In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the US is “terminating ALL discussions” on trade with Canada due to the country’s decision to move forward with its digital services tax, which targets US tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta.
Though Canada first implemented the digital services tax last year, it’s set to collect its first round of payments on Monday, which will retroactively apply to 2022.
On Friday, China’s Commerce Ministry said on state media that it will “review and approve eligible export applications for controlled items in accordance with the law” in response to a question about rare earth materials.
The statement follows President Donald Trump’s confirmation on Thursday that China and the US finalized a deal on rare earth exports, which are used to build a wide range of items, including electric vehicles, smartphones, and military equipment.
Publishing giant Springer Nature is losing millions as a result, Axios reports.
President Trump is also working to slash funding for research institutions in the US, while hundreds of scientists and engineers have accused his administration of censorship.
Edward “Big Balls” Coristine resigned yesterday, Wired reports. He’d been a full-time government employee for a month. “I have heard since Elon [Musk] and Steve [Davis] have supposedly departed, they’ve terminated a lot of those that got hired,” Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE member, told Wired. Well, who doesn’t love a fun little purge?
Last month, the FTC opened an investigation into the nonprofit watchdog group to determine whether it worked with advertisers to carry out a boycott of X. The Elon Musk-owned platform sued Media Matters for defamation after the organization found neo-Nazi content next to ads on the platform in 2023.
In its lawsuit, Media Matters claims that the FTC is using “sweeping governmental powers to attempt
to silence and harass an organization for daring to speak the truth.”
Congress can still vote to effectively bar states from enforcing their own AI laws after what Politico calls the Senate’s “rules referee” decided it meets the criteria to be included in the bill. That slashes opponents’ hope it would be excluded through the Byrd Rule, which restricts the kind of provisions that can be included in reconciliation bills. The Senate version ties the enforcement ban to states’ ability to receive broadband infrastructure funds.
The US District Court in Washington, DC, was the home of two of the most important tech trials in decades — plus so much more.
The Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan congressional advisor — says Republicans are violating a budget reconciliation rule in their attempt to fast-track some parts of President Trump’s agenda.
That includes measures to undo Biden-era tailpipe pollution standards and repeal funding authorizations for climate programs under the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans have been getting creative lately, however, with ways to get around the parliamentarian’s objections.
The Supreme Court sent a fax spam case back to a lower court after determining it erred in deferring to the Federal Communications Commission’s legal interpretation. After the FCC said the law didn’t cover online fax services, a lower court decertified a class of fax recipients seeking damages for receiving unsolicited ads. SCOTUS says the court should have made its own interpretation, which could be meaningful for medical professionals who still use faxes.
[supremecourt.gov]
