WSJ What’s News - Trump Tightens Migrant Work Permits in Legal Immigration Crackdown

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

P.M. Edition for Dec. 4. The Trump administration cut the validity of work permits for some migrants to 18 months rather than five years, saying more vetting of immigrants is needed. Plus, the fight over Warner Bros. Discovery gets messy as Paramount says rival Netflix’s bid has problems. And WSJ’s Peter Grant explains how New York City became the epicenter of office-to-residential conversions. To see examples of the changes developers are making to buildings, read his story. Sabrina Siddiqui hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Canada's Wonderland is bringing the holiday magic this season with Winterfest on select nights now through January 3rd. Step into a winter wonderland filled with millions of dazzling lights, festive shows, rides, and holiday treats. Plus, Coca-Cola is back with Canada's kindness community, celebrating acts of kindness nationwide with a chance at 100,000 donation for the winning community and a 2026 holiday caravan stop. Learn more at canadaswunderland.com. The Trump administration cracks down on work permits for migrants. Plus, U.S. officials arrested a Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs in D.C. before the January 6th Capitol attack. And how New York City became the epicenter in the push to convert offices to apartments. In the current office downturn, there are many midtown buildings that are facing very high vacancy.

so buildings you never would have thought of as apartment buildings are being considered for these types of conversions. It's Thursday, December 4th. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Alex Oscella. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The battle to acquire Warner Brothers' discovery is heating up.

One of its suitors, Paramount, criticized rival Netflix's bid, saying in a letter this week to Warner that regulatory hurdles would block a deal with the streaming giant. The previously unreported letter, which was sent on Monday and viewed by the Wall Street Journal, says Paramount's own proposal was the only one that didn't raise antitrust issues. People familiar with the matter say Warner is seeking more bids by the end of today and plans to finish the auction by the end of the month. Paramount is aiming to buy the the whole company, while Netflix and Comcast are bidding for Warner's movie and TV studios and libraries as well as HBO Max. Turning to finance, the Trump administration is advancing a plan to

establish $1,000 investment accounts for young Americans and Wall Street once in. Many of the largest financial firms are preparing proposals related to the Trump accounts to submit to the Treasury Department. People familiar with the matter say the administration is asking firms including Charles Schwab and Robin Hood to pitch plans to manage the Trump accounts records and handle administrative tasks. Meanwhile, the administration said today that work permits for immigrants seeking asylum and other humanitarian protections will now be valid for 18 months rather than five years. Officials said that will give the government more chances to vet immigrants and frame the change as part of a crackdown on legal immigration after two members of the National

Guard were shot in Washington, D.C. last week. Federal officials say the shooter was a man from Afghanistan who was granted asylum in the U.S. in April. The new rules take effect today and for now only apply to new permits. They will likely affect hundreds of thousands of people and may raise concerns among employers. The meatpacking industry, for example, has relied on people who received legal work authorizations after applying for asylum. Trading in stock markets was mixed today, with the NASDAQ and S&P ending slightly higher, while the Dow was just barely lower, closing down less than 0.1%. And in currency markets, the U.S. dollar ticked higher, ending a decline of

seven straight sessions against several other major currencies. Hannah Aaron Lang, who covers financial markets at the Wall Street Journal, says investors have been adjusting their views on where interest rates are going. The U.S. dollar has suffered its longest losing streak since 2020. And this primarily has to do with changing expectations about central banks across the globe. So here at home, we have the Federal Reserve. They have an upcoming meeting in December, and it's now widely expected that policymakers will cut interest rates. Investors are also looking at how President Donald Trump is talking about his next pick for the Fed chair, and it seems really likely that his selection will be somebody who's quite doveish,

which means that they will be inclined to lower rates even further. But the situation is different overseas. In contrast, what we've heard this week from other major central banks is they're taking a different path. So the Bank of Japan recently indicated that they might hike rates, and the European Central Bank seems like it's going to hold steady. And we know that when interest rates come down, it weakens a currency, and that when they go up, a currency gets stronger. And that dynamic is cast into even sharper relief when you have major central banks around the world going in different directions. That was Hannah Aaron Lang. Coming up, the FBI has made an arrest in a long-running investigation into January 6th pipe bombs.

