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After months of tension, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would seek to remove the chief of the Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar.

Netanyahu met with Bar and informed him that he would propose his removal to the government this week, the prime minister’s office said on Sunday.

Netanyahu is believed to have majority support in government to remove Bar, but the move could be subject to appeals by Israel’s Supreme Court.

In a statement, Bar said that he intends to fulfill certain responsibilities before leaving his position.

“The duty of trust owed by the head of the Shin Bet is first and foremost to the citizens of Israel – this perception is what underlies all of my actions and decisions,” Bar said, “The Prime Minister’s expectation of a personal duty of trust whose purpose contradicts the public interest is a fundamentally wrong expectation.”

In a video statement released on Sunday, Netanyahu said his “ongoing distrust” of Bar led to this decision.

“At all times, but especially in such an existential war, the prime minister must have full confidence in the head of the Shin Bet,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu added that removing Bar would be necessary for achieving Israel’s war goals in Gaza and “preventing the next disaster.”

The prime minister has frequently criticized the agency, placing blame on its leaders for the security lapses that led to the Hamas October 7, 2023, attacks that killed more than 1,200 people.

Shin Bet, which is in charge of monitoring domestic threats to Israel, conducted an internal investigation that determined that the agency had “failed in its mission” to prevent the attacks.

In its investigation, Shin Bet also leveled implicit criticism at Netanyahu, saying that in the years leading up to its October 7 attack, Hamas was enriched by Qatari payments that were blessed by the Israeli government.

Its report also said that Hamas decided to attack when it did in part because of internal divisions in Israeli society fueled by Netanyahu’s attempts to pass judicial changes, which led to massive protest.

The agency also reportedly opened an investigation recently into members of Netanyahu’s office for inappropriately lobbying on behalf of Qatar – something his office denies.

Netanyahu also removed Bar and the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, from the negotiating team engaging in indirect talks with Hamas.

Opposition politicians criticized Netanyahu and suggested that Bar’s firing would be a politically motivated move.

“For a year and a half, he saw no reason to fire him, but only when the investigation into Qatar’s infiltration of Netanyahu’s office and the funds transferred to his closest aides began, did he suddenly feel an urgent need to fire him immediately,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said.

National Unity Chairman Benny Gantz said it would be a “direct violation of the state’s security and the dismantling of unity in Israeli society for political and personal reasons.”

Several far-right members of the government applauded Netanyahu’s intent to fire Bar on Sunday.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that it is a “necessary step” and that it would have been appropriate for the Shin Bet leader to “take real responsibility and resign on his own initiative more than a year ago.”

Israel’s former National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had disputes with Bar over the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and other issues, asserted that Netanyahu’s decision shows “there is no place in a democratic state for officials who behave politically against me and against elected officials.” Ben Gvir has repeatedly called for Bar’s firing.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

One nationalist influencer called it “truly gratifying.” Another said he was laughing his head off. And a state-media editorial hailed the demise of what it called the “lie factory.”

Chinese nationalists and state media could hardly contain their schadenfreude after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to dismantle Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and other US government-funded media organizations that broadcast to authoritarian regimes.

For years, the Chinese government and its propaganda apparatus have relentlessly attacked VOA and RFA for their critical coverage of China, particularly on human rights and religious freedom.

And now, the Trump administration is silencing the very institutions that Beijing has long sought to undermine – at a time when China is spending lavishly to expand the global footprint of its own state media.

In an editorial Monday, the Global Times, a pugnacious Communist Party-run newspaper, denounced VOA as a “lie factory” with an “appalling track record” on China reporting.

From its coverage of alleged human rights abuses in the far western Xinjiang region to reporting on South China Sea disputes, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the coronavirus pandemic and the Chinese economy, “almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it,” the editorial claimed.

“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multidimensional China, the demonizing narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughingstock of the times,” it added.

