Tag: United States

Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Apple, Says Samsung and Other Tech Firms Could Be Targeted Next
President Donald Trump on Friday demanded Apple and other smartphone makers like Samsung make their phones in the United States or face a 25% tariff.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”
Speaking to press in the Oval Office on Friday after signing executive orders, Trump said the tariff would apply to any phone maker selling devices in the US.
“It would be more. It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product,” Trump told reporters. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”
Trump last week during his Middle East trip said he was displeased with Cook, Apple’s CEO, over the company’s plan to manufacture iPhones set to be sold in the United States at newly built plants in India.
Over the past several years, Apple had been working to diversify its production capabilities. Some iPhone production had already moved to India, and Cook on Apple’s earnings call with investors earlier this month said he expected “the majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin.”
On that call, Cook said he expected Apple would face a tariff burden of up to $900 million this quarter. However, it could have been significantly worse: Apple and other US tech companies scored a big win last month when Trump exempted electronics from his massive tariffs on China.
Unlike Apple, Samsung doesn’t rely on China for smartphone production. The South Korea-based tech giant closed its last phone factory in China in 2019 after losing market share to domestic rivals, though it still has operations there. Sources within Samsung previously told CNN that the vast majority of its smartphone manufacturing takes place in South Korea, Vietnam, India and Brazil.
Despite lowering his tariff to at least 30% on most Chinese goods — down from 145% earlier this month — a 10% universal tariff remains on the majority of goods entering the United States. Roughly 90% of Apple’s iPhone production and assembly is based in China, according to Wedbush Securities’ estimates.
Trump met with Cook in Riyadh at the beginning of the president’s Middle East trip last week. In Qatar, he called out Cook for his plan to build US-bound iPhones in India.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook,” Trump said last week in Qatar. “I said to him, ‘Tim, you’re my friend. I treated you very good. You’re coming in with $500 billion.’ But now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”
Cook met with Trump once again at the White House on Tuesday, an administration official told CNN. The official did not divulge the subject matter of the meeting.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday morning that Trump is trying to “bring back precision manufacturing to the US.”
“I think that one of our greatest vulnerabilities are these, is this external production, especially in semiconductors, and a large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors,” Bessent said. “So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure.”
Some of Apple’s chips are already made in the United States, thanks to its partnership with TSMC, which recently opened a chipmaking plant in Arizona. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘Those jobs aren’t coming back’
The world’s most valuable publicly traded company is flush with cash and rakes in tremendous profit — more than any company in history. But Apple has long contended that it cannot manufacture iPhones in America.
Apple has invested billions of dollars training millions of skilled engineers abroad. China and India, with their massive populations, simply have more skilled engineers than the United States does. And it costs Apple significantly less to pay those workers.
Steve Jobs, Apple’s late CEO, famously brought up the issue during an October 2010 meeting with former President Barack Obama. He called America’s lackluster education system an obstacle for Apple, which needed 30,000 industrial engineers to support its on-site factory workers.
“You can’t find that many in America to hire,” Jobs told Obama, according to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “If you could educate these engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here.”
In a 2012 interview with tech journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he agreed with Jobs’ assessment. When asked if the day would ever come when an Apple product is made in the United States, he said: “I want there to be … and you can bet that we’ll use the whole of our influence on this.”
The notion Apple can reshore iPhone production is a “fictional tale,” Dan Ives, global head of technology research at financial services firm Wedbush Securities.
US-made iPhones could cost more than three times their current price of around $1,000, he said, because it would be necessary to replicate the highly complex production ecosystem that currently exists in Asia.
“You build that (supply chain) in the US with a fab in West Virginia and New Jersey, they’ll be $3,500 iPhones,” he said, referring to fabrication plants, or high-tech manufacturing facilities where computer chips that power electronic devices are normally made.
And even then, it would cost Apple about $30 billion and three years to move just 10% of its supply chain to the US to begin with, Ives told Burnett.
Ives reiterated that stance in a statement following Trump’s Friday tariff threat, saying, “the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the US is a fairy tale that is not feasible.” He estimated moving all of Apple’s iPhone production to the United States would take five to 10 years.
An additional 25% tariff on Apple products could result in higher prices for US iPhone buyers. Rumors have already been swirling that Apple is considering raising prices when it releases its new lineup of iPhones in the fall — a move that could further irk Trump, although the company will likely avoid directly attributing the increases to tariffs.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, estimates it would be difficult for Apple not to raise iPhone prices if it faces tariffs of 30% or higher.
“Anything below 30, they will probably carry the vast majority of that increase,” he said. “But I think at some point they’re going to have to start to share it.”
While moving iPhone production to the United States may not be possible, Apple did announce a $500 billion investment to expand its US facilities earlier this year, in an apparent effort to appease Trump.
The company said the investment would create a new facility to produce servers — previously made outside the United States — in Houston to support Apple Intelligence, its new brand of artificial intelligence products. It will also expand data center capacity in several states, and plans to invest in corporate facilities and production of Apple TV+ shows in 20 states, among other efforts.
May 24, 2025
Elon Musk Claims DOGE Didn’t Cut HIV Programs, but It Disrupted a ‘Miracle Drug’
Although Elon Musk said Doge didn’t cut Aids programs, global health officials describe widespread and disastrous effects resulting from the White House’s throttling of foreign aid. The disruptions have caused new HIV infections to surge in recent months and threaten to derail plans to eradicate the virus as a public health threat by 2030.
In one stark case, the cuts have cast uncertainty over the rollout of a newly developed injectable that scientists have hailed as “the closest thing to a vaccine that we have ever had in HIV response”.
Musk says his cuts did no defunding
Musk was projected 10ft tall above the stage at the Qatar Economic Forum this week as he gave a sweeping and combative video interview. The creator of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, who once boasted he had fed “USAID into the wood chipper”, found himself defending his cuts to humanitarian aid. Just days before, Bill Gates had accused the world’s richest person of “killing the world’s poorest children”.
