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George Clooney moves to France and sends a strong message about the American Dream

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France has officially granted citizenship to George Clooney, his wife Amal, and their twins, Ella and Alexander, via decrees published in the country’s Journal Officiel. The naturalization confirms that the family’s primary residence is now in France, where they have owned a former wine estate, Domaine du Canadel, near the village of Brignoles in Provence, since 2021.​

Clooney has described the property as a farm and the main base for his family life, marking a significant shift away from Los Angeles, the traditional center of his industry and personal brand. For a two-time Oscar winner closely identified with Hollywood, turning a Provençal farm into “home” is itself a strong signal about where he believes his children’s future—and his own equilibrium—can best be protected. But it also amounts to a quiet referendum on the viability of the American Dream, even for the ultra-visible, ultra-wealthy class he represents. His move underscores how privacy, stability, and a less celebrity-obsessed culture have become premium “assets” that some high earners no longer see as reliably available in the United States.​

A personal hedge against ‘Hollywood culture’

Clooney has been unusually explicit about why he no longer wants to raise his family in Los Angeles. “I was worried about raising our kids in L.A., in the culture of Hollywood,” he told Esquire recently, adding that he felt they were “never going to get a fair shake at life” there. He further explained that “France—they kind of don’t give a s— about fame,” and emphasized that he does not want his children “walking around worried about paparazzi” or “being compared to somebody else’s famous kids.”​

He has also argued that his twins “have a much better life” in France than they would have had in Los Angeles, describing their routine on the farm as screen-light, chore-heavy, and family-centered. In that framing, France is less a romantic escape than a structural solution to the distortions that come with U.S. celebrity culture—and, by extension, a critique of a system that often markets visibility as a reward but delivers surveillance as a cost.​

What this says about the American Dream

For much of the 20th century, the American Dream was sold as a package of meritocracy, upward mobility, and cultural centrality: make it in America, and you are at the center of the world. Clooney’s relocation suggests that for some of the people who “made it,” the dream now requires an offshore upgrade. The same U.S. system that enabled him to build wealth and status appears, in his telling, ill-suited to giving his children a “fair shake” or a normal childhood.​

By choosing a jurisdiction with strict privacy rules—France has strong protections against photographing children and tighter limits on paparazzi—Clooney is effectively arbitraging regulatory environments to secure non-financial returns: anonymity for his kids and a slower pace of life. That logic mirrors how multinational companies optimize tax or labor regimes, but here the asset being safeguarded is family life rather than corporate profit.

​Anecdotal evidence supports the idea that the ultrawealthy from the U.S. are increasingly deciding that their American Dream lies overseas. Ellen Degeneres and Portia De Rossi famously moved to the UK shortly after President Donald Trump was reelected, while Rosie O’Donnell, often a target of pointed attacks from Trump, qualified for Irish citizenship and moved to Dublin. Richard Gere, like Clooney, seemed to move for love, relocating to Spain to be close to the family and culture of his wife, Alejandra Silva. Fashion designer Tom Ford splashed out on a large mansion in London and has begun calling the UK home, while former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has purchased a house in London as well.

The data shows a wider spike in expat movements. The IRS “Expatriation List” (which mainly captures wealthier individuals who meet certain asset or tax thresholds) recorded about 4,820 citizenship renunciations in 2024, up roughly 48% from 2023 and the third‑highest annual total on record. (The top two years on record were the epochal years of 2016, when Trump was elected, and 2020, when the pandemic hit and Trump lost reelection.)​ Between 2020 and 2024, about 21,000 high‑net‑worth individuals renounced U.S. citizenship, which is roughly 39% of all expatriations reported since this list began in 1996. These figures likely undercount the prominent departures ​because they only include so‑called “covered expatriates” (people above a net‑worth or tax‑liability threshold) and exclude less‑wealthy renouncers and many who move without giving up citizenship. The New Yorker even wrote an article recently, titled “How to leave the USA,” citing surges in citizenship applications to both Ireland and the UK in particular.