VOA’s China coverage stretches back decades. During the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, its Chinese-language radio broadcasts became a critical source of uncensored information for the Chinese people. (VOA discontinued its Chinese radio broadcasts in 2011 but its Chinese language website remained online as of Monday.)

RFA, founded in 1996, broadcasts to China in English, Chinese, Uyghur and Tibetan-language services, catering to ethnic minorities whose freedoms the Chinese government has long been accused of suppressing.

RFA CEO Bay Fang called the US grant cutoff “a reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space.”

On Chinese social media, nationalist influencers celebrated the demise of VOA, which has placed all 1,300 staff on administrative leave, and of RFA, which said it may cease operations following the termination of federal grants.

“Voice of America has been paralyzed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which is just as malicious toward China. How truly gratifying!” wrote Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief of the Global Times and prominent nationalist commentator.

“Almost all Chinese people know the Voice of America, as it is a symbolic tool of US ideological infiltration into China,” Hu wrote in a post on microblogging site Weibo, where he has nearly 25 million followers. “(I) believe that Chinese people are more than happy to see America’s anti-China ideological stronghold crumble from within, scattering like a flock of startled birds.”

Another nationalist commentator accused VOA and RFA of being “notorious propaganda machines for color revolutions,” referring to protests of the 2000s that toppled governments in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

“I’m laughing my head off!” they said.

Others cheered Trump, who during his first term in office was nicknamed “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder” by the Chinese internet, in a mocking suggestion that the US president’s isolationist foreign policy and divisive domestic agenda was helping Beijing to overtake Washington on the global stage.

“Thank you, Comrade Chuan Jianguo and Elon Musk, please take care and stay safe,” a Weibo user said on Monday.

Musk, the billionaire adviser to Trump who has been spearheading sweeping cuts to the US government, has used his social media platform X to call for VOA to be shut down.

“This news marks the end of an era,” said another comment on Weibo on Sunday.

The White House defended Trump’s executive order in a statement Saturday, claiming it “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

But as the US-funded stations dial down, China is busy amplifying its own messages to the world.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China has drastically expanded the reach and influence of its state media outlets as part of its push to gain “discourse power” in a world it sees as unfairly dominated by the Western narrative.

In 2018, Beijing announced the creation of a giant media conglomerate by merging three existing state-run networks aimed at overseas audiences to better combine resources. Its name? Voice of China.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Paris and London on Monday to seek alliances as he deals with US President Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada’s sovereignty and economy.

Carney is purposely making his first foreign trip to the capital cities of the two countries that shaped Canada’s early existence.

At his swearing-in ceremony on Friday, Carney noted the country was built on the bedrock of three peoples, French, English and Indigenous, and said Canada is fundamentally different from America and will “never, ever, in any way shape or form, be part of the United States.”

A senior government official briefed reporters on the plane before picking up Carney in Montreal and said the purpose of the trip is to double down on partnerships on with Canada’s two founding countries. The official said Canada is a “good friend of the United States but we all know what is going on.”

“The Trump factor is the reason for the trip. The Trump factor towers over everything else Carney must deal with,” said Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Carney, a former central banker who turned 60 on Sunday, will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday and later travel to London to sit down with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in an effort to diversify trade and perhaps coordinate a response to Trump’s tariffs.

He will also meet with King Charles III, the head of state in Canada. The trip to England is a bit of a homecoming, as Carney is a former governor of the Bank of England, the first noncitizen to be named to the role in the bank’s 300-plus-year history.

Carney then travels to the edge of Canada’s Arctic to “reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty” before returning to Ottawa where he’s expected to call an election within days.

Carney has said he’s ready to meet with Trump if he shows respect for Canadian sovereignty. He said he doesn’t plan to visit Washington at the moment but hopes to have a phone call with the president soon.

Sweeping tariffs of 25% and Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st US state have infuriated Canadians, and many are avoiding buying American goods when they can.

Carney’s government is reviewing the purchase of US-made F-35 fighter jets in light of Trump’s trade war.