In one especially fraught exchange with Bloomberg interviewer Mishal Husain, Musk rebuked a question about whether his cuts to USAID had imperiled HIV/Aids programs and claimed he would “fix it right now” if any services had, in fact, been defunded.
“First of all, the program, the Aids medication program, is continuing. So, your fundamental premise is wrong. It is continuing,” Musk said. “It is false. It’s false. It’s false.”
Rather than Musk’s cuts leaving HIV/Aids programs intact, however, global health officials said that Doge’s efforts have in reality hampered their work worldwide and thrown the protection of large swaths of people from disease into disarray.
Doge’s dismantling of USAID plunges Aids services into chaos
Prior to Doge’s cuts and the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid, the US was involved in a wide range of HIV/Aids treatment and prevention programs across dozens of countries. The government implemented the majority of its operations through Pepfar, a USAID-funded program that has contributed more than $110bn to preventing and treating the virus since the initiative began in 2003.
Since Doge dismantled USAID in January, however, the future of Pepfar is uncertain, and many of its services are in jeopardy. A temporary waiver from the state department has allowed funding for some HIV/Aids programs to continue, but only those aimed at treating people who are already living with HIV, as well as pregnant or breastfeeding women.
As a result, many prevention programs involving pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs, or Prep, ground to a halt without US funding. Even services that were allowed, such as testing and treatment, also stopped due to the disruption and confusion caused by Doge’s shutdown of USAID, according to the United Nations. People who showed up to receive testing or medicine often found that no one was there to give it to them, according to a UN health official.
“There were thousands of healthcare workers and community health workers, laboratorians and data clerks, for example, that immediately stopped work,” said Dr Angeli Achrekar, deputy executive director of the programme branch at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and a former Pepfar official. “It’s not like you just turn on the light switch and all of a sudden these services start up again.”
The effects of the cuts have been almost immediate, according to Achrekar, and could roll back years of advancements in combating HIV infections. In Botswana, the number of people receiving Prep has decreased by half since last year. The 30,000 people in Mozambique who were receiving Prep at the end of last year recently went down to 19,000, according to a UN tally. In Zimbabwe, the number of people receiving Prep declined from 4,000 to 1,800 in the same time frame. In Nigeria, 850,000 condoms distributed in December went down to 300,000 by February.
“It’s country after country,” Achrekar said.
A miracle drug cast into uncertainty
The cuts to prevention programs have also caused confusion and uncertainty around the rollout of a highly anticipated new drug called Lenacapivir. The drug, which is under review at the US Food and Drug Administration, protects patients against HIV infection through a single shot given every six months. Two separate large trials across different populations have shown that it almost entirely blocks the risk of contracting the virus.
“It’s nearly 100% effective at stopping new infections,” Achrekar said. “It is the closest thing to a vaccine that we have ever had in the HIV response.” Other researchers have called it a “miracle”.
Pepfar announced at the end of last year that it was partnering with The Global Fund, an international organization that finances global health programs, in an effort to roll out Lenacapivir to at least 2 million people within the next three years. Doge’s cuts have thrown a potential wrench in those plans, however, since the drug would fall under the category of preventative services that the tate department’s waiver says should no longer be funded.
At the Qatar Economic Forum this week, Musk insisted that medication programs were continuing, and, when confronted with the example of Lenacapivir, suggested he would restore its funding.
“Which ones aren’t being funded? I’ll fix it right now,” Musk claimed, later adding: “If in fact this is true, which I doubt it is, then we’ll fix it.”
In response to Musk’s comments, UNAIDS released a statement saying it was encouraged that he would review the crisis caused by halts to US funding. Musk has made similar pledges about restoring health programs that Doge cut in the past, however: in February, Musk said that efforts to prevent the spread of Ebola had been accidentally canceled but were then restored – a claim that USAID officials said was false.
While the Global Fund waits to see what the Trump administration decides to do with Pepfar, it is hoping to carry on with its plans for Lenacapivir whether the US is involved or not. Losing Pepfar’s partnership would mean a huge decrease in funding, however, as well as Pepfar’s extensive connections to organizations that could help in administering the drug.
“We’re not backing off the ambition to deliver Lenacapivir to two million people if we can,” said Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund. “The extent to which we can continue to do that in partnership with Pepfar is uncertain.”
Since the waiver was issued on 1 February there has been no clarity or new policy released on what the Trump administration plans to do with Pepfar. US partners working on prevention services have had their agreements terminated, while UNAIDS projects that if Pepfar’s treatment and prevention services are stopped entirely, it would result in an additional 6.6m HIV infections by 2029.
May 24, 2025
Trump shifts from tax cuts to tariffs, disregarding economic red flags
One day after House Republicans approved an expensive package of tax cuts that rattled financial markets, President Trump pivoted back to his other signature policy priority, unveiling a battery of tariff threats that further spooked investors and raised the prospects of higher prices on American consumers.
For a president who has fashioned himself as a shrewd steward of the economy, the decision to escalate his global trade war on Friday appeared curious and costly. It capped off a week that saw Mr. Trump ignore repeated warnings that his agenda could worsen the nation’s debt, harm many of his own voters, hurt the finances of low-income families and contribute far less in growth than the White House contends.
The tepid market response to the president’s economic policy approach did little to sway Mr. Trump, who chose on Friday to revive the uncertainty that has kept businesses and consumers on edge. The president threatened 50 percent tariffs on the European Union, and a 25 percent tariff on Apple. Other tech companies, he said, could face the same rate.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has raced to enact his economic vision, aiming to pair generous tax cuts with sweeping deregulation that he says will expand America’s economy. He has fashioned his steep, worldwide tariffs as a political cudgel that will raise money, encourage more domestic manufacturing and improve U.S. trade relationships.