A case study in elite ‘life diversification’

Clooney’s family still maintains ties to the U.S. and the U.K., and the new French nationality comes on top of Clooney’s existing American citizenship, not in place of it. In portfolio terms, the family appears to be diversifying not just its investments and passports but also its exposure to cultural and media risk, shifting the center of gravity to a country where fame carries fewer day-to-day penalties.​​

For business readers, the move looks less like an indulgent lifestyle play and more like a strategic reallocation of intangible capital: time, privacy, and mental health. If even one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars concludes that the full expression of his “dream” requires decoupling from the ecosystem that made him rich, it raises a sharp question for the U.S.: when success at the very top comes with conditions that drive families to look elsewhere, what, exactly, is the American Dream still promising?​



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‘Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts’: Kennedy family mourns yet another tragic death

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December 30, 2025

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Environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, one of three grandchildren of the late President John F. Kennedy, has died after she was diagnosed with leukemia last year. She was 35.

Schlossberg, daughter of Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and Edwin Schlossberg, revealed she had terminal cancer in a November 2025 essay in The New Yorker. A family statement disclosing her death was posted on social media Tuesday by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the statement said. It did not disclose a cause of death or say where she had died.

Schlossberg told of being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024 at 34. While in the hospital for the birth of her second child, her doctor noticed her white blood cell count was high. It turned out to be acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation, mostly seen in older people.

In the essay, “A Battle With My Blood,” Schlossberg recounted going through rounds of chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants and participating in clinical trials. During the most recent trial, she wrote, her doctor told her “he could keep me alive for a year, maybe.”

Schlossberg also criticized policies pushed by her mother’s cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in the essay, saying policies he backed could hurt cancer patients like her. Her mother had urged senators to reject his confirmation.

“As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers,” the essay reads.

Schlossberg had worked as a reporter covering climate change and the environment for The New York Times’ Science section. Her 2019 book “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have” won the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award in 2020.

Schlossberg wrote in The New Yorker essay that she feared her daughter and son wouldn’t remember her. She felt cheated and sad that she wouldn’t get to keep living “the wonderful life” she had with her husband, George Moran.

While her parents and two siblings tried to hide their pain from her, she said she felt it every day. Her siblings, Rose and Jack Schlossberg, are JFK’s other grandchildren.

“For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry,” she said. “Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Schlossberg’s mother Caroline was 5 years old when her father, President Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. She was 10 when her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 while he was running for president.

Caroline’s brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in 1999 when the single-engine plane he was piloting plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, also died in the crash.

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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Brumfield from Cockeysville, Maryland.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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Meta claims ‘no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI’ after reported $2 billion deal to shore up in AI agent race

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December 30, 2025

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Meta is buying artificial intelligence startup Manus, as the owner of Facebook and Instagram continues an aggressive push to amp up AI offerings across its platforms.

The California tech giant declined to disclose financial details of the acquisition. But The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta closed the deal at more than $2 billion.

Manus, a Singapore-based platform with some Chinese roots, launched its first “general-purpose” AI agent earlier this year. The platform offers paid subscriptions for customers to use this technology for research, coding and other tasks.

“Manus is already serving the daily needs of millions of users and businesses worldwide,” Meta said in a Monday announcement, adding that it plans to scale this service — as Manus will “deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including in Meta AI.”

Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, added that joining Meta will allow the platform to “build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made.” Manus confirmed that it would continue to sell and operate subscriptions through its own app and website.

The platform has grown rapidly over the past year. Earlier this month, Manus announced that it had crossed the $100 million mark in annual recurring revenue, just eight months after launching.

