Donald Trump

Republicans drop Trump-ordered block on state AI laws from defense bill

AI, AI safety, Donald Trump, Policy, raise act, state AI laws / Paul Patrick / December 3, 2025

“A silly way to think about risk”

“Widespread and powerful movement” keeps Trump from blocking state AI laws.

A Donald Trump-backed push has failed to wedge a federal measure that would block states from passing AI laws for a decade into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters Tuesday that a sect of Republicans is now “looking at other places” to potentially pass the measure. Other Republicans opposed including the AI preemption in the defense bill, The Hill reported, joining critics who see value in allowing states to quickly regulate AI risks as they arise.

For months, Trump has pressured the Republican-led Congress to block state AI laws that the president claims could bog down innovation as AI firms waste time and resources complying with a patchwork of state laws. But Republicans have continually failed to unite behind Trump’s command, first voting against including a similar measure in the “Big Beautiful” budget bill and then this week failing to negotiate a solution to pass the NDAA measure.

Among Republican lawmakers pushing back this week were Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, The Hill reported.

According to Scalise, the effort to block state AI laws is not over, but Republicans caved to backlash over including it in the defense bill, ultimately deciding that the NDAA “wasn’t the best place” for the measure “to fit.” Republicans will continue “looking at other places” to advance the measure, Scalise said, emphasizing that “interest” remains high, because “you know, you’ve seen the president talk about it.”

“We MUST have one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last month. “If we don’t, then China will easily catch us in the AI race. Put it in the NDAA, or pass a separate Bill, and nobody will ever be able to compete with America.”

If Congress bombs the assignment to find another way to pass the measure, Trump will likely release an executive order to enforce the policy. Republicans in Congress had dissuaded Trump from releasing a draft of that order, requesting time to find legislation where they believed an AI moratorium could pass.

“Widespread” movement blocked Trump’s demand

Celebrating the removal of the measure from the NDAA, a bipartisan group that lobbies for AI safety laws, Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI), noted that Republicans didn’t just face pressure from members of their own party.

“The controversial proposal had faced backlash from a nationwide, bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers, parents, faith leaders, unions, whistleblowers, and other public advocates,” an ARI press release said.

This “widespread and powerful” movement “clapped back” at Republicans’ latest “rushed attempt to sneak preemption through Congress,” Brad Carson, ARI’s president, said, because “Americans want safeguards that protect kids, workers, and families, not a rules-free zone for Big Tech.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) called the measure “controversial,” The Hill reported, suggesting that a compromise that the White House is currently working on would potentially preserve some of states’ rights to regulate some areas of AI since “you know, both sides are kind of dug in.”

$150 million war over states’ rights to regulate AI

Perhaps the clearest sign that both sides “are kind of dug in” is a $150 million AI lobbying war that Forbes profiled last month.

ARI is a dominant group on one side of this war, using funding from “safety-focused” and “effective altruism-aligned” donor networks to support state AI laws that ARI expects can be passed much faster than federal regulations to combat emerging risks.

The major player on the other side, Forbes reported, is Leading the Future (LTF), which is “backed by some of Silicon Valley’s largest investors” who want to block state laws and prefer a federal framework for AI regulation.

Top priorities for ARI and like-minded groups include protecting kids from dangerous AI models, preventing AI from supercharging crime, protecting against national security threats, and getting ahead of “long-term frontier-model risks,” Forbes reported.

But while some Republicans have pushed for compromises that protect states’ rights to pass laws shielding kids or preventing fraud, Trump’s opposition to AI safety laws like New York’s “RAISE Act” seems unlikely to wane as the White House mulls weakening the federal preemption.

Quite the opposite, a Democrat and author the RAISE Act, Alex Bores, has become LTF’s prime target to defeat in 2026, Politico reported. LTF plans to invest many millions in ads to block Bores’ Congressional bid, CNBC reported.

New York lawmakers passed the RAISE Act this summer, but it’s still waiting for New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, to sign it into law. If that happens—potentially by the end of this year—big tech companies like Google and OpenAI will have to submit risk disclosures and safety assessments or else face fines up to $30 million.

LTF leaders, Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto, have accused Bores of “pushing “ideological and politically motivated legislation that would ‘handcuff’ the US and its ability to lead in AI,” Forbes reported. But Bores told Ars that even the tech industry groups spending hundreds of thousands of dollars opposing his law have reported that tech giants would only have to hire one additional person to comply with the law. To him, that shows how “simple” it would be for AI firms to comply with many state laws.

To LTF, whose donors include Marc Andreessen and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, defeating Bores would keep the opposition out of Congress, where it could be easier to meddle with industry dreams that AI won’t be heavily regulated. Scalise argued Tuesday that the AI preemption is necessary to promote an open marketplace, because “AI is where a lot of new massive investment is going” and “we want that money to be invested in America.”

“And when you see some states starting to put a patchwork of limitations, that’s why it’s come to the federal government’s attention to allow for an open marketplace, so you don’t have limitations that hurt innovation,” Scalise said.

Bores told Ars that he agrees that a federal law would be superior to a patchwork of state laws, but AI is moving “too quickly,” and “New York had to take action to protect New Yorkers.”

Why Bores’ bill has GOP so spooked

With a bachelor’s degree in computer science and prior work as an engineer at Palantir, Bores hopes to make it to Congress to help bridge bipartisan gaps and drive innovation in the US. He told Ars that the RAISE Act is not intended to block AI innovation but to “be a first step that deals with the absolute worst possible outcomes” until Congress is done deliberating a federal framework.

Bores emphasized that stakeholders in the tech industry helped shape the RAISE Act, which he described as “a limited bill that is focused on the most extreme risks.”

“I would never be the one to say that once the RAISE Act is signed, we’ve solved the problems of AI,” Bores told Ars. Instead, it’s meant to help states combat risks that can’t be undone, such as bad actors using AI to build “a bioweapon or doing an automated crime spree that results in billions of dollars in damage.” The bill defines “critical harm” as “the death or serious injury of 100 people or at least $1 billion in damages,” setting a seemingly high bar for the types of doomsday scenarios that AI firms would have to plan for.

