Evelyn Reynolds

Ifeoma Ozoma, who accused Pinterest of discrimination, has become a key figure in helping tech employees disclose, and fight, mistreatment at work.Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed a bill to expand protections for people who speak up about discrimination in the workplace.A new website arrived to offer tech workers advice on how to come forward about mistreatment by their employers.And Apple responded to a shareholder proposal that asked it to assess how it used confidentiality agreements in employee harassment and discrimination cases.The disparate developments had one thing — or, rather, a person — in common: Ifeoma Ozoma.Since last year, Ms. Ozoma, 29, a former employee of Pinterest, Facebook and Google, has emerged as a central figure among tech whistle-blowers. The Yale-educated daughter of Nigerian immigrants, she has supported and mentored tech workers who needed help speaking out, pushed for more legal protections for those employees and urged tech companies and their shareholders to change their whistle-blower policies.She helped inspire and pass the new California law, the Silenced No More Act, which prohibits companies from using nondisclosure agreements to squelch workers who speak up against discrimination in any form. Ms. Ozoma also released a website, The Tech Worker Handbook, which provides information on whether and how workers should blow the whistle.“It’s really sad to me that we still have such a lack of accountability within the tech industry that individuals have to do it” by speaking up, Ms. Ozoma said in an interview.Her efforts — which have alienated at least one ally along the way — are increasingly in the spotlight as restive tech employees take more action against their employers. Last month, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, revealed that she had leaked thousands of internal documents about the social network’s harms. (Facebook has since renamed itself Meta.) Apple also recently faced employee unrest, with many workers voicing concerns about verbal abuse, sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination.Connie Leyva, a California state senator, center, wrote the Silenced No More Act, which was signed into law last month.Chelsea Guglielmino/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMs. Ozoma is now focused on directly pushing tech companies to stop using nondisclosure agreements to prevent employees from speaking out about workplace discrimination. She has also met with activists and organizations that want to pass legislation similar to the Silenced No More Act elsewhere. And she is constantly in touch with other activist tech workers, including those who have organized against Google and Apple.Much of Ms. Ozoma’s work stems from experience. In June 2020, she and a colleague, Aerica Shimizu Banks, publicly accused their former employer, the virtual pinboard maker Pinterest, of racism and sexism. Pinterest initially denied the allegations but later apologized for its workplace culture. Its workers staged a walkout, and a former executive sued the company over gender discrimination.“It’s remarkable how Ifeoma has taken some very painful experiences, developed solutions for them and then built a movement around making those solutions a reality,” said John Tye, the founder of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit that provides legal support to whistle-blowers. He and Ms. Ozoma recently appeared on a webinar to educate people on whistle-blower rights.Meredith Whittaker, a former Google employee who helped organize a 2018 walkout over the company’s sexual harassment policy, added of Ms. Ozoma: “She has stuck around and worked to help others blow the whistle more safely.”Ms. Ozoma, who grew up in Anchorage and Raleigh, N.C., became an activist after a five-year career in the tech industry. A political science major, she moved to Washington, D.C., in 2015 to join Google in government relations. She then worked at Facebook in Silicon Valley on international policy.In 2018, Pinterest recruited Ms. Ozoma to its public policy team. There, she helped bring Ms. Banks on board. They spearheaded policy decisions including ending the promotion of anti-vaccination information and content related to plantation weddings on Pinterest, Ms. Ozoma said.Yet Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks said they faced unequal pay, racist comments and retaliation for raising complaints at Pinterest. They left the company in May 2020. A month later, during the Black Lives Matter protests, Pinterest posted a statement supporting its Black employees.Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks said Pinterest’s hypocrisy had pushed them to speak out. On Twitter, they disclosed their experiences as Black women at the company, with Ms. Ozoma declaring that Pinterest’s statement was “a joke.”In a statement, Pinterest said it had taken steps to increase diversity.By speaking out, Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks took a risk. That’s because they broke the nondisclosure agreements they had signed with Pinterest when they left the company. California law, which offered only partial protection, didn’t cover people speaking out about racial discrimination.Peter Rukin, their lawyer, said he had an idea: What if state law was expanded to ban nondisclosure agreements from preventing people speaking out on any workplace discrimination? Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks soon began working with a California state senator, Connie Leyva, a Democrat, on a bill to do just that. It was introduced in February.“I’m just so proud of these women for coming forward,” Ms. Levya said.Along the way, Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks fell out. Ms. Banks said she no longer spoke with Ms. Ozoma because Ms. Ozoma had recruited her to Pinterest without disclosing the discrimination there and then excluded her from working on the Silenced No More Act.“Ifeoma then cut me out of the initiative through gaslighting and bullying,” Ms. Banks said.Ms. Ozoma said she had not cut Ms. Banks out of the organizing. She added that Ms. Banks had “felt left out” because news coverage focused on Ms. Ozoma’s role.Understand the Facebook PapersCard 1 of 6A tech giant in trouble. More