The governing Liberal Party had appeared poised for a historic election defeat this year until Trump declared economic war and repeatedly has said Canada should become the 51st state. Now the party and its new leader could come out on top.

Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said Carney is wise not to visit Trump.

“There’s no point in going to Washington,” Bothwell said. “As (former Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau’s treatment shows, all that results in is a crude attempt by Trump to humiliate his guests.”

Bothwell said that Trump demands respect, “but it’s often a one-way street, asking others to set aside their self-respect to bend to his will.”

Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said it is absolutely essential that Canada diversify trade amidst the ongoing trade war with the United States. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the US.

Béland said Arctic sovereignty is also a key issue for Canada.

“President Trump’s aggressive talk about both Canada and Greenland and the apparent rapprochement between Russia, a strong Arctic power, and the United States under Trump have increased anxieties about our control over this remote yet highly strategic region,” Béland said.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

A mother and her daughter hunch down by the windows of their attic as armed men gather outside the gate. They try not to make a sound. But in the video that they furtively recorded of this fraught moment, it’s clear they can barely control their panicked breathing.

Earlier that day, on March 7, the patriarch of the Khalil family had assured them that they were not in danger. The forces aligned with Syria’s new Islamist government who had descended on their village of al-Sanobar were only going after people affiliated with the recently toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad, he reasoned.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” his relative recalled him saying as they watched fighters storming their neighbors’ home from their windows. Hours later, she said the patriarch was dead, his lifeless body splayed out on the patio next to his son’s corpse.

The killings at the Khalils’ home, recounted through video and survivor testimonies, was one of many similar incidents that played out across Alawite communities in Syria’s coastal region earlier this month.

The attacks against Alawites raise questions about whether interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa can fulfill his promise to rule Syria in an inclusive way, ensuring the protection of minorities, and stop any insurgent factions from becoming a serious threat to the country’s prospects for peace.

The latest cycle of violence began when Assad loyalists staged a bloody ambush on forces aligned with Syria’s new Sunni Islamist government on March 6 in what appeared to be a coordinated attack. It was Syria’s worst violence since Assad was toppled last December and it prompted a deadly reprisal in the Latakia and Tartus provinces that the new government described as an effort to contain remnants of the former autocratic regime.

The state blamed the mass killings on rogue elements. Al-Sharaa set up a fact-finding committee to investigate the killings and has vowed to hold the culprits to account.

‘They called us Alawite dogs’

Human rights watchdog, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), said more than 800 people were killed in attacks following the ambush. Other rights groups say the number is even higher.

Assad loyalists have staged several smaller attacks on government forces since then, according to authorities.

Survivors said the attacks in Pine village began in the early hours of Friday, March 7, a day after the initial ambush by Assadist loyalists was reported.

In the days that followed, another video surfaced on social media showing him singing, with bodies littered behind him. “We’ve come to you. We’ve come to you with the taste of death.”

“The sword of the people of Idlib wants only you,” he sings, referring to the territory in northern Syria that was ruled by al-Sharaa’s now dissolved Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), before the forces wrested control from the old regime and became the de-facto government. HTS fighters now compose most of the country’s General Security forces.

In his Facebook profile picture, the fighter is seen in fatigues embroidered with what appears to be HTS insignia. Three military experts said the patch on his shoulder was consistent with several HTS units, but the photograph was too blurry to determine the specific brigade.

“At first, they went to homes and confiscated mobile phones they were able to find… and then they left the village. Then they returned and ransacked our home. Then they left,” she added between tears. “And then a third time, they entered the house and demanded that all the men step outside.”

“My father and my two brothers. My father was a 75-year-old retired teacher… they shot my father in the head… they shot my brother in the heart.”

She said another brother, who was injured by a bullet to the right side of his body, pretended to be dead while he bled out. As night fell, he attempted to escape. According to the woman, the fighters shot him six times as he limped through the fields.

Her mother was sitting in shock and grief between her dead male relatives when, she said, one armed fighter pulled a gun to her head and called her an “‘Alawite dog.’”

