Latest news with #Langone
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
A Lawmaker Blasted a Hospital's Super Bowl Ad. Then He Changed His Tune.
The 30-second television advertisement showed star doctors from a top-notch Manhattan hospital clumsily playing football. From the sidelines, a former standout player for the Giants suggested they should stick to medicine. The ad promoting NYU Langone Health probably did not rank among this year's most memorable Super Bowl commercials. But it sure bothered one viewer: a North Carolina congressman. The lawmaker promptly sent NYU Langone's chief executive a stern letter, noting that the hospital benefits from federal funds. 'I write today with questions about your stewardship of this money, including our serious concern about your decision to purchase a 30-second advertisement — estimated to cost $8 million — during Super Bowl LIX,' Representative Greg Murphy, a Republican, wrote on Feb. 11. The letter contained a list of pointed questions about NYU Langone's finances. It is the sort of missive that congressional offices routinely write to gather information for lawmaking or hearings. NYU Langone is hardly the only New York hospital to spend money on a national advertising campaign, although a Super Bowl ad is unusual. Those commercials speak to the intense competition among the country's elite medical centers. The congressman's reaction illustrates that with the promise of being in the spotlight comes peril. But, it turns out, opinions can change. Eight days after he first contacted the hospital, Representative Murphy wrote a follow-up letter. And that letter could not have been more different. The congressman had gone from critic to booster. The second letter expressed enthusiastic admiration for NYU Langone's 'world class patient outcomes' and 'superb' metrics — such as fewer deaths and shorter hospital stays. 'America would be much healthier if all hospitals could report these excellent numbers,' he wrote. Representative Murphy's letter stated that he had been left 'all-the-more impressed' after recently speaking with NYU Langone's chief executive, Dr. Robert Grossman. The letter does not indicate whether Dr. Grossman and the congressman had a phone call or met in person. But just two days before Representative Murphy sent his second letter, a private jet had landed at the sleepy airport in Greenville, N.C., the state's 12th-largest city, where Representative Murphy lives. The Bombardier Global 5000 was registered to Invemed Securities, the parent company of Invemed Associates, the investment firm founded by Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire benefactor of NYU Langone and the chairman of the hospital's board of directors. Mr. Langone, who is best known for cofounding Home Depot, has given hundreds of millions of dollars to NYU's hospital system. In return, his name appears on the hospital. And Mr. Langone's largess allows for free tuition at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is also a major Republican donor, contributing more than $500,000 since 2020 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives. He has donated millions more to other Republican organizations, such as the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC. Records do not show campaign donations from Mr. Langone to Representative Murphy; there can be delays in reporting contributions. It is not clear who was on the plane. A spokesman for NYU Langone, Steve Ritea, declined to answer questions about the hospital's interactions with the congressman or his staff members. Mr. Ritea also declined to say whether Dr. Grossman, the hospital CEO, flew to see Representative Murphy. Mr. Langone did not respond to requests for comment. Representative Murphy's office also declined repeated interview requests on the topic. But his spokesman acknowledged that it might seem 'a little confusing' that the tone in Representative Murphy's letters to Dr. Grossman went from critical to admiring. His spokesman would not share any information about material Dr. Grossman provided or what led the congressman to turn so quickly from critic to booster. 'I don't have much to add,' the spokesman for the congressman, Alexander Crane, said. 'I'd certainly understand that, you know, from A to B to C might seem a little confusing, but basically they had a wonderful private conversation.' Representative Murphy is a urologist who still regularly treats patients in Greenville. Another doctor at the same office where the congressman sees patients, Dr. Jonathan Hamilton, said he did not know if Mr. Langone or Dr. Grossman came to Greenville to visit Representative Murphy. The incoming chairman of the county's Republican Party said he hadn't heard of any such visit either. The operations manager for the Pitt-Greenville Airport Authority, John Hanna, confirmed that an aircraft with a tail number matching Mr. Langone's private jet was 'here for a short duration.' Flight records, accessible through a company that tracks flight information, place that private jet on the ground at Pitt-Greenville Airport for more than two hours on the afternoon of Feb. 17, Presidents' Day. The plane had flown in from Boca Raton, Fla., and returned there afterward. It appears to have been the only time this year the plane went to Greenville. Two days later, Representative Murphy released a statement along with his second letter. 'I was left impressed and grateful for the work the institution is doing,' he said. Representative Murphy's first letter, on Feb. 11, had posed questions that went beyond how much the Super Bowl ad had cost and how NYU Langone had paid for it. The congressman also asked about the hospital's overseas investments and why it had sought a 'rural' designation that would have increased the subsidies it received. NYU Langone is on Manhattan's East Side, on land that hasn't been rural for two centuries. The letter sought information on whether the health system was exploiting legal loopholes to maximize profit. In his follow-up letter, on Feb. 19, Representative Murphy wrote that he considered all his 'questions thoroughly answered.' But his office has declined to provide those answers to the public.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hiltzik: Can Trump's billionaire backers pull him back from the tariff cliff?