Rising prices and a weakened currency are straining households, intensifying pressure on Prime Minister Imran Khan to find solutions.Muhammad Nazir canceled his daughter’s wedding. He parks his motorcycle at home and walks to his shop. Many of his shelves are empty because he can’t afford to stock the same supply of candy, soft drinks and cookies that he once did.A growing number of his customers can’t buy his snacks anyway. The global inflation wave has dealt a severe blow to Pakistan, a country of 220 million people already struggling with erratic growth and heavy government debt.As the cost of food and fuel eats up a larger share of meager incomes, people are putting pressure on the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan to do something.“I am not making any profit these days,” Mr. Nazir, 66, said from his shop in Sohawa, a town about 50 miles southeast of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad. “Still, I come here every day, open the shop and wait for customers.”Surging prices have imperiled President Biden’s agenda in the United States and hit shoppers from Germany to Mexico to South Africa. But they are having a particularly nasty effect in Pakistan, a developing country already prone to political instability and heavily dependent on imports like fuel. The effect has been worsened by a sharp weakening of Pakistan’s currency, the rupee, giving it less purchasing power internationally.Pakistan’s economy has been in and out of crisis since Prime Minister Imran Khan came to power in 2018.Didor Sadulloev/ReutersWhile inflation is expected to ease as supply-chain bottlenecks unsnarl, Pakistan feels it can’t wait. On Monday, the government announced that it had reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for the first $1 billion of what is expected to be a $6 billion rescue package.“The economy is the biggest threat that the government is in fact facing right now,” said Khurram Husain, a business journalist in Karachi. “This is basically eroding the very basis of their public support.”Protests organized by opposition parties have broken out across Pakistan in recent weeks, causing Mr. Khan’s political allies to examine their loyalties. The Pakistan Muslim League-Q, or P.M.L.-Q, party, which is in a coalition with Mr. Khan, said this month that it was becoming difficult to remain part of the government.“Our members of Parliament are feeling a lot of pressure in their constituencies,” said Moonis Elahi, Mr. Khan’s minister for water resources and a member of P.M.L.-Q. “Some even suggested leaving the alliance if the situation doesn’t improve.”Government officials have downplayed the recent surge in inflation, saying it is a global phenomenon. Mr. Khan has also blamed the foreign debt burden he inherited from the previous government.“The government spent the first year in stabilizing the economy, but when it was close to stabilizing it, the country faced the biggest crisis in 100 years: the coronavirus epidemic,” he said, adding, “No doubt the inflation is an issue.”Officials also cite price comparisons of fuel costs with neighboring countries, like India, claiming that Pakistan is still better off. Pakistanis have seen standard gas prices jump 34 percent in the last six months, to about 146 rupees a liter.Filling up the tank in Peshawar in early November. Pakistan imports a large portion of its oil, diesel and gasoline.Bilawal Arbab/EPA, via ShutterstockPakistan has been rushing to tamp down inflation and get the money it needs to keep buying abroad. Last week, Pakistan’s central bank sharply raised interest rates, a move that could help cool price increases but one that could crimp economic growth.Mr. Khan’s government reached out to Saudi Arabia for a lifeline. The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, pledged $4.2 billion in cash assistance. Members of his government are also chasing loans from China that they say are needed to complete crucial power-sector projects that are part of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.Pakistan’s economy has been in and out of crisis since Mr. Khan, a former cricket star, came to power in 2018. But other periods of inflation were felt mainly by the rich, economists say. This bad turn is affecting everyone.Inflation surged 9.2 percent in October from the year before, according to government data. Food-price inflation is crushing Pakistan’s poorest residents, who already normally spend more than half of their incomes on food. The cost of basic food items shot up this month by 17 percent year over year, government data show. Pakistan’s biggest food import is palm oil, which has jumped in price.In the United States, food prices have risen 4.6 percent.In terms of energy, Pakistan imports about 80 percent of its oil and diesel and about 35 percent of its gasoline, according to Muzzammil Aslam, a spokesman for the finance ministry. The cost of electricity in Pakistan is already twice as much as in countries like India, China and Bangladesh.“The economy is not well,” Mian Nasser Hyatt Maggo, the president of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry, a Karachi-based industry group, said simply.A charity worker served inexpensive dishes to laborers and others along a roadside in Karachi in June. The government subsidizes the cost of foods like grains, legumes and cooking oil.Asif Hassan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUnemployment has risen sharply, too, particularly among college graduates in cities. The number of people falling into poverty is up.Understand Rising Gas Prices in the U.S.Card 1 of 5A steady rise. More

