Climate protester arrested after spray painting over presidential insignia at Trump Tower
The man sprayed the bright green paint over the plaque inside the Midtown landmark before kneeling on the ground in front of it and closing his eyes, according to footage posted on X.
Moments after a small crowd gathered — some snapping photos of the demonstrator — a security officer approached, and the man unfurled a small banner bearing the words, 'GAME OVER' with the symbol for the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion.
The suspect was carted away in handcuffs.
FNTV
He was carted away by officers wearing dark-colored suits as he declared, 'This is your country. This is our country. This is our planet. …You cannot ruin it without comment. They are ruining the planet for profit.'
The brazen display comes a day after the same activist group spray-painted the Wall Street Charging Bull — before wiping away their graffiti as cops looked on.
They later sprayed graffiti on the windows of Tesla's Meatpacking District showroom — which landed two of them in cuffs, authorities said.
Two more demonstrators wound up in custody Tuesday night when they allegedly disrupted a performance of 'Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux'at the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center, according to cops and the New York City Ballet.
'It is Earth Day and we are in climate emergency!' one protester yelled during the performance, before being escorted out to cheers and jeers. 'Our country has become a Fascist regime and we are enjoying this beauty?'
The Trump Tower protester was previously nabbed for criminal trespass at Columbia University, law enforcement sources said.
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Newsweek
20 hours ago
- Newsweek
The Origin Story of 'Earthrise' — the Photo That Saved 1968
The year 1968 was by any measure a bad one for America. Two of our nation's leaders were assassinated—Senator Robert Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Following King's murder, riots swept across the nation's biggest cities, with the National Guard deployed to bring them to an end. The war in Vietnam continued to escalate, as did protests and civil unrest across the nation to end it. The event that saved 1968 from an endless barrage of bad news was a journey that propelled three men nearly a quarter-million miles from Earth. That journey to space and the iconic photograph that would define it, "Earthrise," provided a moment of national pride and unity. But it did something even deeper, inspiring a sense of unity—and even awe and transcendence—in a country desperately in need of all three. How did one of history's most iconic photographs come to be? Ironically, the very forces that impelled America to send troops to Southeast Asia—and drive a wedge in America's social and political landscape—propelled us into space: our battle with the Soviet Union. It wasn't Earth Day activists or peaceniks that inspired the photo, though both would claim the picture as symbols of their movements (as did modern climate change activists). It was born out of an epic struggle over competing visions of how human beings should govern and organize themselves. A worldwide competition between communism and our constitutional Republic. Between collectivism and capitalism. Between Karl Marx's vision and the vision of America's Founding Fathers. Astronauts saw the Earth rise over the lunar horizon from Apollo 8 in December 1968. Astronauts saw the Earth rise over the lunar horizon from Apollo 8 in December 1968. Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images Our nation's race to space was set in motion when President John F. 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Once the spacecraft entered lunar orbit, it made 10 complete orbits before returning home. It was on the fourth pass that Apollo 8's crew—Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell—witnessed what would come to be known as an "Earthrise" for the first time. "So we were in lunar orbit upside down and going backwards, so for the first several revolutions we didn't see the Earth, and didn't really think about that," Anders recalled in an interview with NASA years later. "And then we righted ourselves heads-up and twisted the spacecraft so it was going forward, and while Borman was in the process of doing that, suddenly I saw in the corner of my eye this color and it was shocking." The banter between the Apollo 8 crew members was captured for the world to hear. "Oh my God! Look at that picture over there, it's the Earth coming up! Wow, that's pretty!" Anders said to his crewmates as he hurried to replace the black and white film in his Hasselblad 500 EL camera with color film. "I put the long lens on and started snapping away," Anders continued. "I just took the f-stop and just took a shot and then moved it, took a shot and then moved it and then we really didn't think that much about it." That evening, Americans and the world—nearly a billion people—watched in awe as America's intrepid space explorers broadcast a live TV Christmas Eve message from space. What could