Bores agrees with Trump-aligned critics who advocate that the US should “regulate just how people use” AI, “not the development of the technology itself.” But he told Ars that Republicans’ efforts to block states from regulating the models themselves are “a silly way to think about risk,” since “there’s certain catastrophic incidents where if you just said, ‘well, we’ll just sue the person afterwards,’ no one would be satisfied by that resolution.”

Whether Hochul will sign the RAISE Act has yet to be seen. Earlier this year, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar law that the AI industry worried would rock their bottom lines by requiring a “kill switch” in case AI models went off the rails. Newsom did, however, sign a less extreme measure, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act. And other states, including Colorado and Illinois, have passed similarly broad AI transparency laws providing consumer and employee protections.

Bores told Ars in mid-November that he’d had informal talks with Hochul about possible changes to the RAISE Act, but she had not yet begun the formal process of proposing amendments. The clock is seemingly ticking, though, as Hochul has to take action on the bill by the end of the year, and once it reaches her desk, she has 10 days to sign it.

Whether Hochul signs the law or not, Bores will likely continue to face opposition over authoring the bill, as he runs to represent New York’s 12th Congressional District in 2026. With a history of passing bipartisan bills in his state, he’s hoping to be elected so he can work with lawmakers across the aisle to pass other far-reaching tech regulations.

Meanwhile, Trump may face pressure to delay an executive order requiring AI preemption, Forbes reported, as “AI’s economic impact and labor displacement” are “rising as voter concerns” ahead of the midterm elections. Public First, a bipartisan initiative aligned with ARI, has said that 97 percent of Americans want AI safety rules, Forbes reported.

Like Bores, ARI plans to keep pushing a bipartisan movement that could scramble Republicans from ever unifying behind Trump’s message that state AI laws risk throttling US innovation and endangering national security, should a less-regulated AI industry in China race ahead.

To maintain momentum, ARI created a tracker showing opposition to federal preemption of state AI laws. Among recent commenters logged was Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat and state senator in New York—where Bores noted a poll found that 84 percent of residents supported the RAISE Act, only 8 percent opposed, and 8 percent were undecided. Gounardes joined critics on the far right, like Steve Bannon, who warned that federal preemption was a big gift for Big Tech. AI firms and the venture capitalist lobbyists “don’t want any regulation whatsoever,” Gounardes argued.

“They say they support a national standard, but in reality, it’s just cheaper for them to buy off Congress to do nothing than it is to try and buy off 50 state legislatures,” Gounardes said.

Bores expects that his experience in the tech industry could help Congress avoid that fate while his policies like the RAISE Act could sway voters who “don’t want Trump mega-donors writing all tech policy,” he wrote on X.

“I am someone with a master’s in computer science, two patents, and nearly a decade working in tech,” Bores told CNBC. “If they are scared of people who understand their business regulating their business, they are telling on themselves.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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DOGE “cut muscle, not fat”; 26K experts rehired after brutal cuts

department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, Policy / Kris Guyer / November 24, 2025

Government brain drain will haunt US after DOGE abruptly terminated.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), holds a chainsaw as he speaks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Credit: SAUL LOEB / Contributor | AFP

After Donald Trump curiously started referring to the Department of Government Efficiency exclusively in the past tense, an official finally confirmed Sunday that DOGE “doesn’t exist.”

Talking to Reuters, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor confirmed that DOGE—a government agency notoriously created by Elon Musk to rapidly and dramatically slash government agencies—was terminated more than eight months early. This may have come as a surprise to whoever runs the DOGE account on X, which continued posting up until two days before the Reuters report was published.

As Kupor explained, a “centralized agency” was no longer necessary, since OPM had “taken over many of DOGE’s functions” after Musk left the agency last May. Around that time, DOGE staffers were embedded at various agencies, where they could ostensibly better coordinate with leadership on proposed cuts to staffing and funding.

Under Musk, DOGE was hyped as planning to save the government a trillion dollars. On X, Musk bragged frequently about the agency, posting in February that DOGE was “the one shot the American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people. We’re never going to get another chance like this.”

The reality fell far short of Musk’s goals, with DOGE ultimately reporting it saved $214 billion—an amount that may be overstated by nearly 40 percent, critics warned earlier this year.

How much talent was lost due to DOGE cuts?

Once Musk left, confidence in DOGE waned as lawsuits over suspected illegal firings piled up. By June, Congress was drawn, largely down party lines, on whether to codify the “DOGE process”—rapidly firing employees, then quickly hiring back whoever was needed—or declare DOGE a failure—perhaps costing taxpayers more in the long term due to lost talent and services.

Because DOGE operated largely in secrecy, it may be months or even years before the public can assess the true cost of DOGE’s impact. However, in the absence of a government tracker, the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, Elaine Kamarck, put together what might be the best status report showing how badly DOGE rocked government agencies.

In June, Kamarck joined other critics flagging DOGE’s reported savings as “bogus.” In the days before DOGE’s abrupt ending was announced, she published a report grappling with a critical question many have pondered since DOGE launched: “How many people can the federal government lose before it crashes?”

In the report, Kamarck charted “26,511 occasions where the Trump administration abruptly fired people and then hired them back.” She concluded that “a quick review of the reversals makes clear that the negative stereotype of the ‘paper-pushing bureaucrat’” that DOGE was supposedly targeting “is largely inaccurate.”

Instead, many of the positions the government rehired were “engineers, doctors, and other professionals whose work is critical to national security and public health,” Kamarck reported.

About half of the rehires, Kamarck estimated, “appear to have been mandated by the courts.” However, in about a quarter of cases, the government moved to rehire staffers before the court could weigh in, Kamarck reported. That seemed to be “a tacit admission that the blanket firings that took place during the DOGE era placed the federal government in danger of not being able to accomplish some of its most important missions,” she said.

Perhaps the biggest downside of all of DOGE’s hasty downsizing, though, is a trend in which many long-time government workers simply decided to leave or retire, rather than wait for DOGE to eliminate their roles.

During the first six months of Trump’s term, 154,000 federal employees signed up for the deferred resignation program, Reuters reported, while more than 70,000 retired. Both numbers were clear increases (tens of thousands) over exits from government in prior years, Kamarck’s report noted.

