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The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced on Wednesday it has decreased its annual non-defense federal obligations by an additional ~1.9% since last month.

As of June 8th, annual non-defense federal obligations are down 22.4%, or ~$25B, as compared to 2024, DOGE announced on X.

The cut marks an additional ~1.9% reduction from last month’s figures, which were announced on May 8. 

‘Cash outlays will follow as obligations come due,’ DOGE wrote in the post. ‘Our initiative to reduce wasteful spend, consistent with the DOGE Cost Efficiency Executive Order, continues to bear fruit.’

On May 14, DOGE announced the current year’s non-defense federal obligations were down 20.5% as compared to 2024. 

The announcement came minutes before Fox News Digital was first to report the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is rehiring more than 450 previously fired employees belonging to multiple divisions within the agency’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The rehired CDC employees came from the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; the National Center for Environmental Health; the Immediate Office of the Director, and the Global Health Center, according to an HHS official familiar with the matter.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told CBS News in April some personnel who were cut shouldn’t have been. 

‘We’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan,’ Kennedy said. ‘Part of the—at DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we’ll make mistakes.’

In addition to the HHS rehires, the Internal Revenue Service, Food and Drug Administration, State Department, and Department of Housing and Urban Development started rehiring employees let go during DOGE cuts, the Washington Post reported.

Another roadblock this week was a ruling from U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York, who ruled to restrict the agency’s access to federal databases.

The Trump administration previously said DOGE could not work effectively with the limitations, noting DOGE needed to access Social Security information to root out fraud.

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

President Donald Trump’s $9.4 billion spending cuts package survived a key hurdle on Wednesday afternoon, setting the measure up for a final House-wide vote later this week.

Trump’s proposal, which was introduced as legislation by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., would cut $8.3 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and just over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS.

The House of Representatives made a procedural motion known as a ‘rule vote,’ which passed mostly along party lines. 

The rule passing now allows for debate on the $9.4 billion spending cut measure, followed by a final House-wide vote.

But it’s not atypical for House leaders to include unrelated measures in rule votes, as is the case with the spending cuts package – House GOP leaders included a provision with minor changes to Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill’ to account for the Senate needing to amend the bill.

That latter piece of legislation, a vast tax and immigration bill, is moving through the budget reconciliation process.

By dropping the Senate’s threshold for advancement from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to skirt the minority – in this case, Democrats – on vast pieces of legislation, provided they adhere to a specific set of budgetary rules.

House GOP leaders said they needed to make the recent changes to the bill to better adhere to the Senate’s ‘Byrd Bath,’ when the Senate parliamentarian reviews the bill and removes anything not adhering to reconciliation guidelines.

Whereas that deals with the government’s mandatory spending processes that are more difficult to amend, the $9.4 billion spending cuts package tackles discretionary spending that Congress controls every year.

It’s called a ‘rescissions package,’ which is a formal proposal by the White House to claw back federal funds already allocated for the current fiscal year.

Like reconciliation, the mechanism allows for a 51-vote majority in the Senate rather than 60. Congress has 45 days to consider it, or it is deemed rejected.

Republican leaders have held up this rescissions package as the first step to codifying the billions of dollars of government waste identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Trump allies have also made clear they view this first package as a test of what kind of cuts congressional Republicans can stomach.

And while the rule vote was expected to pass, the bill could have trouble ahead of its expected Thursday afternoon vote.

Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., pointed out in a bipartisan statement that the media funding represents less than 0.01% of the federal budget and said taking that money away would ‘dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans.’

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told reporters on Tuesday that he got assurances that USAID cuts would exclude critical medical funding.

‘I feel better than what I was hearing last week, that was gonna be a total cut,’ he said, without revealing whether he would support the bill.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar is the winner of the Norris Trophy for the second time in his career after setting franchise records in goals and points by a blueliner.

He topped the Columbus Blue Jackets’ Zach Werenski and Vancouver Canucks’ Quinn Hughes in voting by the Professional Hockey Writers Association. Makar won his first award in 2021-22.

He opened the season with a 13-game point streak, second-longest by a defenseman in NHL history behind Bobby Orr’s 15, and went on to lead defensemen in goals (30), assists (62) and points (92). He became the first defenseman to reach the 30-goal mark since Mike Green in 2008-09.

