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Warren Buffett Kicks Off Berkshire Meeting With Staunch Defense of Trade

Buffett said the U.S. benefits when the rest of the world prospers; ‘Trade should not be a weapon’

OMAHA, Neb.—Warren Buffett’s many followers didn’t have to wait long to hear his views on the global trade war.

The legendary investor made a vigorous case for trade as Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting kicked off Saturday, though he acknowledged it makes sense to try to limit trade deficits.

“We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world, and we should do what we do best and they should do what they do best,” Buffett said.

President Trump’s trade policies have rocked the markets in recent weeks, and were the focus of the very first question posed to the legendary investor in the lengthy question-and-answer session that has long been the annual gathering’s highlight.

On Saturday, Buffett was asked about a 2003 article in Fortune magazine in which he proposed the U.S. seek to balance its foreign trade by issuing certificates that would be required to import goods. Giving the certificates to U.S. exporters who could then sell them to parties wanting to bring goods into the country would allow American producers to cut their prices in international markets, he wrote.

“Charlie thought it was a little Rube Goldberg,” Buffett said of Charlie Munger, his longtime business partner who died in 2023, and his views on the import-certificates idea. “It’s gimmicky, but it’s certainly a lot better than what we’re talking about now. … Look at the attitudes it’s brought out in the United States.

“I don’t think it’s a great idea to design a world where a few countries say ‘ha-ha-ha, we won’ and the rest of the countries are envious,” Buffett added.

Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive, took the stage at 8 a.m. central time in Omaha, home to his conglomerate and the site of Saturday’s annual meeting. Flanked by his successor-in-waiting, Greg Abel, and Ajit Jain, the executive who runs Berkshire’s insurance business, Buffett will answer shareholders’ questions until 1 p.m.

There is much to discuss. This year’s meeting comes at a tumultuous moment for the markets and the global business world. President Trump’s trade war has dominated the headlines, and investors were eager to hear Buffett’s views on his policies. But there are other subjects that have stoked their curiosity, too, including his thoughts on Berkshire’s stake in Apple and its massive cash trove.

At the start of Saturday’s meeting, Buffett paid tribute to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, one of the luminaries in attendance. “I’m somewhat embarrassed to say Tim Cook has made Berkshire a lot more money than I’ve ever made,” Buffett said.

James Sinanis, a shareholder from Raleigh, N.C., who works for a home-building company, said before the start of the gathering that he wanted to know what Buffett thought about tariffs.

At past meetings, Berkshire stock owners have pressed Buffett for his opinions on everything from broad economic trends and general investment advice to highly specific reviews on Berkshire’s portfolio of businesses and stockholdings. A question asking whether Buffett saw similarities between the current stock market and the lead-up to the dot-com crash might be followed by one asking about profit margins at Berkshire’s BNSF Railway.

Shareholders and fans lined up early Saturday morning to ensure their seats in the arena before the legendary stock picker speaks. A day earlier, long lines wound around the front of Omaha’s CHI Health Center, located near the Missouri River, as visitors and locals waited to pick up their meeting credentials and enter a shopping exhibit.

Inside, they perused products and swag from Berkshire subsidiary companies: Justin cowboy boots, plush geckos from insurer Geico, Berkshire-branded shoes from Brooks Running, icy Dairy Queen treats going for as little as $1. They lined up to examine a mock NetJets aircraft as well as a Clayton home that had been built in Minnesota and then driven to Omaha before being reassembled.

Shoppers at Oriental Trading could snap up memorabilia including a Buffett bobblehead and rubber ducks styled as Buffett and Charlie Munger, Buffett’s friend and partner who died in 2023.

Visitors spoke of their admiration and affection for the two men. Elizabeth Rosen and Bill Craft, retirees from Fayetteville, Ark., had followed Berkshire from afar. After Munger’s death, they decided to travel to Omaha to check out the scene and to see Buffett, who is 94 years old.