A series of restrictions, including a lockdown in Austria, is expected to put a brake on economic growth.Europe’s already fragile economic recovery is at risk of being undermined by a fourth wave of coronavirus infections now dousing the continent, as governments impose increasingly stringent health restrictions that could reduce foot traffic in shopping centers, discourage travel and thin crowds in restaurants, bars and ski resorts.Austria has imposed the strictest measures, mandating vaccinations and imposing a nationwide lockdown that began on Monday. But economic activity will also be dampened by other safety measures — from vaccine passports in France and Switzerland to a requirement to work from home four days a week in Belgium.“We are expecting a bumpy winter season,” said Stefan Kooths, a research director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany. “The pandemic now seems to be affecting the economy more negatively than we originally thought.”The Christmas market in Frankfurt, Germany on Monday. Some German states have imposed partial lockdowns.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersThe tough lockdowns that swept Europe during the early months of the pandemic last year ended up shrinking economic output by nearly 15 percent. Buoyed by a raft of government support to businesses and the unemployed, most of those countries managed to scramble back and recoup their losses after vaccines were introduced, infection rates tumbled and restrictions eased.In September, economists optimistically declared that Europe had reached a turning point. In recent weeks, the main threats to the economy seemed to stem from a post-lockdown exuberance that was causing supply-chain bottlenecks, energy-price increases and inflation worries. And widespread vaccinations were expected to defang the pandemic’s bite so that people could continue to freely gather to shop, dine out and travel.What was not expected was a series of tough government restrictions. A highly contagious strain — aided by some resistance to vaccines and flagging support for other anti-infection measures like masks — has enabled the coronavirus to make a comeback in some regions.“The lower vaccination rates are, the gloomier the economic outlook is for this winter term,” Mr. Kooths said.Roughly two-thirds of Europe’s population has been vaccinated, but rates vary widely from country to country. Only a quarter of the population in Bulgaria has received a shot, for example, compared with 81 percent in Portugal, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.A vaccination line in Lisbon. Covid-19 inoculation rates vary widely among European Union countries; Portugal is among the leaders.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBefore they were ordered shut, stores in Austria were already suffering a 25 percent loss in revenue for November compared with the same period in 2019, the country’s retail trade association said on Monday. Although the last shopping Saturday before the lockdown — stores in Austria are closed on Sunday — was stronger than that day two years ago, the group said, it would not be enough to make up for the losses expected in the coming weeks.Hotels were not faring much better in the week before the start of the lockdown, with one of every two bookings canceled, Austria’s hotel association, Ö.H.V., said.Still, the overall outlook is not nearly as dire as it was last year. Although several analysts have shaved their forecasts for October, November and December, growth is still expected to be positive, with the yearly increase hovering around the 5 percent mark. Jobless rates have dropped and, in some areas, businesses are complaining of labor shortages.Austria’s response, to impose a three-week lockdown — which shuts all stores except those providing basic necessities, allows restaurants to serve only carryout and requires people to stay home except for essential activities — is not necessarily a bellwether of what other governments across Europe will do. Leaders in France and Britain signaled last week that they were not planning new shutdowns.“We’re not at that point,” Sajid Javid, the British health secretary, said on Sunday. While there can’t be complacency, he added that he hoped people could “look forward to Christmas together.”Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Economics, said that while it was clear that restrictions and lockdowns had a significant and immediate impact on the economy, limited and intermittent closings — like those that already exist in some countries — were less likely to put a huge dent in overall growth.Rising infection rates will also push concerns over inflation — at least in the near future — “a little bit into the background,” he said.Much more difficult to assess, though, are the consequences of widespread restrictions on the unvaccinated or vaccine mandates.For individual businesses and regions, however, even the current limits could prove devastating.Restaurants in Austria will allow only carryout service.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe weeks leading up to Christmas Day are among the most important shopping days in Austria and Germany, where people gather at outdoor markets to eat, drink and buy gifts. The region’s traditional holiday markets, which normally open from late November until Dec. 24, are also an important tourist draw, and generate wider revenue through hotel bookings and other cultural events.Last year, many markets were completely shut down, so sellers and buyers were looking forward to this year.In Vienna, the market on Maria Theresien Platz opened on Wednesday, its wooden stalls decorated with evergreen boughs and fairy lights. But the vendors were forced to shut down after only four days.Maria Kissova stood amid piles of tablecloths, pillow covers and lace ornaments she had brought in from neighboring Slovakia, where she employs several women to sew the crafts. This year was her first time coming to Vienna, a trip that required months of planning and paperwork. With the lockdown, she faced the prospect of only several days’ worth of shopping, if the market is allowed to reopen as planned in mid-December.