By Gloria Pazmino, CNN

New York (CNN) — Zohran Mamdani becomes New York City’s mayor on Thursday with an ambitious agenda that drove a national conversation about affordability but will require billions in public funding and the backing of politicians who have expressed reservations.

The 34-year-old democratic socialist has just a few weeks before the start of state and city budget season begins at the end of January. He’s proposed that many of his top agenda items be paid for by raising taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and corporations.

Mamdani does not have power to increase or lower taxes on his own. He will need the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature.

Here’s a look at his top policy proposals and the path forward for each of them.

Expanding universal childcare

Mamdani campaigned on a plan to offer universal childcare to every child from 6 weeks to 5 years old. The program, which is estimated to cost approximately $6 billion every year, would also expand existing pre-K and 3-K programs and increase worker salaries.

If implemented, free universal childcare would amount to one of the most significant government policies in more than a decade, since former Mayor Bill de Blasio successfully launched universal pre-K.

The cost of childcare in New York City has skyrocketed. A 2025 report by the city comptroller found the average cost of childcare for infants and toddlers in small, family-based options was around $18,200 a year, a 79% increase since 2019. The figures were even higher for center-based care, which came in at an average of $26,000 a year, reflecting an increase of 43% since 2019.

Mamdani has said he would fund his proposal by taxing wealthy residents and raising the city’s corporate tax rate.

Hochul, who is heading into her own reelection campaign in 2026, has thrown cold water on Mamdani’s plan to raise income taxes on the wealthy, but she has left the door open on the possibility of raising the corporate tax. Facing a Democratic primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, Hochul will be under pressure to deliver an affordability-themed win of her own.

Hochul is the first woman elected to New York’s top office and often talks about being the first “mom governor.” She has already moved to increase state subsidies for low-income families, which she says will help pave the way towards a universal option.

Freezing increases in rent-stabilized apartments

Mamdani wants to freeze the rent for roughly two million rent-stabilized tenants in New York City.

The proposal is a core plank of Mamdani’s housing and affordability agenda, which also includes a pledge to build 200,000 units of affordable housing over the next decade and increasing funding to maintain already existing public housing.

To make the rent freeze happen, Mamdani has said he would appoint members to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board who support his proposal. The nine-member board, which is controlled by the mayor, sets annual rent increases on stabilized units every year.

The outgoing mayor, Eric Adams, appointed or reappointed four members of the board in the final days of his term. That could delay a rent freeze by a year or more if Adams-picked members reject Mamdani’s proposal and he waits for their terms to expire to replace them.

Board members serve terms of varying length, from two to four years, while the mayor can replace the chair at any time.

While the

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN

(CNN) — Love it or hate it, AI is increasingly becoming integral to the way we work.

So, like a lot of employees, you’ve started using it for your assignments.

That’s great – unless you’re not clear on what defines acceptable versus unacceptable uses of AI for your job and which specific tools your employer has approved or prohibited.

Here’s how to get a better sense of all that and minimize potential trouble, even if your employer hasn’t been great in spelling things out.

1. Recognize AI’s limits

Generative AI can be impressive – for instance, helping you find data or making connections you’d otherwise miss; and testing work products for design flaws or mistakes.

At the same time, it’s also highly imperfect and subject to so-called “hallucinations” – defined by IBM as “a phenomenon where (it) perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible to human observers, creating outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate.”

In other words, it can produce hot garbage.

An AI tool may be excused by its promoters for those hallucinations, but you won’t be.

That’s why when it comes to your job, “never blindly rely on AI,” said Dave Walton, an employer-side attorney who co-chairs Fisher Phillips’ AI, Data, and Analytics Practice Group.

Instead, view it as an initial assist. “Generative AI is the best thing in the world to get you from zero to not bad in 60 seconds,” said Niloy Ray, a co-lead of the AI practice at the employer-side law firm Littler Mendelson.

But, he added, “’Not bad’ is rarely the standard to which you’re working.”

It’s up to you to verify anything you incorporate from AI into your projects. And to be transparent with your boss whenever you use it for that purpose.

2. Seek out your company policy

It’s hard to say definitively how many employers have full-blown AI policies in place, though the numbers are likely on the rise.

Some non-scientific surveys suggest it is a smaller share than the high percentages of employees who say they’re already using AI.