Makar received 176 first-place votes and 1,861 total points. Weresnki had 13 first-place votes and 1,266 points, and Hughes, last year’s winner, had two and 918.

Makar was surprised with the award during a golf outing.

The NHL will announce the winners of the Hart Trophy (MVP to his team) and Vezina Trophy (goaltender) during an hourlong televised show on June 12 (6 p.m. ET, TNT) before Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Hart Trophy finalists are Leon Draisaitl, Edmonton Oilers; Connor Hellebuyck, Winnipeg Jets; and Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay Lightning

Vezina Trophy finalists are Hellebuyck; Darcy Kuemper, Los Angeles Kings; and Andrei Vasilevskiy, Lightning

Other NHL awards winners

Ted Lindsay Award (most outstanding player): Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay Lightning

Jack Adams Award (coach): Spencer Carbery, Washington Capitals.

Masterton Trophy (perseverance): Sean Monahan, Columbus Blue Jackets

Mark Messier Leadership Award: Alex Ovechkin, Washington Capitals

This post appeared first on USA TODAY

Lawyers for a group of eight female athletes who objected to the settlement of three athlete-compensation antitrust cases against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences filed notice on Wednesday, June 11, that they will be appealing a federal district judge’s decision to grant final approval to the agreement.

Attorney John Clune told USA TODAY Sports this effort with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will not challenge the going-forward aspects of the settlement, which include schools being allowed to pay athletes directly for the use of their name, image and likeness, beginning July 1.

It will challenge, under federal gender-equity law, the legality of how more than $2 billion in damages is set to be distributed to current and former athletes who were unable to participate in NIL contracts. About 90% of that money is set to be paid to football and men’s basketball players because the damages model created by the plaintiffs’ economic experts is based on their assessment that the market for college athletes’ NIL compensation historically has been driven by revenues connected to those two sports.

In a filing in January, these objectors’ lawyers argued that, in the absence of rules preventing schools from making NIL compensation to athletes, those payments “would have been required to be made proportionately to male and female athletes due to Title IX.”

In her ruling that granted final approval of the settlement, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken disagreed, writing: ‘the objectors have cited no authority that Title IX applies to damages awards distributions made by a claims administrator are subject to Title IX. Accordingly, the Court cannot conclude that Title IX violations will occur when the Gross Settlement Fund is distributed by the claims administrator pursuant to the damages allocations that Plaintiffs have proposed.’

The appeal could significantly delay the start of payments of damages money to tens of thousands of athletes and to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who have requested that they be awarded hundreds of millions of dollars from the total settlement pool of $2.8 billion. All of these payments are set to occur over a 10-year period.

As the settlement was approved by Wilken, in the event of an appeal of this nature, the NCAA and the conferences would begin making damages payments, but the money would be held in escrow — not paid to athletes or lawyers — until appeals are completed.

The notice of appeal was not accompanied by a legal argument. It just sets the stage for the 9th Circuit to consider the matter, and federal appeals courts frequently takes months to a year or more to work through cases. In addition, parties seeking to appeal this type of ruling by a federal district judge have 30 days to do so from the date of the ruling, which in this case was June 6.

In a statement June 11, objectors’ lawyers Clune and Ashly Hare said: “We support a settlement of the case, just not an inaccurate one that violates federal law. The calculation of damages is based on an error to the tune of $1.1 billion dollars. Paying out the money as proposed would be a massive error that would cause irreparable harm to women’s sports.

“This is a football and basketball damages settlement. Period. Title IX was created to reign in efforts such as these. Congress has expressly rejected efforts to exempt revenue-generating sports like football and basketball from Title IX’s anti-discrimination mandate.”

Steve Berman, one of the lead lawyers for the athlete plaintiffs in the cases being settled said in email to USA TODAY Sports: ‘This is unfortunate as these lawyers are now holding up payments to hundreds of thousands of athletes to pursue an appeal on a Title (IX) issue that the judge disposed of correctly and quickly. This wasn’t a Title (IX) case, it was an antitrust case. If these lawyers think the Title (IX) case was so great, they should bring it and not hijack the payments to college athletes.’

This post appeared first on USA TODAY

The Cincinnati Bengals opened mandatory minicamp on Tuesday, June 10. First-round rookie Shemar Stewart is in attendance, but he did not get in on the action.

