
New Balance 1500 Made in UK Surfaces in "Ashley Blue"
New Balanceexpands its offerings with a1500 Made in UKiteration in 'Ashley Blue.' Gearing up for the summer days, the latest edition sees the smooth suede overlays hit with a calming blue hue suede overlays that match the clean, white mesh underlays. Navy accents hit the shoe for added drama for the sporty and stylish 1500 silhouette. The shoe is made in Flimby, England and features an ENCAP midsole cushioning and sits atop a white midsole and black and grey outsole. The pair is now available at select retailers.
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Fox News
6 hours ago
- Fox News
Socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani under fire for plan to tax 'richer and whiter neighborhoods'
Socialist Zohran Mamdani, the presumptive Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, is facing criticism over a campaign policy document that explicitly calls for shifting the city's tax burden onto "richer and whiter neighborhoods." Mamdani caused a political earthquake in this week's primary, trouncing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a stunning upset, all but securing his place on the November ballot. Housing affordability has been a central pillar of his campaign. A policy document titled "Stop the Squeeze on NYC Homeowners" from Mamdani's mayoral campaign website argues that the city's current property tax system disproportionately benefits wealthy, White homeowners, particularly in Manhattan and affluent areas of Brooklyn, by allowing them to pay far less in taxes due to outdated assessment caps. In contrast, Black, Latino and immigrant homeowners in neighborhoods like Brownsville and Jamaica in the outer borough of Queens are overburdened and at higher risk of foreclosure. His solution? "Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods," the proposal reads. "The property tax system is unbalanced because assessment levels are artificially capped, so homeowners in expensive neighborhoods pay less than their fair share." The proposal would reduce the taxable portion of assessed property values citywide, and offset that by raising actual tax rates in wealthier areas. The result: lower tax bills for lower-income neighborhoods and higher ones for affluent areas — which the campaign describes as "richer and whiter." The racial component of the policy position has come in for criticism online, with broadcaster Mark Levin sharing a New York Post story about the proposal and writing "Oh, and Mamdani is racist, too." Political commentator Eric Daugherty also brandished it as explicitly "racist" on X, while the New York Post editorial board also slammed the proposal as "pure racism." Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani's campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response. The campaign document also highlights racial disparities in deed theft and "tangled titles," which are situations where someone lives in a home they believe they own — often through inheritance — but their name is not on the deed, creating legal uncertainty about ownership. The document states that predominantly Black neighborhoods face these challenges at much higher rates than White neighborhoods. To address this, Mamdani is proposing a $10 million "Tangled Title Fund" to help city residents hire lawyers and clear legal titles so they can secure full homeownership rights and benefits. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose preamble discusses a way to "end white supremacy and racial oppression because its destruction is in the interest of all workers, including white workers." Overall, the housing document frames the city's housing inequities as structurally racist and economically unjust. The document also claims that the city's tax lien sale system is exploitative and racist. When a homeowner falls behind on property taxes under the system, the city sells that debt to a private trust of Wall Street-backed investors, usually at a discount. instead of collecting the debt directly. "The tax lien sale has been particularly harmful to Black, brown, and working-class homeowners, leading many homeowners to lose their home to foreclosure, or forcing them to sell below market value in order to pay off their accumulating debts," the document reads. "The city is six times more likely to sell a tax lien in a Black neighborhood than a white neighborhood. This policy is extracting wealth from Black, brown, and working-class communities and stripping New Yorkers of their homes." Mamdani said he will end the system on his first day in office and create a new tax collection system that provides "additional opportunities" for homeowners to enter into payment plans, pay down their debt and stay in their homes. The Queens assemblyman wants to build 200,000 new publicly-subsidized affordable homes and immediately freeze rents for the city's 2.4 million stabilized tenants. His proposals call for multi-year rent freezes and massive investment in public housing. Critics argue his proposals could worsen existing problems in the rental market,


Washington Post
7 hours ago
- Washington Post
Harvard is the wealthiest U.S. university. Can it survive a Trump standoff?
