Latest news with #WhiteHouse-approved
International Business Times
07-07-2025
- Business
- International Business Times
What is M2 and How It Could Change TikTok for 170 Million US Users
Popular social media app TikTok could soon feel very different for users in the United States. A new model of the widely used video app, described internally as "M2," is in the works and may be launched around September 5 to replace the existing app. The action comes as the U.S. government approaches a deal to separate TikTok's United States business from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Technology Act. The Trump administration has cited it in its effort to force the company to sell its U.S. operations. At the heart of the case is a law enacted in January 2025 that leaves TikTok with a stark choice: either to sell off its U.S. operations or face a total ban. So far, the app has only been unavailable in the U.S. for one day, but time is running out. The White House-approved deadline for an extension to maintain access to TikTok expires in mid-September. According to the reports from The Information and The Verge, the new deal involves a group of wealthy investors, with Oracle expected to be a key partner. To comply with the new law, ByteDance would maintain only a minority holding. But the final green light still hinges on approval from the Chinese government, which is locked in separate trade tensions with the U.S. As part of the plan, when M2 is introduced, the original TikTok app will be removed from app stores and is anticipated to stop functioning by March 2026. The new app could address concerns about data privacy and Chinese influence, though it is not clear whether the idea to build a U.S.-only version was pushed by the Trump administration or by investors. The shift is a relatively rare one in the history of tech. Experts say it is rare for a widely used app to ask people to download a new version from scratch, as it could prompt a significant share of its 170 million U.S. users to abandon the platform. Even so, the move is presented as an effort to safeguard user data and relieve political pressure. In the meantime, Oracle has also landed a significant cloud contract with the United States' government, providing cut-price access to its software across federal agencies. This puts Oracle in a position for a significant role in the data and infrastructure behind the future of TikTok in the United States.
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Trump portrait hangs in Colorado capitol months after president's outburst
Months after Donald Trump expressed strong negative opinions about a presidential portrait of him in the Colorado state capitol that he described as 'purposefully distorted', a White House-approved replacement now hangs in its place. The new portrait, which Trump reportedly demanded be printed with a golden border so it would catch the light and 'glimmer', bears a close resemblance to Trump's official second-term photograph, which hangs in more than 1,600 federal buildings across the US and thousands more on a voluntary basis. The new Colorado painting – donated by the White House and painted by Vanessa Horabuena of Tempe, Arizona, according to the Colorado Sun – shows a significantly older-looking Trump than the first one. It is also more glowering than his first-term photographic portrait, which presented a sunnier disposition and showed Trump standing in the Oval Office with an American flag in the background, smiling. Related: Director of National Portrait Gallery resigns after Trump's effort to fire her Both are a departure from the mugshot issued during his re-election campaign by prosecutors when he was charged with illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia. Yet another portrait, taken from a picture with his fist in the air after he survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last summer, hangs in the grand foyer of the White House, after an official portrait of former president Barack Obama was moved from the location. Trump, with a well-known streak of vanity, strongly objected to the original, rather jowly representation in Colorado by Sarah Boardman. He called it 'truly the worst' and mused that the artist, who also painted the state capitol's portrait of Obama (which Trump said 'looks wonderful'), 'must have lost her talent as she got older'. 'Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,' Trump wrote. 'I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one.' The oil painting, which was commissioned after the state's former Republican senate president Kevin Grantham raised $11,000 for it, was then taken down at the request of other state Republican leaders. 'If the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that's up to them,' the Colorado House Democrats said in a statement at the time. Boardman said the base image she used had been approved by the Capitol building advisory committee. 'My portrait of President Trump has been called thoughtful, non-confrontational, not angry, not happy, not tweeting. In five, 10, 15, 20 years, he will be another president on the wall who is only historical background and he needs to look neutral,' she said.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Harvard Sues Trump Administration in Escalating Fight Over Constitutional Rights