“God’s will saved me,” he added. “I begged them to release my brother, but no one listened.”

Collecting the bodies

Another verified video showed at least 29 bodies in two shallow graves, where an excavator appeared to be refilling one of them with soil.

The villagers said they were still trying to give their loved ones a burial in accordance with Islamic rites.

“Without a doubt, we will give our dead a proper religious burial,” said the survivor whose father and brothers were killed. “But for that we will need to return to the village, and we are too afraid to return.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Lebanon says it was struck by shelling from Syria, after three Syrians were killed in Lebanon, escalating tensions between Beirut and Syria’s new Islamist-led government.

Lebanese villages on the border with Syria were subjected to shelling after three Syrians died in the northern Lebanese town of Qasr, the Lebanese military said on Monday, adding that its forces responded to the attack.

“Contacts continue between the army command and the Syrian authorities to maintain security and stability in the border area,” it said. The Syrian shelling also targeted Qasr, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

On Sunday, Syria’s defense ministry accused the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah of kidnapping three Syrian troops from Syrian territory in an ambush, the state news agency SANA reported, saying they were “taken to Lebanese territory and executed on the spot.”

It also said that a photographer and reporter were injured on the Syria-Lebanon border after being struck by a “Hezbollah missile.”

The Syrian defense ministry will take “all necessary measures following this dangerous escalation by Hezbollah,” SANA said.

The Lebanese army said that two Syrians were killed at the border and another died in hospital, and that the three bodies were handed over to Syria.

Hezbollah denied involvement in the border clashes, the Lebanese state news agency NNA reported, saying it “has no connection to any events taking place within Syrian territory.”

In response, Lebanon’s presidency said Monday that tensions on the country’s frontier with Syria “cannot go on.”

“What is happening on the eastern and northeastern borders cannot go on, and we will not accept its continuation,” the presidency said on X, adding that President Joseph Aoun has instructed the military to respond “to the source of fire.”

If confirmed to have been conducted by Syria, the attack on Lebanon would mark rare action by Syria’s new government on one of its neighbors. The country’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has repeatedly said he wants to maintain stability with Syria’s neighbors and has so far refrained from responding to repeated Israeli strikes on his country.

The clashes are a sign of growing tensions at the Lebanon-Syria border, northeast of the Beqaa valley, where predominantly Shiite Lebanese villages have seen skirmishes with Syrian soldiers in recent weeks.

Syria’s new government is led by former Sunni-Islamist militants who ousted the regime of Iran-allied Bashar al-Assad late last year. Shiite Hezbollah had intervened in Syria during the country’s civil war to help Assad fight the Sunni militants.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Flagging global sales and Elon Musk’s increasingly outspoken political activities are combining to rock the value of Tesla.

Shares in the once-trillion-dollar company saw their worst day in five years this week. Year to date, Tesla’s stock has plunged 36% — though it is still up by some 54% over the past 12 months.

For Musk, Tesla’s shares remain his primary source of paper wealth, though he has also turned his stake in SpaceX into a personal lending tool. But it was proceeds from selling Tesla shares that helped Musk complete his acquisition of Twitter, now known as X.

Musk’s wealth also allowed him to help vault Donald Trump into a second presidential term. Even as Musk’s net worth has diminished as a result of Tesla’s recent share-price declines, data suggests he is in no danger of losing his title as the world’s wealthiest person.

Musk has said on X that he is not concerned about Tesla’s recent drop in value. Still, evidence suggests the company is entering a period of transition.

A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s wealth has propelled him to a global presence that lacks precedent — and has polarized world opinion about the tech entrepreneur in the process. Any weakening of his financial position, therefore, could undercut his influence in the political and tech spaces where he now commands outsize attention.According to Bank of America, Tesla’s European sales plummeted by about 50% in January compared with the same month a year prior.

Some say this is attributable to a growing distaste for Musk, who has begun dabbling in the continent’s politics in the wake of his successful support of Trump’s candidacy last year.

