Trump seeks quick Murdoch deposition in Wall Street Journal lawsuit over Epstein story
Trump sued the Journal, owned by Murdoch, is U.S. District Court in southern Florida on July 18 for its story reporting on the Republican president's ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and alleged child sex trafficker who died in a New York jail in 2019 before trial.
The president's motion to the court on Monday noted Murdoch is 94 years old, is believed to have suffered several health scares in recent years and is presumed to live in New York.
'Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,' Trump's request to the court said.
A spokesman for Murdoch's News Corp. did not immediately return a request for comment. Trump's motion said that, in a telephone conversation, Murdoch's lawyer indicated he would oppose the effort.
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Forbes
25 minutes ago
- Forbes
How Scrubbing Your Instagram, TikTok And X Accounts Could Backfire And Hurt Your Job Prospects
F or college students looking for jobs or internships, the standard advice about social media has been this: Build up your professional profile on LinkedIn, but scrub other social media accounts (the ones displaying your political opinions or party antics) or just make them private. Yet recent developments could make that playbook obsolete. The most jarring is the Trump Administration's order to U.S. consular personnel to require those applying for student and cultural exchange visas to set their social media to public, so as to allow a review of their 'entire online presence.' The State Department is explicit about what it's looking for: indications of 'hostility' to the U.S. government or culture, as well as views it considers supportive of terrorism or antisemitism. Those who do not make their accounts public could have their applications denied. In addition, an absence of a social media presence can also be held against an applicant, as a possible effort to evade scrutiny of their true views. 'You're damned if you do post, damned if you don't,' sighs one international student who requested anonymity because she fears undermining her own immigration status. The new policy has foreign students doing everything from requesting their columns be removed from student publications to painstakingly undoing any of their Instagram likes on pro-Palestinian or anti-Trump posts. (It must be done manually and takes many clicks. But this way, their accounts will still be public and active, just not political.) While visa applicants clearly have the most to worry about, American students, too, are facing a potential Catch 22. What they've said on social media can hurt them when they are job hunting. Yet erasing or cloaking their public online presence can potentially backfire in less obvious and predictable ways, as some prospective employers adopt AI driven screening of social media to determine if applicants are real–and even a cultural fit. 'It creates a double bind: students are told to curate or clean up their profiles for professionalism, yet efforts to control their digital presence can be framed as suspicious or evasive,' says Paromita Pain, an associate professor of global media at the University of Nevada, Reno. This is a new twist. Research published in 2019 suggested that making accounts private didn't hurt, and might even help, job hunters. 'In general, hiring managers saw those that used privacy settings and had strict privacy settings as slightly favorable, I think because they understood they know how to manage confidential information,' explains Chris Hartwell, an associate professor of management at Utah State University who conducted that research. To be clear, U.S. employers haven't explicitly said they're going to demand private accounts be made public or that they'll hold the existence of private or deleted accounts against prospective workers, the way the State Department has with visa applicants. Indeed several states, including California, Maryland and New York, have laws that explicitly bar employers from asking for access to private social accounts. But artificial intelligence is beginning to change hiring practices in significant ways. AI has led to an explosion of fake (or stolen) identities, and fake job candidates. In one notorious case, an Arizona woman was just sentenced to 102 months in prison for her role in an elaborate scheme that used stolen U.S. identities to place North Koreans in remote information technology jobs at 309 U.S. companies. A fourth of candidates applying to any job could be fake by 2028, research and advisory firm Gartner predicts. The technology is getting good enough that in just 70 minutes, a novice AI user can create a fake profile and masquerade as a real person during a virtual interview with a recruiter or hiring manager. In March, Dawid Moczadlot, cofounder of Vidoc Security Labs, posted a video on LinkedIn of an interview he cut short with a job candidate who was using AI to mask his true appearance. It was the second time he'd encountered that ruse in two months, he wrote. So employers have good reason to be wary, which is spawning a whole new business of AI pre-screening of applicants' social media. Companies are looking to make sure people are real, and also in some cases, a cultural fit. For example, Tofu, a small, two-year-old startup, pivoted last September to using machine learning and AI to screen applicants' social media profiles and publicly available information to corroborate their real identity. 