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Tag: gov

  • The White House is on TikTok now, which is technically banned in the US

    The White House is on TikTok now, which is technically banned in the US

    The White House joined TikTok on Tuesday, where it’s sharing video clips of President Donald Trump and his staff that attempt to portray them as quick-witted, rebellious American leaders.

    These clips, edited together like a sizzle reel, show Trump declining phone calls from congressmen and threatening lawsuits during a press conference. Another video boasts that Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt “rips” a New York Times reporter after he asked a question at a press conference.

    Despite the app’s legal battles, TikTok remains a vital way for political candidates and government offices to connect with constituents. But by operating this TikTok account, the White House appears to defy government guidelines, as federal employees were previously banned from using TikTok on government devices.

    Trump himself initiated the calls to ban TikTok nationally in 2020, citing the danger of the Chinese Communist Party potentially accessing American user data. But in his second term, the president has taken a different approach. While the Supreme Court upheld a law that bans TikTok if it is not sold to an American company, Trump has continually extended the sale deadline.

    TechCrunch has reached out to TikTok for comment.

    @whitehouse ‘I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter.’ ♬ original sound – The White House

    Reception to the White House videos has been decidedly mixed. As of Wednesday morning, each of the five videos that the White House has uploaded to TikTok have been spammed with negative comments, many of them referencing the president’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted child sex offender who died awaiting trial.

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  • Supreme Court Allows Trump Admin To Revoke DEI-Related NIH Grants

    Supreme Court Allows Trump Admin To Revoke DEI-Related NIH Grants

    By Matthew Vadum of Epoch Times,

    The Supreme Court voted 5–4 on Aug. 21 to allow the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

    The new ruling clears the way for the funding reductions while litigation over the grants continues in the lower courts.

    The justices filed five separate opinions explaining their votes.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted to allow the grants to be cut.

    Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Chief Justice John Roberts voted to deny the government’s request to rescind the funding.

    The high court said it acted because the federal government faces the possibility that the grant monies, once paid out, may not be recovered.

    Moreover, “the plaintiffs do not state that they will repay grant money if the Government ultimately prevails.”

    The case is known as National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association.

    The Department of Justice filed an emergency application with the nation’s highest court late last month, asking the justices to block a ruling by Boston-based U.S. District Judge William Young, who found the cancellation was unlawful and ordered the government to restore the funding.

    NIH began taking steps in February to end the grants that conflict with President Donald Trump’s policy priorities.

    The NIH is the world’s largest government funder of biomedical research.

    The emergency application stemmed from two lawsuits challenging the cuts to grants involving DEI, “transgender issues,” “vaccine hesitancy,” and other issues.

    The American Public Health Association described the cuts as an “ongoing ideological purge” of projects with a purported connection to gender identity, DEI, or “other vague, now-forbidden language.” A coalition of 16 attorneys general, largely Democrats, alleged their public research institutions are facing harm because of the funding delays and cuts.

    The district court directed the NIH “to continue paying $783 million in federal grants that are undisputedly counter to the Administration’s priorities,” the department said in its filing.

    “Following the change in Administration, the NIH identified, explained, and pursued new funding priorities. That is democracy at work, not, as the district court thought, proof of inappropriate ‘partisan[ship]’—let alone a permissible basis for setting agency action aside.”

    In his written opinion, Gorsuch said the district court’s ruling upholding the grants conflicted with the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Education v. California in April that let the Trump administration withdraw education-related grants.

    “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch said.

    Unless we want anarchy to take over the federal judicial system, “a precedent of this Court must be followed by the lower federal courts no matter how misguided the judges of those courts may think it to be,” Gorsuch said, quoting a prior Supreme Court ruling.

    In his dissenting opinion, Roberts said the district court ruling was justified.

    “This relief—which has prospective and generally applicable implications beyond the reinstatement of specific grants—falls well within the scope of the District Court’s jurisdiction under the [federal] Administrative Procedure Act.”

    Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson joined the dissent in part.

    In her dissenting opinion, Jackson said the high court’s new ruling is “Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,” a reference to a fictional game featured in the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbes.”

    “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,” she said.

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  • Netskope follows Rubrik as a rare cybersecurity IPO, both backed by Lightspeed

    Netskope follows Rubrik as a rare cybersecurity IPO, both backed by Lightspeed

    Cybersecurity is a massive sector, but startups in the category are more likely to be acquired than go public. Even Wiz, which for a time held the title of the fastest-growing startup, abandoned its IPO ambitions when it agreed to sell to Google earlier this year.