they say after seeing what they'd just seen? "We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to you," Anders began. Anders then read the first verses of Genesis, with Borman and Lovell to follow—10 verses total. It would become, instantly, the largest mass-televised Bible reading in world history. Days later, the negatives from the photo session splashed safely into the Pacific Ocean along with the crew. The photos were developed within days. Soon thereafter, the world would see what the astronauts had seen from their capsule: "Earthrise" in all its glory. Life magazine's year in review—published in January 1969—put "Earthrise" on its cover and printed the photo on a double-page spread alongside a poem by U.S. poet laureate James Dickey: And behold / The blue planet steeped in its dream / Of reality, its calculated vision shaking with the only love. Five decades later, Lovell recalled the impact Apollo 8 had on him during a speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8. "Seeing the world from 240,000 miles, my world suddenly expanded to infinity," Lovell said. "I put my thumb up to the window and it completely hid the Earth. "How did I fit in what I saw? In my mind, the answer was clear. God gave man a stage upon which to perform. The rest was up to us." Millions of Americans thought similar thoughts about that photo. About God's magnificent design. God's beautiful and perfect creation. Lovell then closed things out with these final words about the mission, and the iconic photo that embodied it. "It was the American public that received the greatest gift," he said. "After a year of controversary, Apollo 8 gave them a reason to be American. The flight of Apollo 8 can best be expressed by a telegram received by the crew. It only said: "Thanks, you saved 1968."
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Trump Targets Corporate America to Achieve Economic and Foreign Policy Goals
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In these cases, the administration is picking winners and losers, and risks undermining the free flow of capital. 'The Trump administration's focus on industries like steel, semiconductors, and critical minerals is not arbitrary – these sectors are critical to our national and economic security,' White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an emailed statement. 'Cooled inflation, trillions in new investments, historic trade deals, and hundreds of billions in tariff revenue prove how President Trump's hands-on leadership is paving the way towards a new Golden Age for America.' Trump surprised markets earlier this month when he announced Nvidia and AMD agreed to pay the US government 15% of their revenue from AI chip sales to China. The move rankled investors, trade experts, lawmakers and others who feared a much broader slippery slope in which the federal government could begin forcing pay-for-play scenarios in everything from trade negotiations to defense contracts. 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CNN
3 days ago
- CNN
‘An existential threat': For Silicon Valley, falling behind in AI is a bigger threat than tariffs
If there's one thing the White House, Wall Street and Silicon Valley can agree on, it's that artificial intelligence is a top priority. Tech giants are pouring billions into new data centers and infrastructure to support the technology. The White House came out with an AI action plan in July to boost America's leadership in the space, underscoring the tech's importance to the administration. Wall Street keeps pushing AI-related stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) to new records. But President Donald Trump's trade war has raised questions about whether the administration's policies could work against its big AI push. Certain tariffs could raise the costs of materials and components necessary to support those AI models. For example, the president said on August 6 that he would issue a 100% tariff on semiconductors imports, although he added that companies that have committed to expanding their manufacturing operations in the US would be exempt. (He did not give an exact timeline for when those tariffs would start.) And in late July, he imposed a 50% tariff on copper, which is used in electronic components such as printed circuit boards and chips. But while tariffs could stoke uncertainty around costs, experts say they won't slow technological advancements, primarily because the stakes are simply too high to fall behind in the global AI race. For large tech companies like Meta and Microsoft, losing in AI would be a higher price to pay than any additional costs from tariffs. Dallas Dolen, the US technology, media and telecommunications lead for PricewaterhouseCoopers, said these types of companies likely view the AI boom as an 'existential moment' for their businesses. 