'The point is to find them before hiring managers spend time interviewing fake applicants,' explains Jason Zoltak, Tofu's cofounder and CEO. Some of the things Tofu looks for include age of social accounts, posting and liking activity and even the number of LinkedIn connections. Tofu will also report to a prospective employer the last found date of a deleted profile, as well as any accounts that seem empty. A typical fake candidate might have a LinkedIn account that's about four months old with two or three connections or an empty Instagram or TikTok profile, Zoltak says, So what does this mean for students and workers who've scrubbed their online presence? They won't necessarily get flagged as fake candidates, says Zoltak, although he doesn't entirely rule out that possibility. But, he points out, there are other ways to validate people are real, including checking the age of the email address they used to apply for a job, as well as their phone numbers and carriers and metadata in profiles. The advice here for students: Set up a LinkedIn account and the email address you'll use for job hunting well before you start your search. A LinkedIn account might seem like a no-brainer. But Elizabeth Soady, a member of the career services advising team at the University of Richmond, says because students have heard for years about the dangers of their digital footprint, many are actually hesitant to use social media profiles for professional purposes. They're also still scrubbing away. Delete Me CEO Rob Shavell reports students are increasingly turning to services like his as they approach graduation. 'All of a sudden [younger users are] realizing they've been very cavalier about the information they were sharing online and how it's showing up everywhere,' he says. 'It dovetails really nicely with their first job search.' But erasing too much personal and private information from the internet could backfire as screening tools like Tofu use that information to verify you're a real person. It's not just a search for fake applicants that AI is spurring. Companies are increasingly screening social media history as part of their background check for future hires. Darrin Lipscomb, founder and CEO of Ferretly, says he launched the company in 2019 to vet social media activity and online presence (including news articles) as a part of security clearances. But now, with the spread of AI, he's offering the same sort of screening for pre-employment checks. In addition to working with police departments and political campaigns, Ferretly has signed up companies across business sectors to vet not only high-ranking executives, but also customer-facing employees and even social media influencer partners. The company is up to over 40 employees and 1,000 clients and even vetted candidates for the NFL draft. It has also worked with Democratic and Republican congressional campaign committees in the United States and political parties in the U.K., Australia and Canada to vet political candidates, staff and appointees. For every candidate, Ferretly produces a social media report that includes behavioral trends (including likes and post count), sentiment towards specific topics, and engagement analysis (private versus public accounts). The company makes no judgment on the contents of the report, Lipscomb emphasizes. 'We're providing a tool to be able to look at a profile and ask 'does this person represent our values as an organization? Are they going to strengthen our culture?'' he says. 'You can apply that same thinking to the student visa application. Is this person going to strengthen the American culture?' In other words, even if the practices aren't exactly the same, there's a correlation between the State Department's enhanced viewpoint screening and what's gaining a foothold in the private sector. In today's charged political atmosphere, and with today's AI capabilities, American students aren't crazy to worry about how their social media will be used. Last year, college guidance site surveyed 672 recent and current students who said that had participated in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. More than half said they were always (11%), often (19%) or sometimes (23%) asked about their activism and 28% said they had removed online evidence of that activism. In addition, 29% said they'd had a job offer rescinded in the last six months, with 68% of those who lost an offer believing the decision was either "definitely" or 'probably' linked to their activism. Beyond political activity, Pain, the Nevada prof, warns students to think twice before sharing anything identity-based (including sexual identity and religion) or related to mental health or disabilities. Even with state anti-discrimination laws, she says 'bias still operates subtly in hiring.' So what about those laws? Rod M. Fliegel, an employment lawyer and co-chair of Littler's background check practice group, says that 28 states regulate what information garnered from social media or internet searches employers can use as part of their hiring decisions. 'Just by posting something public doesn't give an employer free reign to consider the information during the hiring process,' he says. Of course recruiters or employers could still unwittingly come across protected information in public profiles. Which is why, if they want to avoid legal trouble, Fliegel urges they set company-wide policy and guardrails describing what they can use during pre-employment screening. Which raises the question of whether such limits will be built into any AI screens. College students looking to enter a tough entry job market would probably be wise not to count on it. More from Forbes Forbes One More Worry For College Students: Medicaid Work Requirements By Fiona Riley Forbes The Best Career Advice From 2025's Commencement Speakers. By Maria Gracia Santillana Linares Forbes These 26 Rich Private Colleges Just Got A Tax Cut From Republicans By Emma Whitford Forbes The Dangers Of AI-Generated Job Candidates By Maria Gracia Santillana Linares Forbes Even As Companies Retreat From Diversity Efforts, Many Quash Anti-DEI Shareholder Resolutions By Maria Gracia Santillana Linares
Bloomberg
25 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Why US Partners Are Giving In to Trump on Trade
In Donald Trump's first term as president, Japan stood out as an exception in opting not to retaliate against his tariff hikes, as the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reckoned it was better to shrug them off in favor of maintaining the broader economic and security relationship. Most others did retaliate, however, and that experience conditioned economists to anticipate damaging tit-for-tat levies in Trump 2.0 if he proceeded with the aggressive trade actions he campaigned on. Except, something happened on the way to the global recession: Aside from China, American trading partners have largely accepted Trump's new duties.
