Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will seek to bring Disney’s special governing district under direct state control in a bid to end the entertainment giant’s multi-decade arrangement with the Sunshine State.

DeSantis is expected to appoint a new board to control Reedy Creek, the self-governing area that is currently de facto run by The Walt Disney Company, and allows it to maintain its own infrastructure and public services. Created in 1967, the district also allows Disney to raise taxes and issue bonds to finance the expenses required to run services for Walt Disney World resort.

“The corporate kingdom has come to an end,’ said DeSantis’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, in a statement. ‘Under the proposed legislation, Disney will no longer control its own government, will live under the same laws as everyone else, will be responsible for their outstanding debts, and will pay their fair share of taxes.’

Fenske added that a state-controlled board would also ensure that neighboring Orange County cannot use Reedy Creek-related issues ‘as a pretext to raise taxes on Orange County residents.” 

Fox News first reported the Friday development, citing sources in DeSantis’ office. In a document posted to the website of Osceola County, which also borders Orange County and Reedy Creek, notice was given that the proposed legislation would leave no current aspect of Reedy Creek untouched.

Florida legislators already voted in a special session last year to dissolve all special districts like Reedy Creek in Florida by June 2023. It was not immediately clear how that earlier vote would impact the new proposal.

Florida’s next legislative session will start in March.

DeSantis’s dispute with Disney stems from the company’s decision last year to weigh in on the governor’s proposal to ban discussion of gender and sexual orientation in schools for kindergarten through third grade. In response, DeSantis and his allies in the Florida legislature announced they would seek to end the privileges Disney had enjoyed through the special district.

The perception that Disney had stepped into a political battle is said to have played a role in the ouster of former CEO Bob Chapek and the return of former longtime CEO Bob Iger. In a town hall meeting with Disney employees soon after returning to the helm, Iger said he did not like to see Disney embroiled in controversy.

“The state of Florida has been very important to us for a long time, and we have been very important to the state of Florida,” Iger said last month.

A Disney representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Goldman Sachs is laying off fewer employees than feared, but the cut is still a deep one.

The global investment bank is letting go of as many as 3,200 employees starting Wednesday, according to a person with knowledge of the firm’s plans.

That amounts to 6.5% of the 49,100 employees Goldman had in October, which is below the 8% reported last month as the upper end of possible cuts.

The final figure, reported earlier by Bloomberg, is a result of internal discussions between business heads and top management over the last month, said the person, who declined to be identified speaking about personnel decisions.

Goldman CEO David Solomon kicked off Wall Street’s layoff season in September and then opted to enact the industry’s deepest cuts so far. Bank employee levels swelled over the last two years in response to a boom in deals and trading activity, but the good times didn’t last: IPO issuance plunged 94% last year because of suddenly inhospitable markets, according to SIFMA data.

Now, with concerns that the economy will slow further this year, Goldman is pulling back on headcount in case stock and bond issuance and mergers don’t rebound. Solomon is also scaling back his ambitions in consumer banking, resulting in part of the layoffs.

Other investment banks are adopting a “wait and see” attitude in the coming weeks. If revenues are tracking below estimate in February and March, the industry could cut more workers, said a person familiar with a leading Wall Street firm’s processes.

Goldman’s move follows smaller cuts from Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Barclays in recent months. Beleaguered Credit Suisse, which is in the midst of a restructuring, has said it would cut 2,700 employees in the last three months of 2022 and aims to remove a total of 9,000 positions by 2025.

Meanwhile, Goldman is still moving forward with plans to hire junior bankers and in other areas as needed, the source said.

Fisher-Price’s recalled Rock ‘n Play Sleepers have now been linked to 100 fatalities, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Monday.

The sleeper was first recalled in April 2019 following reports that infants had rolled from their back to their stomach or side while unrestrained, ‘or under other circumstances,’ the commission said. Some 4.7 million units were affected.

Since the initial recall, approximately 70 additional fatalities have been reported, the commission said.

‘Fisher-Price notes that in some of the reports, it has been unable to confirm the circumstances of the incidents or that the product was a Rock ‘n Play Sleeper,’ the Commission said.

