates this year have called for abolishing the agency, with centrist organizations such as Third Way warning that embracing the idea could hurt Democrats at the polls in November. The latest Reuters/Ipsos survey, which was conducted online, gathered responses from 4,638 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of two percentage points. Reuters contributed to this report. The post Most Americans Back Trump’s Deportation Goals, Reuters/Ipsos Poll Finds appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Feb 26 (Reuters) — Vanguard Group will pay $29.5 million and bolster its passive investing approach in order to settle a suit by 13 Republican state attorneys general claiming the fund manager and rivals violated antitrust law through their climate activism. The suit in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas has been closely watched as a test of how far Republicans from energy-producing states would push Wall Street firms they accused of overemphasizing environmental matters. In a press release one of the plaintiffs, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, said Vanguard “agreed to strict passivity commitments” prohibiting it from dictating the strategy of companies in which it invests or to push shareholder proposals related to environmental or social issues.     Vanguard said the deal reaffirms “the passive nature of our index funds.” The terms provide an easy off-ramp for Vanguard of Pennsylvania but may be more difficult for its Texas co-defendants BlackRock of New York and State Street of Boston to accept. The states sued the three firms in late 2024 over actions like their membership in industry trade groups focused on climate change, which the Republicans said served to reduce coal production and boost energy prices. The firms had pushed back, saying among other things that a remedy the plaintiffs once suggested, having the funds divest from coal companies, would only harm the industry. All three remain major fossil-fuel industry shareholders, rejecting calls they boycott coal and oil stocks over climate concerns. STAYING HANDS-OFF Among the three, Vanguard has been clearest it seeks only a passive role in running companies held by its well-known products like the Vanguard 500 index fund. In 2024, for instance, Vanguard offered concessions to federal energy regulators similar to Thursday’s agreement, like offering to not submit shareholder proposals. “They’re an index fund firm. They don’t want to divest from stocks and not be able to track their indexes,” said Vanguard investor newsletter editor Jeff DeMaso. Vanguard has already adopted some settlement terms as policy, like the expansion of a program allowing its fund investors to shape how Vanguard proxy votes are cast. It and the others also supported fewer shareholder resolutions on matters like corporate emissions or workforce diversity. The companies face less regulatory pressure in turn, including avoiding new regulations from the Trump administration and BlackRock’s removal from a Texas investment blacklist. A representative for Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, another plaintiff in the case, said via email that while Vanguard has made some adjustments, “those adjustments must continue and are binding” now. Bird’s office hopes “more companies in the financial sector will follow suit.” In his press release Kobach said BlackRock and State Street “remain defiant.” A BlackRock spokesman declined to comment. In an emailed statement, State Street said that “the lawsuit remains baseless and without merit.  There was not, and is not, any collusion here aimed at coal prices.  This settlement does not change that.” A spokesperson also noted that like BlackRock and Vanguard, State Street runs a program allowing retail investors to influence proxy votes. (Reporting by Ross Kerber. Additional reporting by Nate Raymond. Editing by Franklin Paul, Jane Merriman and Andrea Ricci ) The post In Texas, Vanguard Settles Antitrust Suit for $29.5 Million Over Climate Activism appeared first on The Daily Signal.