Some of Manus’ initial financial backers reportedly included China’s Tencent Holdings, ZhenFund and HSG. And the company that first launched the platform — Butterfly Effect, which also operates under the name monica.im, which was founded in China before moving to Singapore.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that there would be “no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI” following its transaction, and that the platform would also discontinue its services and operations in China. Manus reiterated that it would continue to operate in Singapore, where most of its employees are based.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing to revive its commercial AI efforts as the company faces tough competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. In June, the company made a $14.3 billion investment in AI data company Scale and recruited its CEO Alexandr Wang to help lead a team developing “superintelligence” at the tech giant.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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‘I opened her door and the wind caught me, and I went flying’: The U.S. Arctic air surge is sweeping northerners off their feet

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December 30, 2025

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A surge of Arctic air brought strong winds, heavy snow and frigid temperatures to the Great Lakes and Northeast on Tuesday, a day after a bomb cyclone barreling across the Midwest left tens of thousands of customers without power.

Blustery winds were expected to add to the chill, with low temperatures dipping below freezing as far south as the Florida panhandle, the National Weather Service said.

The wild storm hit parts of the Plains and Great Lakes this week with sharply colder air, strong winds and a mix of snow, ice and rain, leading to treacherous travel. Forecasters said it intensified quickly enough to meet the criteria of a bomb cyclone, a system that strengthens rapidly as pressure drops.

Kristen Schultz, who was heading home to Alaska, said it took her four hours to get to the Minneapolis airport on Tuesday.

“Just give yourself plenty of extra time and that way, even if things go smoothly, you don’t have to be stressed out,” she said, “and you’re ready in case things don’t go so smoothly.”

Nationwide, more than 115,000 customers were without power Tuesday morning, around a third of them in Michigan, according to Poweroutage.us.

As the storm moves into Canada, the frigid air trailing behind it will spread across much of the eastern two-thirds of the country, the National Weather Service said, powering the lake-effect “snow machine” in areas downwind of the Great Lakes.

Some areas in western and upstate New York saw a foot or more of snow Monday and their totals could reach up to 3 feet (91 centimeters) this week, forecasters said. Strong winds on Monday, including an 81 mph (130 kph) gust in Buffalo, New York, knocked down trees and wires across the region, the weather service said.

“At this point, the worst does seem to be over, and we are expecting conditions to improve especially by later today,” said Andrew Orrison, a weather service meteorologist.

Videos on social media show people struggling to walk in the windy conditions and a waterway in downtown Buffalo clogged with tree branches and other debris stemming from a windblown surge from Lake Erie.

Just south of Buffalo in Lackawanna, Diane Miller was caught on video being blown off the front steps of her daughter’s house and landing in some bushes. She wasn’t seriously hurt.

“I opened her door and the wind caught me, and I went flying,” Miller told WKBW-TV.

Whiteout conditions were still possible in some areas, forecasters said, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned people in impacted areas to avoid unnecessary travel.

The fierce winds on Lake Erie had sent water surging toward the basin’s eastern end near Buffalo while lowering water on the western side in Michigan to expose normally submerged lakebed — even the wreck of a car and a snowmobile.

Kevin Aldrich, 33, a maintenance worker from Monroe, Michigan, said he has never seen the lake recede so much and was surprised Monday to spot remnants of piers dating back to the 1830s. He posted photos on social media of wooden pilings sticking up several feet from the muck.

“Where those are at would typically be probably 12 feet deep,” or 3.6 meters, he said. “We can usually drive our boat over them.”

Dangerous wind chills across parts of North Dakota and Minnesota plunged as low as minus 30 F (minus 34 C) on Monday. And in northeast West Virginia, rare nearly hurricane-force winds were recorded on a mountain near Dolly Sods, according to the National Weather Service.

On the West Coast, strong Santa Ana winds with isolated gusts topping 70 mph (112 kph) brought down trees in parts of Southern California where recent storms had saturated the soil. Downed powerlines forced the shutdown of a freeway north of Los Angeles for several hours on Monday. Wind advisories had expired by evening, but blustery conditions were expected through Saturday, along with thunderstorms.

Rain on New Year’s Day could potentially soak the Rose Parade in Pasadena for the first time in about two decades.

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Associated Press writers Julie Walker in New York; Leah Willingham in Concord, New Hampshire; Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia; and Susan Haigh in Norwich, Connecticut, contributed.



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