    In the past few years, there have been scant few significant cybersecurity debuts such as SentinelOne in 2021, and Rubrik last year.

    Next week, the sector is expected to add one more public company: the cloud cybersecurity platform Netskope. The 13-year-old startup also shares its earliest and largest investor with Rubrik: Lightspeed Venture Partners.

    The large Silicon Valley firm had a 23.9% ownership of Rubrik when it went public at $6.6 billion last year. In the case of Netskope, Lightspeed owns 19.3% of the company that aims to achieve a valuation of as much as $6.5 billion, according to the updated S1 filing.

    Lightspeed first backed Netskope in 2013, leading the company’s $21 million Series B.

    The company set its IPO price between $15 and $17 per share, and at the upper end of that range, giving Lightspeed an approximately $1.1 billion windfall, in terms of the value of its stake.

    Netskope’s other major investors include ICONIQ Growth, which holds 19.2% of the company’s stock, followed by Accel with a stake of nearly 9%.

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    Netskope is known as a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) provider. It offers cybersecurity for an enterprise’s cloud infrastructure, with such products as secure web gateways and firewall as a service. The company’s main competitors are Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks.

    The company was last valued at $7.5 billion, when it raised a $300 million Series H led by ICONIQ Growth in 2021, the height of the ZIRP era. It also took on a $401 million convertible note in 2023.

    But those capital infusions weren’t enough to get Netskope to profitability. For the first half of the year, Netskope’s revenue grew to $328.5 million from $251.3 million a year ago. During that time, its net loss narrowed to $169.5 million from $206.7 million, the filing shows.

    If Netskope goes public at a valuation of $6.5 billion, the company would be among a number of VC-backed companies that have recently debuted below their final private market valuation.

    Other companies that went public below their latest private valuations include Chime and Hinge Health. But not all new listings are being met with caution. Some recent IPOs, like Figma and Circle, have soared on the first day of trading.

  • FDA Harnesses AI to Revolutionize Its Operations

    FDA Harnesses AI to Revolutionize Its Operations

    FDA Gives AI the Green Light: Ready to Roll Out

    After a solid pilot showing that AI can keep pace with the fast‑moving world of drug regulation, the Food and Drug Administration is gearing up to unleash artificial intelligence across the whole agency.

    What’s on the Horizon?

    • Broadening AI tools to sift through terabytes of clinical data.
    • Automating routine tasks so scientists can tackle the big science questions.
    • Boosting safety checks with smarter, real‑time alerts.
    • Ensuring every new tool gets a rigorous safety test before it hits the field.

    In short, the FDA’s plan is to mix human expertise with AI’s speed, creating a smoother, faster, and safer drug‑approval pipeline. The move comes at a time when the market is buzzing with AI innovations, and the agency is keen to stay ahead of the curve.

    FDA Goes AI‑Crazy: The FDA’s New Turbocharged Review Sprint

    Picture this: the FDA’s big‑screen office in White Oak, MD, suddenly turns on a digital engine that whizzes through drug‑review paperwork faster than a Chevette on a flat track. That’s exactly what happened in June 2023, thanks to Dr. Marty Makary, the commissioner who decided it was time for the agency to stop sweating the exam and start giving its scientists a breather.

    What’s the Buzz About?

    • AI in the mix – “Artificial Intelligence” isn’t just sci‑fi jargon. It’s the brain behind sleek algorithms that learn, decide, and predict, cutting out the slow‑moving mule of manual review.
    • One‑stop shop – By June 30, the FDA promised a single, secure generative AI system that plugs straight into every internal data platform. No more juggling spreadsheets and email chains.
    • Fast‑track review – A pilot test showed the system could crunch through analyses that used to mop up whole days. Dr. Makary called it “blowing up the time‑blocks” that buried scientists in paperwork.

    Why Now, Dr. Makary Says

    Makary’s mantra: “The pharma world’s been waiting 10‑plus years for a drug to reach shelves. We’re stuck in a bubble. If AI can turn days into minutes, why not launch it across the board?” He hit a social media megaphone called X to shout out the future:

    “We’ve just finished our first AI‑assisted scientific review for a drug. That’s the beginning, not the end.”

    Power Players Behind the Roll‑out

    • Jeremy Walsh – Former Booz Allen tech boss now FDA’s chief AI officer, charting the AI course.
    • Sridhar Mantha – Former head of the FDA’s Business Informatics office, making sure data flows smoothly.

    From Trump’s Executive Order to the White House Memorandum

    President Trump had already said, “Let’s keep America on the cutting edge of AI.” The White House memo, meanwhile, nudged agencies to embrace innovation, stamp out bureaucracy, and “shape the future of government operations.” So the FDA’s AI makeover is no surprise.