As the Trump administration freezes billions of dollars in federal funding for universities across America refusing to comply with its list of demands, Harvard University has filed a federal lawsuit against the administration and accused it of violating the First Amendment. 'No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,' Harvard's President Alan Garber said in a statement to the university on Monday. The Trump administration has targeted college campuses in recent months, revoking students' visas and attempting to defund universities over pro-Palestine activism. The administration has canceled funding for Columbia and frozen funding for Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern over what they call antisemitism on campuses. Harvard previously agreed to the definition of antisemitism promoted largely by the right, but pushed back against the administration's attempts to seize greater control by demanding the university shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; allow a White House-approved external body 'to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity'; and more. Although some members of the administration have claimed their letter of demands issued this month was sent by mistake, Garber said, other statements and actions suggest a different story: In addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, the government has moved to freeze another $1 billion in grants, and begun investigations of Harvard's operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of the university's tax-exempt status. 'The consequences of the government's overreach will be severe and long-lasting,' Garber said in his message announcing the lawsuit, warning that research for child cancer, infectious diseases outbreaks, and easing the pain of wounded soldiers on the battlefield will be at risk, as well as future 'opportunities to reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.' Harvard's lawsuit is the second stemming from the premier university against the Trump administration. Earlier this month, Harvard professors sued the Trump administration over its review of about $9 billion in federal funding for the university following pro-Palestine protests, calling the move a 'gun to the head.' The complaint also sought a temporary restraining order, and accused the government's tactics of amounting 'to exploiting Title VI to coerce universities into undermining free speech and academic inquiry in service of the government's political or policy preferences.' In Garber's letter to Harvard's community on Monday, he wrote, 'The government has cited the University's response to antisemitism as a justification for its unlawful action. As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism.' He continued, 'To address it effectively requires understanding, intention, and vigilance. Harvard takes that work seriously. We will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law. That is not only our legal responsibility. It is our moral imperative.' More from Rolling Stone Trump Attacks the Supreme Court, Says America 'Cannot Give Everyone a Trial' George Clooney Is Obviously Not Bothered by Trump Attacks: 'I Don't Care' Rich People and Corporations Help Trump Shatter Record for Inauguration Cash Haul Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
The Guardian
20-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Trump-Harvard showdown is the latest front in a long conservative war against academia
The showdown between Donald Trump and Harvard University may have exploded into life this week, but the battle represents just the latest step in what has been a decades-long war waged by the right wing on American academia. It's a fight by conservatives that dates back to Ronald Reagan, the hitherto spiritual leader of the Republican party, all the way to McCarthyism and beyond, experts say, as the rightwing scraps to seize more control in a manner that is 'part of a standard playbook of authoritarianism'. Trump reacted furiously this week after the president of Harvard University, the US's oldest, richest and most prestigious college, refused to acquiesce to demands that would have given the government control over whom it hired and admitted, and what it taught. But the anger wasn't just that Harvard had refused to roll over. It was that the move represented, for the time being, a step back for the Trump administration in what some believe is part of a wider attempt to overhaul US democracy at large. 'It's as dangerous as anything I've ever experienced in my lifetime,' said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors. 'They're attempting to undermine and destabilize and ultimately control higher education. And at one level, it's an assault on higher education, at another level, it could be seen as prevalent to a full-on assault on democracy. So I think this is a threat to the future of the United States of America, and because of this country's role in the world, a threat to the entirety of the globe at this moment.' The government said on Monday it planned to freeze $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard, hours after Alan Garber, the university president, said Harvard would not accept a series of demands made by the Trump administration. The demands included appointing a White House-approved external body to 'to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity', and that Harvard 'immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs'. Garber said the government's edicts 'represent direct governmental regulation' of the school's independence and constitutional rights. 'No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,' Garber wrote in an open letter, which was hailed by the left and by college professors concerned at the capitulation of other schools. Yet, as evidenced by Trump's emotional post on Wednesday, the government's assault on universities is unlikely to stop anytime soon, particularly if he is to emulate the kind of strongman leaders, such as the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, he has praised in the past. '[People in the Trump administration] have read their history, and they know that authoritarian regimes often target higher education as an independent sector and society, and aim to undermine it because of its role in creating an educated populace that could stand up to all forms of authoritarian rule,' Wolfson said. 