“They are icons,” Rosen said. “It may never be the same once Warren is gone.”

Saturday kicked off with the release of Berkshire’s results for the first quarter. The company reported net income of $4.6 billion, or $3,200 a Class A share equivalent. That was down from $12.7 billion, or $8,825 a Class A share equivalent, a year earlier.

Operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, fell to $9.64 billion from $11.22 billion last year.

Buffett emphasizes operating earnings as a gauge of Berkshire’s performance, because unrealized gains and losses in the company’s investment portfolio can drive big swings in its quarterly net income.

Berkshire’s trove of cash and Treasury bills rose to a record $333 billion, after accounting for a payable for purchasing some of the short-term government debt, from $321 billion at the end of last year.

One contributor to the continued cash buildup: Berkshire was a net seller of stocks for a 10th consecutive quarter. The company sold $4.7 billion of equity securities in the first three months of the year while buying $3.2 billion.

Berkshire also held off again for another quarter on buying back its own stock.

In his annual letter in February, Buffett played down the growth in cash, saying that most of shareholders’ money was in equities when Berkshire’s subsidiary companies were counted along with its stock portfolio.

Berkshire’s Class A and B shares have climbed 19% this year, compared with a 3.3% drop in the S&P 500.

Spain’s power and information blackout

If governments want to decarbonise while maintaining public trust, they will need to invest in the right infrastructure

Spain and Portugal suffered a catastrophic power outage on Monday, bringing both countries to a sudden halt.

The Iberian peninsula is something of an energy island, with few connections to European grids. But with its abundance of wind and sunshine, the region is at the vanguard of efforts to decarbonise power systems. A failure there has potentially huge implications for the energy transition in the rest of Europe, arguably the biggest industrial, economic and societal transformation for decades — one that is being increasingly contested politically. For critics of net zero policies and the shift to renewables it was a gift.

Many experts have rebutted claims that the rise in solar and wind power per se is to blame. But as the FT’s editorial board observed, such a systemic grid collapse should serve as a wake-up call for governments everywhere to bolster network resilience. I’m at ben.hall@ft.com.

Radio silence

The blackout caused massive disruption and for some people distress, shutting businesses, stranding travellers and cutting off mobile communications. Spaniards once again showed the impressive civismo or public spiritedness that characterised their handling of the pandemic and the catastrophic flood in Valencia last year. For some, it offered a brief journey back in time to the pre-digital age, with analogue radio the only source of information. Battery-powered sets quickly sold out in stores in Madrid.

The lights mostly came back on in the early hours of Tuesday. But Spaniards, Portuguese and their European neighbours were left in the dark for days about the causes of the outage.

Blame game

In Spain’s highly polarised political climate, it was not surprising that the leftwing government led by prime minister Pedro Sánchez would take the blame. It has accelerated the renewables rollout and is planning to phase out nuclear power from 2027.

After the Valencia floods, Sánchez’s government and the opposition conservative People’s Party, which runs the regional government, attacked each other for failing to warn residents of the impending deluge.

This week Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP leader, criticised the government’s “information blackout” and said the nuclear phase out plan would make Spain’s energy supply more unstable. Santiago Abascal, the leader of the hard-right Vox party, demanded the government abandon its “climate fanaticism”. He and other Vox figures have mischievously pointed out that the blackout hit shortly after a judge in Badajoz said she would be pressing charges against the prime minister’s brother David for abuse of public office.

The prime minister has meanwhile pinned the responsibility on Spain’s private-sector energy companies, including Red Eléctrica, which operates the high-voltage grid. Electricity generators including Iberdrola have said it is up to RE to explain what went wrong. RE in turn has blamed the generators.

Beatriz Corredor, RE’s chair and a longtime friend and political ally of Sanchez, gave a round of interviews defending the operator, saying it had done nothing wrong. Its rapid reconnection of the entire grid proved it was the “best” network operator in Europe, she claimed. In terms of corporate communications, it was as tone-deaf as it gets. Whatever the original cause of the blackout, RE did not prevent the whole power supply collapsing which is its job. Punto.