“It was a shock” when the lockdown was announced, she said, adding that it was too early to predict the scale of the losses she could incur. “We just have to accept it.”For Daniel Zieman, who ran a gift stand across the square between Vienna’s Natural History and Art History Museums, the story was the same. But he worried about the staff at the restaurant serving typical Austrian fare that he runs on the edge of town, many of whom count on the tips coming in from waiting tables in the normally busy season. Lost tips won’t be included in the government subsidies that will help keep people afloat.“Many of our staff have children, and you count on a certain percent from these tips every month,” he said. “That won’t be there.”The holiday season is when many restaurants do their biggest business, with companies holding end-of-year events, he said. “That is really good business, with 30 to 40 people who eat and drink and drink again and eat again. It’s a real shame,” he said.The Czech Republic and Slovakia have also imposed new restrictions. In Germany, some states have introduced partial lockdowns, and starting Wednesday, the unvaccinated will be required to show a negative Covid test before going to work.By the end of this winter, pretty much everyone in Germany “will be vaccinated, cured or dead,” Jens Spahn, the health minister, said on Monday.A nationwide closure in Germany, the continent’s largest economy, is unlikely at the moment, but Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, warned that one there would drag down all of Europe. “If Germany locks down, Europe is going to go back into recession,” he said.In France, Europe’s second-largest economy, President Emmanuel Macron is loath to reverse economic gains when a major election is scheduled in April. Despite warnings by health experts that another wave of coronavirus is hitting France “with lightning speed,” Mr. Macron said last week that he wouldn’t close parts of the economy again or follow Austria.Nearly 70 percent of the French population has been double vaccinated, and the country imposed a health pass earlier this year requiring people to show proof of vaccination to travel on trains and planes and enter restaurants, cinemas and large shopping centers.The government will now require a booster dose for people 65 or older for the pass to remain valid, and France’s Health Defense Council will meet on Wednesday with Mr. Macron to discuss other options to slow the spread of the coronavirus.The government, a spokesman said this week, is bringing “the weight of restrictions to bear on nonvaccinated people rather than vaccinated people.”Liz Alderman More

President Biden said on Monday that he would nominate Lael Brainard as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair, the No. 2 role at the Fed and one that could give her a stronger mandate to influence everything from the cost of money to the future of digital cash.Ms. Brainard, who has been a Fed governor since 2014, is already part of the inner policy circle of the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell. But her elevation to vice chair will make her Mr. Powell’s closest collaborator on monetary policy matters if she is confirmed by the Senate.The vice chair holds little power officially, but in practice is regularly the person who floats new ideas in speeches and who helps to guide a Fed chair’s thinking on policy matters.Ms. Brainard’s elevation comes at a pivotal economic moment. The Fed is wrestling with how to set policy at a time when inflation has shot higher but millions of jobs remain missing. Like Mr. Powell, Ms. Brainard has been wary of reacting to high prices too swiftly by lifting interest rates to choke off growth, worried that it could diminish job market opportunities. But both are carefully watching the price trajectory, with an eye on ensuring that high inflation does not become a long-lasting trend.“I’m committed to putting working Americans at the center of my work at the Federal Reserve,” Ms. Brainard said during a news conference Monday at the White House, where Mr. Biden introduced his picks. “This means getting inflation down at a time when people are focused on their jobs and how far their paychecks will go.”Ms. Brainard also pledged to ensure that the economy would be “sustainable for future generations” and that the Fed would reflect “the diversity of the communities we serve.”Her views on financial regulation and climate change have won her plaudits from some progressives but drawn concern from Republicans, raising questions about how much support she might win in the Senate. Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, applauded Mr. Powell’s reappointment but couched his support for Ms. Brainard.“While I have concerns about regulatory policies that Governor Brainard would support as vice chair, I look forward to meeting with her to discuss these and other matters,” Mr. Toomey said in a statement on Monday.Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, another Republican on the committee, also said he had concerns about Ms. Brainard’s regulatory policies and looked forward to discussing those matters with her.Ms. Brainard has been a major proponent of a more active Fed role in making sure the financial system is prepared for potential fallout from climate change. She gave a speech at the Fed’s first climate-focused conference in 2019 and has recently focused on the need for climate scenario analysis for banks, which would test how well they would hold up amid extreme weather events, sea level change and other climate-tied risks.As the sole Democrat left at the Fed board in Washington after 2018, Ms. Brainard used her position to draw attention to efforts to chisel away at bank rules, a process that was being driven by Randal K. Quarles, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, who is stepping down in December. In the process, she created a rare public disagreement at the consensus-driven central bank, dissenting from policy changes more than 20 times in 2019 and 2020.Ms. Brainard often released detailed explanations of her dissents, laying out a road map of what changes were made and why they might be problematic. For instance, when the Fed streamlined its stress-test approach, she supported simplification in spirit — but disagreed with how it was done.