The Trump administration's escalating battle with Harvard University, including renewing a threat this week to pull all of its federal funding, poses an unprecedented challenge to the financial footing of America's wealthiest college. Harvard is in a better financial position than any of its peers to resist President Donald Trump's efforts to force higher education to align with his political ideology. But its costs have risen in recent years and a significant portion of its endowment is locked up in long-term investments. Harvard's massive $53 billion endowment is often seen as a financial shield, but most of those funds have restrictions on how they are spent. In a sign of the university's limited ability to tap its existing financial reserves, administrators tapped the bond market in March to raise $450 million in debt and another $750 million in April. While Harvard periodically issues bonds, the pace picked up this year. 'With its resources and an AAA bond rating, Harvard has financial freedom and flexibility. Still, these headwinds, and there are a lot of them, are piling up all at once,' said Howard Bunsis, an accounting professor at Eastern Michigan University. Harvard and the Trump administration have been in a tense standoff for months. On Monday, the administration threatened to withdraw all of Harvard's federal funding, saying a federal investigation found the school violated civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish students on campus from discrimination. In court documents, the university responded that in a rush to inflict punishment, the government had not documented any meaningful investigation into antisemitism at Harvard. Before that, the Trump administration had frozen billions of dollars in federal funding to Harvard. The university has challenged the order in court. Trump has countered with threats to end Harvard's tax-exempt status, restrictions on international students and scholars who want to attend the university, investigations into its operations, cancellation of contracts and a declaration that the school wouldn't receive new government grants. Since the federal government began demanding the university change how it operates in April, Harvard has lost more than $2 billion in federal funding. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are considering legislation that would increase the tax on Harvard's endowment earnings from 1.4 percent to 8 percent, which could cost the university hundreds of millions a year. The attacks on Harvard are part of a wider battle the Trump administration is waging against universities it says have allowed antisemitic behavior on campus or have allegedly discriminated against White students through their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Last week, the president of the University of Virginia resigned to spare the school a costly fight with the Trump administration over DEI. Trump administration officials have said they hoped to strike a deal with Harvard, but it's unclear how willing the university, which has secured several court wins, will be to compromise. Still, the administration's efforts pose an unprecedented financial challenge to Harvard, which has already taken steps to save money and mitigate the impact of federal funding cuts. It paused hiring, halted merit pay raises and instructed department heads to plan for budget cuts. Harvard's president, Alan M. Garber, is taking a 25 percent pay cut starting this month. 'It's a very strategic and reasonable strategy to try to conserve cash and have at the ready as many different types of liquid resources to bridge the uncertainty,' said Lisa Washburn, managing director of research firm Municipal Market Analytics. Harvard also tapped the financial markets for more than $1 billion in short-term funding, so far, this year, but it's not alone. Universities issued a record $12.3 billion in bonds in the first three months of the year, the highest amount since the first quarter of 2009 during the Great Recession, according to Municipal Market Analytics. Debt financing is part of its 'ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances,' Harvard said in a statement. In May, Harvard set aside $250 million to offset the loss of federal research funding. 'Although we cannot absorb the entire cost of the suspended or canceled federal funds, we will mobilize financial resources to support critical research activity for a transitional period,' Garber and Provost John F. Manning wrote in a statement when the move was announced. Still, the university's expenses are significant and already under pressure. Harvard ended fiscal 2024 with an operating surplus of $45 million, compared with $186 million the previous year, which the university attributes to rising costs, including investing in its workforce. That leaves it with less financial wiggle room in an emergency. Critics and supporters of the university — including former president Barack Obama, a Harvard alumnus — have argued the school should tap more of its $53 billion endowment to weather a potentially lengthy fight with the Trump administration. 