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump eyes bringing Azerbaijan, Central Asian nations into Abraham Accords, sources say
By Gram Slattery WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump's administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter. As part of the Abraham Accords, inked in 2020 and 2021 during Trump's first term in office, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after U.S. mediation. Azerbaijan and every country in Central Asia, by contrast, already have longstanding relations with Israel, meaning that an expansion of the accords to include them would largely be symbolic, focusing on strengthening ties in areas like trade and military cooperation, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. Such an expansion would reflect Trump's openness to pacts that are less ambitious than his administration's goal to convince regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel while war rages in Gaza. The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not recognize Israel without steps towards Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state. A soaring death toll in Gaza and starvation in the enclave due to blockage of aid and military operations by Israel have buoyed Arab fury, complicating efforts to add more Muslim-majority countries to the Abraham Accords. The war in Gaza, where over 60,000 people including tens of thousands of women and children have died according to local health authorities, has provoked global anger. Canada, France and the United Kingdom have announced plans in recent days to recognize an independent Palestine. Another key sticking point is Azerbaijan's conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to join the Abraham Accords, three sources said. While Trump officials have publicly floated several potential entrants into the accords, the talks centered on Azerbaijan are among the most structured and serious, the sources said. Two of the sources argued a deal could be reached within months or even weeks. Trump's special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, traveled to Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, in March to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Aryeh Lightstone, a key Witkoff aide, met Aliyev later in the spring in part to discuss the Abraham Accords, three of the sources said. As part of the discussions, Azerbaijani officials have contacted officials in Central Asian nations, including in nearby Kazakhstan, to gauge their interest in a broader Abraham Accords expansion, those sources said. It was not clear which other countries in Central Asia - which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan - were contacted. The State Department, asked for comment, did not discuss specific countries, but said expanding the accords has been one of the key objectives of Trump. "We are working to get more countries to join," said a U.S. official. The Azerbaijani government declined to comment. The White House, the Israeli foreign ministry and the Kazakhstani embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. Any new accords would not modify the previous Abraham Accords deals signed by Israel. OBSTACLES REMAIN The original Abraham Accords - inked between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan - were centered on restoration of ties. The second round of expansion appears to be morphing into a broader mechanism designed to expand U.S. and Israeli soft power. Wedged between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan occupies a critical link in trade flows between Central Asia and the West. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, prompting various major powers to compete for influence in the region. Expanding the accords to nations that already have diplomatic relations with Israel may also be a means of delivering symbolic wins to a president who is known to talk up even relatively small victories. Two sources described the discussions involving Central Asia as embryonic - but the discussions with Azerbaijan as relatively advanced. But challenges remain and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, particularly with slow progress in talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two countries, which both won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh - an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population - broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. In 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, prompting about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides have since said they want to sign a treaty on a formal end to the conflict. Primarily Christian Armenia and the U.S. have close ties, and the Trump administration is wary of taking action that could upset authorities in Yerevan. Still, U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself, have argued that a peace deal between those two nations is near. "Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there," Trump told reporters earlier in July. 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