But for many of his signature policies to succeed, Mr. Trump will have to prove investors wrong, particularly those who lend money to the government by buying its debt.
So far, bond markets are not buying his approach. Where Mr. Trump sees a “golden age” of growth, investors see an agenda that comes with more debt, higher borrowing costs, inflation and an economic slowdown. Investors who once viewed government debt as a relatively risk-free investment are now demanding that the United States pay much more to those who lend America money.
That is on top of businesses, including Walmart, that say they may have to raise prices as a result of the president’s global trade war. The onslaught of policy changes has also left the Federal Reserve frozen in place, unsure as to when the economy will call for lower interest rates in the face of persistent uncertainty. As a result, borrowing costs for mortgages, car loans and credit cards remain onerous for Americans.
Still, Mr. Trump continues to proclaim that his policies will bring prosperity. This week, the White House released data showing that its tax cuts could increase U.S. output as much as 5.2 percent in the short term, compared with the gains it would have achieved if the bill is not adopted. The administration has stood largely alone in offering such rosy predictions about the effects of Mr. Trump’s policies on businesses, average workers and the nation’s fiscal future.
In report after report, economists this week predicted that Mr. Trump’s signature tax package could add well over $3 trillion to the national debt. Some found that the measure is unlikely to deliver substantial economic growth, and could enrich the wealthiest Americans while harming the poorest, millions of whom could soon lose access to federal aid for food and health insurance.
The tax cuts are largely an extension of ones that Congress passed in 2017, meaning that few taxpayers will see an increase to their after-tax income. In fact, some might see their financial situation deteriorate: Many of the lowest earners may even see about $1,300 less on average under the Republican bill in 2030, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, which factored in the proposed cuts to federal safety-net programs.
Facing an onslaught of red flags and dour reports, the White House has remained bullish.
“I think folks have cried wolf a lot,” Stephen Miran, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview, stressing that Mr. Trump’s agenda would “grow the economy.”
In the past, investors and businesses might have rejoiced over Mr. Trump’s grand proclamations about lowering taxes, reducing regulations and opening access to foreign markets. But the most common reaction this week was concern over Mr. Trump’s sclerotic approach, which has renewed fears that the economy could enter a prolonged period of pain.
“It’s possible that you’re going to get a big benefit to growth, but the costs are so obvious and so clear that I think it’s hard to put a lot of faith in that at the moment,” said Eric Winograd, an economist at the investment firm AllianceBernstein.
By most metrics, Mr. Trump inherited a solid economy. Layoffs were low when he took office, and have stayed that way, helping to keep the unemployment rate stable. And consumers, even amid elevated prices, continued to spend apace.
Four months into his second term, however, there are signs that the economy is beginning to come under greater strain, in what experts worry is a prelude to a more substantive slowdown. While economists do not expect the economy to tip fully into a recession, they say Mr. Trump’s tariffs in particular have raised the odds of a downturn, as both businesses and consumers begin to cut back.
Many of the president’s allies maintain that Mr. Trump is doing exactly as he promised during the 2024 presidential campaign, acting out of a belief that his vision can spur robust economic growth. In doing so, that can help to create jobs, raise wages and generate the sort of activity that can lessen the nation’s fiscal imbalance, said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who served as one of Mr. Trump’s advisers during his first term.
“So many of these problems are the result of low growth,” Mr. Moore said of the economy. Mr. Trump is aiming to get growth back up to 3 percent, Mr. Moore added.
But the administration has at times ignored a steady stream of data suggesting its policies may not deliver those gains.
The disparity between vision and reality became apparent Thursday as House Republicans voted to advance a bill that would extend the set of tax cuts enacted in the president’s first term. The measure also included Mr. Trump’s campaign promises to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay.
An analysis released Thursday by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan advisory arm of Congress, found that the new Republican measure may raise the average rate of growth in U.S. output by only 0.03 percentage points compared with current expectations through 2034. The finding cast doubt on the administration’s long-held assertion that economic activity can help to lower the deficit. The joint committee also said the president’s tax package could add $3.7 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next decade.
Mr. Miran maintained on Friday that congressional analysts and others had underestimated the effects of Mr. Trump’s initial tax cuts, and had done the same this year.
“Better tax policy creates better economic growth, and better economic growth creates better revenue,” he said.
Focusing on the debt, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said on Fox News on Thursday that there was “a lot of spending reduction in this bill,” adding that the Trump administration would seek additional savings as the bill moved through the Senate.
The prospect of a worsening fiscal imbalance prompted Moody’s Ratings just last week to downgrade the U.S. credit rating, citing Republican tax cuts and the proclivity of past G.O.P. administrations to spend. Party lawmakers swiftly rejected the finding, but bond markets took notice, sending yields on longer-term U.S. debt higher. Soft demand at an auction of 20-year Treasuries on Wednesday gave markets another jolt, pushing up bond yields and weighing on U.S. stocks.
Mr. Trump sent markets into another tailspin on Friday as he abruptly shifted his attention to tariffs. He attacked the European Union and threatened to raise tariffs on its exports to a flat rate of 50 percent. He signaled a mixed appetite for negotiations, telling reporters in the Oval Office: “I don’t know. We’re going to see what happens.”
The president also took aim at Apple, signaling he would impose a 25 percent import tax on iPhones, months after his administration relaxed some of its trade policies to aid tech giants. Mr. Trump later suggested his new tariffs might also apply to Samsung.
The S&P 500 fell nearly a percentage point on Friday and pushed the U.S. dollar lower against a basket of its peers. Many from Washington to Wall Street yet again scrambled to decipher Mr. Trump’s intentions — and sort out the extent to which the president is serious, bluffing or set to walk back his policies again.
Some companies, including Walmart, have said they may have to raise prices as a result of the president’s global trade war. (Karsten Moran for The New York Times)
Some businesses have forecast price increases as a result of Mr. Trump’s tariff threats. A report this week from Allianz found that many businesses are trying to push the added tariff costs onto suppliers or consumers, with roughly half of its survey respondents saying they may increase prices.