More information on the recall can be found here. Fisher-Price did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In its April 2019 statement alongside the first recall, the company said it continues to stand by the safety of all of its products, while noting that some customers used the product ‘contrary to safety warnings and instructions.’

NBC News has asked Fisher-Price to clarify its claims about customers using the device improperly.

The product was sold at major stores nationwide including Walmart, Target and online at Amazon from September 2009 through April 2019, for $40 to $149.

Consumers should stop using the Rock ‘n Play immediately and contact Fisher-Price for a refund or voucher.

More than 800 Amazon employees are calling on the company to step up its response to climate change through foreign aid — a sign internal activism is still alive at tech companies despite layoffs and a slowing economy. 

The employees say the aid is a way for Amazon to take greater responsibility for its role in producing the greenhouse emissions that cause climate change.

In a petition posted on an internal system, the workers are asking Amazon to contribute toward “reparations” for Pakistan —which suffered devastating floods last summer and fall— by matching employee donations to relief efforts, according to screenshots given to NBC News. They also want the company to match employee donations in future climate related disasters.

“Amazon’s success and scale comes with a broad responsibility,” the petition reads. “As Amazonians, we are proud to uphold our leadership principles, and in that spirit, we owe it to our workforce, our customers, and the planet we live on to mitigate the harm our operations cause.”

The petition was started by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of workers that has pushed the company on climate issues for years. Scientists have said the flooding that killed more than 1,700 people and displaced millions in Pakistan was much more likely to occur because of climate change. 

Amazon created a disaster relief portal in 2017 that allows employees and the company to work together to send supplies to areas affected by climate change and other disasters, and it has donated $200,000 to relief organizations in Pakistan since the floods, according to spokesman Patrick Malone. 

The company did not comment directly on the petition. Malone said in a statement that “Amazon has responded to more than 100 events around the globe and donated more than 20 million goods, funding, and other services to nonprofits operating on the ground.”

Following previous employee actions around climate change, the company pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040. 

Despite pledge, emissions rise

But workers noted in their petition that the company’s most recent disclosures showed its carbon emissions increased 40 percent in 2021 from 2019, the year the company announced its climate pledge. 

The petition is part of a growing global movement demanding that wealthy countries and companies recognize their contributions to the climate crisis and the disproportionate effects climate change has wreaked on areas of the world that produce fewer emissions.

And it is attracting some Amazon workers not previously involved in workplace activism. The effort was sparked in part by Pakistani employees in the group whose families back home were affected by the floods. They say the company has an obligation to do more, given both its role in climate emissions, and the population of Pakistani workers it employs in the United States, many of whom are on H1B visas. 

One Pakistani employee on the East Coast said she thought hard about getting involved because of concern for her job in an uncertain economic climate. Amazon recently announced layoffs of some 18,000 workers, joining other tech luminaries like Meta, Salesforce and Lyft in downsizing. She ultimately decided the modest action was worth the risk, though she requested that her name not be used, fearing retaliation for publicly criticizing the company.

“Amazon is one of the largest logistics companies and uses tons of fossil fuels,” the worker said. “It hasn’t been proactive enough. Amazon does have a responsibility, as do all of the big corporations in the U.S., and Europe.”

A contentious history

Amazon has faced down internal activism over climate change before, at times aggressively. 

The company fired two of the founders of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, after the group organized a virtual event for the company’s tech employees to speak with its warehouse workers about covid safety issues in early 2020. Tim Bray, a prominent engineer and vice president at the company, quit in protest over those firings, as well as that of organizer Chris Smalls.  

Previously, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice had helped organize letter-writing campaigns, protests and a walkout to pressure the company on climate issues, demanding Amazon meet zero emissions by 2030, stop its cloud services division from doing business with the oil and gas industry, and cease donations to climate change denying politicians. One letter received 8,700 signatures from Amazon employees. 

The NLRB found merit in the workers’ complaints that they were fired in retaliation, and Amazon eventually settled out of court with the employees. 

“It definitely had an effect on people,” said Eliza Pan, a former program manager at the company who left in 2019 to go work on climate change issues, but is still involved with Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. “The effect was people being more cautious and more careful, but it wasn’t scaring people away completely.”