Many of America's billionaires and millionaires thought they knew how they would profit from a second Trump term: There would be tax cuts and deregulation and an end to bothersome government investigations. In other words, a White House sedulously attuned to their interests. What they didn't count on, however, was a chaotic and nonsensical tariff policy that threatens to plunge their investment holdings into a bear market — or in some cases, has already done so — and to unravel the global economy in which they made all their money. What Trump unveiled Wednesday is stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme, ignorant trade-wise and addressing a non-problem with misguided tools. Investment manager Ken Fisher Now, many of his erstwhile supporters among America's plutocrats are screaming for mercy. In interviews and social media postings, and in one case even via a federal lawsuit, they've been calling on him to roll back his tariff plans or at least to pause them for several months. Is he listening? So far, he hasn't indicated a change in strategy. Whether Trump is open to persuasion or his White House sits behind a figurative barrier against criticism, like the Coulomb barrier that repels protons from an atomic nucleus until they reach a high energy level, isn't known. Criticism of the tariffs by Trump's wealthier supporters has emerged as the investment markets continue to reel over Trump's tariff plans and his apparent resistance to moderating the levies or his anti-free-trade rhetoric. One can't pretend that Trump's backers haven't been speaking clearly. Let's listen in on the backlash from billionaires and the billionaire-adjacent. Among the most vociferous is Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot. Langone, whose net worth is estimated at about $9.5 billion by Forbes, is a Trump backer whose political contributions have gone mostly to Republicans, including a $500,000 donation last year to the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund. In an interview with the Financial Times published Monday, Langone decried Trump's tariffs as too large, imposed too hastily, and based on an incoherent mathematical formula. Read more: Hiltzik: Yes, America absolutely should annex Greenland and Canada. Here's why Langone told the FT that he thought Trump was 'poorly advised.' He questioned the math used by the White House to calculate the "reciprocal tariffs" Trump announced on April 2. "I don't understand the goddamn formula," he said. 'I believe he's been poorly advised by his advisors about this trade situation — and the formula they're applying.' Focusing on how the formula produced a 42% tariff on goods from Vietnam, he called that figure "bulls—. ... Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on! You might as well tell them, 'Don't even bother calling.'' He also called the 34% tariff on China "too aggressive, too soon." He spoke before Trump threatened to add another 50% to tariffs on goods from China if it pursued plans to retaliate with higher tariffs on U.S. goods. Langone is not alone in questioning the April 2 formula. Because of a definitional error, according to economists Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the formula yielded tariffs that are roughly four times too high. The proper rate for Vietnam, they calculated, should be 12.2%, not 46%. "The formula the administration relied on has no foundation in either economic theory or trade law," Corinth and Veuger wrote. "But if we are going to pretend that it is a sound basis for US trade policy, we should at least be allowed to expect that the relevant White House officials do their calculations carefully." Among others weighing in on the tariffs was Stanley Druckenmiller, a revered investment manager who once worked for progressive philanthropist George Soros, and was once the mentor and boss of Scott Bessant, Trump's treasury secretary. In the 2020 election, Druckenmiller contributed $250,000 to the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund. In an interview Sunday with CNBC that he later cited in a tweet on X, Druckenmiller said tariffs shouldn't exceed 10% to avoid triggering retaliatory tariffs by targeted countries. Trump's tariffs start at 10% and go higher from there. "What Trump unveiled Wednesday," tweeted billionaire investment manager Ken Fisher, who has contributed to Republicans and Democrats, "is stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme, ignorant trade-wise and addressing a non-problem with misguided tools. ... On tariffs Trump is beyond the pale by a long shot." Fisher called the tariff formula "ridiculous" and predicted that "if GOP congress members don't get Trump's tariffs reigned in pretty quickly, the midterms ... will be a blood bath for them big time." Among the most vociferous critics of the tariffs has been billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who was one of Trump's most steadfast supporters during the presidential campaign and since the election. But he drew the line at the tariff announcement. Referring to the plan to begin imposing reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, Ackman tweeted that if "on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate." He