    All About Bias, Speed, and Smiles

    The FDA’s caution? AI can amplify biases, potentially widening health care inequalities. Balance that with the upside: a faster drug review pipeline means patients get life‑saving medicines sooner. It’s a risk‑but‑reward game, and the FDA’s decided to lean heavily on the win.

    In the end, the FDA’s new AI strategy is all about the same thing: give scientists more time to innovate, cut down on tedious admin, and light up the road to better medicines. It’s a bold move into a future where a computer’s second can mean a patient’s second.

  • Democrat Extremism Underwrites Trump

    Democrat Extremism Underwrites Trump

    Authored by J.T. Young via RealClearPolitics,

    Democrats’ extremism continues to underwrite Donald Trump’s agenda. Since 2021, this has been the case, and it shows no sign of stopping. Rather than bolstering them as an alternative, Democrats are giving Trump the leverage to pursue his aggressive agenda.

    President Trump remains divisive. While his job approval and favorability ratings are higher than they were eight years ago, they remain low. According to Real Clear Politics’ August 28 average of national polling, Trump’s approval rating is 45.3%-51.5% for -6.2% net; on August 28, 2017, Trump sat at -16.9%. According to RCP’s polling average of Trump’s favorability, he is 44.3%-52.1%, for -7.8%; on August 28, 2017, Trump was -17.9%.

    Trump’s 2024 victory was a landslide in swing states and states between the coasts. However, Trump’s win in the popular (below 50%) and in the electoral votes (312-226) was hardly historic. Nor did he bring home large congressional majorities: Republican control of the Senate (by six votes, 53-47) and House (by five votes, 220-215) do not approach past presidents’ majorities. 

    Yet Trump took office governing like FDR in his first 100 days. Now into his third “hundred days,” Trump is still doing so. And this is a president who was twice impeached and once defeated: No impeached president has ever been reelected (let alone a twice-impeached one), and the last time a defeated president was reelected occurred over 130 years ago. 

    How is this continued momentum possible? Democrats’ extremism is making them even less popular. 

    According to a recent WSJ poll, Democrats’ popularity is at a 35-year low. This is no outlier: Other polls show similar results. Between 2020 and 2024, Republicans gained up to 4.5 million registered voters versus Democrats, who saw net losses in all 30 states reviewed by the NYT. And Trump’s 2024 victory was attributable to an overwhelming win in “fly-over” country: The 46 states outside California, New York, Massachusetts, and Washington contain 80.5% of America’s electoral votes; Trump won 72% of them in 2024. 

    The issues that the Biden-Harris ticket lost on last November are the same issues that Democrats are insistent about fighting Trump on now. 

    On illegal immigration, RCP’s average of national polling showed Biden’s last job approval rating was just 33.5%. Yet Democrats continue to challenge Trump at every juncture: They have tried to make Kilmar Abrego Garcia into a martyr; they have stormed ICE detention facilities; they have tried to jeopardize ICE agents’ safety by pushing to bar them from wearing masks.   

    On crime, RCP’s average of national polling showed Biden’s last job approval rating was just 38%. Yet Democrats continue to challenge Trump on his push against crime: They have objected to him deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., despite D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser saying it has reduced the city’s crime; and they have threatened to take him to court if he tries to deploy the National Guard in crime-ridden Chicago.

    The same anti-Trump intransigence has led Democrats to take similarly extremist positions on allowing biological males to compete against biological females (something Americans overwhelmingly oppose), to lock arms against Trump’s push to keep tax rates from rising to pre-2017 levels (every Democrat in the House and Senate voted against it), and for many, to object to his strike against terrorist-backing Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

    Americans oppose allowing biological males to compete against girls and women. RCP’s average of national polling showed Biden’s last job approval rating on the economy – which would have been devastated by the tax hike that would have occurred if Democrats had blocked keeping 2017 tax rates in place – was just 38.8%. The RCP average showed Biden’s last job approval rating on foreign policy – to which America’s support for Israel has been foundational for decades – was a mere 35.6%. 

    Time and time again, Democrats are choosing the wrong side of lopsided issues. In doing so, they are maintaining the margin between themselves and Trump, and they are not giving Americans a plausible alternative to Trump. No alternative means giving Trump all the leverage.

    There is an old joke about two men encountering a lion. Terrified, the first man whispers to the other man, “What are you going to do?” “Run,” the other man whispers back. The first man responds, “Are you crazy, you can’t outrun a lion!”  “I don’t have to outrun the lion,” says the second, “I just have to outrun you.”