The Bengals have been unable to sign Stewart to his rookie contract, as the team and the 21-year-old are embroiled in a dispute over the deal.

Stewart made it clear during a Tuesday media availability that he is not happy with the lack of progress in the negotiations.

‘I’ve been doing this for most of my whole life, and then all of a sudden it’s gone over something very simple to fix,’ Stewart told reporters. ‘It’s kind of disappointing.’

Here’s what to know about Stewart’s holdout as it drags into the summer months.

Why is Shemar Stewart holding out?

Stewart is holding out because of a dispute over the language of his rookie contract.

Stewart has been adamant he deserves a deal that doesn’t contain that language, as it wasn’t included in the contracts of recent Cincinnati first-round picks Myles Murphy and Amarius Mims, both of whom were selected lower than Stewart (17th overall).

‘I’m not asking for nothing y’all have never done before,’ Stewart told reporters Tuesday, referencing the Bengals. ‘But in y’all case, y’all just want to win arguments [more] than winning more games.’

Stewart further explained he doesn’t have a lot of recourse for the matter aside from holding out.

‘I can’t say what I really want to say,’ Stewart explained. ‘But it’s ‘their contract.’ They can do what they want with it.’

The 21-year-old is doing his best to stay ready for when the contract dispute is resolved.

‘I still go to meetings. I still study my playbook,’ he said. ‘Taking down the right notes, and then whenever I get some free time, I go out to train.’

Still, Stewart acknowledged nothing will be able to truly replace the practice reps on which he is missing out.

‘I thought I’d be on the field by now.’

NFL rookie contract values

It’s worth noting Stewart and the Bengals aren’t hung up on the total value of the first-round pick’s contract.

The NFL implemented a rookie wage scale in 2011 as part of a then-new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that ended the 2010 NFL lockout. The goal of the wage scale was to mitigate the rising costs of contracts awarded to high-drafted but unproven players while also ensuring that first-round draft picks receive fully guaranteed contracts.

Stewart was the 17th pick which gives him a slot value of $18,942,634, per Spotrac.com. Below is a full look at the cost of each first-round draft slot for 2025.

$48,757,500
$46,571,074 
$45,179,746 
$43,589,604 
$40,806,872 
$35,837,732 
$31,862,416 
$27,887,104 
$27,688,114 
$26,595,118 
$24,905,620 
$22,520,414 
$21,924,122 
$20,930,294 
$20,532,790 
$19,340,170 
$18,942,634 
$18,445,724 
$18,147,572 
$18,048,198 
$17,948,806 
$17,750,036 
$17,551,274 
$17,153,744 
$16,954,982 
$16,756,186 
$16,557,446 
$16,458,064 
$15,660,564 
$15,238,238 
$14,884,470 
$14,656,682

This post appeared first on USA TODAY

President Donald Trump’s $9.4 billion spending cuts package survived a key hurdle on Wednesday afternoon, setting the measure up for a final House-wide vote later this week.

Trump’s proposal, which was introduced as legislation by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., would cut $8.3 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and just over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS.

The House of Representatives made a procedural motion known as a ‘rule vote,’ which passed mostly along party lines. 

The rule passing now allows for debate on the $9.4 billion spending cut measure, followed by a final House-wide vote.

But it’s not atypical for House leaders to include unrelated measures in rule votes, as is the case with the spending cuts package – House GOP leaders included a provision with minor changes to Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill’ to account for the Senate needing to amend the bill.

That latter piece of legislation, a vast tax and immigration bill, is moving through the budget reconciliation process.

By dropping the Senate’s threshold for advancement from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to skirt the minority – in this case, Democrats – on vast pieces of legislation, provided they adhere to a specific set of budgetary rules.

House GOP leaders said they needed to make the recent changes to the bill to better adhere to the Senate’s ‘Byrd Bath,’ when the Senate parliamentarian reviews the bill and removes anything not adhering to reconciliation guidelines.

Whereas that deals with the government’s mandatory spending processes that are more difficult to amend, the $9.4 billion spending cuts package tackles discretionary spending that Congress controls every year.

It’s called a ‘rescissions package,’ which is a formal proposal by the White House to claw back federal funds already allocated for the current fiscal year.