'And so this is part of a standard playbook of authoritarianism: to attack and to attempt to control or destroy higher education.' The move against universities has echoes of the efforts by the Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy in the middle of the 20th century to root out people he accused of being communists and Marxists. And like McCarthy, Trump's efforts – led by a group of loyalists including the White House deputy chief of staff and head of policy, Stephen Miller – go beyond just universities. Trump has targeted some of the biggest law firms in the US with executive orders, prompting many to cave and pledge hundreds of millions of dollars of pro bono work to causes backed by the Trump administration. 'The Trump administration is following the playbook of totalitarian dictatorships elsewhere in the world. It is trying to use the force of law to intimidate independent civic society organizations, so that opposition to its policies is impossible,' said Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard and co-chair of the university's Council on Academic Freedom. 'This new incarnation of the American right wing, with complete fealty to a single man, and an unprecedented attempt to disable civic society institutions like law firms and universities, is quite extraordinary.' The Trump administration has framed its move on Harvard and other colleges as an effort to crackdown on antisemitism, following protests against Israel's war on Gaza, and as a move against alleged civil rights violations on campus. Few outside of the rightwing sphere see that as a good faith argument. 'As a Jewish faculty member, I'm sensitive to antisemitism on campus, and it does exist and it should be combated. But the claim that Harvard is a bastion of antisemitism is just wild hyperbole. Three of our last four presidents who've served longer than a year have been Jewish. The fourth was married to a Jewish professor,' Pinker said. Harvard has found itself in the Trump administration's crosshairs because of its status as the best known of America's universities, one of the eight esteemed Ivy League schools. Thousands of influential figures across politics, media and business attended Harvard's grand campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts; many of those who didn't go to Harvard still tend to take an interest in its affairs. 'We've got between 4,000 and 5,000 higher education institutions in the US. The Ivys always make headlines. The major cultural commentators in this country are obsessed with the Ivys, and have been for a long time. These are things that sell papers, they get a lot of clicks and a lot of attention,' said Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, a historian of US colleges and universities and author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars. 'The other thing, too, is what happens at your regional state public flagship university often follows from the trends that are set at the Ivys. Not only do they generate a lot of headlines, they are influential in that way.' Just as Harvard's existence predates the founding of the US, rightwing antipathy towards universities has been brewing for a long time. When Ronald Reagan was running for governor of California in 1966, he used anger towards anti-Vietnam student protesters for political gain: one of his main campaign strands was a promise to 'clean up the mess at Berkeley' – the state's flagship university. Reagan's tactics bear echoes of Trump's. Ray Colvig, UC Berkeley's chief public information officer at the time, told the university's news service years later that Reagan 'wanted to establish a special process to select faculty in several disciplines'. 'In other words, he wanted to set a political standard for appointing faculty members. This idea was widely opposed, and it went away,' Colvig said. Reagan wasn't the first to take on the universities. Shepherd said efforts to set up rival, conservative universities, date back to the 1920s, while McCarthy's war on higher education came later. Ellen Schrecker, a historian and author of No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, wrote in the Nation recently that the Trump administration's efforts were 'worse than McCarthy', and Shepherd said Trump's attacks were 'much more accelerated' than the communist-paranoid senator's tactics. 'McCarthyism, in the 1940s and 50s, the idea was to identify specific professors, hardly ever students, always faculty, and have them fired. Today, we're seeing much worse than that. These are attacks on entire programs and departments. So entire departments like Black studies or DEI initiatives. It's also not just relegated to the professors. We're seeing students with their visas revoked being literally plucked off the streets,' Shepherd said. Trump hasn't just targeted Harvard. Columbia caved to a series of demands from the Trump administration in March, as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding, while the White House has announced funding freezes to other schools including Brown, Northwestern, Princeton and Cornell. Harvard taking a stand is one of the first signs of a fight back – even if it came after it was reported in March that the leaders of the university's center for Middle Eastern studies were forced out, a move seen by critics as an attempt to appease Trump – and academics and others hope it could begin a resistance. It is likely to require a group effort to avoid the right wing's goal for higher education in the US: universities that are in effect government-controlled, and where freedom of speech and thought is restricted. 'The right don't want students to hear about the legacy to slavery. They don't want them to hear about structural inequalities,' Shepherd said. 'They don't want to hear why billionaires are bad. They don't want to hear, from the sciences, about climate change. They want a nice, friendly experience where the most students ever get to debate is the differences in Aristotle and Plato. 'They don't want the actual debates that we see unfolding on campuses today.'