“Today’s rule gives a green light for large banks to reduce their capital buffers materially, at a time when payouts have already exceeded earnings for several years on average,” she said, publishing an analysis of how she came to that conclusion, one that Mr. Quarles disagreed with.Her new position will not give her more direct say over financial regulation than she previously had — governors all have a single vote on regulatory decisions — but she and her record of dissents could be a resource for the new person coming into the vice chair for supervision job.Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and chairman of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, said Ms. Brainard had “spent her life fighting for a stronger, fairer economy.”“At this moment, when workers are finally starting to see more power in our economy, we need a vice chair who understands that our economic recovery must strengthen our communities and put workers first,” Mr. Brown said in a statement.Ms. Brainard would be the third woman in the Fed’s 108-year history to hold the job, following in Janet L. Yellen’s and Alice Rivlin’s footsteps. Her new role would put her in a powerful position to weigh in on the path ahead for digital currency as the Fed contemplates whether it needs to issue one, something some other global central banks have done or are in the process of doing. Her more elevated position could also give her a bigger bully pulpit on climate-related issues.Ms. Brainard is a longtime Washington policymaker. She played a leading role in European debt crisis and Chinese currency deliberations during the Obama administration as a Treasury Department official, and she worked for the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration. She earned her economics doctorate at Harvard and was an up-and-coming professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to Washington to pursue a career in policy.Ms. Brainard was initially viewed as a leading candidate for Biden administration Treasury secretary, and her name continues to surface as a potential successor should Ms. Yellen, who now holds that top policy role, step down. More

WASHINGTON — President Biden said Monday that he would renominate Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, to another four-year term, opting for policy continuity at a moment of rapid inflation and economic uncertainty and betting that the Fed will do more to help workers reap the gains of the pandemic recovery.The much-awaited decision was a return to tradition in which the central bank’s top official is reappointed regardless of partisan identity — a norm bucked by former President Donald J. Trump, who appointed Mr. Powell instead of renominating Janet L. Yellen.While some progressive Democrats criticized Mr. Powell’s reappointment, the move was primarily greeted with bipartisan praise that suggested an easy path to confirmation.Mr. Biden also said he planned to nominate Lael Brainard, a Fed governor whom many progressive groups had championed to replace Mr. Powell, to serve as the Fed’s vice chair, a move that helped mollify some criticism on the left.The president and his top aides believe that Mr. Powell has done well in supporting the economy through the pandemic recession and a halting recovery, while amassing credibility by standing up to political pressure from Mr. Trump. But Mr. Biden is also making a calculated bet that the Fed chair will be more aligned with his views on the economy and, in particular, inflation, than he is with Republicans in the Senate who have demanded quicker action from the Fed to tamp down rising prices.“At this moment, of both enormous potential and enormous uncertainty for our economy we need stability and independence at the Federal Reserve,” Mr. Biden said during remarks at the White House. “And we need people of character and integrity, who can be trusted to keep their focus on the right long-term goals of our country, for our country.”The stakes in the choice are unusually high.Inflation has jumped because of booming consumer demand, tangled supply lines and labor shortages that have helped to push up the cost of used cars, couches and even food and rent. Yet millions of workers are missing from the labor market compared with before the pandemic.The central bank is charged with keeping consumer prices stable while striving for maximum employment, and striking that balance could require difficult policy choices in the months ahead.Mr. Biden, who is facing a delicate balancing act within his own party, deliberated over the pick for months. He consulted with both progressive and moderate Democrats along the way, seeking their views on inflation, worker considerations, financial regulation and climate change policy at the Fed.That included Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had called Mr. Powell “a dangerous man,” and suggested she would not support his renomination during a testy hearing in late September. Mr. Biden met with Ms. Warren on Nov. 9 in the Oval Office to discuss Fed appointments and called her last Thursday, before he had settled on a pick, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.On Friday, Mr. Biden called Mr. Powell and Ms. Brainard to inform them that he had made his choice. The decision was influenced in large part by Mr. Biden’s belief that he and Mr. Powell are philosophically aligned when it comes to keeping interest rates low and continuing to support the economy until more people are working and wages are rising.On Monday, Mr. Biden said he believed the Fed had more work to do to get to “maximum employment.”