Like reconciliation, the mechanism allows for a 51-vote majority in the Senate rather than 60. Congress has 45 days to consider it, or it is deemed rejected.

Republican leaders have held up this rescissions package as the first step to codifying the billions of dollars of government waste identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Trump allies have also made clear they view this first package as a test of what kind of cuts congressional Republicans can stomach.

And while the rule vote was expected to pass, the bill could have trouble ahead of its expected Thursday afternoon vote.

Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., pointed out in a bipartisan statement that the media funding represents less than 0.01% of the federal budget and said taking that money away would ‘dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans.’

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told reporters on Tuesday that he got assurances that USAID cuts would exclude critical medical funding.

‘I feel better than what I was hearing last week, that was gonna be a total cut,’ he said, without revealing whether he would support the bill.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Taiwan’s top envoy to the U.S. urged the Senate to ease tax burdens between the two countries and asked Congress to fast-track foreign military sales, following a closed-door lunch Wednesday with the House.  

Ambassador Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, Taipei’s top representative in Washington, told Fox News Digital that he is encouraged that U.S. leaders recognize the urgent existential threat China poses, but emphasized the need to get weapons into the hands of the Taiwanese military more quickly and to address issues impeding two-way investment. 

‘We appreciate the United States prioritizing Taiwan and helping us strengthen our defense capabilities,’ Yui said. ‘We’re cheering on more military commitments to the states and [a] joint effort to speed up the delivery of the products that we bought.’

Yui called on the Senate to advance a stalled double taxation agreement, which has already cleared the House.

‘That’s an important incentive for Taiwanese companies to come to the United States and invest – but also vice versa for U.S. companies to go to Taiwan,’ he said. ‘We are the only one of the large trading partners without this treatment, which is worrying for the whole country right now.’

By a vote of 423 to 1, the House last Congress passed the United States-Taiwan Expedited Double-Tax Relief Act, legislation that prevents double taxation on cross-border investments. 

The ambassador also offered a sobering assessment of China’s increasingly belligerent posture in the Taiwan Strait and across the Indo-Pacific.

‘We are concerned,’ Yui said. ‘The [People’s Liberation] Army and Navy are increasing their activities around Taiwan, harassing our territorial waters and airspace. These provocations are constant.’

While emphasizing that ‘we don’t want war,’ he noted that the U.S. and regional partners have begun ramping up their own defenses, recognizing the threat.

Rep. August Pfluger, who chairs the influential RSC, told Fox News Digital that the meeting was a show of solidarity with Taiwan’s democratic government and a rebuke of China’s authoritarian policies.

‘China is an existential threat to Taiwan,’ said Pfluger, a Texas Republican. ‘The difference between mainland China and Taiwan is how they treat human life. Taiwan values openness. China suppresses free speech, targets groups like the Uyghur Muslims – it’s deeply concerning.’

The lunch meeting, attended by dozens of House Republicans, comes amid rising tensions in the region – but just as President Donald Trump announced a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease the trade war. 

While Pfluger did not commit to further supplemental aid, he said he supports efforts by both nations to strengthen military readiness, including Taiwan’s move to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP.

‘It stands to reason that Taiwan increasing their own internal spending on defense, as well as the U.S. recapitalizing our Navy and Air and Space Forces, is vitally important,’ he said.

Asked what message Congress wants to send to the Taiwanese people, Pfluger was unequivocal:

‘We stand by them – as an ally, as a trading partner, as a democracy facing tyranny just next door.’

The conversation came at a time when U.S. military officials are warning China is readying for battle in the Indo-Pacific in an effort to ‘dominate’ the region. 

‘Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,’ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress this week. He added that such an outcome could put the U.S. economy and its supply chains in a choke hold. 

‘China is undertaking a historic military buildup and actively rehearsing for an invasion of Taiwan,’ he said.

‘These aggressive maneuvers are not routine exercises, they are rehearsals for a forced unification,’ Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added in his own testimony. 

Taiwan has recently renewed an effort to purge its ranks of Chinese sympathizers, indicting four people on Tuesday suspected of spying for China that had infiltrated the presidential office. 

Two Chinese aircraft carriers spotted conducting operations in the Pacific demonstrated the country’s ‘expansionist’ aims, Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo said Wednesday.