Inertia good and bad

Many experts believe the grid’s inability to manage a predominance of solar energy in the supply mix on Monday was the reason for the grid’s collapse. My colleague Ian Johnston spoke to some of them in this piece and here’s our explainer earlier in the week.

In a nutshell, a sudden and unexplained drop off in supply to the grid shortly after 12.30pm caused the grid’s frequency to drop below the required 50hz and the voltage to surge. The operator normally uses the inertia of spinning turbines in conventional power plants to balance the frequency. But for some reason, it appears, it did not have enough of what the experts call “rolling synchronous capacity” to do the job before the system tripped out.

For a more detailed account of what probably happened, see this interview with Jorge Sanz, a leading former Spanish energy official and International Energy Agency board member, for the website Ethic (in Spanish). Ed Conway of Sky News illustrates the importance of inertia to power grids in this thread on X.

These are complex and technical issues and, as experts warn, it is easy to jump to the wrong conclusions. Is Spain really endangering Europe’s energy security with its “over-reliance” on intermittent solar and wind? Or does it just lack adequate tools for managing those sources?

Alongside keeping some conventional turbine capacity, grids should be investing in technologies to keep the power supply stable, including artificial intelligence. Batteries can provide instant balancing, but according to this report for El Confidencial (in Spanish) Spain is years behind other countries in installing battery storage.

Antonio Cabarga, an electrical systems engineer, pointed out on LinkedIn that it is relatively easy for renewable power installations to put in place frequency inverters, which can provide “synthetic inertia” to the grid, mimicking turbines. But Spanish regulation does not yet allow it to be used, he said.

Governments do not pay enough attention to upgrading power networks, perhaps because it means acknowledging that there are additional costs to the renewables rollout. To its credit, the European Commission has been banging the drum on this for some time. Its 2023 grid action plan noted that 40 per cent of Europe’s network infrastructure is more than 40 years old and with the planned doubling of cross-border interconnections by 2030, it would need €584bn in new investment.

Mario Draghi’s competitiveness report also underscored the importance of investing in grids and in cross-border interconnectors. More extensive power links with France may not have prevented Monday’s blackout but could help to make power supply more stable and more efficient.

Governments and grid operators across Europe will now come under pressure to show they are doing everything necessary to ensure that a blackout on this scale does not happen again otherwise voters may lose confidence in the green transition.

Bordeaux wine producers slash prices as wealthy collectors stay away

Falling demand hits centuries-old ‘en primeur’ system under which fine wine is sold before it is bottled

Some of Bordeaux’s top winemakers have slashed prices for their latest vintage of yet-to-be-bottled wines by more than 30 per cent in a further blow to a centuries-old market as wealthy investors step back from fine wine purchases.

A poor quality harvest last year due to heavy rainfall and cooler temperatures, a large amount of higher quality bottled wine already available on the market and a lack of interest among younger collectors have all made this year’s so-called en primeur campaign a particularly tough one for the French region’s producers.

The system, which dates back to the 18th century and centres on an annual spring festival, offers Bordeaux’s best wines for sale before bottling via local dealers, known as négociants, for delivery a year or more later. Popularised in the late 1970s, it once offered the best way to gain access to wines in high demand before they rose in price.

But less interest in fine wine among the younger generation of wealthy investors and declining alcohol consumption have all hit demand. Consultancy Bain says that 65 per cent of drinkers in the top 10 consumer markets are moderating their alcohol intake.

In April, two of the best-known producers, Lafite Rothschild and Angélus, both released their priciest 2024 red wines at 31 per cent discounts to 2023’s vintage. Lafite’s is priced at €288 per bottle wholesale while Angélus’s is €180. Both are the lowest prices since 2014.