“That’s an economy where companies have to compete to attract workers, instead of workers competing with each other for jobs, where American workers get steady wage increases after decades of stagnation, and where the benefits of economic growth are broadly shared by everyone in the country, not just concentrated for those at the top,” he said.Yet some economists, and many Republicans, say the Fed runs the risk of allowing inflation to spin out of control if it does not start to pull back efforts to fuel economic growth, with workers demanding increasingly higher wage increases to cover rising costs, resulting in 1970s-style inflation.Mr. Biden has been suffering politically as prices rise for food, gas and airplane tickets. The president has repeatedly tried to reassure Americans that his economic policies will ultimately calm inflation, a message he is expected to repeat during remarks on Tuesday.But his larger economic agenda has become tangled in the politics of price increases, particularly as the president pushes Senate Democrats to coalesce around a $2.2 trillion climate change and social policy bill that Mr. Biden says will ease inflationary pressures in years to come but Republicans warn will stoke higher prices immediately.Mr. Biden said he was certain that both Mr. Powell and Ms. Brainard would work to stabilize inflation and keep the economic recovery on track.“We’re in a position to attack inflation from the position of strength, not weakness,” he said.Mr. Powell, who appeared alongside the president and Ms. Brainard at the White House, acknowledged the challenge ahead.“We know that high inflation takes a toll on families, especially those less able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing and transportation,” he said, adding that the Fed would “use our tools both to support the economy and a strong labor market and to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched.”Mr. Powell’s reappointment suggests that the White House, which has a chance to fully reshape the Fed, is not aiming to completely overhaul the institution.The Biden administration already has one vacant governor role to fill, and two more seats will open early next year, giving Mr. Biden room to appoint at least three of seven governors. The president must also fill several leadership roles, including the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, a powerful position given its influence on bank oversight.Mr. Biden has been under pressure from progressives and moderate Democrats to pick a diverse slate of leaders for the Fed who would prioritize tough bank regulation and do what they could to address climate change risks in the financial system.Lael Brainard is the president’s choice to be the Federal Reserve’s vice chair.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesMr. Powell has faced opposition from some progressive Democrats, who have faulted him for not using the Fed’s tools to help combat climate change and for voting to loosen financial rules for the nation’s biggest banks.He has also come under criticism for an ethics scandal that took place while he was overseeing the central bank. Two of the Fed’s 12 regional presidents made significant financial trades for their private accounts in 2020, when the Fed was actively rescuing many markets from pandemic fallout.Mr. Biden tried to ease at least some of those concerns, saying that Mr. Powell had assured him that the Fed would “accelerate” efforts to address and mitigate the risk that climate change poses to the economy.Mr. Biden also said he planned to soon nominate a new vice chair for supervision. In conversations with Mr. Biden, Mr. Powell convinced the president he would follow the lead of that person in setting financial regulatory policy, according to people with knowledge of the matter.Whether that will be enough to appease Mr. Powell’s critics remains to be seen. Ms. Warren said in a statement on Monday that she would not vote for Mr. Powell’s confirmation. Still, she did not recount her litany of concerns about him.Another critic, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who opposed Mr. Powell’s reappointment, said on Monday that was “disappointed” in Mr. Biden’s decision. But he did not say whether he would vote no on his nomination.“I sincerely hope that, if confirmed, Powell will reassess his past opposition to utilizing the Fed’s regulatory tools to minimize climate-related risks to the financial sector,” he said.Other Democrats were more supportive, including Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who praised Mr. Powell for helping steer the economy through the pandemic. Mr. Brown’s position is important — he is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the Fed and will handle the confirmation hearings for both Mr. Powell and Ms. Brainard.Republicans, who supported Mr. Powell when he was nominated as chair by Mr. Trump, also lauded Mr. Biden’s decision.Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania and the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, released a statement saying he would support Mr. Powell’s nomination, as did several other of his party’s senators. That full-throated support did not extend to Ms. Brainard, however, with Mr. Toomey and other Republicans saying they had some concerns about her views on financial regulation and other issues.The big challenge ahead for Mr. Powell is deciding when — and how quickly — to remove pandemic-era economic support that the central bank has been using to cushion workers, businesses and financial markets.The Fed has so far decided to slow its large bond-purchase program, a first step toward withdrawing monetary policy support that will leave it more nimble to raise interest rates next year if reining in the economy becomes necessary.The federal funds rate has been set to near-zero since March 2020, keeping many types of borrowing cheap and helping to fuel home and car purchases and other types of demand that in turn set the stage for strong hiring. Raising it could cool off growth and weaken inflation.Yet trying to slow price gains would come at a cost. Workers are still trickling back after severe job losses at the onset of the pandemic, and the Fed is hoping to give the job market more space and time to heal. That’s especially true because continued waves of infection may be keeping many people from searching for work, either out of health concerns or because they lack child care. More