'Cost, if you have enough money, is not the most important variable that you take into account when you're told it's an existential threat,' he said to CNN. When Meta, Microsoft and Google reported earnings in late July, one message rang loud and clear: Big Tech is spending big on AI, and it's starting to pay off. Meta spent $17 billion in capital expenditures for the quarter that ended in June, and it saw its earnings per share go up 38% compared to a year ago. Capital expenditures typically refer to money spent on things like data centers and infrastructure, likely a sign that Meta is investing more in the servers needed to power its burgeoning AI services. Wall Street cheered the results; Meta shares (META) rose 9% in after-hours trading when it posted the results on July 30, and shares are up roughly 30% year to date. Microsoft (MSFT) also posted strong results thanks to its cloud computing business. It spent $24.2 billion in capital expenditures during its most recent quarter, and it plans to spend another $30 billion in the coming months, the company said in late July. Microsoft became the second company to reach a $4 trillion valuation last month, following Nvidia, and its shares are up about 26% so far this year. And Google parent Alphabet increased its capital expenditures for 2025 to $85 billion because of demand for its cloud products. The company said its cloud services are used by 'nearly all gen AI unicorns,' referring to privately held companies worth $1 billion or more in the generative artificial intelligence space. Alphabet shares (GOOG) are up nearly 7% year to date. That additional infrastructure may be essential; Goldman Sachs estimates that global power demand from data centers will surge 50% by 2027 and 165% by 2030 compared to 2023 because of AI. 'We have barely scratched the surface of this 4th Industrial Revolution now playing out around the world led by the Big Tech stalwarts such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon,' Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a research note following the companies' earnings results. Trump's rapidly changing tariff policies have made it difficult to estimate how exactly the levies could impact the cost of building and operating data centers. But PwC's Dolen said he's seen estimates indicating that tariffs could increase construction costs by 5% to 7%. The National Association of Manufacturers' outlook survey also found that trade uncertainties and increased costs of raw materials were the top business challenges for manufacturers in the first quarter of 2025. However, big tech companies are likely to eat any additional costs related to AI infrastructure because 'demand is so strong,' said Michelle Brophy, director of research for tech, media and telecom at market intelligence firm AlphaSense. It's a different story for smaller companies that don't have billions to spend each quarter. They also typically have private investors demanding a fast return on investment, and data centers are long-term bets that could take years to show value in a meaningful way. Between 2015 and 2020, it took one to three years on average to construct a data center, according to commercial real estate services firm CBRE. And a data center is useful for 25 years to 30 years on average, McKinsey & Company senior partner Pankaj Sachdeva said in October 2024. Because data centers are long-term projects, 'the degree of uncertainty will have a larger impact in terms of, you know, committing to something that will take multiple years to execute,' said Laurence Ales, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University. It's also unclear whether Trump's semiconductor tariffs will raise the cost of future data centers. The president said companies that have 'committed' to building in the US won't have to pay a levy on semiconductors. 'But the good news for companies like Apple is, if you're building in the United States, or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge,' he said on August 6 during an event announcing Apple's $100 billion initiative to produce iPhone parts in the US. Trump didn't specify which companies would be exempt, but chipmaking giants Nvidia and TSMC have both said they would expand their US operations. Experts believe more collaboration between the White House and Silicon Valley is likely to come, possibly easing any potential tariff-induced costs for tech giants. Trump showed his willingness to negotiate with tech leaders earlier this week: He allowed Nvidia and AMD to sell their AI chips to China as long as they provide a 15% cut to the US government in exchange for export licenses. And the White House is reportedly discussing taking a stake in chipmaker Intel. Building AI infrastructure is a key part of the White House's AI action plan, which includes policy recommendations for streamlining permits for facilities like data centers and semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The United States already has more data centers than any other country, according to data from Cloudscene, a platform that connects businesses with cloud services, compiled by Statista. Many of the world's largest cloud providers, like Microsoft and Amazon, are American companies. 'We need to be mindful that this is an area in which we have an advantage,' Matt Pearl, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, said to CNN. 'And we don't want to give that up.'