Many in the industry are now questioning the viability of the system in Bordeaux.

“If en primeur offers value then it is a valid sales model,” said Ella Lister at consultants Wine Lister. “But it’s just that [recently] en primeur has not done so.”

Prices have fallen sharply in recent years. An index of the 10 most recent vintages of five top Bordeaux producers compiled by wine exchange Liv-ex has declined almost 27 per cent in sterling terms in the two years to March.

With so much matured wine now available at similar or lower prices, many wealthy collectors have shied away from the 2024 vintage that has been offered en primeur since last month. Last year’s en primeur sales for the better-rated 2023 vintage also struggled.

“The major theme is that most investors [in Bordeaux wine] no longer need to buy and hold [en primeur] for the long term, given the stocks of back vintages available,” said Chloe Ashton, of 1275 Fine Wine in Switzerland, a merchant and adviser to wealthy collectors.

“High-end claret buyers everywhere have drastically reduced their volumes,” she added.

Bordeaux is also facing increased competition from other wine-growing regions. Both Burgundy in France and other countries such as Italy and the US have grabbed market share. In 2014, Bordeaux accounted for well over half of the trade in fine wine, according to Liv-ex. Last year, that proportion had dropped to about a quarter.

Last year’s poor harvest, as the region’s climate changes, did not help.

“It’s a really tough time to sell these wines. This is not an unmissable vintage,” said wine critic Jane Anson.

Merchants hoping for a positive reaction from buyers to the lower prices have so far been disappointed.

“It’s very challenging now, the most I’ve ever known,” said Miles Davis, fine wine consultant at merchant Vinum Fine Wines. “The worst [market] in at least 20 years.”

Veteran investor says ‘trade should not be a weapon’ in dig at Donald Trump’s tariffs policy

Warren Buffett continued to sell stocks in the first three months of 2025 amid a broad market sell-off, according to a regulatory filing ahead of the historic 60th annual meeting of his holding company Berkshire Hathaway.

The figures showing he offloaded stocks for the tenth consecutive quarter came in a quarterly earnings report that also noted Berkshire’s insurance arm took a $1.1bn hit from the January wildfires in California.

Buffett sold $4.7bn in stocks in the three months to March 31, more than the $3.2bn he purchased.

That helped swell Berkshire’s cash pile, which rose to another record of $348bn as money poured in from Buffett’s sprawling business empire, which spans insurance, manufacturing, utilities and one of North America’s biggest railways, along with the interest paid on his portfolio of US Treasuries.

Asked about the huge cash reserves at Saturday’s meeting, Buffett said: “Things get extraordinarily attractive very occasionally.” At some point, he said, the company would be “bombarded with offerings that we’ll be glad we have the cash for”.

Tens of thousands of Berkshire’s shareholders attended the event, with high-profile figures including Hillary Clinton and Apple chief executive Tim Cook in the crowd. Some attendees said they made the trek to Omaha in case it was Buffett’s last time presiding over the meeting.

The event provided Buffett with the first opportunity to weigh in on markets and the economy since US President Donald Trump last month launched a trade war by unveiling plans to slap new tariffs on imports from most other nations.

Buffett tries to avoid commenting on politics but, during a marathon question-and-answer session, the 94-year-old sharply criticised tariffs without mentioning Trump.

“Trade should not be a weapon,” he said. “We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world. We should do what we do best and they should do what they do best.”

He later shrugged off a question about American exceptionalism, arguing that the country has undergone waves of cataclysmic change ever since its founding.

Changes in net profit at Berkshire largely reflect swings in the value of its $264bn equity portfolio and other investments. In the first quarter, bottom line earnings were $4.6bn, down from $12.7bn in the first quarter last year.

Buffett directs shareholders to pay more attention to operating profit, which was $9.6bn, down from $11.2bn. The decline largely reflected lower insurance underwriting profits, including the hit from the California fires. Wildfires raged for days across Los Angeles, destroying thousands of homes in some of the country’s wealthiest neighbourhoods.