Others note Tesla’s European market is facing increased competition from the Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD, which has telegraphed ambitious plans for expansion on the continent.  

A more decisive blow to Tesla’s near-term fortunes may be emanating from China itself. There, Tesla’s shipments plunged 49% in February from a year earlier, to just 30,688 vehicles, according to official data cited by Bloomberg News. That’s the lowest monthly figure registered since July 2022 — amid the throes of Covid-19 — when it shipped just 28,217 EVs, Bloomberg said.

Donald Trump accompanied by Elon Musk speaks Tuesday next to a Tesla Model S on the South Lawn of the White House.Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

Tesla is now facing intense competition from other Chinese EV makers, including BYD.

Yet even there, a Chinese official also warned about the impact of Musk’s high-profile politicking.

“As a successful businessman, one should be embracing 100% of the market: Treat everyone nicely, and everyone will be nice in return,” the secretary of China’s Passenger Car Association, said in a briefing Monday, Bloomberg reported. “But if you look at it in terms of voting, then half of voters will be friendly to you and half of them won’t be.”

“This is the unavoidable risk that’s come after he got his personal glory,” the secretary, Cui Dongshu, said Monday, referring to Musk.

On Friday, Reuters reported Tesla was planning to sell a Model Y costing at least 20% less to produce to defend its China share.

And in the U.S., Tesla’s January sales were down about 11%, according to data from the S&P Global analytics group — an outlier at a time when EV sales for all other brands are trending higher in America.

Though he has long worn multiple proverbial hats, Musk’s role in the White House as nominal head of the Department of Government Efficiency may be his most consequential. And having influence with the Trump administration could be critical to Tesla’s fortunes. This week, Trump promised he would purchase a Tesla in a showy presentation on the White House lawn, seemingly further cementing the Trump-Musk alliance.

On X — the social media platform he owns — Musk’s frenetic posting is increasingly focused on politics and America’s culture wars, with an occasional nod to SpaceX launches.

His apparently undiminished role in the Trump administration — he was seen leaving the White House last weekend alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — has sparked boycotts in Europe, as well as protests and even acts of vandalism against auto owners in the U.S.

“When people’s cars are in jeopardy of being keyed or set on fire out there, even people who support Musk or are indifferent to Musk might think twice about buying a Tesla,” Ben Kallo, an analyst at Baird, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Monday.

In a note to clients this week downgrading its estimate of deliveries, analysts with JPMorgan said the damage to Tesla’s brand has been serious.

“We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly,” they wrote.

Tesla itself is warning about the fallout from retaliatory measures taken by countries targeted by Trump’s tariffs, saying in a letter to the U.S. trade representative this week that the company may be “exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to US trade actions.”

Already, the Canadian province of British Columbia has announced it was ending subsidies for Tesla’s products.

For all the oxygen Musk has taken up with his political activities, concerns about Tesla products themselves are equally keeping investors and analysts up at night.

Musk has “neglect[ed] the rest of Tesla’s automotive business as he thought that by the end of every year for the last 6 years, Tesla would be able to flip a switch and make all its vehicles self-driving — automatically increasing their value and making them infinitely more competitive than other vehicles,” Fred Lambert, who covers the company for the Electrek electric vehicle blog, wrote in a recent post.

Meanwhile, Musk decided to kill Tesla’s cheaper, $25,000 model while going all-in on the Cybertruck, whose sales have yet to take off, Lambert said.

“Tesla’s core business remains selling cars and batteries,” he wrote. “There’s no doubt that the business of selling cars is not going well for Tesla right now, and under Musk, there’s no clear path to improvement.”

By contrast, many analysts continue to take a much longer view of Tesla’s outlook. In his most recent note to clients about the company, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, one of the most closely watched observers of Tesla, summarized the long-term outlook that he says continues to justify the company’s eye-watering valuation.

“Tesla’s softer auto deliveries are emblematic of a company in the transition from an automotive ‘pure play’ to a highly diversified play on AI and robotics,” he wrote in a note March 2.

