Latest news with #PriscillaChan
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Monday briefing: Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill; ambush of Idaho firefighters; AI's impact on brains; lab-grown salmon; and more
An intercepted call captured Iranian officials downplaying the damage of U.S. strikes. Senate Republicans are racing to pass Trump's massive tax bill this week. Trump said he will move aggressively to undo nationwide blocks on his agenda. Firefighters were ambushed while responding to a fire in Idaho. A school shut down after Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pulled funding. Artificial intelligence might be changing our brains, but it's not clear how. Lab-grown salmon is on sale for the first time in the U.S. And now … are you taking too many prescription drugs? Here are the risks. Want to catch up quickly with 'The 7' every morning? Download The Post's app and turn on alert notifications for The 7 or sign up for the newsletter.
Washington Post
4 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
The Chan-Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes. 400 kids lost their school.
When Priscilla Chan opened a school for disadvantaged kids in 2016 with her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, she took aim at some of America's thorniest challenges. 'A persistent academic achievement gap separates white children and children of color — and wealthier children and their lower-income peers,' the school's website said. 'A similarly large health gap mirrors these differences.'
The Independent
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Mark Zuckerberg's charity backing away from DEI and political spending after Trump criticisms and staff tensions: report
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the multi-billion-dollar philanthropy led by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan, is reportedly moving away from political spending, following criticism from Republicans and internal tensions with liberal staff members. The initiative, founded in 2015, always invested in a combination of social and scientific causes, but has recently rebranded as 'science-first,' and has ended internal diversity programs, housing initiatives, and diversity-focused funding for scientists. This spring, a school for low-income students that Chan founded also closed. The shift, which has also included an overall slowdown in spending, with $336 million in grants, less than half the group's average, came after a series of bruising encounters with politics, The New York Times reports. Chan and Zuckerberg were reportedly frustrated after getting criticism from Trump and his allies for efforts like donating $400 million to nonpartisan election infrastructure in the 2020 race, an effort MAGA derided as 'Zuckerberg bucks.' Trump, for his part, threatened the Meta boss with 'life in prison' during the 2024 campaign if he intervened in the election. Political fatigue reportedly began even earlier, according to the Times, with Zuckerberg growing frustrated with criticisms from liberal staff members at the philanthropy in the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests. The Independent has contacted the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for comment. The organization has explained the changes as a combination of new strategy and a shifting political landscape. In a June letter, Chan, a pediatrician, emphasized the group's long-running commitment to curing disease, a cause she became attached to as a doctor in San Francisco. 'It was there that I saw the limits of medicine and science up close, working with children with rare diseases,' she wrote in a June blog post. 'For those families, expanding the limits of what we know — advancing basic science research — is their only hope for a better life for their child. In a February post, the initiative explained its decision to cut its DEI teams as a response to the ' shifting regulatory and legal landscape.' In recent years, the Supreme Court has struck down race-based affirmative action in higher education admissions, and the Trump administration has sought to end DEI in both the public and private sector. At the same time, as the Republican has returned to power, Meta has repositioned itself with moves seen by some as an attempt to remain in the administration's good graces, including ending diversity programs, eliminating fact-checkers, putting Trump ally Dana White on the Meta board, and attending the president's inauguration earlier this year. Shortly after Trump was elected, Zuckerberg was spotted at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, where senior White House official Stephen Miller said the tech billionaire had 'been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of and a participant in this change that we're seeing all around America, all around the world, with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading.'