Berkshire Hathaway shares have been on a tear in 2025, rising 20 per cent to close on Friday at a record $809,808.50 for the “A class” stock. Berkshire once again authorised no share buybacks in the first quarter.

The Week’s Biggest Funding Rounds: Investors Look To The Stars And Defense

It was a big week for the space and defense sectors, as investors clearly were looking to the skies. However, other sectors including cyber, healthcare and even data orchestration also saw some big raises. While nothing came close to $1 billion, it was still a pretty good week for big rounds.

1. Chaos Industries, $275M, defense: Less than six months after raising $145 million in a Series B, defense and critical infrastructure tech startup Chaos Industries locked up $275 million in a Series C that reportedly values the startup at $2 billion. The new round was led by Accel and New Enterprise Associates. Los Angeles-based Chaos specializes in advanced detection, monitoring and communication solutions for the defense and commercial sectors. The company’s Vanquish radar provides early warning and tracking capabilities against unmanned aerial systems, missiles and aircraft. Founded in 2022, Chaos has raised $490 million, per the company.

2. True Anomaly, $260M, space: Centennial, Colorado-based True Anomaly, which develops hardware and software systems to help space security and readiness, is accustomed to large raises. Back in late 2023, the space tech startup raised a $100 million round led by Riot Ventures. It’s back again after raising a $260 million Series C led by Accel. The startup helps the government and commercial customers keep an eye on threats to assets they have in space, such as satellites. Founded in 2022, True Anomaly has raised $418 million, per Crunchbase.

3. (tied) Apex, $200M, space: Less than a year after landing a $95 million Series B, space manufacturing company Apex locked up a $200 million Series C led by 8VC and Point72 Ventures. The Los Angeles-based startup is helping streamline the approach to satellites with the ability to mass produce spacecraft buses — the main body and structural component of satellites — to help meet increasing demand from customers like the U.S. Department of Defense. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $322 million, per Crunchbase.

3. (tied) Persona, $200M, cybersecurity: Cybersecurity has proven pretty strong with investors recently, and this week was no exception. Verified identity platform Persona raised a $200 million Series D co-led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital that values the company at $2 billion. The San Francisco-based startup’s identity platform allows businesses to securely collect, verify, manage and make decisions about individuals’ and businesses’ identities. Founded in 2018, the company has raised nearly $418 million, per Crunchbase.

5. (tied) Cast AI, $108M, software development: Miami-based Cast AI, which helps optimize workloads with automation, closed a $108 million Series C round led by G2 Venture Partners and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. While the company is mainly known for its work with Kubernetes workloads, it now is helping to optimize workloads for AI. Founded in 2019, the company has raised $181 million, per Crunchbase.

5. (tied) Veza, $108M, cybersecurity: Veza raised a $108 million Series D investment led by New Enterprise Associates. The Redwood Shores, California-based identity security startup said it more than doubled its annual recurring revenue last year and the new round values it at $808 million. Founded in 2020, Veza has raised $235 million, per the company.

7. Persivia, $107M, healthcare: Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Persivia, a developer of an AI-powered platform that helps healthcare decision making, completed a $107 million recapitalization with Aldrich Capital Partners. Founded in 2005, Persivia’s platform turns data into real-time insights to help drive decisions and streamline workflows. It is used in more than 200 hospitals nationwide.

8. Astronomer, $93M, data orchestration: Astronomer, the developer of data orchestration platform Astro, locked up a $93 million Series D led by Bain Capital Ventures. The New York-based startup’s Astro platform has proven valuable as AI has exploded — as automating and processing data workflows across different systems has become a necessity for anyone wanting to produce AI applications. Founded in 2018, the company has raised nearly $376 million, per Crunchbase

9. AssetWatch, $75M, predictive analytics: Columbus, Ohio-based AssetWatch, a predictive maintenance platform developer for the manufacturing industry, closed a $75 million Series C led by Viking Global Investors. Founded in 2014, the company has raised $166 million, per Crunchbase.