“A lot of people said, ‘the hell with this’ and left,” Kamarck told Ars.

Kamarck told Ars that her report makes it obvious that DOGE “cut muscle, not fat,” because “they didn’t really know what they were doing.”

As a result, agencies are now scrambling to assess the damage and rehire lost talent. However, her report documented that agencies aligned with Trump’s policies appear to have an easier time getting new hires approved, despite Kupor telling Reuters that the government-wide hiring freeze is “over.” As of mid-November 2025, “of the over 73,000 posted jobs, a candidate was selected for only about 14,400 of them,” Kamarck reported, noting that it was impossible to confirm how many selected candidates have officially started working.

“Agencies are having to do a lot of reassessments in terms of what happened,” Kamarck told Ars, concluding that DOGE “was basically a disaster.”

A decentralized DOGE may be more powerful

“DOGE is not dead,” though, Kamarck said, noting that “the cutting effort is definitely” continuing under the Office of Management and Budget, which “has a lot more power than DOGE ever had.”

However, the termination of DOGE does mean that “the way it operated is dead,” and that will likely come as a relief to government workers who expected DOGE to continue slashing agencies through July 2026 at least, if not beyond.

Many government workers are still fighting terminations, as court cases drag on, and even Kamarck has given up on tracking due to inconsistencies in outcomes.

“It’s still like one day the court says, ‘No, you can’t do that,’” Kamarck explained. “Then the next day another court says, ‘Yes, you can.’” Other times, the courts “change their minds,” or the Trump administration just doesn’t “listen to the courts, which is fairly terrifying,” Kamarck said.

Americans likely won’t get a clear picture of DOGE’s impact until power shifts in Washington. That could mean waiting for the next presidential election, or possibly if Democrats win a majority in midterm elections, DOGE investigations could start as early as 2027, Kamarck suggested.

OMB will likely continue with cuts that Americans appear to want, as White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Reuters that “President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government, and he continues to actively deliver on that commitment.”

However, Kamarck’s report noted polls showing that most Americans disapprove of how Trump is managing government and its workforce, perhaps indicating that OMB will be pressured to slow down and avoid roiling public opinion ahead of the midterms.

“The fact that ordinary Americans have come to question the downsizing is, most likely, the result of its rapid unfolding, with large cuts done quickly regardless of their impact on the government’s functioning,” Kamarck suggested. Even Musk began to question DOGE. After Trump announced plans to appeal an electrical vehicle mandate that the Tesla founder relied on, Musk posted on X, “What the heck was the point of DOGE, if he’s just going to increase the debt by $5 trillion??”

Facing “blowback” over the most unpopular cuts, agencies sometimes rehired cut staffers within 24 hours, Kamarck noted, pointing to the Department of Energy as one of the “most dramatic” earliest examples. In that case, Americans were alarmed to see engineers cut who were responsible for keeping the nation’s nuclear arsenal “safe and ready.” Retention for those posts was already a challenge due to “high demand in the private sector,” and the number of engineers was considered “too low” ahead of DOGE’s cuts. Everyone was reinstated within a day, Kamarck reported.

Alarm bells rang across the federal government, and it wasn’t just about doctors and engineers being cut or entire agencies being dismantled, like USAID. Even staffers DOGE viewed as having seemingly less critical duties—like travel bookers and customer service reps—were proven key to government functioning. Arbitrary cuts risked hurting Americans in myriad ways, hitting their pocketbooks, throttling community services, and limiting disease and disaster responses, Kamarck documented.

Now that the hiring freeze is lifted and OMB will be managing DOGE-like cuts moving forward, Kamarck suggested that Trump will face ongoing scrutiny over Musk’s controversial agency, despite its dissolution.

“In order to prove that the downsizing was worth the pain, the Trump administration will have to show that the government is still operating effectively,” Kamarck wrote. “But much could go wrong,” she reported, spouting a list of nightmare scenarios:

“Nuclear mismanagement or airline accidents would be catastrophic. Late disaster warnings from agencies monitoring weather patterns, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and inadequate responses from bodies such as the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), could put people in danger. Inadequate staffing at the FBI could result in counter-terrorism failures. Reductions in vaccine uptake could lead to the resurgence of diseases such as polio and measles. Inadequate funding and staffing for research could cause scientists to move their talents abroad. Social Security databases could be compromised, throwing millions into chaos as they seek to prove their earnings records, and persistent customer service problems will reverberate through the senior and disability communities.”

The good news is that federal agencies recovering from DOGE cuts are “aware of the time bombs and trying to fix them,” Kamarck told Ars. But with so much brain drain from DOGE’s first six months ripping so many agencies apart at their seams, the government may struggle to provide key services until lost talent can be effectively replaced, she said.

“I don’t know how quickly they can put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” Kamarck said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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US may owe $1 trillion in refunds if SCOTUS cancels Trump tariffs

Donald Trump, Policy, reciprocal tariffs, tariffs / Tim Belzer / November 14, 2025

Tech industry primed for big refunds if SCOTUS rules against Trump tariffs.

If Donald Trump loses his Supreme Court fight over tariffs, the US may be forced to return “tens of billions of dollars to companies that have paid import fees this year, plus interest,” The Atlantic reported. And the longer the verdict is delayed, the higher the refunds could go, possibly even hitting $1 trillion.

For tech companies both large and small, the stakes are particularly high. A Trump defeat would not just mean clawing back any duties paid on imports to the US that companies otherwise can use to invest in their competitiveness. But, more critically in the long term, it would also end tariff shocks that, as economics lecturer Matthew Allen emphasized in a report for The Conversation, risked harming “innovation itself” by destabilizing global partnerships and diverse supply chains in “tech-intensive, IP-led sectors like semiconductors and software.”

Currently, the Supreme Court is weighing two cases that argue that the US president does not have unilateral authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Defending his regime of so-called “reciprocal tariffs,” Trump argued these taxes were necessary to correct the “emergency” of enduring trade imbalances that he alleged have unfairly enriched other countries while bringing the US “to the brink of catastrophic decline.”