New York Times
5 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
The Narrowing of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's Philanthropy
At a Silicon Valley off-site meeting in February for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were asked to reassure their staff about their philanthropy's approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. Dr. Chan, a pediatrician, spoke first. She told employees that words such as D.E.I. would be de-emphasized internally, according to four attendees, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential meeting. But, Dr. Chan insisted in lengthy remarks, the charitable organization's commitment would not change. Then Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, chimed in. Their philanthropy was going to hire the best talent for the job, he said bluntly. Within days, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative ended diversity-based recruiting and laid off or reassigned employees who ran diversity initiatives, scrubbing its website of all references. A few months later, a school for low-income students that Dr. Chan had founded announced it was closing. The philanthropy also axed its work in housing, its most progressive remaining project. The moves capped a startling retrenchment for an organization that had once set out to be a sprawling left-of-center philanthropic endeavor. Mr. Zuckerberg, 41, and his wife, Dr. Chan, 40, had started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015 using the wealth from their social networking empire to form a 'new kind of philanthropy' and pledging to fix American education, transform U.S. public policy and 'cure all disease.' 'Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality,' Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan wrote in an open letter about the effort to their newborn daughter, Max, at the time. They added, 'We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Gizmodo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
Chan Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Killing Funding for Non-Profits Associated With ‘DEI'
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (or CZI) has been quietly suspending grants to nonprofits across California and the country, especially those that might be construed as reflecting support for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. While CZI claims that it has long planned to move its focus away from social issues and towards the sciences, current and former employees had a different story to tell the San Francisco Standard. In 2015, then-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, created CZI. The couple pledged to donate 99% of their Meta (then Facebook) shares to the organization, which currently implies a sum of nearly $100 billion. CZI says it has distributed almost $7B in grants over the course of its 10-year history. The organization, whose founding mission was to 'build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone,' has also given millions of dollars to nonprofits in San Mateo County, where Meta is headquartered. In recent months, however, many of those grants have been suspended. The Standard spoke with Juan Hernandez, the CEO of Creser Capital Fund, which provides loans to Latino entrepreneurs, who learned last month that his CZI grant would not be renewed. And just last week, The Mercury News reported that CZI cut funding for local homelessness and affordable housing groups. The cuts come in the wake of CZI's warning to employees in February that the organization would be winding down its DEI work, both internally and externally. In a message posted to its website, CZI's COO Marc Malandro seemed to speak out of both sides of his mouth, saying that while CZI was still committed to 'ensuring our work serves everyone' and to 'building a workforce that reflects a broad ranges of experiences, thoughts, and opinions,' the organization would be shifting its focus away from political and social advocacy (where it had worked on immigration reform and racial equality); eliminating its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility team ('given the shifting regulatory and legal landscape'); and discontinuing its 'Diverse Slate' hiring practices, which aimed to ensure that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds were considered for roles. The Standard spoke with current and former CZI employees about the recent changes at the organization, two of which described an internal meeting that included remarks from General Counsel Mark Kim. According to the Standard's reporting, Kim explained that the organization is a 'political target' because of its billionaire co-founders (at least one of whom has done his very best to make friends with the Trump administration) and is simply hoping to avoid litigation. In response to the Standard's reporting, a CZI spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the changes stemmed solely from CZI's desire to avoid being sued, saying that the organization's strategy is 'driven by our science vision to cure, prevent, and manage all disease by the end of this century.' Except, perhaps, the disease of bigotry? Anyway. Additionally, CZI spokesperson assured the Standard that it remained committed to serving the local community, partially through its Community Fund, which has provided $35 million in the last eight years to fund 'local organizations doing essential work throughout San Mateo County.' However, one former grantee told the Standard that she was informed by CZI that she was suddenly 'no longer eligible' to apply for a grant from the fund. Adriana Ayala, who leads the Chicana Latina Foundation, says she was told by a CZI program officer that it was because of her foundation's focus on a targeted population (namely, Latinas). 'In this political climate, targeted populations are frowned upon, or they're seen as DEI,' Ayala told the Standard. The changes at CZI come just months after Zuckerberg's Meta announced that it was ending its fact-checking program on social media and winding down its internal DEI efforts, including the 'Diverse Slate' practices it shared with CZI. The Guardian reported that the changes at Meta caused angst at CZI, with employees asking in a Slack group for managers and executives if CZI 'would 'reaffirm' the organization's values.' At the time, Mark Gundacker, CZI's Head of People, assured employees that CZI's policies and governance remained entirely separate from Meta's, and that 'Meta's changes to its DEI efforts does not impact ours.' He reiterated this point, saying, 'If employees have questions, please reaffirm this for them and we'll continue to do the same whenever the question comes up.'