Widespread flight cancellations. Excruciating waits for customer service. Unruly passengers.And that was all before the holiday travel season.Even in normal times, the days around Thanksgiving are a delicate period for the airlines. But this week is the industry’s biggest test since the pandemic began, as millions more Americans — emboldened by vaccinations and reluctant to spend another holiday alone — are expected to take to the skies than during last year’s holidays.A lot is riding on the carriers’ ability to pull it off smoothly.“For many people, this will be the first time they’ve gotten together with family, maybe in a year, year and a half, maybe longer, so it’s very significant,” said Kathleen Bangs, a former commercial pilot who is a spokeswoman for FlightAware, an aviation data provider. “If it goes poorly, that’s when people might rethink travel plans for Christmas. And that’s what the airlines don’t want.”The Transportation Security Administration said it expected to screen about 20 million passengers at airports in the 10 days that began Friday, a figure approaching prepandemic levels. Two million passed through checkpoints on Saturday alone, about twice as many as on the Saturday before last Thanksgiving.Delta Air Lines and United Airlines both said they expected to fly only about 12 percent fewer passengers than they did in 2019. And United said it expected the Sunday after Thanksgiving to be its busiest day since the pandemic began 20 months ago. Many Thanksgiving travelers seem to be going about their travel routines as usual, with some now-familiar pandemic twists.“Airports are busy right now, and everything seems back to normal,” said Naveen Gunendran, 22, a University of Illinois student who was flying on United from Chicago to San Francisco on Saturday to visit relatives. “But we’re all packed together, and we just have to hope everybody is being safe.”The pent-up travel demand has elevated the cost of tickets. Hopper, an app that predicts flight prices, said that the average domestic flight during Thanksgiving week was on track to be about $293 round-trip this year, $48 more than last year — although $42 cheaper than in 2019.While the industry is projecting optimism about easy traveling, the influx of passengers has injected an element of uncertainty into a fragile system still reeling from the pandemic’s devastation. Some airlines have experienced recent troubles that rippled for days — stymying travel plans for thousands of passengers — as the carriers struggled to get pilots and flight attendants in place for delayed and rescheduled flights, a task complicated by thin staffing.“We’ve said numerous times: The pandemic is unprecedented and extremely complex — it was messy going into it, and it’s messy as we fight to emerge from it,” the president and chief operating officer of Southwest Airlines, Mike Van de Ven, said in a lengthy note to customers last month.His apology came after Southwest canceled nearly 2,500 flights over a four-day stretch — nearly 18 percent of its scheduled flights, according to FlightAware — as a brief bout of bad weather and an equally short-lived air traffic control staffing shortage snowballed.Weeks later, American Airlines suffered a similar collapse, canceling more than 2,300 flights in four days — nearly 23 percent of its schedule — after heavy winds slowed operations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, its largest hub.American and Southwest have said they are working to address the problems, offering bonuses to encourage employees to work throughout the holiday period, stepping up hiring and pruning ambitious flight plans.Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing roughly 50,000 flight attendants at 17 airlines, gave the carriers good marks for their preparations.“First and foremost, we are getting demand back after the biggest crisis aviation has ever faced,” she said.“I think there has been a lot of good planning,” she added. “And barring a major weather event, I think that the airlines are going to be able to handle the demand.”According to FlightAware, just 0.4 percent of flights were canceled on Sunday, which the T.S.A. said was nearly as busy as the Sunday before Thanksgiving in 2019.Thanksgiving travel will be a major test of whether the airline industry is ready to return to normal operations.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York TimesTravelers at La Guardia Airport in New York on Sunday. Some got away earlier than usual because of the flexibility of doing jobs or taking classes remotely.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York TimesMajor airlines have just started to report profits again, and only after factoring in billions of dollars of federal aid. While the aid allowed carriers to avoid sweeping layoffs during the pandemic, tens of thousands of employees took generous buyouts or early-retirement packages or volunteered to take extended leaves of absence.That has made ramping back up more difficult, and the pandemic has created new challenges. Flight crews have had to contend with overwork and disruptive and belligerent passengers, leaving them drained and afraid for their safety.Helene Albert, 54, a longtime flight attendant for American Airlines, said she took an 18-month leave by choice that was offered because of the pandemic. When she returned to work on Nov. 1 on domestic routes, she said, she saw a difference in passengers from when she began her leave.“People are hostile,” she said. “They don’t know how to wear masks and they act shocked when I tell them we don’t have alcohol on our flights anymore.”The number of such unruly passengers has fallen since the Federal Aviation Administration cracked down on the behavior earlier this year. But the agency has so far begun investigations into 991 episodes involving passenger misbehavior in 2021, more than in the last seven years combined. In some cases, the disruptions have forced flights to be delayed or even diverted — an additional strain on air traffic.Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Saturday.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesLayered on top of the industry’s struggles during the holiday season is the perennial threat of inclement weather. Forecasters have cautioned in recent days that gathering storm systems were threatening to deliver gusty winds and rain that could interfere with flights, but for the most part, the weather is not expected to cause major disruptions.