Melania’s “Official Meme” coin debuted this afternoon, a day after Trump launched his own cryptocurrency. An appended community note warns, “buying this token is incredibly risky and will likely result in the loss of funds.”
Around the same time, Trump’s coin fell by 36 percent, according to Axios. Bitcoin exceeded $108k for a new record early Monday morning.
Update: Added Bitcoin record.
Ramaswamy has been “subtly encouraged to exit” the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump tapped him to lead alongside Elon Musk, according to CBS News.
People close to Musk have privately undercut Ramaswamy for weeks, frustrated with his lack of participation in the heavy lifting, according to sources familiar with the internal dynamics.
Ramaswamy will reportedly announce a bid for governor of Ohio “as soon as the end of January.”
[CBS News]
You can catch the national mood from time to time using the iOS App Store’s top free apps list.
After today’s TikTok chaos, the top 20 apps there are taken up mostly by VPNs and video editing or social media posting apps, with a little ChatGPT and Temu sprinkled in for good measure.
Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Pete Rickets “called some of the major tech companies in recent days to say they needed to comply with” today’s federal TikTok ban, reports The New York Times.
The article followed a joint statement from the two praising Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for “halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok.” Since then, the app has started coming back online — but is still unavailable in app stores.
[The New York Times]
TikTok’s native visionOS app still works, at least for me, after the company cut off access for millions of US users of its smartphone app.
Despite the app continuing to be locked down, TikTok’s website seems to be working for US users, including those of us at The Verge, though at least in my case, it features a banner saying it’s unavailable.
Meanwhile, the app version now features a message saying it’s “temporarily unavailable,” and no longer mentions Trump.
The Apple Mail app in macOS 15.4 will be able to use AI to sort your emails by categories like transactions or promotions, as well as surface “Priority” emails at the top of your inbox, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter.
The features have already been part of the iPhone mail app since iOS 18.2.