Not everyone thinks Trump will lose. But after oral arguments last week, prediction markets dropped Trump’s odds of winning from 50 to 25 percent, Forbes reported, due to Supreme Court justices appearing skeptical.

Dozens of economists agreed: Trump’s tariffs are “odd”

Justices may have been swayed by dozens of leading economists who weighed in. In one friend of the court brief, more than 40 economists, public policy researchers, and former government officials argued that Trump’s got it all wrong when he claims that “sustained trade deficits” have “fostered dependency on foreign rivals and gutted American manufacturing.”

Far from being “unusual and extraordinary,” they argued that trade deficits are “rather ordinary and commonplace.” And rather than being a sign of US weakness, the deficits instead indicate that the US has a “foreign investment surplus,” as other countries clearly consider the US “a superior investment.”

Look no further than the tech sector for a prominent example, they suggested, noting that “the United States has the dominant technology sector in the world and, as a result, has been running a persistent surplus in trade in services for decades.” Citing a quip from Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow—“I have a chronic deficit with my barber, who doesn’t buy a darned thing from me”—economists argued that trade deficits are never inherently problematic.

“It is odd to economists, to say the least, for the United States government to attempt to rebalance trade on a country-by-country basis,” economists wrote, as Trump seems to do with his trade deals imposing reciprocal tariffs as high as 145 percent.

SCOTUS urged to end “perfect storm of uncertainty”

Trump has been on a mission to use tariffs to force more manufacturing back into the US. He has claimed that the court undoing his trade deals would be an “economic disaster” and “would literally destroy the United States of America.” And the longer it takes for the verdict to come out, the more damage the verdict could do, his administration warned, as the US continues to collect tariffs and Trump continues to strike deals that hinge on reciprocal tariffs being in play.

However, in another friend-of-court brief, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and the Chamber of Commerce (CoC) argued that the outcome is worse for US businesses if the court defers to Trump.

“The current administration’s use of IEEPA to impose virtually unbounded tariffs is not only unprecedented but is causing irreparable harm” to each group’s members by “increasing their costs, undermining their ability to plan for the future, and in some cases, threatening their very existence,” their filing said.

“The tariffs are particularly damaging to American manufacturing,” they argued, complaining that “American manufacturers face higher prices for raw materials than their foreign competitors, destroying any comparative advantage the tariffs were allegedly meant to create.”

Further, businesses face decreased exports of their products, as well as retaliatory tariffs from any countries striking back at Trump—which “affect $223 billion of US exports and are expected to eliminate an additional 141,000 jobs,” CTA and CoC estimated.

Innovation “thrives on collaboration, trust and scale,” Allen, the economics lecturer, noted, joining critics warning that Trump risked hobbling not just US tech dominance by holding onto seemingly misguided protectionist beliefs but also the European Union’s and the United Kingdom’s.

Meanwhile, the CTA and CoC argued that Trump has other ways to impose tariffs that have been authorized by Congress and do not carry the same risks of destabilizing key US industries, such as the tech sector. Under Section 122, which many critics argued is the authority Trump should be using to impose the reciprocal tariffs, Trump would be limited to a 15 percent tariff for no more than 150 days, trade scholars noted in yet another brief SCOTUS reviewed.

“But the President’s claimed IEEPA authority contains no such limits” CTA and CoC noted. “At whim, he has increased, decreased, suspended, or reimposed tariffs, generating the perfect storm of uncertainty.”

US may end up owing $1 trillion in refunds

Economists urged SCOTUS to intervene and stop Trump’s attempt to seize authority to impose boundless reciprocal tariffs—arguing the economic impact “is predicted to be far greater than in two programs” SCOTUS previously struck, including the Biden administration’s $50 billion plan for student loan forgiveness.

In September, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned justices that “the amount to be refunded could be between $750 billion and $1 trillion if the court waits until next summer before issuing a ruling that says the tariffs have to be repaid,” CNBC reported.

During oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fretted that undoing Trump’s tariffs could be “messy,” CNBC reported.

However, some business owners—who joined the We Pay Tariffs coalition weighing in on the SCOTUS case—told CNBC that they think it could be relatively straightforward, since customs forms contain line items detailing which tariffs were paid. Businesses could be paid in lump sums or even future credits, they suggested.

Rick Muskat, CEO of family-run shoe company DeerStags, told CNBC that his company paid more than $1 million in tariffs so far, but “it should be simple for importers to apply for refunds based on this tariff itemization.” If the IRS can issue repayments for tax overpayments, US Customs should have “no problem” either, he suggested—especially since the agency automatically refunded US importers with no issue during a 2018 conflict, CNBC reported.

If there aren’t automatic refunds, though, things could get sticky. Filing paperwork required to challenge various tariffs may become “time-consuming and difficult” for some businesses, particularly those dealing with large shipments where only some products may have been taxed.

There’s also the issue that some countries’ tariffs—like China’s—changed “multiple times,” Joyce Adetutu, a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins, told CNBC. “It is going to take quite a bit of time untangling all of that, and it will be an administrative burden,” Adetutu said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Man finally released a month after absurd arrest for reposting Trump meme

censorship, Donald Trump, facebook, meme, Policy, Social Media, true threats / Paul Patrick / October 30, 2025

Bodycam footage undermined sheriff’s “true threat” justification for the arrest.

The saga of a 61-year-old man jailed for more than a month after reposting a Facebook meme has ended, but free speech advocates are still reeling in the wake.

On Wednesday, Larry Bushart was released from Perry County Jail, where he had spent weeks unable to make bail, which a judge set at $2 million. Prosecutors have not explained why the charges against him were dropped, according to The Intercept, which has been tracking the case closely. However, officials faced mounting pressure following media coverage and a social media campaign called “Free Larry Bushart,” which stoked widespread concern over suspected police censorship of a US citizen over his political views.

How a meme landed a man in jail

Bushart’s arrest came after he decided to troll a message thread about a Charlie Kirk vigil in a Facebook group called “What’s Happening in Perry County, TN.” He posted a meme showing a picture of Donald Trump saying, “We should get over it.” The meme included a caption that said “Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after,” and Bushart included a comment with his post that said, “This seems relevant today ….”