The potential for rising prices while growth is slowing poses a unique challenge for the Fed and its voting members, forcing them to reconcile with conflicting missions — a goal to pursue low, stable inflation, and a desire to sustain a healthy labor market.
“The bar for me is a little higher for action in any direction while we’re waiting to get some clarity,” Austan Goolsbee, the president of the Chicago Fed and a voting member on this year’s rate-setting committee, told CNBC on Friday.
Mr. Goolsbee recalled a recent exchange with the chief executive of a construction business, who said: “We’re now in a put-your-pencils-down moment.” Businesses, Mr. Goolsbee said, now “have to wait if every week or every month or every day there’s going to be a new major announcement.”
“They just can’t take action until some of those things are resolved,” he added.
May 24, 2025
Pro-Trump Crypto Advocate Justin Sun Exemplified MAGA-Style Favor-Trading at Trump’s Crypto Gathering
If you’re looking for one image to summarize the grifter’s paradise that was Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency dinner Thursday night, behold:
I was awarded a Trump Golden Tourbillon watch by Trump! pic.twitter.com/CCYGQ6FMPA
— H.E. Justin Sun 👨‍🚀 🌞 (@justinsuntron) May 23, 2025
The event was a private dinner with the president at Trump National Golf Club, where “investors spent an estimated $148 million on the $TRUMP meme coin to secure their seats … with the top-25 holders spending more than $111 million,” Reuters reported, citing crypto intelligence firm Inca Digital. Reuters also cited an analysis that found the Trumps have made $320.19 million in fees from their meme coins.
And the person in the photo is Justin Sun, a MAGA-aligned crypto bro who said he was “awarded” what he identified as a “Trump Gold Tourbillon” (a Trump-branded watch that retails for $100,000). The White House didn’t immediately respond to MSNBC’s question as to whether the president actually gifted this watch to Sun.
Sun, whose dubious ventures have previously enlisted celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul, claimed he’s the top holder (that is, the largest investor) of Trump’s meme coin, which has drawn many foreign investors — itself a whole ethical and legal quagmire.
His investments in Trump have been considerable — but, for him, arguably worthwhile. Sun has been in the news in the last few months because, after he plowed $75 million into Trump family crypto, per NBC News, the SEC put a 60-day pause on the charges of market manipulation and offering unregistered securities it had been pursuing against him since 2023. (Sun did not reply to NBC News’ request for comment, but denied any wrongdoing to The Wall Street Journal in April.)
NBC News published a dispatch on the president’s event, for a more thorough picture of the various attendees and the MAGA movement’s blatant disregard for ethics.
But to really catch the flavor of what’s happening, it’s these images of brazen wealth and intolerably open corruption that one would expect from a president dead-set on dragging the United States back to the Gilded Age, an era marked by immense wealth inequality and widespread corruption.
As Chris Hayes noted on “All In” on Thursday, the contrasting images of Trump that day — whipping votes for a House budget with deep cuts to social programs, such as food aid and health care, in the morning, and in the evening reportedly helicoptering into a ritzy and self-enriching dinner for a few minutes — is too glaring to ignore.
Watch Hayes’ commentary on what he called the “Met Gala of pay-for-play” here:
May 24, 2025
Judge Halts Trump Administration’s Attempt to End Harvard’s Enrollment of Foreign Students
A federal judge on Friday granted Harvard University’s emergency motion to block the Trump administration from revoking its ability to enroll international students, as litigation on the matter continues.
In her order, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said Harvard showed “it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury” if the Trump administration is allowed to implement its revocation notice before “there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
The order allows Harvard to maintain its “status quo” in enrolling international students for now. Burroughs has scheduled another hearing for May 27.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem notified Harvard a day earlier that the government would be terminating its student visa program, marking a major escalation in the administration’s pressure campaign against the Ivy League university.
This development is extraordinary, but it does not appear out of the blue: In mid-April, while canceling nearly $3 million in DHS grants to Harvard, Noem simultaneously demanded that the university turn over records on foreign students alleged to have engaged in “illegal and violent activities.” Failure to cooperate would jeopardize Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification — which allows schools to admit international students. Evidently, Noem has now followed through on that threat.
Harvard sued the Trump administration less than 24 hours after Noem’s revocation notice was issued.
“The government’s action is unlawful,” the university said in a statement on Thursday, adding: “This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”
Roughly 7,000 students across Harvard’s 13 schools are student visa holders, according to the university.
May 23, 2025
At Trump’s $148 Million Meme Coin Dinner, the Food Was Bad and Security Was Weak, Attendee Says
The price of President Donald Trump’s meme coin plunged 16% as of Friday morning, just hours after he hosted a black-tie gala at his Virginia golf club for its biggest buyers — an elite crowd that spent a combined $148 million on the token for the chance to be there.
It was billed as “the most exclusive invitation in the world.”
Among the 220 attendees were crypto influencers, industry executives such as Sandy Carter of Unstoppable Domains, and former NBA star Lamar Odom, who used the occasion to praise Trump as “the greatest president” and promote his own token, $ODOM.
The top 25 wallets were promised a private reception and guided tour. Others, such as 25-year-old Nicholas Pinto — whose dad drove him to the event in his Lamborghini — left underwhelmed and still hungry.
“The food sucked,” Pinto said. “Wasn’t given any drinks other than water or Trump’s wine. I don’t drink, so I had water. My glass was only filled once.”
Trump made only a brief appearance, Pinto said. “He didn’t talk to any of the 220 guests — maybe the top 25,” he said.
All in, the president was there for 23 minutes, Pinto said. Trump delivered a brief address rehashing old crypto talking points then left on a helicopter before taking any questions or pictures with his meme coin contest winners, he said.