While that was before the most recent sell-off intensified, Jonas said he was already discounting market gyrations.

“While the journey may be volatile and non-linear, we believe 2025 will be a year where investors will continue to appreciate and value these existing and nascent industries of embodied AI where we believe Tesla has established a material competitive advantage,” he wrote.


This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Nestled in a modest storefront in New York City’s East Village, Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop blends into the other red-brick businesses on the block. But one thing sets it apart: Customers routinely line up, sometimes for hours, to get their hands on her freshly baked goods before they sell out.

The shop’s menu is simple, featuring Irish soda bread loaves and scones served with salty butter and fresh raspberry jam. The recipes, passed down through generations of Mary O’Halloran’s family, are at the core of her operations. But the secret to her success is precision. Only O’Halloran herself handles the batter, a non-negotiable standard she insists maintains the quality of her baked goods.

“I’ve had people come and say, ‘Why don’t you have somebody come in and help you?’ It’s not going to work,” she said. “The scone does not come out the same.”

Mary O’Halloran mixes her next batch of soda bread batter for customers waiting in the store.NBC News
Mary O’s storefront in the East Village of New York.NBC News

O’Halloran said the demand for her soda bread scones surges every March for St. Patrick’s Day, but her journey to success hasn’t been easy. Five years ago, O’Halloran was facing the closure of her East Village pub due to the financial strain of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband, a longshoreman working in Alaska, was unable to return home due to travel restrictions, leaving her to manage the business alone.

Mary O’Halloran’s Irish soda bread loaf.NBC News
Mary O’Halloran’s Irish soda bread scone served with Irish butter and fresh raspberry jam.NBC News

It was her loyal pub customers who encouraged her to start selling her scones, a treat they had grown to love. What began as a small-scale venture soon caught the attention of Brandon Stanton, the creator of the viral “Humans of New York” social media account with more than 12 million followers.

After interviewing O’Halloran, Stanton offered to help spread the word about her scones. Reluctant at first, O’Halloran eventually agreed, leading to a spike in sales.

“So I wrote a story on this, and we ended up that night selling a million dollars’ worth of scones,” Stanton told NBC News. “It is one of the greatest stories in the world.”

Customers line up inside Mary O’Halloran’s shop for scones and loaves of Irish soda bread.NBC News

The overwhelming response turned O’Halloran’s small baking operation into a community effort. Regular customers and neighbors pitched in by packing orders, printing labels and decorating boxes with handwritten notes and custom drawings from one of her daughters. Despite the surge in demand, O’Halloran remained committed to quality, handling every batch of batter herself.

“Mary is where she is because that scone tastes so dang good,” Stanton said. “She would have got there without me.”

It took more than a year to fulfill the backlog of orders, but the hard work paid off. The revenue not only saved her pub, but allowed her to open Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop in November 2024. Customers from around the world flock to her store to sample the viral scones and meet the woman behind the treats.

“I live in Los Angeles, but they told me, you know, next time you’re in town, there’s a place we have to go, and it’s the best scone you’ve ever had. It’s the best soda bread,” out-of-towner David Murphy said.

For O’Halloran, the hard work has been worth it.

“I love it, so it’s easy,” she said. “Of course I’m tired, but I love what I get from it with people. So it’s easy.”

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Almost nothing is guaranteed in life. Certainly not weather, electricity, health, tariffs or eggs. But for more than 50 years, American consumers could count on Southwest Airlines letting them check bags for free.

Dallas-based Southwest is ending the policy in May. Customers are not happy.

“It was the only reason I flew Southwest,” said MaKensey Kaye Alford, a 21-year-old singer and actress who lives near Birmingham, Alabama.

Alford, who is planning to move to New York City later this year, said she would “definitely” consider taking another airline now.

Southwest’s customer-friendly policies have survived recessions, oil price spikes and even the Covid-19 pandemic, winning it years of goodwill and a loyal following, even as it has grown. No other airline carries more people in the United States than Southwest.