His meme caught the eye of the Perry County sheriff, Nick Weems, who had mourned Kirk’s passing on his own Facebook page, The Intercept noted.

Supposedly, Weems’ decision to go after Bushart wasn’t due to his political views but to receiving messages from parents who misread Bushart’s post as possibly threatening an attack on the local Perry County High School. To pressure Bushart to remove the post, Weems contacted the Lexington Police Department to find Bushart. That led to the meme poster’s arrest and transfer to Perry County Jail.

Weems justified the arrest by claiming that Bushart’s meme represented a true threat, since “investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community,” The Tennessean reported. But “there was no evidence of any hysteria,” The Intercept reported, leading media outlets to pick apart Weems’ story.

Perhaps most suspicious were Weems’ claims that Bushart had callously refused to take down his post after cops told him that people were scared that he was threatening a school shooting.

The Intercept and Nashville’s CBS affiliate, NewsChannel 5, secured bodycam footage from the Lexington cop that undermined Weems’ narrative. The footage clearly showed the cop did not understand why the Perry County sheriff had taken issue with Bushart’s Facebook post.

“So, I’m just going to be completely honest with you,” the cop told Bushart. “I have really no idea what they are talking about. He had just called me and said there was some concerning posts that were made….”

Bushart clarified that it was likely his Facebook posts, laughing at the notion that someone had called the cops to report his meme. The Lexington officer told Bushart that he wasn’t sure “exactly what” Facebook post “they are referring to you,” but “they said that something was insinuating violence.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Bushart responded, confirming that “I’m not going to take it down.”

The cop, declining to even glance at the Facebook post, told Bushart, “I don’t care. This ain’t got nothing to do with me.” But the officer’s indifference didn’t stop Lexington police from taking Bushart into custody, booking him, and sending him to Weems’ county, where Bushart was charged “under a state law passed in July 2024 that makes it a Class E felony to make threats against schools,” The Tennessean reported.

“Just to clarify, this is what they charged you with,” a Perry County jail officer told Bushart—which was recorded on footage reviewed by The Intercept—“Threatening Mass Violence at a School.”

“At a school?” Bushart asked.

“I ain’t got a clue,” the officer responded, laughing. “I just gotta do what I have to do.”

“I’ve been in Facebook jail, but now I’m really in it,” Bushart said, joining him in laughing.

Cops knew the meme wasn’t a threat

Lexington police told The Intercept that Weems had lied when he told local news outlets that the forces had “coordinated” to offer Bushart a chance to delete the post prior to his arrest. Confronted with the bodycam footage, Weems denied lying, claiming that his investigator’s report must have been inaccurate, NewsChannel 5 reported.

Weems later admitted to NewsChannel 5 that “investigators knew that the meme was not about Perry County High School” and sought Bushart’s arrest anyway, supposedly hoping to quell “the fears of people in the community who misinterpreted it.” That’s as close as Weems comes to seemingly admitting that his intention was to censor the post.

The Perry County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

According to The Tennessean, the law that landed Bushart behind bars has been widely criticized by First Amendment advocates. Beth Cruz, a lecturer in public interest law at Vanderbilt University Law School, told The Tennessean that “518 children in Tennessee were arrested under the current threats of mass violence law, including 71 children between the ages of 7 and 11” last year alone.

The law seems to contradict Supreme Court precedent, which set a high bar for what’s considered a “true threat,” recognizing that “it is easy for speech made in one context to inadvertently reach a larger audience” that misinterprets the message.

“The risk of overcriminalizing upsetting or frightening speech has only been increased by the Internet,” SCOTUS ruled. Justices warned then that “without sufficient protection for unintentionally threatening speech, a high school student who is still learning norms around appropriate language could easily go to prison.” They also feared that “someone may post an enraged comment under a news story about a controversial topic” that potentially gets them in trouble for speaking out “in the heat of the moment.”

“In a Nation that has never been timid about its opinions, political or otherwise, this is commonplace,” SCOTUS noted.

Dissenting judges, including Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas, thought the ruling went too far to protect speech, however. They felt that so long as a “reasonable person would regard the statement as a threat of violence,” that supposedly objective standard could be enough to criminalize speech like Bushart’s.

Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told The Intercept that “people’s performative overreaction is not a sufficient basis to limit someone else’s free speech rights.”

“A free country does not dispatch police in the dead of night to pull people from their homes because a sheriff objects to their social media posts,” Steinbaugh said.

Man resumes Facebook posting upon release

Chris Eargle, who started the “Free Larry Bushart” Facebook group, told The Intercept that Weems’ story justifying the arrest made no sense. Instead, it seemed like the sheriff’s actions were politically motivated, Eargle suggested, intended to silence people like Bushart with a show of force demonstrating that “if you say something I don’t like, and you don’t take it down, now you’re going to be in trouble.”

“I mean, it’s just control over people’s speech,” Eargle said.

The Perry County Sheriff’s office chose to remove its Facebook page after the controversy, and it remains down as of this writing.

But Weems logged onto his Facebook page on Wednesday before Bushart’s charges were dropped, The Intercept reported. The sheriff seemingly stuck to his guns that people had interpreted the meme as a threat to a local school, claiming that he’s “100 percent for protecting the First Amendment. However, freedom of speech does not allow anyone to put someone else in fear of their well being.”

For Bushart, who The Intercept noted retired from decades in law enforcement last year, the arrest turned him into an icon of free speech, but it also shook up his life. He lost his job as a medical driver, and he missed the birth of his granddaughter.

Leaving jail, Bushart said he was “very happy to be going home.” He thanked all his supporters who ensured that he would not have to wait until December 4 to petition for his bail to be reduced—a delay which the prosecution had sought shortly before abruptly dismissing the charges, The Intercept reported.

Back at his computer, Bushart logged onto Facebook, posting first about his grandkid, then resuming his political trolling.

Eargle claimed many others fear posting their political opinions after Bushart’s arrest, though. Bushart’s son, Taylor, told Nashville news outlet WKRN that it has been a “trying time” for his family, while noting that his father’s release “doesn’t change what has happened to him” or threats to speech that could persist under Tennessee’s law.