10. Utilidata, $61.3M, artificial intelligence: Providence, Rhode Island-based Utilidata, a developer of an AI platform for the energy industry, secured a $60.3 million Series C led by Renown Capital Partners. Founded in 2012, the company has raised $95 million, per Crunchbase.

The biggest raise this week outside the U.S. again came from Singapore.

Technology outage, construction and staffing shortages led to a week from hell for travelers at the New Jersey hub

NEWARK, N.J.–Families huddled on Mickey Mouse-printed suitcases. Businessmen shouted into phones with their offices trying to rebook flights. Strangers commiserated over shared indignities. Airline employees yelled for passengers to board a shuttle that would take them to another airport two rivers away.

This wasn’t a nationwide air-travel meltdown or storm-induced snarl. It was just another Thursday at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Newark has long been a punchline among travelers in the tri-state area, a launchpad to be avoided at all costs. It routinely tops rankings of large airports in flight delays and cancellations. It is hard to get to and harder to get around.

“The American people are reasonable, but if we have to spend the night sleeping on a bench in the Newark airport we will grab a flag and join the revolution like an extra in Les Miz,” late-night television host Stephen Colbert joked during a government shutdown in 2019.

But over the past few days, Newark achieved the unthinkable: It got worse.

Newark’s week started badly with an air-traffic technology outage that disrupted flights. Runway construction and air-traffic control staffing issues extended the pain, prompting hundreds of flight delays and cancellations this week alone, according to travel analytics company FlightAware.

For travelers, there’s no end in clear sight, especially as the summer months and their inclement weather add to the airport’s troubles.

Shawn Ahmad and his wife were traveling from their home in Philadelphia to Louisville, Ky., to attend this weekend’s Kentucky Derby. Originally they planned to drive. But when they saw that Spirit Airlines was offering cheap airfares out of Newark, they took the bait.

Big mistake.

Their Thursday morning flight was delayed three times before it was listed as “interrupted.” Ahmad said an airline employee told them the hiccup was due to the staffing issues.

Spirit offered to rebook the couple on flights the next day, but they decided to rent a car after all and drive. “We just don’t want the same thing to happen tomorrow,” he said.

Some of the criticism of Newark can be chalked up to snobbery. New Yorkers of a certain ilk see crossing the Hudson into New Jersey to board a plane as a bridge too far, even if parts of Manhattan are geographically closer to Newark than they are to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia once refused to get off a plane at Newark, complaining that his TWA ticket from Chicago listed New York as the destination, not New Jersey.

But Newark’s operational problems are very real. In the last Wall Street Journal rankings of best large airports, Newark came in last based on scores for reliability, convenience and value.

Yehong Li, a 31-year-old university researcher, lives in nearby Jersey City and travels once or twice a month. In recent months, he has opted to make the arduous trek all the way to JFK in the far reaches of Queens rather than deal with the potential for hiccups flying out of Newark.

But when he does travel out of Newark, he doesn’t go in blind. Before leaving his house, he checks his airline, social media and flight-tracking apps. “These days you’ve got to be ahead of schedule changes,” he says.

On Monday afternoon, Li was supposed to fly to San Diego out of Newark. When he noticed his flight was delayed due to the system outage, he opted to rebook for the next day, even though his new itinerary included a layover in Dallas.

“I didn’t want to spend the whole day at the airport,” he says. His original flight ended up being delayed more than five hours, he says.

After flare-ups in 2023, United scaled back flying at Newark to ease congestion and took other steps to shore up its operation. The domestic flight cancellation rate at the airport edged down last year, dropping below prepandemic levels, according to government data. But air-traffic control problems keep cropping up.

Cancellations and delays aren’t Newark travelers’ only lament. Some have complained about challenges navigating to or around the airport for airlines and fliers alike.