That's after the break. U.S. authorities today announced charges against a Virginia man who they said placed two pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican National Committees, the 9th of the Democratic and Republican National Committees, night before the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The bombs were discovered on January 6th at the same time as rioters began to breach police barricades. 30-year-old Brian Cole was arrested the first time the Justice Department named a suspect in the long-running investigation. The FBI has been under intense pressure to solve the crime. Some of President Trump supporters had complained about the lack of progress and conspiracy theories about the bombs spiraled

that law enforcement officials tried to push back on. FBI director Cash Patel spoke today about the investigation. We will not stop until we interview anyone and everyone associated with the subject, the house, and every piece of his life. Overseas, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in India today for a two-day summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendermode. He's expected to offer cheap oil and Russia's latest weapons as he tries to deepen the relationship between the countries whose partnership has angered the Trump administration.

The White House sees reducing Russia's income from oil as key to pushing Moscow to end the war in Ukraine. And more children under five years old are expected to die this year, the first increase in decades. A Gates Foundation report released today says about 243,000 more young children will have died this year than in 2024. Most of the increases are in African countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Uganda. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates said cuts in global health aid from wealthy countries, including the U.S., deepen the crisis. A White House spokeswoman said the U.S. provides more foreign aid than any other country, including this year. One way to address the shortage of housing in this country, make unloved office buildings

into apartments. And over the last two decades, Manhattan's been at the heart of that push, with the city's developers converting almost 30 million square feet of office space into homes. The office downturned during the pandemic made those transformations even more popular. And the Wall Street Journal's Peter Grant says New York developers' breakthroughs on exactly how to carve an apartment out of an office are giving a boost to the pace of conversions across the country. Nationwide, 78,500 units are in the works compared with 23,000 in 2022, according to rent cafe. Peter, who covers commercial real estate, joins us now with more. Peter, how did New York developers figure out a way to make the conversions financially viable? Well, there are three

major things that need to line up for office to residential conversions to make sense. One is that the office market has to deteriorate to the point where you can buy the buildings cheap enough that conversion is economically viable. Number two, you generally need help. from the city and state for zoning changes, as well as some tax incentives. And number three, you need a strong residential market. All three of those stars have lined up for New York, and as well as the fourth one, architects and developers are getting very creative now that they have a lot more office buildings to work with.

What are some of the new architectural hacks that they've used? If you have a big sprawling office floor, in the middle, you're not going to get enough light. You're not going to get enough air for it to be an apartment. It's just not going to work. And what they've done is they've gotten very creative about the way they can carve out spaces to provide light and air. The main point is to take floors that are too wide for residential and make them less wide. They'll actually block the space off in the center of the building and take that space, that floor area, and move it elsewhere.

And where in the city are these conversions happening and why? The first big conversion trend took place in the 1990s. The city created special zoning and tax incentives for downtown conversions. In the current office downturn, there are many midtown buildings that are facing very high vacancy, and the city and the state have responded by expanding a lot of these incentives to Midtown, and developers are taking advantage of it. So buildings you never would have thought of as apartment buildings are being considered for these types of conversions. One of the ones that we featured in our most recent story was 7503rd Avenue built in the late

1950s. It's no longer working as an office building, so they came up with a plan for carving out space on the fourth through 17th floor, they're going to pretty much hollow out that base, demolish that space, but they're also going to create a new tower, which work for apartments because it will be narrow enough that the apartments can all get the necessary light in there. And because of the new zoning incentives that the city created, they can now do this. That was the Wall Street Journal's Peter Grant. Peter, thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. You can see the changes these buildings are making on WSJ.com.

We'll leave a link in the show notes. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Additional sound in this episode, courtesy of Reuters. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienname with supervising producer Tali Arbell. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

Thank you.