    Right now, Trump is outrunning the Democrats, and the Democrats aren’t even making it a race.

    J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.

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  • Trump's Tariffs Will Reduce Deficits By Trillion Over Next Decade, Says CBO Report

    Trump's Tariffs Will Reduce Deficits By $4 Trillion Over Next Decade, Says CBO Report

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    A report released on Friday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will reduce federal deficits by around $4 trillion over the next decade.

    If Trump’s global tariff hikes continue, increased revenue could shrink primary deficits by $3.3 trillion and cut federal interest payments by $0.7 trillion over the next decade, the CBO said. The current top tariff rates may not hold as negotiations with trading partners and international legal challenges are ongoing.

    “We estimate that the effective tariff rate for goods imported into the United States has increased by about 18 percentage points when measured against 2024 trade flows,” the budget office said in its report, adding that Trump’s tariffs would reduce “the need for federal borrowing.”

    The CBO also said it “projects further increases in tariff revenues in the coming months” and that “if there are no further changes in tariff rates, we project that customs duties from new and existing tariffs will total about $200 billion this fiscal year.”

    But the office cautioned that revenues often lag several months behind the implementation of tariff policies, noting that once the rates are in effect, they don’t get applied to goods that are already in transit to the United States.

    “In addition, importers have the option to delay payments by up to six weeks by participating in Customs and Border Protection’s Periodic Monthly Statement program,” added the CBO, which is a federal agency within the legislative branch that provides budget and economic information to both houses of Congress.

    In July, Congress passed the GOP-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that contained several major Trump priorities on energy, the border, spending, and tax cuts. The CBO has said that it would add around $3.4 trillion to the national deficit over the coming decade, although the White House has disputed those figures.

    The Trump administration has also said that the tariffs and policies initiated under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump backed and signed into law, would bring forth economic growth over the coming years that would offset any additions to the national deficit.

    “It was the largest tax cut for middle and working class families in our nation’s history, and the president wants to see this country get our fiscal house in order. That’s why this was a fiscally responsible bill,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on July 21 in response to the CBO report on the bill.

    In a statement on Thursday, the White House again touted the bill by posting excerpts from a series of recent newspaper articles that praised the measure. Earlier this month, the administration also said that Americans would see an average tax cut of $3,752 under the bill, citing a report from nonprofit organization the Tax Foundation.

    Friday’s report from the CBO comes as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would scrap some of its retaliatory tariffs against the United States. Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico earlier this year, saying those measures were necessary to curb illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking into the country.

    “We have the best deal of anyone in the world right now,” Carney told reporters in Ottawa. “Today, the Government of Canada is harmonizing its tariffs with the U.S.”

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  • Meta to pay $1 million to bolster UK government’s AI workforce

    One of the world’s biggest tech and artificial intelligence (AI) companies will front a $1 million (€854,000) grant for the UK government to develop new technologies.

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    The United Kingdom is bolstering its tech workforce to develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools for government. And Meta is footing the $1 million (€854,000) bill.
    Through the new “Open-Source AI Fellowship,” 10 fellows will work with the UK government for one year to build AI tools for “high-security use cases” in the public sector, such as language translation for national security or using construction data to speed up approval processes to build more homes.

    The fellows could also work on “Humphrey,” a suite of AI-powered tools for civil servants to help them effectively deliver on minister requests, like summarising documents, consultations, and taking notes. 
    The programme could also see fellows using Meta’s Llama 3.5 AI model to create new tools that could unblock planning delays, boost national security, or reduce the cost to integrate AI throughout the government.
    Meta will issue the $1 million grant to the Alan Turing Institute, and fellows will then be placed in the UK government.

    Related

    Meta announces new ‘superintelligence’ unit to work on AI

    “This Fellowship is the best of AI in action – open, practical, and built for public good. It’s about delivery, not just ideas – creating real tools that help government work better for people,” Peter Kyle, the UK’s technology secretary, said in a government release. 

    The UK government is already testing an AI for the public service called Caddy, an open-source AI assistant used at Citizen’s Advice centres. It gives the users of a government call service advice on common questions about managing debt, getting legal help, or knowing their rights as a customer. 
    The fellowships will begin in January 2026, and all of the initiatives developed by the engineers will be open-source and available for public use.
    The announcement comes in the same week as another agreement struck between the UK government and Google Cloud that aims to upskill 100,000 civil servants in tech and AI by 2030. The goal of that programme is to have at least one in every 10 government officials be tech experts.