“Self-directed AI use has grown to 65%, creating both innovation and risk as employees explore tools ahead of formal guidance,” according to the American Management Association, which surveyed 1,365 professionals in varying industries across 29 countries this year.

Meanwhile, a recent Littler survey of 349 professionals from US companies of varying sizes and industries found that 38% of companies said they created a specific policy for employee use of AI; another 13% said they’d developed guidelines; and 19% indicated they fit AI use into pre-existing workplace policies.

So, before doing anything else, check what AI policies and guidelines your employer has put in place.

If well done, those policies should offer a clear sense of the company’s guiding principles on usage, a clear set of dos and don’ts as well as a list of AI tools you are permitted to use and under what conditions. And it should make clear what disciplinary actions could result if you misuse them. (Here’s a sample from Fisher Phillips to give you an idea.)

Some types of companies may forbid AI use (e.g., a defense contractor) while others (such as banking and finance firms) may urge extreme caution or just don’t have the appetite for it, Ray said.

And other employers may license an AI tool that will be bespoke for company use or create its own internal AI tool, Walton said. In which case, use of publicly available third-party tools may be discouraged, restricted or prohibited.

3. Use common sense

If your employer doesn’t have a dedicated AI policy, consult your company’s other policies that apply to

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN

New York (CNN) — In 2025, shoppers said farewell to a number of well-known retailers.

Forever 21 didn’t live up to its name. The celebrations ended at Party City. And it all went wrong for Rite Aid.

These stores were just some of the roughly 8,200 locations that shut their doors this year, about 12% more than 2024, according to Coresight Research.

Slumping consumer sentiment, poor finances and years of shifting shopping habits have left some of these aging chains in a lurch. Some are headed down a path to bankruptcy as Americans dial back on discretionary purchases as inflation remains a stubborn problem.

Here are some of the major chains that went bust in 2025:

Forever 21

Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy (for the second time) in March and closed down its US operations, shuttering about 500 stores.

The company blamed “economic challenges impacting our core customers” – namely, cost-sensitive teens shifting their allegiance to competitors – as well as the rise of foreign fast fashion companies.

Forever 21 was unable to keep up with Chinese e-commerce giants such as Shein and Temu, especially as online shopping boomed during the pandemic. The company was also sensitive to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports into the United States.

Joann

Fabrics and crafts retailer Joann closed up shop in February, ending more than 80 years in business.

The closure came following its second Chapter 11 filing within a year, with the company blaming sluggish sales, inventory problems and a heavy debt load.

The “last several years have presented significant and lasting challenges in the retail environment, which, coupled with our current financial position and constrained inventory levels, forced us to take this step,” its former CEO Michael Prendergast said in a January press release.

However, the brand name and some of Joann’s beloved private labels were recently revived by Michaels with a “store within a store” concept.

Party City

Party City first announced it was going out of business about a year ago, but fully closed its stores in February. The chain, best known for balloons and other celebratory supplies, had been in business for 40 years.

The retailer previously declared bankruptcy in January 2023 and struggled with debt, carrying more than $1.7 billion at one point.

Party City also faced lots of competition – from e-commerce sites, pop-up concepts like Spirit Halloween and big-box retailers like Walmart and Target.

Rite Aid

Rite Aid, once one of America’s biggest pharmacy chains, closed its doors in October following its second bankruptcy in the past few years.

The full-service pharmacy firs

By Brianna Keilar, CNN

(CNN) — Back in 2017, when my husband was still in the Army, we learned he was unexpectedly deploying right as we were going to start trying to get pregnant. Military families get accustomed to this pattern: You plan and the United States Armed Forces makes you go back to the drawing board.

Inconveniently, he had pre-deployment work travel pop up while I was ovulating, which is how we found ourselves explaining to the staff at a local fertility clinic that we needed to freeze my husband’s sperm so I could do an intrauterine insemination while he was away.

It was incredibly stressful. It was like the clinic had never dealt with a couple in our situation. We didn’t have fertility issues that we were aware of, but I was 37 and it felt like we didn’t have a month to waste. One staff member tried to charge us for a full IVF cycle, at a cost of at least $10,000. Ultimately, after a negotiation, we were able to get the job done a la carte for several hundred dollars.

The IUI didn’t work. Maybe I do have fertility issues, I thought. I wasn’t exactly young for having children.

I remember thinking how I wished I hadn’t switched to my husband’s military insurance, TRICARE. It covered only fertility issues related to “a serious or severe illness or injury while on active duty.” My employer-provided insurance did, though it was more expensive but significantly cheaper than paying for IVF out of pocket.