Now, the airline with an unrivaled streak of profitability (its almost never posted an annual loss) is under pressure to increase profits as big competitors outpace the airline. So it’s backpedaling off of years of banishing the thought that they would charge customers for bags, adding to other business-model tweaks like assigned seating that give it more in common with all other airlines.

Errol Joseph, 36, a sales consultant who lives in New York and Dallas, said he would now consider flying on Delta Air Lines if the price is the same as Southwest because its planes have seatback screens, unlike Southwest. Joseph added that with baggage policy change, there’s “pretty much no reason to be loyal.”

The bag policy had been around longer than most women were able to get credit cards on their own without a man’s signature. But those days are over. No more freebies, America.

Retailers, restaurants and airlines are among the businesses that have been pulling back on free perks, from complimentary birthday coffees to free package returns, since the pandemic ended.

Increasingly, airline perks are only available for loyalty program members or customers who buy a more expensive ticket.

Delta offers customers free Wi-Fi on board, but only for those who have signed up for its SkyMiles loyalty program. United Airlines is making a similar move, meanwhile, installing equipment on its planes so customers can soon connect to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Wi-Fi for free if they are members of the airline’s MileagePlus program.

It typically takes real financial pressure for companies to return to giveaways, but it’s not unprecedented. Starbucks, for example, got rid of upcharges for dairy alternatives to attract customers to try to reverse a sales slump.

Southwest’s decision pits investors against customers.

Activist hedge fund and, as of last year, big Southwest shareholder Elliott Investment Management has been increasing pressure on the airline to raise its profits as rivals like Delta and United have pulled ahead. Elliott pushed for faster changes at the carrier, which has been long hesitant to change, so it could increase revenue. The firm last year won five board seats in a settlement with Southwest.

In fact, after Southwest unveiled the bag shift and other policy changes, its shares rose close to 9% this week, while Delta, United and American, each fell more than 11%. CEOs of all the carriers raised concerns about weaker-than-expected travel demand, but Southwest bucked the trend, as it expects the changes to add hundreds of millions of dollars to its bottom line.

“Shareholder activism is reshaping LUV into a company that we believe investors will eventually gravitate to,” wrote Seaport Research Partners airline analyst Dan McKenzie in a note Wednesday as he raised his price target on Southwest’s shares to $39 thanks to the policy changes even though “macro backdrop is glum.”

The decision to ditch the two-free-checked bags is part of the airline’s big profit-seeking makeover in which it is shedding other long-standing offerings like open-seating and single-class cabins for seat assignments and pricier extra legroom options.

It will also start offering a no-frills, no-changes basic economy ticket. Flight credits will also soon have expiration dates. Last month, Southwest had its first-ever mass layoff, cutting about 15% of corporate jobs. It has also slashed unprofitable flying.

Air travel hasn’t stood still over the last half century, and while it’s held onto many core tenets, neither has Southwest. It has gradually made changes over the years, starting to sell things like early boarding, for example. And with air travel breaking new records, assigned seating is necessary for both customers and to make the jobs of employees easier, Southwest executives have argued.

Charging for checked bags was something Southwest leaders repeatedly said would cost it more than it could make. (U.S. carriers brought in more than $7 billion in baggage fees in 2023.)

In a presentation at an investor day last September, Southwest said it would gain between $1 billion and $1.5 billion from charging for bags but lose $1.8 billion of market share.

Southwest executives said that’s changed.

Hours after breaking the news to customers, CEO Bob Jordan said at a JPMorgan industry conference on Tuesday that “in contrast to our previous analysis, actual customer booking behavior through our new booking channels such as metasearch, did not show that we are getting the same benefit from our bundled offering with free bags, which has led us to update the assumptions.”

Jordan added that the carrier has new executives with “direct experience implementing bag fees at multiple airlines, and that’s also helped further validate the new assumptions.”

But thousands joined in consumers’ cri de coeur.