Phones weren’t locked in RFID pouches, and security was lax, according to Pinto.
“Once Trump left, they didn’t really worry about anything else,” Pinto added.
Contest winners who spent the most on $TRUMP meme coins added their signatures to a poster-sized printout of the leaderboard at a gala dinner at Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, May 22, 2025. (Nicholas Pinto)
The crowd’s opulence was on full display.
“Richard Mille watches weren’t even rare,” Pinto said. “I saw at least 16 people wearing them. I never see that unless I’m at a high-end restaurant in Miami or Dubai.”
But the vibe was more muted than expected, he said: “Lots of people didn’t even hold the coin anymore. They were checking their phones during dinner to see if the price moved.”
The Budgets has reached out to Trump representatives for comment on the dinner and attendees.
Protests
For lawmakers and regulators, the dinner set off alarm bells.
The #1 token holder was Chinese-born crypto mogul Justin Sun, who is currently facing Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges that were recently paused, with the agency citing “the public interest.”
Sun holds over $22 million in the $TRUMP token and another $75 million in World Liberty Financial’s native token.
“As the top holder of $TRUMP and proud supporter of President Trump, it was an honor to attend the Trump Gala Dinner,” Sun posted on Friday. “Thank you @POTUS for your unwavering support of our industry!”
Outside the gates of Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, about a hundred protesters gathered, according to NBC News. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., joined them, backing a new End Crypto Corruption Act with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Signs read “Crypto Corruption” and “Trump is a traitor.”
Crypto on Capitol Hill
“The Trump family activity in the memecoin space makes my work in Congress more complicated,” Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., told CNBC News on Friday.
Hill, who’s leading negotiations on a bipartisan stablecoin regulation bill known as the GENIUS Act, called the gala “a distraction from the good work we need to do.”
Now, the GENIUS Act is at risk.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., recently added a controversial rider to the bill that would cap credit card late fees — what’s seen as a poison pill that could alienate banking allies and stall final approval.
President Donald Trump speaks at a dinner for meme coin contest winners at Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, May 22, 2025. (Nicholas Pinto)
On Thursday night as the meme coin contest dinner was underway, a bloc of Senate Democrats announced they’d be pushing for a new provision that would ban presidents and senior officials from profiting off crypto ventures while in office — a direct challenge to the Trump-linked stablecoin USD1 that launched in the spring.
In Washington, there’s growing concern that political infighting over Trump’s crypto ventures could derail the stablecoin bill altogether. That poses an even bigger risk.
According to The Wall Street Journal, major banks including JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are in early talks to issue a unified digital dollar to compete with Tether, the foreign-controlled stablecoin that now commands over 60% of global market share.
Those plans hinge on legal clarity.
If the GENIUS Act stalls, the U.S. could lose its window to regain ground in the global race for digital payments.
The White House has tried to draw a line between Trump the president and Trump the private businessman.
“The president is attending it in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters when pressed on attendee transparency.
The administration declined to release a guest list. But blockchain data — and a patchwork of guest photos — tell part of the story.
A Bloomberg News analysis found that all but six of the top 25 wallets used foreign exchanges, ostensibly off-limits to U.S. users. More than half of the top 220 wallets were linked to similar offshore platforms.
One Nasdaq-listed penny stock, Freight Technologies, disclosed in an SEC filing that it spent $2 million on Trump’s token to push U.S.-Mexico trade policy. It didn’t make the cut for the dinner — finishing 250th.
Since its January debut, the $TRUMP coin has generated more than $324 million in trading fees. Roughly 80% of the $TRUMP token supply is controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliates, according to the project’s website.
WLFI, the Trump’s parallel token, has sold $550 million in two token sales.
Still, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks remained bullish on “significant bipartisan support” for stablecoin legislation.
“We already have over $200 billion in stablecoins — it’s just unregulated,” Sacks told CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime” on Wednesday. “If we provide the legal clarity and legal framework for this, I think we could create trillions of dollars of demand for our Treasurys practically overnight, very quickly.”
“We have every expectation now that it’s going to pass,” added Sacks, though he didn’t answer a question about concerns from Democrats that there aren’t sufficient safeguards in place to keep the president and his family from profiting from legislation.
While Sacks sold $200 million in crypto-related holdings before taking his White House job, according to a disclosure filing, Trump and his family have been leaning into building a crypto empire.
The Trumps are financial backers of World Liberty Financial, which is behind the USD1 stablecoin that is backed by Treasurys and dollar deposits.
Abu Dhabi’s MGX investment fund recently pledged $2 billion in USD1 to Binance, the world’s largest digital assets exchange. It’s the company’s largest-ever investment made in crypto.
May 23, 2025
Record Number of Americans Applied for U.K. Citizenship as Trump Started His Second Term
A record number of Americans applied for British citizenship between January and March, according to the first set of data covering the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
Some 1,931 Americans put in an application, the most since records began in 2004 and a jump of 12% on the previous quarter, figures from the UK Home Office showed Thursday. Applications had already soared during the October-December period, which coincided with Trump’s re-election.
Successful applications by US citizens to settle permanently in the United Kingdom, rather than just move there initially, also hit a record high last year, the latest period for which official data is available. Settlement comes with the right to live, work and study in Britain indefinitely and can be used to apply for citizenship. More than 5,500 Americans were granted settled status in 2024, a fifth more than in 2023.
The last time American applications for British citizenship spiked was in 2020, during Trump’s first presidential term and at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Other data also showed that in the first six months of 2020 more than 5,800 Americans gave up their citizenship, nearly triple the number from all of 2019. The statistics were compiled by Bambridge Accountants, a firm with offices in New York and London specializing in cross-border taxation.
“These are mainly people who already left the US and just decided they’ve had enough of everything,” Alistair Bambridge, a partner at Bambridge Accountants, told CNN in August 2020.