added, "What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large, long-term, economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war? I don't know of one who will do so." He urged Trump to "call a time out." Business leaders have also begun speaking out. As I reported earlier, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who earlier this year counseled Americans that Trump's plans for relatively modest tariff increases were no big deal — "Get over it," he advised — changed his tune in a his annual letter to JPM shareholders published Monday. There he observed that "the recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.' Wilbur Ross, an investment banker who served as Commerce Secretary during Trump's first term, indicated that he was unnerved by the magnitude of the planned tariff hike. 'It's more severe than I would have expected,' he told the Financial Times. 'Particularly the way it is impacting Vietnam, China and Cambodia is more extreme than I would have thought.' He added, 'It's hard to deal with uncertainty. Fear of the unknown is the worst for people and we are in a period of extreme fear of the unknown.' Trump's tariff policy has exposed a serious rift within his inner circle, with conflict between his advisor Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, Trump's hard-line trade counselor, breaking into the open. Speaking on CNBC Monday — after Musk called for "a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone between Europe and North America' — the opposite of Trump's approach — Navarro called Musk "not a car manufacturer" but a "car assembler," referring to Tesla, the electric vehicle maker Musk controls. Navarro's goal was to imply that Tesla is dependent on imported parts that would be subject to the new tariffs. Musk responded with tweets in which he called Navarro "truly a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks." The assertion that Tesla relies on imported parts, he wrote, is "demonstrably false." The Trump White House downplayed the conflict as a minor spat. "Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. Another path of attack on Trump's tariffs was opened last week by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative legal group that has been funded by right-wing sources including the Koch network, the Linde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. The Alliance filed a lawsuit last week asserting that the law Trump cited as giving him power to set tariffs — a power the constitution reserves for Congress — does not, in fact, provide that authority. Get the latest from Michael HiltzikCommentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize me up. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
09-04-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Can Trump's billionaire backers pull him back from the tariff cliff?
Many of America's billionaires and millionaires thought they knew how they would profit from a second Trump term: There would be tax cuts and deregulation and an end to bothersome government investigations. In other words, a White House sedulously attuned to their interests. What they didn't count on, however, was a chaotic and nonsensical tariff policy that threatens to plunge their investment holdings into a bear market — or in some cases, has already done so — and to unravel the global economy in which they made all their money. Now, many of his erstwhile supporters among America's plutocrats are screaming for mercy. In interviews and social media postings, and in one case even via a federal lawsuit, they've been calling on him to roll back his tariff plans or at least to pause them for several months. Is he listening? So far, he hasn't indicated a change in strategy. Whether Trump is open to persuasion or his White House sits behind a figurative barrier against criticism, like the Coulomb barrier that repels protons from an atomic nucleus until they reach a high energy level, isn't known. Criticism of the tariffs by Trump's wealthier supporters has emerged as the investment markets continue to reel over Trump's tariff plans and his apparent resistance to moderating the levies or his anti-free-trade rhetoric. One can't pretend that Trump's backers haven't been speaking clearly. Let's listen in on the backlash from billionaires and the billionaire-adjacent. Among the most vociferous is Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot. Langone, whose net worth is estimated at about $9.5 billion by Forbes, is a Trump backer whose political contributions have gone mostly to Republicans, including a $500,000 donation last year to the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund. In an interview with the Financial Times published Monday, Langone decried Trump's tariffs as too large, imposed too hastily, and based on an incoherent mathematical formula. Langone told the FT that he thought Trump was 'poorly advised.' He questioned the math used by the White House to calculate the 'reciprocal tariffs' Trump announced on April 2. 'I don't understand the goddamn formula,' he said. 'I believe he's been poorly advised by his advisors about this trade situation — and the formula they're applying.' Focusing on how the formula produced a 42% tariff on goods from Vietnam, he called that figure 'bulls—. ... Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on! You might as well tell them, 'Don't even bother calling.'' He also called the 34% tariff on China 'too aggressive, too soon.' He spoke before Trump threatened to add another 50% to tariffs on goods from China if it pursued plans to retaliate with higher tariffs on U.S. goods. Langone is not alone in questioning the April 2 formula. Because of a definitional error, according to economists Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the formula yielded tariffs that are roughly four times too high. The proper rate for Vietnam, they calculated, should be 12.2%, not 46%. 'The formula the administration relied on has no foundation in either economic theory or trade law,' Corinth and Veuger wrote. 'But if we are going to pretend that it is a sound basis for US trade policy, we should at least be allowed to expect that the relevant White House officials do their calculations carefully.' Among others weighing in on the tariffs was Stanley Druckenmiller, a revered investment manager who once worked for progressive philanthropist George Soros, and was once the mentor and boss of Scott Bessant, Trump's treasury secretary. In the 2020 election, Druckenmiller contributed $250,000 to the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund. In an interview Sunday with CNBC that he later cited in a tweet on X, Druckenmiller said tariffs shouldn't exceed 10% to avoid triggering retaliatory tariffs by targeted countries. Trump's tariffs start at 10% and go higher from there. 'What Trump unveiled Wednesday,' tweeted billionaire investment manager Ken Fisher, who has contributed to Republicans and Democrats, 'is stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme, ignorant trade-wise and addressing a non-problem with misguided tools. ... On tariffs Trump is beyond the pale by a long shot.' Fisher called the tariff formula 'ridiculous' and predicted that 'if GOP congress members don't get Trump's tariffs reigned in pretty quickly, the midterms ... will be a blood bath for them big time.' Among the most vociferous critics of the tariffs has been billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who was one of Trump's most steadfast supporters during the presidential campaign and since the election. But he drew the line at the tariff announcement. Referring to the plan to begin imposing reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, Ackman tweeted that if 'on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.' He added, 'What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large, long-term, economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war? I don't know of one who will do so.' He urged Trump to 'call a time out.' Business leaders have also begun speaking out. As I reported earlier, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who earlier this year counseled Americans that Trump's plans for relatively modest tariff increases were no big deal — 'Get over it,' he advised — changed his tune in a his annual letter to JPM shareholders published Monday. There he observed that 'the recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.' Wilbur Ross, an investment banker who served as Commerce Secretary during Trump's first term, indicated that he was unnerved by the magnitude of the planned tariff hike. 'It's more severe than I would have expected,' he told the Financial Times. 'Particularly the way it is impacting Vietnam, China and Cambodia is more extreme than I would have thought.' He added, 'It's hard to deal with uncertainty. Fear of the unknown is the worst for people and we are in a period of extreme fear of the unknown.' Trump's tariff policy has exposed a serious rift within his inner circle, with conflict between his advisor Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, Trump's hard-line trade counselor, breaking into the open. Speaking on CNBC Monday — after Musk called for 'a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone between Europe and North America' — the opposite of Trump's approach — Navarro called Musk 'not a car manufacturer' but a 'car assembler,' referring to Tesla, the electric vehicle maker Musk controls. Navarro's goal was to imply that Tesla is dependent on imported parts that would be subject to the new tariffs. Musk responded with tweets in which he called Navarro 'truly a moron' and 'dumber than a sack of bricks.' The assertion that Tesla relies on imported parts, he wrote, is 'demonstrably false.' The Trump White House downplayed the conflict as a minor spat. 'Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. Another path of attack on Trump's tariffs was opened last week by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative legal group that has been funded by right-wing sources including the Koch network, the Linde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. The Alliance filed a lawsuit last week asserting that the law Trump cited as giving him power to set tariffs — a power the constitution reserves for Congress — does not, in fact, provide that authority.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tuesday's Campaign Round-Up, 4.8.25: Texas' Abbott finally calls a key special election