I should note that having the choice of two insurance options is something many military spouses do not have. My husband was at the end of his military career, and his home base was stationary. The constant moves that usually define military life wreak havoc on a military spouse finding a job, let alone maintaining a career. Military spouses have an unemployment rate four to five times the national average. TRICARE is often their only choice for medical coverage.

More than eight years after my failed IUI, as federal employees have seen an expansion in their fertility benefits, TRICARE still doesn’t offer fertility coverage. A couple of weeks ago, it really looked like it would, which is why as we ring in 2026, I am thinking of the military families struggling to have a baby, for whom this new year will be off to a bitter start.

They were banking on a provision in the massive defense bill signed into law by President Donald Trump just before the holidays that would have given them the same kind of access to fertility coverage that other federal employees have.

The IVF language easily passed out of committees in the House and Senate. But as the bill was buffed and polished into a final version for both chambers to pass and send to Trump’s desk, the IVF provision was stripped from the measure just days before a vote.

It was devastating for military family members like Courtney Deady and her husband, a member of the Ohio Air National Guard, who have been trying to have a baby for a decade.

They’ve spent $100,000 on multiple attempts to conceive by intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization.

“It’s the mental health, it’s the travel,” Deady said. “There’s so many other things, such as cryopreservation” of embryos.

Deady has one embryo left for one last round of IVF.

She was counting on the fertility coverage in the defense bill. It seemed like it had a real shot. After all, Trump campaigned on making IVF more accessible, and this was the first National Defense Authorization Act he would sign after he reentered the White House.

Broken campaign promise

On the trail in 2024, Trump had pledged that “under

By Rachel Tashjian, CNN

(CNN) — Fashion! A delight to the senses, a thing of beauty, a source of pleasure, pain and, in its determined ridiculousness, humor. But this year, fashion was more likely to inspire something else: pure, unadulterated rage.

Sydney Sweeney’s great jeans ad — or were they great genes?! — became a cultural firestorm so potent that President Donald Trump weighed in, praising the campaign on Truth Social as “the HOTTEST ad out there.” Months later, Sweeney is still offering explanations in interviews, and one can’t help but politicize her haircuts and clothing choices.

Dutch indie designer (and, in the months since, the head of Jean Paul Gaultier) Duran Lantink’s hilariously realistic top made of jiggling oversized breasts, worn by a male model at Paris Fashion Week in March, was so hotly debated that former Fox news anchor Megyn Kelly dedicated a segment of her podcast to dissecting the look.

“There are always going to be mentally deranged people in our society,” she said. “And then there will be equally cynical advantage takers, like the designers behind this whole thing. The only solution for the rest of us is to say no, call out the depravity, and register how gross we find it. That’s all we can do — or we’re going to lose everything to these people.”

Kelly may be provocative, but almost anyone discussing fashion in 2025 approached it with an attitude that everything is at stake. Seemingly innocuous moments of sartorial froth, like paparazzi shots of Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming “American Love Story” series on Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, Jr., led to multi-day debates, as TikTokkers attempted to lay claim to their ultimate authority on the late Bessette Kennedy’s precise style. Kylie Jenner fronting a Miu Miu campaign raised questions over whether the pop cerebral brand had dumbed itself down. And The Row, the understated American label helmed by publicity-shy sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, saw its ethos of quietude turn on itself when a longtime customer, influencer Neelam Ahooja, wrote a Substack post in late October “breaking up” with the label.

Even talking about fashion became a font for rage bait, when designer Edward Buchanan posted an Instagram plea during the Spring-Summer 2026 Paris Fashion Week shows, asking social media commenters to accord designers more respect: “I have read some really heinous comments about the work of many designers in these last few days….Please bring some intelligent criticism to the table otherwise it’s just a troll fest from the comfort of your homes.”

That spiraled into a heated debate over who gets to critique fashion shows at all — do you need to be an expert in the room, or is it just as valid to weigh in as an observer whose platform is social media, even if the stage is just a brand’s comment section?

Fashion is the cradle of trend making, so all this may not be surprising given that Oxford University Press’s word of the year was “rage bait”: content that is explicitly designed to incite outrage. Even if designers (or brands, editors, commentators or celebrities) are just trying to be cheeky or merely delivering what they believe their public wants, we can’t help but respond with sustained exasperation.

Read more