Many people who renounced their citizenship complained of being unhappy with the political climate in the United States at the time and how the pandemic was being handled, but another reason for their decision was often taxes, he said.
While many Americans are looking to build a life in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, that’s becoming more difficult.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last week that the government would toughen requirements for legal migrants and extend the wait for newcomers to claim citizenship.
And earlier this week, Italy enacted a law that removes the route to citizenship through great-grandparents. The country had already tightened visa rules for non-European Union citizens.
May 23, 2025
iPhone Price Could Soar to $3,500 if Made in the U.S.
US President Donald Trump boasted “jobs and factories will come roaring back” when he unleashed unprecedented tariffs around the world during his “Liberation Day” address last month.
But there’s one product the president is particularly eager to produce in the US: iPhones.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”
But Dan Ives, global head of technology research at financial services firm Wedbush Securities, told in April that idea is a “fictional tale.”
US-made iPhones will likely cost more than three times their current price of around $1,000, Ives said, because of the costs associated with replicating the highly complex production ecosystem that currently exists in Asia.
“You build that (supply chain) in the US with a fab in West Virginia and New Jersey. They’ll be $3,500 iPhones,” he said, referring to fabrication plants, or high-tech manufacturing facilities where computer chips that power electronic devices are normally made.
And even then, it would cost Apple about $30 billion and three years to move just 10% of their supply chain to the US to begin with, Ives told Burnett.
The making and assembly of smartphone parts shifted to Asia decades ago, as American companies largely focused on software development and product design, which generate much higher profit margins. That move has helped make Apple one of the world’s most valuable companies and cement itself as a dominant smartphone maker.
Since Trump’s inauguration in late January, Apple’s shares have lost more than 14% of their value due to concerns about the impact of tariffs on its sprawling supply chain, which is highly dependent on China and Taiwan. About 90% of Apple’s iPhone production takes place in China, according to Ives.
“That’s why I think you see what’s happened to the stock, because no company is more caught up in this tariff front and center in this category five storm than Cupertino and Apple,” he said in April. “It’s an economic Armageddon, but especially for the tech industry.”
The chips that power iPhones are mainly manufactured in Taiwan, while its screen panels are supplied by South Korean companies. Some other components are made in China, and final assembly mostly takes place in the country.
The administration’s exemption of smartphones and other electronics containing semiconductors from the elevated “reciprocal” tariffs on China has spared iPhones from the harshest levies, but Apple still faces a 20% tariff on Chinese goods for the country’s role in the fentanyl trade. Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the company’s most recent earnings call that “the majority” of iPhones coming into the United States will now be shipped from India, adding that tariffs could add $900 million to Apple’s costs this quarter.
In February, Apple announced it would invest $500 billion in the United States over the next four years as part of its effort expand production outside China and to avoid Trump’s tariffs on the country.
Apple has been seeking to diversify its production bases from China to India and Brazil. But Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, estimates it would be difficult for Apple not to raise iPhone prices if it faces tariffs of 30% or higher.
“Anything below 30, they will probably carry the vast majority of that increase,” he said. “But I think at some point they’re going to have to start to share it.”
May 23, 2025
Trump advocates for Apple to pay a 25% tariff on iPhones manufactured outside the U.S.
President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday morning that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.
Production of Apple’s flagship phone happens primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.
Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.
This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.
“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.
Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.
Apple declined to comment for this story.
The company said during its May 1 earnings report that it expects about $900 million in additional costs for tariffs in the current quarter. Cook said on the company’s earnings call that the tariff outlook was “very difficult to predict” past June.
Foxconn, one of Apple’s main iPhone assembly partners, is spending $1.5 billion on expanding its India facilities, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
Trump has made public criticisms of other major U.S. companies, including Walmart, during his trade war push, but the levies on a specific consumer product is a new step. The exact legal mechanism for the tariff is unclear.
Trump followed up his post about Apple with another calling for a 50% tariff on products from the European Union. Taken together, the posts point to trade tensions increasing again after the U.S. had temporarily lowered many of its levies, including in an agreement with China.
Apple also had to navigate tariff threats during Trump’s first term, when a 15% tariff on Chinese imports was being considered in 2019. At that time, Cook had a strong relationship with Trump and the final trade deal excluded core Apple products from the duties.
As Apple is caught in the U.S. president’s crosshairs, the company is also seeing weak demand in China. On Friday the company hiked trade-in incentives for iPhones in China.
May 23, 2025
judge has halted the Trump administration’s plans for extensive layoffs across numerous U.S. government agencies
A federal judge further blocked the Trump administration from sharply cutting jobs and reorganizing the structure of many major federal agencies as part of its so-called DOGE effort under billionaire Elon Musk.
The order issued late Thursday granted a preliminary injunction that pauses further reductions in force and “reorganization of the executive branch for the duration of the lawsuit.”
The Trump administration on Friday morning appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and is expected to ask that court to block the injunction from taking effect.
“Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them. This much is undisputed,” wrote Judge Susan Illston in her order in U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California.
“But Congress creates federal agencies, funds them, and gives them duties that — by statute — they must carry out,” Illston wrote.
“Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”
Illston’s injunction was issued in response to a lawsuit challenging the effects of a Feb. 11 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which said it “commences a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy.” The order directed heads of federal agencies to prepare for large-scale reductions in force.
The suit was filed by a group of unions representing federal workers, as well as advocacy groups, and several cities, states and counties.
The Trump administration has already requested that the Supreme Court issue an emergency pause of Illston’s initial temporary restraining order blocking its reorganization efforts.
“That far-reaching order bars almost the entire Executive Branch from formulating and implementing plans to reduce the size of the federal workforce, and requires disclosure of sensitive and deliberative agency documents that are presumptively protected by executive privilege,” wrote U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer in the May 16 application to the high court.
“Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has ever intended to make federal bureaucrats ‘a class with lifetime employment, whether there was work for them to do or not,’” Sauer wrote. “This Court should stay the district court’s order.”