Newark’s location near busy roadways has hampered the airport’s ability to expand. The limited number of gates forces airlines to park aircraft in “parking lots” away from the terminals. And when a runway needs to be surfaced, as is currently the case, it slows down operations.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, has committed to a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul Newark. It opened a new Terminal A in 2023, and announced plans last year to build a replacement for Terminal B. The Port Authority is also replacing the AirTrain system that connects the airport’s three terminals to parking garages and a nearby rail station.

“Our investments today are laying the foundation for the airport of tomorrow,” the Port Authority said in an email.

Since Newark’s new Terminal A opened, a common complaint is that the terminal isn’t directly serviced by the airport’s AirTrain system. Instead, people looking to go in or out of the terminal via the AirTrain must either walk more than 10 minutes to the closest stop at a nearby parking garage or take a shuttle bus.

Then there’s the unavoidable issue of Newark being located in New Jersey, which can seem very distant for the New York clientele the airport serves. Two years ago, the airport officially lost its New York City designation by the International Air Transport Association—a technical change largely invisible to consumers that nonetheless prompted outrage among Garden State residents.

United, which dominates Newark, has tried to counter Newark’s reputation as out of the way and inconvenient, at times mounting GPS-based trackers on top of New York City taxis to display live travel times to Newark and JFK.

In the 1990s, Continental Airlines plastered the city with advertisements hoping to convince New Yorkers to embrace Newark as their own. “Need to feel like a real New Yorker? Eat a bagel on your way to Newark,” one read. Others highlighted the hassles of getting to JFK: “The Road to JFK is Paved and Repaved With Good Intentions.”

The ads sparked blowback from then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who complained they were negative and disparaging of New York.

United, which acquired Continental in 2012, went all in on Newark a decade ago when it pulled out of JFK and struck a deal to acquire Delta’s slots at the airport.

United CEO Scott Kirby, who joined United after that, has urged people to give Newark a shot. Still, he has long said the move to leave JFK was a mistake. Some corporate customers preferred JFK and switched airlines.

On Friday after the latest problems, Kirby wrote in a message posted on United’s website that the airline will cancel 35 daily round trip flights at Newark starting this weekend after a group of air-traffic controllers took leave following equipment outages:

“Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.”

Some IRS officials fear the deliberations appear to depart from longstanding practice

Key Points

WASHINGTON—Trump administration officials are exploring ways of challenging the tax-exempt status of nonprofits, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that some IRS staffers fear could damage the agency’s apolitical approach.

In hourslong meetings that continued over a recent weekend, Internal Revenue Service lawyers explored whether they could alter the rules governing how nonprofit groups can be denied tax-exempt status, the people said.

The meetings started taking place shortly after the Trump administration appointed a new top interim lawyer at the agency, Andrew De Mello, whom Trump had nominated for a different post in his first term. De Mello privately discussed the nonprofit rules with agency officials, including those at the tax-exempt division, according to people familiar with the matter.

Another senior IRS official, Gary Shapley, separately said in at least one meeting that he’s giving priority to investigating the tax-exempt status of a select group of nonprofit organizations, according to people familiar with his remarks. Shapley made the comments as deputy head of the criminal investigations unit. Shapley, who is also an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, didn’t name any specific groups, the people said.

Some current and former IRS officials fear that the deliberations appear to depart from longstanding practice at the IRS. They come as Trump has said his administration will strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status and suggested the administration could target other organizations.

Trump officials outside the IRS have also had ongoing conversations about how to potentially target nonprofits’ tax-exempt status and endowments for months, an administration official said.

The IRS and Treasury Department can make broadly applicable changes that would affect how nonprofits are scrutinized. Officials have long stayed away from any clampdown on the sector, fearing it could be viewed as a partisan attack on certain nonprofits. Some IRS officials have told associates they were worried that De Mello would find a way to target nonprofits disfavored by Trump, according to people familiar with the concerns.