Southwest posted on Instagram on Thursday, two days after its bombshell announcement, saying “It’s not like we traded Luka,” a nod to the shocking February trade of Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers. As of Friday afternoon, the post, which also included information about the change, got more than 14,000 replies, far more than couple of hundred responses the account usually gets.

“Taking a screen shot of this as it will be the thumbnail for the harvard business review case study of destroying a brand an entire company,” replied Instagram user rappid_exposure.

Frances Frei, a professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School, said that, indeed, no other company is likely as studied as Southwest.

“I sure hope this isn’t a case of activist investors coming in and insisting on a set of decisions that they won’t be around to have to endure,” she said. “Great organizations get built over time. It doesn’t take very long to ruin an organization, and I really don’t want this to be an example of that.”

Southwest’s two checked bags-fly-free policy officially ends May 28 but for now the slogan is still found on board, printed on cocktail napkins.

There will be exceptions: Customers who have a Southwest Airlines co-branded credit card can get one bag for free, and customers in its top tiers of service (read: pricier tickets) or its top-tier loyalty program members will get one to two free checked bags.

Whether customers abandon Southwest or are simply reacting to the change remains to be seen.

The CEOs of Delta, United and Spirit this week said they see an opportunity to win over customers who might turn away from Southwest.

Many travelers won’t have a lot of other options, however, with so much consolidation among U.S. carriers and stronghold hubs, though they might have to venture to other airports.

Southwest has a roughly 73% share at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, a more than 83% share in San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport, and 89% share in Long Beach, California, according to aviation-data firm Cirium.

The real test, Harvard’s Frei said, will be whether the bag change will slow down Southwest’s operation, with more customers bringing carry-on bags on board to avoid the checked luggage fees.

“I just fear the cost is being underestimated,” she said. “It’s real operational harm to Southwest if they go slower.”

Southwest is already preparing its employees for an onslaught of customer luggage at the gate.

Just after its announcement on Tuesday, Southwest told its employees in a memo that customers will “undoubtedly carry on more luggage than before.”

Gate agents will receive mobile bag-tag printers “reducing the need for string bag tags” and the company will design new carry-on size guides so customers can see if their luggage fits as a carry on, according to a staff memo sent by Justin Jones, EVP of operations, and Adam Decaire, senior vice president of network planning, a copy of which was seen by CNBC.

The airline also plans to speed up retrofits of its Boeing 737-800s and Max aircraft with bigger overhead bins.

Frei said not charging for bags, unlike the Costco $1.50 hot dog, is not a loss leader, something a company sells at a loss just to win over customers who might buy more expensive, and profitable, items.

As much as it’s been beloved by customers, the checked bag policy also had a helped the airline turn planes around faster.

“The reason isn’t because it’s kinder to customers. It’s because it’s a fast turnaround airline,” she said. “If I charge for bags, you will be more likely to carry more luggage on board. And when you carry more luggage on board, I lose my fast turnaround advantage.”

Southwest is confident that it’s prepared for an increase in gate-checked bags and onboard luggage.

“We have a series of work streams that are underway with our with our current operations, to make this not impact our turn times,” COO Andrew Watterson said in an interview.

Time will tell how it shakes out. For now, we have the $1.50 Costco hot dogs.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

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Is a new market uptrend on the horizon? In this video, Mary Ellen breaks down the latest stock market outlook, revealing key signals that could confirm a trend reversal. She dives into sector rotation, explains why defensive stocks are losing ground, and shares actionable short-term trading strategies for oversold stocks. Don’t miss these crucial market insights to spot the next rally before it takes off!

This video originally premiered March 14, 2025. You can watch it on our dedicated page for Mary Ellen’s videos.

New videos from Mary Ellen premiere weekly on Fridays. You can view all previously recorded episodes at this link.

If you’re looking for stocks to invest in, be sure to check out the MEM Edge Report! This report gives you detailed information on the top sectors, industries and stocks so you can make informed investment decisions.