More from Trump’s first 100 days: all the news affecting the tech industry
Signed on Wednesday, it establishes an AI task force directing funding for various “resources for K-12 AI education.” It also outlines the creation of a “Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge” to “encourage and highlight student and educator achievements in AI.”
It’s described as an effort to “solidify our Nation’s leadership in the AI-driven future.” Still, so far, the AI-driven present has involved disturbing deepfake images and an arms race over cheating on exams and homework.
A leaked memo from the Office of Management and Budget proposes drastic cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency that leads weather and climate research in the US.
”We’ll go back to the technical and proficiency levels we had in the 1950s,” former NOAA acting chief scientist Craig McLean tells ProPublica.
Tim Pool, a conservative podcaster known for spreading covid-19 misinformation, interviewing Kanye West in his Nazi era, and inadvertently being part of a Kremlin-financed scheme to infiltrate right-wing media. (Pool has denied involvement.) While he wasn’t at the White House’s recent Podcast Row event targeted at right-wing content creators, Pool has a bigger opportunity, as The Washington Post’s Dan Diamond reported yesterday:
Russian-born Kseniia Petrova has been detained since she was arrested at a Boston airport in February for allegedly not declaring samples of frog embryos for Harvard, which recruited her to work on cutting-edge research into aging and cancer detection.
The US faces a potential brain drain of scientists avoiding Trump’s crackdown on immigration and science. A poll of 1,600 scientists by the journal Nature found that 75 percent were thinking of relocating outside the US.
DOGE is gutting the agency that enforces environmental laws Elon Musk’s companies have been accused of breaking.
On Friday, a Wired report and allegation by Rep. Gerald Connolly surfaced, saying that DOGE is creating a “cross-agency master database” of personal information for surveillance on immigrants. Today, the Washington Post reports that several staffers were granted access to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System (ECAS).
It’s a Justice Department system that one official said has “...every record of every interaction immigrants have had with the U.S. government in any way.”
The system...is used to store records of immigrants who have interacted with the U.S. immigration system, detailing their name, addresses, previous immigration-court testimony and any history of engagement with law enforcement, among other things.
That’s more than triple the total clean energy investments canceled over the past 30 months, according to a report from nonpartisan think tank E2. Economic uncertainty and proposals to rollback tax credits for renewables under the Trump administration are already taking a toll.
Despite those headwinds, however, companies still managed to announce $1.6 billion in investments in new solar, EV, and power grid facilities this March.
[technologyreview.com]
On the heels of the millions-strong April 5th Hands Off protests and the March Tesla Takedown events, an estimated 400 events are scheduled for tomorrow.
The Washington Post has some more detail, and as usual, there’s a lot of new sign fodder: this week alone we’ve had a major court escalation over unlawful deportations, some probably also unlawful mass consumer protection firings, the potential end of routine food safety inspections, our usual dose of Brendan Carr shenanigans, and a DOGE data privacy nightmare. Tariffs are still on, too.
[events.pol-rev.com]
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen offers an air-, sea-, and ground-level view on the tariff chaos.
Semafor wrote about efforts from President Trump’s circle to encourage him to have a tougher spine against Meta’s lobbying efforts. One person, Mike Davis, seemed to hint about an Oval Office meeting last week on X.
Mark Meador, a former staffer for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), was confirmed to the Federal Trade Commission. He’ll join Republican Chair Andrew Ferguson and Republican commissioner Melissa Holyoak. Meanwhile, the two Democrats President Donald Trump attempted to fire from the commission are fighting for their jobs back. Under the law, no more than three commissioners can be from a single party.