‘Crossing from the first island chain into the second island chain sends a definite political message and their expansionist nature can be seen,’ he told reporters in Taipei.

The first island chain refers to the region from Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines to Borneo and the second island chain spreads farther into the Pacific, toward the U.S. territory of Guam. 

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The American Bar Association asked the Department of Justice on Tuesday to reconsider its historic decision to shut the organization out of the judicial nomination process and insisted it rates potential judges fairly.

ABA President William Bay wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi that he was ‘surprised and disappointed’ by her decision, which Bondi revealed in a letter two weeks ago.

‘It is deeply disturbing that the Justice Department has decided to restrict access to judicial nominees without justification or basis,’ Bay wrote.

Bondi accused the ABA, which comprises hundreds of thousands of lawyers and other legal professionals, of favoring Democratic administrations’ nominees and refusing to ‘fix the bias in its ratings.’

The ABA has for seven decades been involved in rating presidents’ nominees to serve as judges in the district and appellate courts and the Supreme Court.

An ABA committee rates potential judges as ‘well qualified,’ ‘qualified’ or ‘not qualified’ based on their experience level, legal writings, and dozens of interviews with the candidates’ colleagues and peers.

Bay noted the ABA rated all three of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees as ‘well qualified’ and that it has given ‘well qualified’ or ‘qualified’ ratings to at least 97% of rated nominees for the last two decades.

The ABA has also received nonpublic information about nominees, including their bar records, through DOJ waivers. Bondi said the department will no longer provide those.

Bay’s remarks were the latest development in a protracted legal fight that Trump and Republicans have waged against the ABA and big law over allegations they are plagued by bias. The ABA has on occasion promoted liberal initiatives, including abortion access, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the LGBTQ agenda. Bay said the rating committee is walled off from the rest of the organization.

‘The Standing Committee’s work is insulated from all other activities of the ABA to ensure its independence and impartiality,’ Bay wrote.

Presidents nominate federal judges, and the Senate votes on them. The judges, once confirmed, serve lifetime appointments.

Presidents and the Senate have for decades included the ABA in the nomination process, but Trump and President George W. Bush declined to give the ABA a first look at potential nominees before announcing them.

Former President Joe Biden continued Trump’s practice but clarified that he valued the ABA’s ratings and only gave it post-nomination access to nominee information to save time.

A DOJ spokesman said in response to Bay’s letter: ‘It’s clear that the American Bar Association has lost its way and no longer treats all nominees in a fair and impartial manner.’

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who leads the Senate panel tasked with vetting potential judges, said in response to Bondi’s decision that it was ‘hardly surprising’ and that the legal organization has ‘consistently taken partisan stances on political issues.’ Grassley noted the ABA could still weigh in on nominees independently of the administration.

‘The Judiciary Committee will still accept letters from the ABA, the same as we do for all outside organizations, but it doesn’t make sense for this administration to be giving favored access to an organization that’s consistently shown political bias,’ Grassley said.

Grassley’s Democratic counterpart, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, said in a statement online that the ABA’s ratings process was objective.

‘The Trump Administration is clearly just trying to cover for unqualified and extreme nominees,’ Durbin said.

Among those once rated as ‘not qualified’ by the ABA was DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle’s wife, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who serves as a federal judge in Florida. The rating was due to her lack of experience, as the ABA’s criteria for federal judges includes 12 years of experience practicing law.

The ABA had mixed reviews for Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991, ultimately giving him its mid-level ‘qualified’ rating.

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Nintendo sold more than 3.5 million units of its flagship Switch 2 gaming system in the four days following its launch, with online stores of major U.S. retailers putting up “out of stock” signs.

The record-breaking start for the company’s first new console in eight years, puts Nintendo on the path to realizing its aim of selling 15 million units of the Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026.

However, analysts continue to believe that those expectations are modest, and forecast the strong initial demand to sustain.

“The market expected a record from Nintendo, and as it turns out, Nintendo delivered,” Serkan Toto, CEO and founder of gaming industry consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.

“All signals prior to launch pointed to significant demand, and I believe we will see further records broken over the next weeks or months,” he added.

Toto has maintains that the Switch 2 will sell over 20 million units in its first 12 months. David Gibson, senior research analyst at MST Financial told CNBC that he expects 20 million sales for the year ending March 2026.