A spokesman for the IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department said De Mello’s meetings were standard protocol. “It is the job of any agency counsel to meet with department teams to ensure a fulsome understanding of all rules and processes,” the spokeswoman said. She noted that the chief counsel doesn’t serve as a policymaker and instead advises leadership.

The White House has denied considering any executive actions that target nonprofits’ tax status. On Friday, Trump ramped up his fight against Harvard, whose federal funding the administration has frozen amid broad disagreements. A revocation of Harvard’s tax status, which the university is expected to fight, would presumably require an IRS finding that the university violated its rules.

The Trump administration also has pulled grant funding for hundreds of groups, many of which are worried they could lose their tax-exempt status and thus their ability to receive tax-deductible donations.

“None of this is normal,” said Phil Hackney, who advised the tax-exempt division commissioner as a lawyer at the IRS in the early 2000s.

A White House official on Friday said the White House isn’t involved in decisions about any institution’s tax-exempt status, including Harvard’s. It is a crime for the president, vice president or certain other top officials to request a specific IRS audit or investigation.

De Mello took over the role of acting chief counsel after the former official in the role, William Paul, was demoted. Paul had expressed concerns about other Trump administration efforts. De Mello later cut Paul out of the discussions about nonprofits, the people said. Paul declined to answer questions from The Wall Street Journal. “It wouldn’t be right for me to talk to you,” he said.

De Mello was an IRS lawyer before Paul’s job change but wasn’t next in line to take the top job. He was Trump’s nominee in 2020 to be the Education Department’s inspector general but was never confirmed by the Senate. Trump recently nominated Donald Korb, who was IRS chief counsel during the George W. Bush administration, to take the job again.

An IRS chief counsel would likely engage with leaders of the tax-exempt team to make a major change to policies tailored to nonprofits, Hackney said in an interview. “You could have neutral conversations about neutral policies intending to make such a big change. For the chief counsel, it certainly wouldn’t normally be something that’s at the top of the list of things to discuss,” Hackney said.

Many provisions of President Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017 are set to expire at the end of 2025. Three economists break down the fiscal impact of the cuts for individuals and businesses. Photo Illustration: Annie Zhao

The agency has for decades been allergic to most top-down efforts to challenge the tax-exempt status of nonprofits, after long and bruising battles with Bob Jones University, which initially lost its tax-exempt status in the 1970s, and the Church of Scientology, which eventually settled with the IRS in 1993.

One tack the Trump administration could take against nonprofits is to examine those that focus on diversity, former IRS officials said. In late 2024, lawyers at the IRS wrote a memo that said the 2023 Supreme Court ruling barring affirmative action at educational institutions shouldn’t affect nonprofits that support diversity goals through other programs. Some officials believed that memo could be reversed, with the IRS instead pushed to examine nonprofits that, for example, provide scholarships to minority students.

The Treasury spokeswoman said “speculation regarding unsubstantiated Biden-era analysis is a red herring,” adding “The American people recognize that organizations providing essential community services are appropriately treated as tax-exempt.”

The IRS division that regulates the sector has been chronically understaffed and at times faced controversy. More than a decade ago, the IRS acknowledged it gave improper scrutiny to conservative-leaning nonprofit groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their names. During that episode, IRS lawyers struggled to provide quick, clear guidance to front-line workers about what was allowed and what wasn’t. The agency later attempted to write rules detailing when certain nonprofits could engage in political activity but withdrew those after an uproar.

The IRS has said it doesn’t use politics to decide who gets audited, but Trump has said he believes his own supporters, including evangelists and other faith leaders, were targeted by Democrats through the IRS and other federal agencies.

Last month the president described his recent conversations with faith leaders to reporters in an Oval Office briefing. “They said ‘sir, I was targeted by the IRS. And the FBI came in, sir, and I’ve been going through hell for years,’” Trump said.