The mass firing of federal employees has been a pillar of Trump’s domestic policy in the early months of his second term.
May 23, 2025
Trump Directs Accelerated Expansion of Nuclear Power Plants
President Trump signed four executive orders on Friday aimed at accelerating the construction of nuclear power plants in the United States, including a new generation of small, advanced reactors that offer the promise of faster deployment but have yet to be proven.
One order directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nation’s independent safety regulator, to streamline its rules and to take no more than 18 months to approve applications for new reactors. The order also urges the agency to consider lowering its safety limits for radiation exposure, saying that current rules go beyond what is needed to protect human health.
Another order directs the Energy and Defense departments to explore siting reactors on federal lands and military bases, possibly alongside new data centers. That could allow the agencies to bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and develop their own, faster processes for approving reactors.
The Trump administration also set a goal of quadrupling the size of the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants, from nearly 100 gigawatts of electric capacity today to 400 gigawatts by 2050. One gigawatt is enough to power nearly 1 million homes.
“This is a huge day for the nuclear industry,” said Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, as he stood behind Mr. Trump at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office. “Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation.”
In one of his first acts in office, Mr. Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” saying the country did not have enough electricity to meet its growing needs, particularly for data centers that run artificial intelligence. While most of Mr. Trump’s actions have focused on boosting coal, oil and natural gas, administration officials have supported nuclear power, too.
Nuclear power enjoys bipartisan backing in Congress. While some Democrats remain opposed because of concerns about safety and disposal of nuclear waste, an increasing number have embraced the technology because it doesn’t produce planet-warming emissions. It also gets backing from Republicans who say nuclear power plants strengthen U.S. energy security.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks to the media after the House narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” (Fox News)
The far-reaching domestic policy bill passed by House Republicans this week aimed to halt federal support for most types of emissions-free power. But the nuclear industry got an exemption: Companies aiming to build new reactors would still be able to get a tax break as long as they begin construction by the end of 2028.
Even so, developing new reactors in the United States has proved enormously difficult.
While the country has the world’s largest fleet of nuclear power plants, only three new reactors have come online since 1996. Many utilities have been scared off by the cost: The two most recent reactors built at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia totaled $35 billion, double the initial estimates, and arrived seven years behind schedule.
In recent years, more than a dozen companies have begun developing a new generation of smaller reactors a fraction of the size of those at Vogtle. The hope is that these reactors would have a lower upfront price tag, making them a less risky investment for utilities. They might also be based on a design that could be repeated often, as opposed to custom-built, to reduce costs.
So far, however, none of these next-generation plants have been built, although projects are underway in Wyoming, Texas and Tennessee.
Some nuclear proponents and companies have blamed the sluggish pace on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must approve new designs before they are built. Critics say that many of the regulations that the agency uses were designed for an earlier era and are no longer appropriate for advanced reactors that are designed to be less susceptible to meltdowns.
“This is an agency that needs be shaken up a bit,” said Jacob DeWitte, chief executive of Oklo Inc., a startup that has developed a small advanced reactor that it plans to build at Idaho National Laboratory. He called the executive orders “incredibly exciting on multiple fronts.”
In one executive order, Mr. Trump directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to undertake a “wholesale revision” of its rules within 18 months and reorganize itself in consultation with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the group formed by Elon Musk. That reorganization could include layoffs, the order said.
While Congress established the nuclear agency to be independent from the White House, Mr. Trump has sought to exert greater authority over independent agencies in recent months.
“The N.R.C. is assessing the executive orders and will comply with White House directives,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “We look forward to continuing to work with the administration, DOE and DOD on future nuclear programs.”
Inside the control room of the Three Mile Island facility, which is being revived to power a Microsoft data center. (George Etheredge/The New York Times)
Skeptics of nuclear power fear that pressure from the White House could cause the agency to take shortcuts on safety. Since the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, in which there were no fatalities, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ratcheted up safety requirements. While that has made it harder to build new plants, the country has also not experienced another major nuclear accident.
“Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority,” said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a frequent critic of the industry. He added that if another large radiological release were to occur, it would “destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject U.S. nuclear technology for decades to come.”
Even a few nuclear companies and proponents have been nervous about a major shake-up at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They note that the agency has already started streamlining its approval processes in response to bipartisan bills passed by Congress, and that a hasty reorganization could, paradoxically, end up delaying approvals for the nuclear companies that are in the process of getting permits.
“Our assessment is that N.R.C. is already making significant progress on reform,” said Judi Greenwald, executive director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a pronuclear think tank. “It is in everyone’s interest that this progress continue and not be undermined by staffing cuts or upended by conflicting directives.”
Another order calls on the secretary of energy to develop a plan to rebuild U.S. supplies of enriched uranium and other nuclear fuels, which in recent years have largely been imported from Russia.
But speeding up regulatory approvals won’t be sufficient to revive the nuclear industry, some experts said. The first few reactors that do get built are likely to be enormously expensive, and some sort of government support would likely be required to help companies build reactors at a pace that could drive down costs.
To that end, one of the executive orders directs the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, which currently has roughly $400 billion in lending authority, to make resources available for restarting shuttered nuclear plants and building new reactors. The order sets a goal of having 10 large reactors under construction by 2030.
Yet the loan office has lost more than half its staff this year after a wave of Trump administration layoffs and buyouts, and House Republicans have proposed cutting its budget. Those cuts could hobble a key program for financing new reactors. nuclear supporters have said.
“It’s good to see the focus on building a series of proven large reactors as well as smaller newer designs,” said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group that supports nuclear power. “But you need serious government financial support to make any of this happen, and get to commercial scale and lower costs. To support the administration’s goals, Congress needs to boost support instead of gutting it.”