“I can’t even begin to express how thankful we are for the outpour of support he has received,” Taylor said. “If we don’t fight to protect and preserve our rights today, just as we’ve now seen, they may be gone tomorrow.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Man finally released a month after absurd arrest for reposting Trump meme Read More »

Nvidia hits record $5 trillion mark as CEO dismisses AI bubble concerns

AI, AI chips, AI infrastructure, Apple, Biz & IT, Blackwell chips, data centers, Donald Trump, GPUs, Jensen Huang, machine learning, microsoft, Nokia, NVIDIA, openai, palantir, semiconductors, Uber / Tim Belzer / October 29, 2025

Partnerships and government contracts fuel optimism

At the GTC conference on Tuesday, Nvidia’s CEO went out of his way to repeatedly praise Donald Trump and his policies for accelerating domestic tech investment while warning that excluding China from Nvidia’s ecosystem could limit US access to half the world’s AI developers. The overall event stressed Nvidia’s role as an American company, with Huang even nodding to Trump’s signature slogan in his sign-off by thanking the audience for “making America great again.”

Trump’s cooperation is paramount for Nvidia because US export controls have effectively blocked Nvidia’s AI chips from China, costing the company billions of dollars in revenue. Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research told Reuters that “Nvidia clearly brought their story to DC to both educate and gain favor with the US government. They managed to hit most of the hottest and most influential topics in tech.”

Beyond the political messaging, Huang announced a series of partnerships and deals that apparently helped ease investor concerns about Nvidia’s future. The company announced collaborations with Uber Technologies, Palantir Technologies, and CrowdStrike Holdings, among others. Nvidia also revealed a $1 billion investment in Nokia to support the telecommunications company’s shift toward AI and 6G networking.

The agreement with Uber will power a fleet of 100,000 self-driving vehicles with Nvidia technology, with automaker Stellantis among the first to deliver the robotaxis. Palantir will pair Nvidia’s technology with its Ontology platform to use AI techniques for logistics insights, with Lowe’s as an early adopter. Eli Lilly plans to build what Nvidia described as the most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company, relying on more than 1,000 Blackwell AI accelerator chips.

The $5 trillion valuation surpasses the total cryptocurrency market value and equals roughly half the size of the pan European Stoxx 600 equities index, Reuters notes. At current prices, Huang’s stake in Nvidia would be worth about $179.2 billion, making him the world’s eighth-richest person.

Nvidia hits record $5 trillion mark as CEO dismisses AI bubble concerns Read More »

Satellite shows what’s really happening at the East Wing of the White House

Donald Trump, earth observation, planet labs, remote sensing, Space, White House / Mike M. / October 25, 2025

“Now it looks like the White House is physically being destroyed.”

The facade of the East Wing of the White House is demolished by work crews on October 22, 2025. Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

You need to go up—way up—to fully appreciate the changes underway at the White House this week.

Demolition crews starting tearing down the East Wing of the presidential mansion Tuesday to clear room for the construction of a new $300 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a recent priority of President Donald Trump. The teardown drew criticism and surprise from Democratic lawmakers, former White House staffers, and members of the public.

It was, after all, just three months ago that President Donald Trump defended his ballroom plan by saying it wouldn’t affect the existing structure at the White House. “It won’t interfere with the current building,” he said in July. “It’ll be near it but not touching it—and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”

So it shocked a lot of people when workers took a wrecking ball to the East Wing. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters Thursday that the “optics are bad” as the Trump administration demolishes part of the White House, especially during a government shutdown.

“People are saying, ‘Oh, the government’s being destroyed,’” she said. “Well, now it looks like the White House is physically being destroyed.”

The US Secret Service on Thursday closed access to the Ellipse, a public park overlooking the South Lawn of the White House. Journalists were capturing “live images” of the East Wing destruction from the Ellipse before the Secret Service ushered them out of the park, according to CNN’s Jim Sciutto. Employees at the Treasury Building, just across the street from the East Wing, were instructed not to share photos of the demolition work, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Some Trump supporters used their social media accounts to push back against the outcry, claiming only a small section of the East Wing’s facade would be torn down. An image taken from space revealed the reality Thursday.

Eyes always above

Without press access to see the demolition firsthand, it fell to a camera hundreds of miles above the White House to see what was really happening at the East Wing. Planet Labs released an image taken Thursday morning from one of its SkySat satellites showing the 123-year-old annex leveled.

What became known as the East Wing was first constructed in 1902 and was then rebuilt in 1942 during the Franklin Roosevelt administration to create more office space and provide cover for a bunker during World War II. In modern presidencies, the East Wing was typically home to the first lady’s staff.

Planet Labs, based in San Francisco, operates a fleet of hundreds of small Earth-imaging satellites mapping the planet every day. The company sells its imagery to commercial customers and the US government, including intelligence agencies, which use the imagery to augment the surveillance capabilities of more exquisite government-owned spy satellites.

Users often turn to satellite imagery from companies like Planet Labs to find out what’s going on in war zones, countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Satellite constellations like Planet Labs scan for changes across the globe every day, making it virtually impossible to hide a large construction project.

The SkySat satellite used for Thursday’s examination of the White House flies at an altitude of approximately 295 miles (475 kilometers). It can capture imagery with a resolution of about 20 inches (50 centimeters) per pixel. Planet Labs owns 15 SkySats, each with three overlapping 5.5-megapixel imaging sensors fitted under a downward-facing 14-inch-diameter (35-centimeter) telescope, according to the company.

Who’s paying?

It turns out some of Planet Labs’ cohorts among the government’s cadre of defense and aerospace contractors are actually funding the construction of the new White House ballroom. Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s largest defense contractor, is on the list of donors released by the White House. At least two other companies with business relating to defense and aerospace were also on the list: Booz Allen Hamilton and Palantir Technologies.

Palantir has invested in BlackSky, one of Planet’s competitors in the commercial remote sensing market.

People watch along a fence line Thursday as crews demolish the East Wing of the White House. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The Trump administration has said no public money will go toward the new ballroom, but officials haven’t said how much each donor is contributing. Many donors have business dealings with the federal government, raising ethical concerns that those paying for the ballroom might win favor in future contract decisions.

