The United States and China– two of the world’s largest economies– are locked in a dangerous trade stand-off that may have no winners. As the US tries to arm-twist China — with mounting tariffs– into seeking a deal from his administration, it is becoming increasingly clear that Beijing may have more leverage than President Donald Trump and his aides think.
The United States remains an almost irreplaceable market for China for its manufactured goods. However, experts caution Washington not to underestimate Beijing’s capacity to resist the Trump administration’s coercive tactics. The combination of Beijing’s centralised political control, diversified export markets and stronghold over some strategically vital materials, including rare earth metals and magnets, gives China plenty of room to negotiate with the US.
The complexity of the United States’ dependence on China was evident over the weekend when the Trump administration exempted smartphones, laptops and TVs from its new tariffs — goods that the US primarily imports from China.
We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government. The president really loves the UK. He loved the queen. He admires and loves the king. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [the UK].
But I think it’s much deeper than that. There’s a real cultural affinity. And of course, fundamentally America is an Anglo country. I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.
Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro angrily called for an end to rising political violence just hours after a man broke into the governor’s mansion and set it on fire, forcing Shapiro and his family to flee into the night.
It was the latest in a string of partisan political attacks in the United States.
“This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society. And I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other,” Shapiro said. “It has to stop.”
While police have not said what might have motivated the attack early Sunday, court documents say the suspect admitted he hated Shapiro and was plotting to beat him with a hammer.
“The attacker basically wasn’t a fan of anybody,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday. “And certainly, a thing like that cannot be allowed to happen.”
A 5.2 magnitude earthquake hit Southern California just outside San Diego on Monday, and people received text alerts on their phones mere seconds before the quake occurred.
“Parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties were jolted Monday morning by a strong earthquake near San Diego,” reported KTLA.
“The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.2 and was near the mountain town of Julian, east of San Diego, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Multiple aftershocks in the 2 and 3 magnitude range have been reported,” it added.
People from San Diego to Los Angeles received an alert about the quake on their phones from the “Shake Alert” system, which, according to the Guardian, was “designed to warn those who could be affected and give them essential seconds to prepare before shaking starts.”
If you are confused about the government‘s tariff policy, don’t worry. You are not alone. Confusion is not your fault. Since taking office for the second time, President Donald Trump has flipped back and forth on tariffs while offering different explanations for current policy and different predictions for future policy.
There are many components to successful leadership, but an important one is communicating to constituents what your policies are, why they are needed, and how they will work. Trump has not done this for his tariffs. As a result, the economy is suffering, and voters are beginning to blame the president for their pain. Until Trump is able to deliver stability or clarity on this matter, the economic pain will continue for everyone, and the political pain for Trump and the Republican Party will worsen.
On his first day in office, Trump announced a 25% tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on all goods from China starting Feb. 1. On Feb. 1, Trump reannounced the tariffs but pushed the start date to Feb. 4. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced a 30-day delay for the Canada and Mexico tariffs but started the China tariffs.
The federal government says it’s freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University, after the institution said Monday it won’t comply with the Trump administration’s demands to limit activism on campus.
In a letter to Harvard Friday, the administration called for broad government and leadership reforms, “merit-based” admissions and hiring policies, and an audit of the study body, faculty and leadership on their views about diversity.
The demands, which are an update from an earlier letter, also call for a ban on face masks — a measure that appears to target pro-Palestinian protesters — and pressure the university to stop recognizing or funding “any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment.”
Eased restrictions around ChatGPT image generation can make it easy to create political deepfakes, according to a report from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation).
The CBC discovered that not only was it easy to work around ChatGPT’s policies of depicting public figures, it even recommended ways to jailbreak its own image generation rules. Mashable was able to recreate this approach by uploading images of Elon Musk and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and then describing them as fictional characters in various situations (“at a dark smoky club” “on a beach drinking piña coladas”).
Political deepfakes are nothing new. But widespread availability of generative AI models that can create images, video, audio, and text to replicate people has real consequences. For commercially-marketed tools like ChatGPT to allow the potential spread of political disinformation raises questions about OpenAI’s responsibility in the space. That duty to safety could become compromised as AI companies compete for user adoption.
President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, announced new contract terminations on Tuesday, saving American taxpayers $2.6 billion in wasteful spending.
The agency highlighted presumably the most outrageous expenses, which total over $350,000 for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “plant maintenance” and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) social media programs.
Similarly, DOGE recently revealed that minor routine website maintenance for the VA cost $380,000 PER MONTH.
“That contract has not been renewed, and the same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending ~10 hours/week,” the department said.