May 23, 2025
Deepfake Laws Lead to Prosecution and Penalties — and Some Pushback
Pennsylvania’s attorney general recently accused a police officer of taking photos in a women’s locker room, secretly filming people while on duty and possessing a stolen handgun. But he was unable to bring charges related to a cache of photos found on the officer’s work computer featuring lurid images of minors created by artificial intelligence. When the computer was seized, in November, creating digital fakes was not yet considered a crime.
Since then, a statewide ban on such content has taken effect. While it came too late to apply to the police officer’s case, the state’s attorney general, Dave Sunday, has already used the law to charge another man who was accused of having 29 files of A.I.-generated child sexual abuse material in his home.
Over the past two years, American legislators have grown increasingly alarmed by the threat of malicious deepfakes. Sexual images of middle school students have been digitally faked without their permission. Vice President JD Vance disavowed an almost certainly inauthentic clip that mimicked his voice to criticize Elon Musk. An ad featuring an A.I.-generated version of the actress Jamie Lee Curtis was removed from Instagram only after she posted a public complaint.
Legislators are responding. Already this year, 26 laws governing various kinds of deepfakes have been enacted, following 80 in 2024 and 15 in 2023, according to the political database Ballotpedia. This month in Tennessee, sharing deepfake sexual images without permission became a felony that carries up to 15 years of prison time and as much as $10,000 in fines. Iowa enacted two bills related to sexually explicit deepfakes last year, one of which established sexual images of children generated by A.I. as a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,245 fine for the first offense. In New Jersey, a recently approved ban on malicious deepfakes could result in a fine of up to $30,000 and prison time.
California has been especially aggressive in reacting to deepfakes, passing eight related bills in September alone, including five on a single day.
Academy Award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis poses with her Oscar trophy, the morning after her win at the 95th Oscars ceremony, at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2023. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re in a very dangerous time, and we’re playing defense on everything that we do,” said Josh Lowenthal, a Democrat in the California Assembly, while introducing a session last week in Sacramento on the dangers of deepfakes.
Mr. Lowenthal, who co-sponsored a recently introduced bill targeting sexually explicit deepfake material, later watched a demonstration of the technology spit out a realistic image of him in a prison cell and produce a fake news story about comments he never made.
“I would’ve thought that was me,” he said after hearing deepfake audio of his voice, generated on the spot.
Reining in deepfakes has also become a federal priority, and a markedly bipartisan one. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes the nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit photos and videos, including A.I. content, and requires tech platforms to quickly remove the content once they are notified. President Trump signed the bill in the White House Rose Garden on Monday, accompanied by his wife, Melania, who backed the legislation.
But lawmakers’ enthusiasm for deepfake legislation has also set off a surge of pushback. Critics complain that many of the laws stifle free speech, constrain American competitiveness and are so complicated to enforce that they are, in effect, toothless.
Because of those concerns, some Republicans in Congress are trying to curb the state actions. They are now considering a 10-year moratorium that would stop states from enforcing and passing legislation related to artificial intelligence, giving the federal government sole regulatory authority and lessening the pressure on A.I. companies. Soon after re-entering office, Mr. Trump revoked an executive order from his predecessor that sought to ensure the technology’s safety and transparency, issuing his own executive order that decried “barriers to American A.I. innovation” and pushed the United States “to retain global leadership” in the field.
Regulating artificial intelligence requires balance, said Representative Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey who has helped write multiple deepfake bills. For all its potential dangers, he said, the technology could also become a powerful engine for job creation and creative expression.
“It’s an ever-evolving space,” said Mr. Gottheimer, a candidate for governor who last month posted a video that featured, with a disclosure, a digitally generated version of himself boxing with Mr. Trump. “The key is making sure that people are protected as we harness the opportunities here.”
Some state laws have also been challenged in court. In California, a conservative YouTube creator who posted an edited campaign video spoofing former Vice President Kamala Harris’s voice sued the attorney general last fall over two laws focused on election-related deepfakes. His argument: The regulations force social media companies to censor protected political speech, including parodies, and allow anybody to sue over content that he or she dislikes.
The lawsuit now includes plaintiffs such as The Babylon Bee, a right-wing satirical site; Rumble, the right-wing streaming platform; and X, the social media company owned by Mr. Musk (which last month also sued Minnesota over a similar law). A federal judge ordered that enforcement of one of the California laws be temporarily paused, saying it “acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel.”
In Dubuque County, Iowa, Sheriff Joseph L. Kennedy is assisting a local police department with a case involving male high schoolers who shared images of female students’ faces attached to artificially generated nude bodies. (Facebook)
Litigation isn’t the only challenge to regulating deepfakes. In Dubuque County, Iowa, Sheriff Joseph L. Kennedy is assisting a local police department with a case involving male high schoolers who shared images of female students’ faces attached to artificially generated nude bodies.
Such cases are time-consuming to work through, requiring careful documentation, data preservation efforts, subpoenas and search warrants for devices, Sheriff Kennedy said. Occasionally, the companies behind the websites or apps that people use to make A.I. images are uncooperative, especially if they are based in a country where an Iowa law has no power, he said.
“That’s where you can hit snags and are short on options for what you can do,” he said. “Sometimes, it just seems like we’re chasing our tails.”
First lady Melania Trump has used AI to record her audiobook. (AP)
While most deepfake bans are focused on sexual, political or artistic content, the technology also has banks and other businesses on high alert. Michael S. Barr, a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, said in a speech last month that the technology “has the potential to supercharge identity fraud.”
One deepfake scam bilked Arup, a British design and engineering company that worked on the Sydney Opera House and Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium, out of $25 million last year. Fraudsters also tried to target Ferrari last summer, using WhatsApp messages that mimicked the southern Italian accent of the automaker’s chief executive.
“If this technology becomes cheaper and more broadly available to criminals — and fraud detection technology does not keep pace — we are all vulnerable to a deepfake attack,” Mr. Barr said.
May 23, 2025