The Switch 2, which was released on June 5, has been met with much fanfare, with people lining up for hours ahead of midnight releases at Nintendo stores.

“Fans around the world are showing their enthusiasm for Nintendo Switch 2 as an upgraded way to play at home and on the go,” Nintendo of America President and Chief Operating Officer Doug Bowser said in a statement, adding the company was thankful for the response.

Tokyo-listed shares of Nintendo, which have gained nearly 30% so far this year, were down 3.5% on Wednesday, LSEG data showed. The company has seen its shares rise nearly fivefold since the original Switch debuted in early March 2017.

It remains to be seen if the Switch 2 can recapture the magic of its predecessor, which had set the bar with 15 million unit sales in its first year. It went on to sell more than 152 million units to become the second-highest selling Nintendo device ever, behind the Nintendo DS.

The record initial sales of the Switch are in line with the strong demand analysts had predicted. However, the rush has put into question Nintendo’s ability to meet demand.

Retailers including Walmart, GameStop, Target and Best Buy were out of stock of the consoles, their online stores showed Wednesday.

In April, Nintendo’s Bowser told CNBC that the company had been working with “retail partners to ensure there’s ample supply for not only the launch weekend, but well beyond.”

However, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa stated the same month that 2.2 million people in Japan had entered the lottery to purchase the Switch 2 on launch day, exceeding expectations and what the company had initially planned to deliver to stores.

Kantan Games’ Toto said shortages in Japan were expected to persist, but would be less impactful elsewhere.

“Except for Japan where demand for Switch 2 is extraordinarily high, it looks like fans who really want the console and invest time in trying to secure one actually can get one,” he said. “It might take a while, but as far as can be monitored, supply seems to be more robust than around the launch of the original Switch in 2017.”

President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” on most countries around the world also present headwinds for the Switch 2.

In April, the company announced that it would delay preorders of the Switch 2 in the U.S. while it considers the impact of tariffs.

The Switch 2 retails for $449 in the U.S., which makes it Nintendo’s priciest console to date.

Nintendo’s Bowser said in April the company was going to “monitor where tariffs are going” before making any further decisions on price hikes.

MST Financial’s Gibson said that a resolution to Trump’s tariffs and lower duty rates could see the Switch 2 prices drop in the U.S.

The Switch 2 builds on the success of the original Switch, featuring a larger screen and improved performance. The system also introduces the new GameChat2 feature, which allows players to voice or video chat with friends online and share game screens.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Legendary Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton has pleaded no contest to a charge of driving under the influence after being stopped by police last month in West Virginia.

The 1984 all-around gold medalist took full responsibility for her actions, according to a statement issued by her attorney Edmund J. Rollo.

‘What happened was completely unacceptable. I make no excuses,’ she said. ‘To my family, friends and my fans: I have let you down, and for that I am deeply sorry. I am determined to learn and grow from this experience, and I am committed to making positive changes in my life. I truly appreciate your concern, encouragement and continued support.’

As a first-time offender, Retton was ordered to pay a $100 fine.

Retton, 57, was stopped in Marion County, West Virginia, on May 17, following a report about a person in a Porsche driving erratically. According to a criminal complaint, when officers pulled her over, she smelled of alcohol and failed a field sobriety test.

Retton was in the news last year when her daughter revealed on social media that the five-time Olympic medalist was ‘fighting for her life’ with ‘a very rare form of pneumonia’ and was not insured.

That led to a flood of donations totaling over $450,000 – but also to questions about basic details of Retton’s illness, whether or not she had health insurance and exactly how the money collected was being spent.

Retton did agree to an interview with NBC’s ‘Today’ show in January 2024, appearing with an oxygen tube in her nose and describing a harrowing, month-long hospital stay, including a moment when ‘they were about to put me on life support,’ she said.

Retton’s daughter, McKenna Kelley, told USA TODAY Sports at that time Retton could not get affordable health care because of pre-existing conditions, stemming from ‘over 30 orthopedic surgeries, including four hip replacements.’

Retton later told NBC in the interview that she was able to get medical insurance.

Retton’s family said that any funds remaining after her medical expenses were paid would be donated to a charity of her choice. But no further information was ever revealed.

This post appeared first on USA TODAY