Trump said he will also contribute an undisclosed sum for the ballroom.

Regardless of whether the donors are buying influence, they are funding the most significant overhaul of the White House grounds since former President Harry Truman renovated the mansion’s interior and added a balcony to the South Portico. The Truman-era changes were approved by Congress, which established a commission to oversee the work. There’s been no such oversight from Congress this time.

The new ballroom will be nearly twice the size of the most iconic element of the White House grounds: the two-century-old executive residence.

“It’s going to turn the executive mansion into an annex to the party space,” said Edward Lengel, who served as chief historian of the White House Historical Association during Trump’s first term. “I think all the founders would have been disgusted by this,” he told CNN.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, shared a different point of view in an interview with Fox News earlier this week.

“I believe there’s a lot of fake outrage right now because nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own,” Leavitt said.

An official White House fact sheet published Tuesday used similar sensationalized language, accusing “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies” of “clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately-funded ballroom to the White House.”

President Donald Trump displays a rendering of the White House ballroom as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (left) in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

It’s true that every president has put their own mark on the White House, but all of the updates cost at least an order of magnitude less than Trump’s ballroom. Most amounted to little more than redecorating, and none were as destructive as this week’s teardown. Former President Barack Obama repainted the lines of the White House tennis court and installed hoops to turn it into a basketball court. During the George W. Bush administration, the White House press briefing room got a significant makeover. Taxpayers and media companies shared the bill. It’s hard to imagine that happening today.

Former President Gerald Ford had an outdoor swimming pool built near the West Wing. Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy famously spearheaded the redesign of the White House Rose Garden and East Garden, which was later renamed in her honor. The grass in the Rose Garden was paved over with stone tiles earlier this year, and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden was razed this week, the result of which was also visible from space.

In July, Leavitt said the East Wing would be “modernized.” Like Trump, she did not mention plans for demolition, only saying: “The necessary construction will take place.”

Thanks to satellites and commercial space, we now know what necessary construction really meant.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Satellite shows what’s really happening at the East Wing of the White House Read More »

“Extremely angry” Trump threatens “massive” tariff on all Chinese exports

china tariffs, Donald Trump, Policy, rare earth, rare earth magnets, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Paul Patrick / October 10, 2025

The chairman of the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), issued a statement, suggesting that, unlike Trump, he’d seen China’s rare earths move coming. He pushed Trump to interpret China’s export controls as “an economic declaration of war against the United States and a slap in the face to President Trump.”

“China has fired a loaded gun at the American economy, seeking to cut off critical minerals used to make the semiconductors that power the American military, economy, and devices we use every day including cars, phones, computers, and TVs,” Moolenaar said. “Every American will be negatively affected by China’s action, and that’s why we must address America’s vulnerabilities and build our own leverage against China.”

To strike back forcefully, Moolenaar suggested passing a law he sponsored that he said would “end preferential trade treatment for China, build a resilient resource reserve of critical minerals, secure American research and campuses from Chinese influence, and strangle China’s technology sector with export controls instead of selling it advanced chips.”

Moolenaar also emphasized steps he recommended back in September that he claimed Trump could take to “create real leverage with China” in the face of its stranglehold on rare earths.

Those included “restricting or suspending Chinese airline landing rights in the US,” “reviewing export control policies governing the sale of commercial aircraft, parts, and maintenance services to China,” and “restricting outbound investment in China’s aviation sector in coordination with key allies.”

“These steps would send a clear message to Beijing that it cannot choke off critical supplies to our defense industries without consequences to its own strategic sectors,” Moolenaar wrote in his September letter to Trump. “By acting together, the US and its allies can strengthen our resilience, reinforce solidarity, and create real leverage with China.”

“Extremely angry” Trump threatens “massive” tariff on all Chinese exports Read More »

Bank of England warns AI stock bubble rivals 2000 dotcom peak

AI, AI stocks, alphabet, Amazon, andrew bailey, Apple, bank of england, Biz & IT, Donald Trump, dotcom bubble, Federal Reserve, financial stability, Google, Lisa Cook, machine learning, mark zuckerberg, market correction, Meta, microsoft, NVIDIA, UK economy / Kris Guyer / October 8, 2025

Share valuations based on past earnings have also reached their highest levels since the dotcom bubble 25 years ago, though the BoE noted they appear less extreme when based on investors’ expectations for future profits. “This, when combined with increasing concentration within market indices, leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic,” the central bank said.

Toil and trouble?

The dotcom bubble offers a potentially instructive parallel to our current era. In the late 1990s, investors poured money into Internet companies based on the promise of a transformed economy, seemingly ignoring whether individual businesses had viable paths to profitability. Between 1995 and March 2000, the Nasdaq index rose 600 percent. When sentiment shifted, the correction was severe: the Nasdaq fell 78 percent from its peak, reaching a low point in October 2002.

Whether we’ll see the same thing or worse if an AI bubble pops is mere speculation at this point. But similarly to the early 2000s, the question about today’s market isn’t necessarily about the utility of AI tools themselves (the Internet was useful, after all, despite the bubble), but whether the amount of money being poured into the companies that sell them is out of proportion with the potential profits those improvements might bring.

We don’t have a crystal ball to determine when such a bubble might pop, or even if it is guaranteed to do so, but we’ll likely continue to see more warning signs ahead if AI-related deals continue to grow larger and larger over time.

Bank of England warns AI stock bubble rivals 2000 dotcom peak Read More »

Trump’s EPA sued for axing $7 billion solar energy program

clean energy, Donald Trump, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Policy, Solar energy / Rejus Almole / October 6, 2025

The Environmental Protection Agency was sued Wednesday over an allegedly politically motivated decision to end a program that Congress intended to help low-income and disadvantaged communities across the US save money on electricity bills through rooftop and community solar programs.

In their complaint, a group of plaintiffs who would have benefited from the EPA’s “Solar for All” program—including a labor union, several businesses, and a homeowner who cannot afford her electricity bills without it—accused the EPA of violating federal law and the Constitution by unlawfully terminating the program.