Today's installment of campaign-related news items from across the country. * NBC News reported that the North Carolina Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court's ruling 'that would have required that more than 65,000 votes cast in the disputed 2024 state Supreme Court race be recounted and verified.' * As Democratic officials start to feel some optimism about the 2026 midterm elections, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced this week that it's targeting 35 Republican-held House seats. The party will need a net gain of three seats to take back the majority in the chamber. * Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, a longtime Republican donor, condemned the White House's trade tariffs in an interview this week. 'I don't understand the goddamn formula,' Langone told The Financial Times. * To the surprise of no one, Republican Rep. John James of Michigan launched a 2026 gubernatorial campaign this week. It will be his third bid for statewide office, following failed Senate campaigns in 2018 and 2020. * In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott finally scheduled a congressional special election to fill the vacancy left by the late Rep. Sylvester Turner's death. That said, voters in the Houston-area district won't get to choose a new representatives until November, leaving them without a voice in Congress for the next six months. * In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff's re-election campaign raised $11 million in the first quarter, and if that sounds like a lot, it is: As Politico noted, the Democratic senator's haul was 'the most ever raised by an incumbent in the first quarter of an off-year.' * And while state attorneys general races tend not to generate a lot of national attention, The New York Times reported that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's group will spend $10 million to help elect Democratic attorneys general this year and in 2026. This first test will be this fall in Virginia, where a Republican incumbent, Jason Miyares, is seeking a second term. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
GOP mega-donor knocks Trump tariffs: ‘I don't understand the goddamn formula'
Billionaire Republican mega-donor Ken Langone whacked President Trump's tariffs as 'bulls‑‑‑' and questioned the White House's approach to calculating them in a new interview published Monday. 'I don't understand the goddamn formula,' Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot, told the Financial Times. 'I believe he's been poorly advised by his advisers about this trade situation — and the formula they're applying.' Trump unveiled his sweeping tariff plan last week during a ceremony at the White House. It levies hefty import taxes on most goods from other countries, including ally nations, in an attempt to rectify trade deficits. The tariffs will go into effect at midnight, but they already have created economic turmoil around the uncertainty, as countries attempt to retaliate or negotiate for better deals. Trump has repeatedly defended his plan, even as stocks plummeted and business leaders voiced concerns. 'We're going to get fair deals and good deals with everybody. And if we don't, we're going to have nothing to do with them,' Trump said Monday. 'They're not going to be allowed to participate in the United States.' Trump called critics of his plan 'panicans,' which he defined on social media as 'a new party based on Weak and Stupid people!' But Langone slammed the rollout and the formula. He cited the 46 percent tariff on Vietnam, calling it an example of 'bulls‑‑‑' in the plan and said the 34 percent rate on goods from China is 'too aggressive, too soon.' 'Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on,' the businessman, who has contributed to Trump's campaign, told the Financial Times. 'You might as well tell them, 'Don't even bother calling.'' He also said the rollout of the tariff plan, which was much more drastic than anticipated, prevented 'serious negotiations' with China. China's Ministry of Commerce characterized Trump's tariffs as 'completely groundless' and 'a typical unilateral bullying practice,' in a statement Tuesday. The country's leaders have vowed to counter tariffs from the U.S. with equally robust taxes on Chinese goods, presenting a possible tariff war as Trump has escalated his response. 'The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake and once again exposes the blackmailing nature of the U.S. China will never accept this,' it said. 'If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.' Langone said a better approach would have been a 10 percent tariff on imports, followed by direct negotiations with individual countries. 'Right now, what everybody's terrified of is a tariff war,' he said. Langone's remarks follow other business leaders who also have taken aim at the Trump administration's tariff overhaul. 'The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president — in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress — are going to be severely negative,' billionaire hedge fund investor and Trump supporter Bill Ackman wrote in a lengthy social media post Sunday. 'This is not what we voted for.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