“Overall, the news is pretty good in terms of the weather in general across the country cooperating with travel,” said Jon Porter, the chief meteorologist for AccuWeather. “We’re not dealing with any big storms across the country, and in many places the weather will be quite favorable for travel.”Even so, AAA, the travel services organization, recommended that airline passengers arrive two hours ahead of departure for domestic flights and three hours ahead for international destinations during the Thanksgiving travel wave.Some lawmakers warned that a Monday vaccination deadline for all federal employees could disrupt T.S.A. staffing at airports, resulting in long lines at security checkpoints, but the agency said those concerns were unfounded.The influx of passengers has added uncertainty to a system still reeling from the pandemic. Christopher Lee for The New York TimesMajor airlines have just started to report profits again, and only after factoring in billions of dollars of federal aid.Christopher Lee for The New York Times“The compliance rate is very high, and we do not anticipate any disruptions because of the vaccination requirements,” R. Carter Langston, a T.S.A. spokesman, said in a statement on Friday. With many people able to do their jobs or classes remotely, some travelers left town early, front-running what are typically the busiest travel days before the holiday.TripIt, a travel app that organizes itineraries, said 33 percent of holiday travelers booked Thanksgiving flights for last Friday and Saturday, according to its reservation data. (That number was slightly down from last year, when 35 percent of travelers left on the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving, and marginally higher than in 2019, when 30 percent of travelers did so, TripIt said.)Among those taking advantage of the flexibility was Emilia Lam, 18, a student at New York University who traveled home to Houston on Saturday. She is doing her classes this week remotely, she said, and planned her early getaway to get ahead of the crush. “The flights are going to be way more crowded,” she said, as Thursday approaches.Robert Chiarito and Maria Jimenez Moya contributed reporting. More

Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. More

President Biden’s decision to renominate Jerome H. Powell to head the Federal Reserve reflects the president’s belief that despite high inflation, America’s economy still has a long way to go to deliver strong gains to women, Black and Hispanic Americans and low-wage workers trying to climb into the middle class.Mr. Biden made clear during a White House appearance that he believes Mr. Powell is philosophically aligned with his vision that the central bank needs to keep interest rates low and continue supporting the economy until it reaches maximum employment.“That’s an economy where companies have to compete to attract workers, instead of workers competing with each other for jobs, where American workers get steady wage increases after decades of stagnation, and where the benefits of economic growth are broadly shared by everyone in the country, not just concentrated for those at the top,” Mr. Biden said Monday.The president’s decision is also based on his belief that Mr. Powell and Lael Brainard, the Fed governor whom Mr. Biden nominated for vice chair on Monday, share his views on stabilizing inflation while being careful not to snuff out the recovery before the labor market heals.It is a gamble on several fronts for the president. He is betting that Mr. Powell will be more aligned with his views on the economy than he is with Republicans in the Senate who have decried rising inflation for months and demanded action from the Fed. Many of those Republicans endorsed Mr. Powell quickly on Monday, expressing hope that he would act swiftly to combat inflation.The president is also betting that his team is correct in its economic diagnosis that the inflation risk is fading and marginalized groups of workers still need help to reap the full gains of economic growth.Mr. Biden and his aides view the recent burst of inflation, which surged to its highest levels in three decades last month, as largely the product of crimps in global supply chains — and not a function of monetary policy that necessitates quick rate increases from the central bank.The decision to renominate Mr. Powell and to elevate Ms. Brainard is the sum of a wide range of political and economic calculations. Chief among them was choosing the chair with the desire, and bipartisan support, to pursue full employment.But administration officials say other considerations also favored Mr. Powell’s reappointment, like the need to maintain central bank stability in the midst of the economic disruption of a pandemic and the record of independence that Mr. Powell built over a four-year term that included withering criticism from former President Donald J. Trump, who appointed him to the chairmanship.Mr. Powell also appears to have defused, in the eyes of the president and his aides, liberal Democrats’ concerns that on his watch the Fed has not regulated big banks and other financial institutions stringently enough. In conversations with Mr. Biden leading up to the decision, Mr. Powell convinced the president he would follow the lead of the Fed’s vice president for supervision — an open position that Mr. Biden has yet to fill — in determining the central bank’s policies on financial regulations.Mr. Biden is expected to announce his pick for that job early next month, and Democrats expect him to nominate someone who will take a hard line on banks, a key demand of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a progressive who opposes Mr. Powell’s renomination and has called him “dangerous.” Mr. Biden recently discussed his Fed picks with Ms. Warren, and he has been in regular contact with Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the Democrat who leads the banking committee. More