Amazon did ramp up its work on climate change, releasing a Climate Pledge on the eve of an employee walkout in 2019 that promised to have net zero emissions by 2040. 

Those efforts include transitioning some of its fleet from gas to electric vehicles and pledging $100 million to reforestation funds. More than 350 other companies have since signed on to the pledge. 

Tensie Whelan, the director of the Center for Sustainable Business at New York University’s business school, said that this kind of activism would continue to bubble up at companies as millennials and Generation Z continue to make up a bigger sector of the workforce.

“We’re not asking Amazon to do anything super extreme,” said an Amazon developer in Seattle who also spoke to NBC News on the condition his name not be used for fear of reprisal for going public. “What we’re asking them to do first is something we’re willing to do.”

Bed Bath & Beyond on Tuesday posted wider quarterly losses than expected as its chief executive acknowledged that the struggling retailer’s turnaround plan had not achieved its goals.

Days after the company warned of potential bankruptcy, it painted an even more dire picture of its finances. Bed Bath lost $393 million during the period, it said Tuesday, worse even than the $385.8 million quarterly loss it projected just last week and a 42% increase from year-ago losses.

Bed Bath’s net losses have now exceeded $1.12 billion for the first nine months of the fiscal year.

A Bed Bath & Beyond store in Westbury, N.Y., on Jan. 6, 2023.Johnny Milano / Bloomberg via Getty Images

As the home goods retailer fights to stay in business, those mounting losses have tripped up its turnaround strategy. It wants to bring back more national brands and popular products, as it phases out some of its private labels. Yet suppliers, spooked by Bed Bath’s finances, have changed payment terms or stopped shipping goods — leaving store shelves emptier than usual.

CEO Sue Gove said Tuesday the company is working to address its cascading financial problems in a “timely manner.” She echoed the company’s news release in remarks on an approximately 10-minute earnings call and declined to take analyst questions.

Bed Bath did not share sales trends for the holiday season, which falls in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter. Gove said Bed Bath used money it made in December to get more inventory.

Here’s how the retailer did in the three-month period that ended Nov. 26 compared with what analysts were anticipating, based on Refinitiv data:

Loss per share: $3.65 adjusted vs. $2.23 expectedRevenue: $1.26 billion vs. $1.34 billion expected

The retailer includes three banners: its namesake; its baby supplies chain, Buybuy Baby; and its health and beauty banner, Harmon.

Comparable sales across Bed Bath & Beyond’s business dropped by 32%. Its namesake banner’s comparable sales dropped by 34%. Buybuy Baby’s comparable sales dropped in the low-20% range. It did not specify comparable sales trends for its health and beauty chain, Harmon.

Net sales of $1.26 billion mark a roughly 33% decline from $1.88 billion in the year-ago period.

Last week, the company previewed its net sales and net losses for the fiscal third quarter in a “going concern” warning. In the filing, it said it is at risk of running out of money to cover expenses, as it struggles to attract customers to stores and turn around declining sales.

The company’s market value has fallen to a meager $142.8 million. Still, its shares were up almost 10% in premarket trading Tuesday.

“Although we moved quickly and effectively to change the assortment and other merchandising and marketing strategies, inventory was constrained and we did not achieve our goals,” Gove said in Tuesday’s release.

Still, she said, the retailer is making progress. It has aggressively cut costs and is on track to close the 150 stores that it had previously announced. Its operating expenses have dropped to $583.6 million, compared with $698 million last year.

“Our organization is more streamlined and we have adopted a more focused infrastructure that reflects our current business,” Gove said.

A commissioner with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is proposing a ban on gas stoves, calling them a ‘hidden hazard.’

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Richard Trumka Jr. said all options would be on the table to regulate the appliances, which have been shown to be harmful to both human health and the environment, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

‘Products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” Trumka said, adding the commission could also consider imposing new emissions standards on the appliances. Trumka is one of several commissioners on the CPSC.

Trumka later clarified in a tweet that any new regulations would apply only to new appliances.

‘To be clear, CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves. Regulations apply to new products,’ he said, adding the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act includes a $840 rebate to replace equipment like gas stoves.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the CPSC said there was not yet an official proposal on the matter, and that any action to regulate the appliances would involve a ‘lengthy process.’

