Southwest announces its 1st lounges at these 4 airports
Southwest Airlines airplanes sit on the tarmac at the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Nov. 26, 2025, in Baltimore, Maryland. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — For the first time ever, Southwest Airlines is joining the airport lounge race with plans to open lounges in four cities next year.
The airline announced Wednesday it will open lounges in Austin (Austin-Bergstrom International Airport), Baltimore (Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport), Honolulu (Daniel K. Inouye International Airport) and Nashville (Nashville International Airport) in 2027.
At least seven more lounges are expected to open over the next several years, according to Southwest.
The Dallas, Texas-based carrier is partnering with Chase on the lounges, and travelers will need to have a Southwest credit card to access them.
The card, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Credit Card issued by Chase, will also launch in 2027, according to Southwest.
In opening lounges, Southwest is keeping up with competitors like American and Delta Airlines that already offer lounge access for travelers who hold certain credit cards.
With airline-specific credit cards, the airlines get a cut of the profit from purchases on the credit card, and the cards help build brand loyalty to the airline.
Earlier this year, Southwest made another change that also put it in line with competitors when it switched to assigned seats on its planes instead of using boarding zones.
In 2025, the airline also ended its longstanding policy of free checked bags, charging customers $35 for their first checked bag and $45 for their second checked bag.
The NASDAQ display in Times Square is seen as the $1.5B partnership between World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and ALT5 Sigma is marked with with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell by Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 Board Director of World Liberty Financial, on August 13, 2025 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A Trump-appointed national bank regulator granted a wing of the Trump family’s crypto business conditional approval to establish a bank charter, opening the door for larger clients and potentially heightened profits.
The decision marks the first time in U.S. history that a company owned by the sitting president’s family has been granted bank status, as Democratic lawmakers express concerns over potential conflicts of interest.
In a letter published Friday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted World Liberty Trust Co., an organization that is 38% owned by “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members,” according to its website, the ability to issue stablecoin cryptocurrency tied to the U.S. dollar.
World Liberty Financial, the listed sponsor of the conditionally approved trust, has previously relied on a third-party crypto company, BitGo, to provide a stable digital currency. Friday’s approval allows the Trump family’s business to cut out the middleman and provide the service directly.
Digital currencies, like Bitcoin, are historically volatile and therefore less appealing for entities making large transactions.
Crypto tied to more stable values, like the U.S. dollar or the price of gold, can be more attractive to big spenders and can be “marketed for use as a means of making payments, transmitting money, or storing value,” according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The decision allows the Trump-linked business to act as a bank, issuing digital currency to clients for transactions. Clients would exchange the U.S. dollar for the stablecoin, with profits going directly to the Trump family’s crypto business.
The president’s family has seen extensive profit from World Liberty Financial, securing around $5 billion in the company’s first days after going public, according to the token’s value at the time, with major investments from individuals and foreign nations continuing to fuel the company’s value.
Trump himself has made more than $1.4 billion in business revenue from his family’s crypto ventures, according to his released financial disclosures.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly has maintained that the president “only acts in the best interests of the American public,” and said that no conflict of interest exists in part because the president’s assets are held in a blind trust managed by his children. Typically, a blind trust would operate with an independent trustee.
“President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children,” Kelly said. “There are no conflicts of interest.”
State-backed Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX invested another $2 billion in the company in May 2025, promising to use the Trump family’s USD1 stablecoin in large transactions with crypto exchange company Binance.
The deal later came under scrutiny when the Trump administration then agreed to supply the UAE with highly coveted American-made AI chips despite prior administration concerns that they may make their way to China.
“We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us, and I think it’s only the beginning,” World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff said after announcing the deal, alongside the president’s son Eric Trump at a crypto convention in Dubai.
Witkoff is the son of the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
Ranking Member of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., urged the OCC to halt approval of Trump-linked business ventures, writing a letter to the comptroller in January. As an executive branch office, the president has ultimate authority over the OCC, though the office considers itself independent.
“For the first time in history, the president of the United States would be in charge of overseeing his own financial company,” Warren wrote.
Following the OCC’s preliminary approval, Warren described the decision as the “most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen.”
“I’m introducing a bill to stop this kind of unprecedented corruption,” Warren said in a post on social media.
“The Comptroller and staff acted consistently with their statutory duties and ethical obligations with respect to the Application,” the OCC wrote Friday. “OCC staff reviewed this Application in accordance with the agency’s established policies and procedures.”
The charter application will not be fully approved until some conditions are met, including increasing the company’s capital, the OCC said.
Social Security benefits will increase 3.6% beginning in January for more than 70 million recipients, the Social Security Administration (SSA) said on Wednesday.
The cost-of-living adjustment for 2027, known as COLA, came in markedly higher than the prior year’s hike of 2.8%.
The annual uptick in Social Security benefits aims to keep payments on pace with inflation, which surged in the spring after the outbreak of the Iran war.
The rise in Social Security payments for 2027 amounts to an average increase of about $75 a month for each recipient, the SSA said.
The announcement on Wednesday came after inflation data for September showed price hikes had climbed to a four-month high due in large part to a surge in gasoline costs. The fresh reading marked the final piece of data necessary for SSA to calculate COLA for 2027.
“Social Security will implement this cost-of-living adjustment for 76 million Americans, giving them greater financial stability,” Commissioner Frank Bisignano said in a statement.
The agency will also hike the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax, elevating the taxable income limit from $184,500 to $192,300.
Recipients can check their online accounts with Social Security for notifications of their new benefit amount beginning in late November, the agency said. Notices will be sent to recipients by mail starting in early December.