'If Harvard prefers not to change, then Harvard should have no problem using its overflowing endowment to fund its bloated bureaucracy,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a letter to the university's president in May after the Trump administration said it would cut off Harvard's access to new federal grants. Spending more of its endowment 'would not have any significant negative effect,' said Bunsis, the Eastern Michigan University professor. 'The world would not end as we know it, and their endowments would be fine.' But the university has limited access to its endowment and already depends on it for a significant portion of its operating budget. And about 80 percent of Harvard's endowment, a collection of 14,000 funds, is restricted to uses that donors stipulate, and the university cannot change the terms of those gifts — some dating back to the founding of the school — on its own. The endowment is designed to support students, faculty, research and operations in perpetuity, and some financial experts say redirecting funds to cover short-term financial pressure could jeopardize that mission. Harvard did not respond to questions about whether it plans to spend more of its endowment. 'You might be able to liquidate some unrestricted endowment dollars and perhaps cover the [federal research funding] shortfall for a year or two, but you can't possibly recreate those funds from endowment,' said Tim Yates of Commonfund OCIO. Complicating Harvard's financial plans has been its investment in private equity funds, a strategy pioneered by Yale University. These types of investments have helped many elite universities achieve higher returns than they could with traditional stocks and bonds. The Harvard Management Company, which oversees the endowment, began investing in private equity in the 1980s and became more aggressive in recent years. Over the past decade, the portion of the endowment invested in private equity has nearly doubled, to about 40 percent. The university's 'major portfolio shift' toward private equity helped the endowment produce better returns in the last fiscal year, HMC chief executive N.P. Narvekar wrote in the school's 2024 financial report. The endowment reported a 9.6 percent return last year, compared with 2.9 percent the previous year. However, he wrote, 'for the second year in a row, private equity returns lagged those of public equity markets.' And private equity comes with risks, including that it is harder to access the money once it's invested. Often, private equity firms buy companies, locking the money up for years until the company is sold or holds an initial public offering. Compounding the difficulties for private equity investors has been a decline in the number of IPOs and mergers in recent years, transactions that traditionally allowed them to cash out of their positions. 'Few would contest that the past few years in private equity have been the industry's most challenging period since the global financial crisis,' Bain & Company, a private investment firm, said in a recent market analysis. Harvard put portions of its private equity holdings up for sale to other investors in 2017 and 2021. In 2024, it began exploring the sale of another $1 billion of its private equity holdings. The sale would make more funds available for new investment opportunities and to meet commitments to private equity firms to invest more money, according to a person close to Harvard Management Company, who asked not to be named to talk about sensitive financial information. Other universities have taken similar steps. Yale, for example, is negotiating the sale of nearly $3 billion of its private equity portfolio to pursue new investment opportunities, according to the university. Harvard has about $8.2 billion in unfunded private equity commitments coming due in the near term, said Michael Markov, co-founder and chairman of the research firm Markov Processes International. Finding the money to cover those kinds of commitments could put tremendous pressure on universities with large private equity stakes, he said. Academic freedom is at the heart of Harvard's challenges, but it's also facing financial constraints, said Philip Casey, founder and chief executive of Institutional LPs. 'It's just this perfect storm of academic freedom in the crosshairs at the same time that the universities are vulnerable because of the financial uncertainties associated with their endowments and their private equity investments,' he said.

Hypebeast
9 hours ago
- Hypebeast
Nike Unveils the Zoom Vomero 5 "Ochre"
Name:Nike Zoom Vomero 5 'Ochre'SKU:HF1553-301Colorway:Ochre/Flat Gold-Metallic Silver-Light Orewood BrownRetail Price:$160 USDRelease Date:Summer 2025Retailers: Nikeunveiled another earthy 'Ochre' iteration of its popularZoom Vomero 5silhouette. The upcoming model features a mesh base and suede overlays in a dark wheat hue. That same color lands on the panel and heel TPU caging, with the former sitting below the silver leather panel swoosh. More branding can be found on the tongue tag and stamped mini heel check. The shoe then rests on a white and gold-brown Cushlon midsole and matching outsole, while gold-brown laces tie them together for a neat finish.