‘Agency staff plans to start gathering data and perspectives from the public on potential hazards associated with gas stoves, and proposed solutions to those hazards later this year,’ the statement said. ‘Commission staff also continues to work with voluntary standards organizations to examine gas stove emissions and address potential hazards.’

An estimated 40% of American homes still rely on gas stoves. Though some chefs favor them, they can emit hazardous levels of compounds such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and methane, especially in poorly ventilated areas or if the stoves are not properly maintained. A recent study estimated that as many as 1 in 8 childhood asthma cases in the United States can be attributed to the presence of a gas stove in the home.

In a December letter to the CPSC, multiple U.S. senators and representatives urged it to take action on the harms of gas stoves, which they noted disproportionately affect minority and low-income communities.

‘We ask the CPSC to explicitly evaluate the disparate health outcomes that occur from the coupling of gas stoves with the material realities to which the most vulnerable Americans are subjected, as well as evaluate the health impacts of gas leaks due to gas stoves connections,’ they wrote.

In a statement, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers said a ban would be ill-advised.

“A ban on gas cooking appliances would remove an affordable and preferred technology used in more than 40% of homes across the country,’ it said. ‘A ban would fail to address the overall concern of indoor air quality while cooking, because all forms of cooking, regardless of heat source, generate air pollutants, especially at high temperatures. A focus on increased use of ventilation is an effective solution to improve indoor air quality while cooking.”

Fresh off telling investors last week that it may consider a bankruptcy filing, Bed Bath & Beyond has kicked off a fresh round of layoffs.

The company said in a statement Tuesday that it would be “necessary to right-size” the company as it seeks to turn its business around.

“Unfortunately, this has necessitated making the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our colleagues,” it said.  

CNBC was first to report the layoffs after it obtained a company memo that told employees that the cuts would be “across our corporate, supply chain and store portfolio.” It did not give an exact number of layoffs.

Bed Bath & Beyond is also eliminating the role of chief transformation officer, CNBC reported.

Last Thursday, Bed Bath & Beyond issued a “going concern” warning as it faced the prospect of a critical cash shortfall. It said it would seek to address the crunch it by exploring options, including a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Doing so would bookend a tumultuous post-pandemic period for the company that got it get caught up in the meme-stock frenzy, in which day traders and other amateur investors speculated on ostensibly troubled companies’ turning around. In the case of Bed Bath & Beyond, after they hit a pandemic low of about $4 in April 2020, company shares spiraled upward to as much as $35 in summer 2021.

Today, the company’s shares are worth about $2.

Bed Bath & Beyond has also faced tragedy in the death of its chief financial officer, Gustavo Arnal, in September, which was ruled a suicide.

On Tuesday, the company reported quarterly results that showed same-store sales had fallen by 32%.

A technology issue at the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded flights nationwide Wednesday.

It is territory infrequently traveled when it comes to the massive and complex U.S. flight system. Not since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have all domestic flights been unable to take off.

So what should travelers do if their scheduled travel has been affected?

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, ‘there are no federal laws requiring airlines to provide passengers with money or other compensation when their flights are delayed.’

Instead, each airline has its own policies about what it will do for delayed passengers. The DOT advises that, if a flight is significantly delayed, customers should ask airline staff if the carrier will pay for meals or a hotel room — but neither of these are guaranteed.

If a flight has been delayed for more than two hours, or canceled, many airlines have policies that will kick in that allow passengers to get a full refund for the unused portion of their ticket. Other airlines will offer vouchers for future flights.

But because the ground stop Wednesday could be classified as a force majeure event, also known as an act of God outside the airline’s control, each airline will ultimately decide what its passengers may be entitled to. The DOT’s new passenger rights dashboard only applies to events that were within an airline’s control.

United Airlines has activated a travel waiver for any customers who need to change their plans, including offering refunds for customers who no longer want to travel.

Southwest Airlines is rebooking customers on the next available Southwest flight with seats available to the customer’s ticketed destination at no additional cost. The airline said customers who choose not to travel due to a cancellation or significant delay can receive a refund of the unused portion of the Southwest ticket upon request.

