You know the phrase “a scrambled egg makes all happy”? No? Neither did game maker Neven Mrgan when Apple’s search bar suggested it, maybe because it doesn’t exist. A couple of followup posts get to the bottom of this little data artifact mystery — or you can skip to the answer right away.
As The Verge’s policy editor, I know how exhausting the Trump administration news firehose can be. There’s truly need-to-know stuff like the future of the Paris climate agreement and the TikTok ban. But we’re now collecting some updates in a stream whose posts won’t all appear on the front page, so readers get a break from the full weight of Trump’s random off-the-cuff proposals and his regulators’ antics. That said, we’re entering a new era in tech policy, so I hope you’ll periodically check it out!
He’s reinstated three complaints against broadcasters that former chair Jessica Rosenworcel dismissed as attempts to influence news coverage:
Rosenworcel said the commission was rejecting complaints that “seek to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment”. Then, on Wednesday, the FCC said in a series of orders the complaints had been dismissed “prematurely based on an insufficient investigatory record”.
A fourth complaint, against a Fox station, has not been reinstated.
Nothing says protecting the First Amendment like Elon Musk’s congressional DOGE liaison threatening reporters for describing a physical gesture. Musk has previously used a friendly judge in Texas to fight being associated with the far right. But when you’ve got a White House office and a congressional subcommittee to fight your battles, who needs lawsuits?
USDS was founded under President Barack Obama to revamp healthcare.gov and do other White House tech consulting work. A Trump executive order renames it to the United States DOGE Service (the United States Department of Government Efficiency Service, if you unpack the nesting acronym) and orders it to “improve the quality and efficiency” of government software and other IT services.
But President Donald Trump has issued one anyway:
The previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.
And existing appointments reportedly have been canceled. The app was a target of smears from President Donald Trump’s campaign, and its partial shutdown was widely expected.
A lawsuit filed minutes after Trump took office alleges Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (which is not a department of the government) is violating laws that require transparency and balance in federal advisory committees. Incidentally, this one is being brought by two men who tried and failed to apply for work at DOGE — but there are at least two others as well.
[The Washington Post]
The Supreme Court’s site has added text saying it “may announce opinions” at 10AM ET tomorrow. I’m going to be furious if we don’t find out the fate of TikTok two days before the scheduled ban. I will also grudgingly respect the top-tier troll effort.