White House

Billionaire VC Mike Moritz slams new H-1B visa fee as ‘brutish extortion scheme’

Government & Policy /

The Trump administration last Friday announced a new $100,000 annual levy on H-1B visas, which allow 85,000 skilled foreign workers to enter the U.S. each year. The fee applies to companies hiring these workers, primarily in tech. Veteran venture capitalist Michael Moritz isn’t having it. In a new, scathing Financial Times op-ed, the former Sequoia […]

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The White House is on TikTok now, which is technically banned in the U.S.

Government & Policy /

The White House joined TikTok on Tuesday, where it’s sharing video clips of President Donald Trump and his staff that attempt to portray them as a quick-witted, rebellious American leaders. These clips, edited together like a sizzle reel, show Trump declining phone calls from Congressmen and threatening lawsuits during a press conference. Another video boasts

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Trump administration to spend $1 billion on ‘offensive’ hacking operations

Security /

The Trump administration, through the Department of Defense, plans to spend $1 billion over the next four years on what it calls “offensive cyber operations.”  The provision in Trump’s landmark One Big Beautiful Bill does not say what those “offensive cyber operations” are, nor what specific tools or software would qualify. The budget does note

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Public comments to White House on AI policy touch on copyright, tariffs

AI /

Individuals, industry groups, and local governments submitted over 10,000 comments to the White House about its work-in-progress national AI policy, also known as the AI Action Plan. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on Thursday published the text of the submissions in a PDF spanning 18,480 pages. The comments, which touch

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You might be following Second Lady Usha Vance on Instagram now

Government & Policy /

Starting Wednesday, Meta says it will begin combining the Instagram accounts of the Second Lady of the United States, Usha Vance, and the former Second Gentleman of the United States, Doug Emhoff. As a result, the 1.2 million people who were previously following the Instagram account of Kamala Harris’s husband, @secondgentleman46archive (recently archived by the

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Anthropic submits AI policy recommendations to the White House

Government & Policy /

A day after quietly removing Biden-era AI policy commitments from its website, Anthropic submitted recommendations to the White House for a national AI policy that the company says “better prepare[s] America to capture the economic benefits” of AI. The company’s suggestions include preserving the AI Safety Institute established under the Biden Administration, directing NIST to

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Elon Musk is reportedly taking control of the inner workings of US government agencies

Government & Policy /

People working for, or with, Elon Musk are reportedly taking over the inner workings of multiple government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury Department. The Washington Post reported Friday that the highest-ranking career official at Treasury is leaving the department after “a clash” with people working for Musk’s so-called Department of

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Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang has published an open letter lobbying Trump to invest in AI

AI /

Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, has taken out a full-page ad in The Washington Post asking the Trump administration to invest more in AI. Wang, who attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday like many other tech CEOs, posted a copy of the ad on X, which reads “Dear President Trump, America must win the

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The U.S. has a new cybersecurity safety label for smart devices

Security /

The White House this week announced a new label for internet-connected devices, the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, intended to help consumers make more-informed decisions about the cybersecurity of products they bring into their homes. To earn the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, which is being administered by the Federal Communications Commission, companies have to test their

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