Solar for All was “expected to save an estimated $350 million annually on energy bills during and after the five-year program, providing energy bill relief for more than 900,000 low-income and disadvantaged households,” plaintiffs noted. Additionally, it was “expected to secure 4,000 megawatts of new solar energy over five years and generate 200,000 new jobs.”

According to plaintiffs, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin illegally squashed the program after Congress repealed a statute in July that had sparked the program’s creation. However, lawmakers were clear when repealing the statute that only “unobligated” funds could be rescinded, plaintiffs argued, citing lawmakers who “repeatedly” stated that the repeal would not impact funding that had already been awarded.

In 2024, Congress obligated the EPA to award $7 billion in grants to recipients behind projects that would have created “hundreds of thousands of good-paying, high-quality jobs” and spared the average low-income family “about $400 each year on their electricity bills,” plaintiffs argued.

Allegedly Zeldin “arbitrarily” decided to ignore the “plain language” of the statute, plaintiffs alleged, waiting a month after the statute’s repeal to terminate the Solar for All program in August.

Plaintiffs noted that because Zeldin was distributing funds for weeks after the statute’s repeal, this indicated he understood the funding had not been rescinded. They accused Donald Trump’s EPA of violating the separation of powers by interfering to block congressionally awarded funds due to Trump’s disdain for solar energy—pointing to a Zeldin social media post that claimed that the “EPA no longer has the authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive.”

Trump’s EPA sued for axing $7 billion solar energy program Read More »

Taiwan pressured to move 50% of chip production to US or lose protection

Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, Policy, semiconductors, Taiwan, trump administration, trump tariffs, TSMC, us-china trade war / Rejus Almole / September 29, 2025

The Trump administration is pressuring Taiwan to rapidly move 50 percent of its chip production into the US if it wants ensured protection against a threatened Chinese invasion, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told NewsNation this weekend.

In the interview, Lutnick noted that Taiwan currently makes about 95 percent of chips used in smartphones and cars, as well as in critical military defense technology. It’s bad for the US, Lutnick said, that “95 percent of our chips are made 9,000 miles away,” while China is not being “shy” about threats to “take” Taiwan.

Were the US to lose access to Taiwan’s supply chain, the US could be defenseless as its economy takes a hit, Lutnick alleged, asking, “How are you going to get the chips here to make your drones, to make your equipment?”

“The model is: if you can’t make your own chips, how can you defend yourself, right?” Lutnick argued. That’s why he confirmed his “objective” during his time in office is to shift US chip production from 2 percent to 40 percent. To achieve that, he plans to bring Taiwan’s “whole supply chain” into the US, a move experts have suggested could take much longer than a single presidential term to accomplish.

In 2023, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang forecast that the US was “somewhere between a decade and two decades away from supply chain independence,” emphasizing that “it’s not a really practical thing for a decade or two.”

Deal is “not natural for Taiwan”

Lutnick acknowledged this will be a “herculean” task. “Everybody tells me it’s impossible,” he said.

To start with, Taiwan must be convinced that it’s not getting a raw deal, he noted, explaining that it’s “not natural for Taiwan” to mull a future where it cedes its dominant role as a global chip supplier, as well as the long-running protections it receives from allies that comes with it.

Taiwan pressured to move 50% of chip production to US or lose protection Read More »

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, us-china trade war / Rejus Almole / September 26, 2025

Previously, experts had suggested that China had little incentive to follow through with the deal, while as recently as July, ByteDance denied reports that it agreed to sell TikTok to the US, the South China Morning Post reported. Yesterday, Reuters noted that Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the “new US company will be valued at around $14 billion,” a price tag “far below some analyst estimates,” which might frustrate ByteDance. Questions also remain over what potential concessions Trump may have made to get Xi’s sign-off.

It’s also unclear if Trump’s deal meets the legal requirements of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, with Reuters reporting that “numerous details” still need to be “fleshed out.” Last Friday, James Sullivan of JP Morgan suggested on CNBC that “Trump’s proposed TikTok deal lacked clarity on who is in control of the algorithm, leaving the national security concerns wide open,” CNBC reported.

Other critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties director David Greene, warned in a statement to Ars that the US now risks “turning over” TikTok “to the allies of a President who seems to have no respect for the First Amendment.”

Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, agreed. “The arrangement creates uncertainty about what influence or oversight the US government might require over this separate algorithm that could raise potential First Amendment concerns regarding government influence over a private actor,” Huddleston said.

Will TikTok become right-wing?

The Guardian recently conducted a deep dive into how the Murdochs’ and Ellisons’ involvement could “gift Trump’s billionaire allies a degree of control over US media that would be vast and unprecedented” by allowing “the owners of the US’s most powerful cable TV channels” to “steer the nation’s most influential social network.”

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA” Read More »

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal

bytedance, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok / Mike M. / September 17, 2025

However, Trump seems to think that longtime TikTok partner Oracle taking a bigger stake while handling Americans’ user data at its facilities in Texas will be enough to prevent remaining China-based owners—which will maintain less than a 20 percent stake—from allegedly spying, launching disinformation campaigns, or spreading other kinds of propaganda.

China previously was resistant to a forced sale of TikTok, FT reported, even going so far as to place export controls on algorithms to keep the most lucrative part of TikTok in the country. And “it remains unclear to what extent TikTok’s Chinese parent would retain control of the algorithm in the US as part of a licensing deal,” FT noted.

On Tuesday, Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s cyber security regulator, did not go into any detail on how China’s access to US user data would be restricted under the deal. Instead, Wang only noted that ByteDance would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s US user data and content security,” presumably to US owners, FT reported.

One Asia-based investor told FT that the US would use “at least part of the Chinese algorithm” but train it on US user data, while a US advisor accused Trump of chickening out and accepting a deal that didn’t force a sale of the algorithm.

“After all this, China keeps the algorithm,” the US advisor said.

To the Asia-based investor, it seemed like Trump gave China exactly what it wants, since “Beijing wants to be seen as exporting Chinese technology to the US and the world.”

It’s likely more details will be announced once Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold a phone conference on Friday. ByteDance has yet to comment on the deal and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal Read More »