From a practical standpoint in this scenario, there is not much that passengers can do, short of hitting the road in a vehicle or jumping on a bus to their next destination. If they do so, it is not guaranteed that an airline will reimburse them for that expense.

Scott Mayerowitz, the executive editor of The Points Guy travel website, said that at this point, all anyone who expects to fly Wednesday can do is have patience.

‘If the FAA can restart its system quickly, those passengers who are already at airports whose planes were waiting at gates and who have pilots and flight attendants should be on their way pretty quickly once the ground stop is lifted,’ he said.

‘For everybody else, unfortunately, it’s going to be a horrible day to fly.’

Family grocery bills are on the rise with higher prices for most items, accentuated by significant increases in the cost of eggs. But unless shoppers are taking notes, it can be hard to really see which items are seeing the biggest spikes.

NBC News is monitoring the average point-of-sale prices and how much those prices have changed since January 2022 for six popular supermarket items: orange juice, eggs, chicken breasts, fresh ground beef, bacon and bread.

Readers can use this interactive chart to see how the price they have paid for groceries differs from the national average or from the prices shoppers paid in other major metro areas.

The goal is to track the impact of inflation on consumers’ wallets during the pandemic and as the economy reopens. The White House has said inflation is on the rise and here to stay.

The NBC News grocery price tracker is one measure of the outcomes of President Joe Biden’s economic policies for everyday people.

The Federal Reserve has said that prices have accelerated and that they are expected to keep rising. Input costs are up, especially for food and fuel, which pressures grocery prices. Supply chain disruptions and weather also play roles.

The data in the NBC News tracker, provided by NielsenIQ, is collected from real checkout prices paid nationwide at grocery stores, drugstores, mass merchandisers, selected dollar stores, selected warehouse clubs and military commissaries.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly consumer price index, which uses human data collectors and includes other food product categories, is another resource for average price data.

This story will be updated monthly.

Wednesday was another day to forget for U.S. airline passengers, as a technology issue at the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide.

While all airlines were affected, one stood out as the grounding of domestic flights had a cascading effect on air travel: Southwest Airlines. According to the flight tracking company Flight Aware, Southwest had as many as 49% of its flights delayed as of noon Wednesday.

That compares with 48% for American Airlines, 40% for United, 38% for Delta, and 33% for JetBlue.

Anuvu, another site that tracks flights, showed just 7% of Southwest flights were departing on time, compared with 15% for American Airlines, 21% for United Airlines, and 33% for Delta Airlines.

Southwest is still reeling from the huge disruption it experienced over the Christmas holiday that saw an estimated 11,000 of its flights canceled. This week, it pinned the cost of the fiasco at upward of $800 million.

In a statement, Southwest said that while it was fully staffed and operating as many flights as possible on Wednesday, ‘we expect delays across our system on this day shortened by the FAA ground stop that pushed the departure of our first flights on the East Coast by two to three hours.’

The airline acknowledged it had also proactively canceled flights early before the ground stop was lifted.

‘There is no concern higher than safety and accurate, timely information from the FAA,’ it said.

The scale of transformation that Southwest must undergo to correct the issues that led to the holiday meltdown will require much more than a week to undertake, said Henry Harteveldt, president and travel industry analyst at the Atmosphere Research Group.

Still, he called the airline’s outsize delays Wednesday ‘troubling.’ He said Southwest’s ‘point-to-point’ flight routing process, which allows the airline to fly a greater volume of passengers but which can create a cascade of delays, could be to blame.

Southwest also operates a crew scheduling system that was not designed to handle its current daily volume of flights, said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group International aviation consultancy.

‘When they were a simpler airline, you could make a phone call,’ Boyd said. ‘You can’t do that with 700 airplanes going across all of North America. … They’ve invested in a new customer reservation system, but [crew scheduling] is one area they haven’t gotten to.’

Southwest said Wednesday it would rebook customers on the next available Southwest flight with seats available to the customer’s ticketed destination, at no additional cost.

For customers who choose not to travel after a cancellation or significant delay, Southwest said it would issue a refund of the unused portion of the ticket upon request in accordance with its contract of carriage.