Latest news with #MAGA-fied
Black America Web
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump's Ban On Foreign Students Enrolling At Harvard
Source: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / Getty A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's move to bar Harvard University from enrolling foreign students, which appeared to be President Donald Trump's latest retaliatory move against any institution that refuses to bow down to his unproven claims of rampant on-campus antisemitism as well as his anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion directives. (Or maybe Trump just hates education and non-white foreigners. Probably all of the above, actually.) According to The Guardian , US District Judge Allison Burroughs issued the temporary restraining order Friday morning, just hours after Harvard filed a lawsuit against the White House over its abrupt ban on foreign students, which the administration's Department of Homeland Security issued (for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with homeland security) on Thursday. Harvard announced the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Boston, early Friday morning. The lawsuit argues that the government's ban on non-U.S. students violates the First Amendment and will have an 'immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders.' 'With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard's student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission,' the suit reads. 'Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,' it also declared. The White House, of course, called the lawsuit 'frivolous,' which is rich coming from an administration that is trying to justify an arbitrary action that appears to serve no practical purpose outside of presidential pettiness against an Ivy League institution that won't bow to an overreaching federal government. Also, the administration appears to be following its Columbia University playbook, threatening the school and students who have engaged in protests and other causes that go against the ideology of the MAGA-fied government. (Some people might call that fascism. Trump and his GOP just call it another day of the week.) From The Guardian : The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported that the Department of Homeland Security gave Harvard 72 hours to turn over all documents on all international students' disciplinary records and paper, audio or video records on protest activity over the past five years in order to have the 'opportunity' to have its eligibility to enroll foreign students reinstated. 'The government's action is unlawful,' said a statement from Harvard on the action. 'This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard's academic and research mission.' Harvard President Alan Garber wrote an open letter to students, 'The revocation (of foreign enrollments) continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government's illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body.' Harvard's lawsuit lists Garber and 'fellows of Harvard' as plaintiffs. The lengthy list of defendants includes the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the government's Student and Exchange Visitor Program, Homeland Securety Secretary Kristi Noem (the official who doesn't appear to know what habeas corpus is), US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretay of State Marco Rubio, and acting ICE director Todd Lyons. SEE ALSO Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump's Ban On Foreign Students Enrolling At Harvard was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Black America Web
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Ben Crump Rip's Trump Administrations Decision To End Police Reform Agreement Reached In Wake Of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor
Source: Anadolu / Getty Famed civil attorney Ben Crump has weighed in on the MAGA-fied U.S. Department of Justice's recent decision to end Biden-era police-accountability agreements with Minneapolis and Louisville that came as a result of extensive investigations following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. It's the latest decision made by the DOJ's civil rights division that indicates the Trump administration's intent to halt any and all civil rights progress aimed at correcting systemic racism, except, of course, for the fictional systemic racism against white Americans (and, apparently, white Afrikaners in South Africa). First, here's Crump's full statement: 'Just days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder — a moment that galvanized a global movement for justice — the U.S. Department of Justice has chosen to turn its back on the very communities it pledged to protect. By walking away from consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, and closing its investigation into the Memphis Police Department while retracting findings of serious constitutional violations, the DOJ is not just rolling back reform, it is attempting to erase truth and contradicting the very principles for which justice stands. 'This decision is a slap in the face to the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tyre Nichols, and to every community that has endured the trauma of police violence and the false promises of accountability. These consent decrees and investigations were not symbolic gestures, they were lifelines for communities crying out for change, rooted in years of organizing, suffering, and advocacy. 'These moves will only deepen the divide between law enforcement and the people they are sworn to protect and serve. Trust is built with transparency and accountability, not with denial and retreat. 'But let me be clear: We will not give up. This movement will not be swayed or deterred by fickle politics. It is anchored in the irrefutable truth that Black lives matter, and that justice should not depend on who is in power. 'We will continue to fight for the reforms we know are necessary. For federal oversight that holds police departments accountable. For an end to the brutalization of our communities. For a future where justice is not an exception, but the rule.' Mind you, the announcement of the DOJ decision also came just one day after it was announced that the very same DOJ approved a nearly $5 million settlement for the family of Ashli Babbitt—the Jan. 6 Capitol rioter who got herself shot and killed by a Capitol police officer, Lt. Michael Byrd, while climbing over a barricade inside the Capitol building that rioters were warned not to breach. It's almost as if this administration isn't even bothering to hide its not-so-subtle intention to make white supremacy great again. It's worth noting that, according to The Washington Post, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey responded to the DOJ's announcement that it will rescind the police reform agreement by declaring that his city will still follow through with it. Leaders in Louisville reportedly said the same. 'We will comply with every sentence of every paragraph of the 169-page consent decree that we signed this year,' Frey said during a recent news briefing. Of course, it's also worth mentioning that the DOJ said it also plans to close investigations into local police departments in Phoenix, Memphis, Oklahoma City and other cities that were launched under President Joe Biden. In short: if you want any semblance of police reform, you pretty much have to be a Jan. 6 Capitol rioter. SEE ALSO: Op-Ed: Unpacking Trump's Factless Claims About 'White Genocide' Trump's DOJ Thinks Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Hired Too Many Black People, So It Launched An Investigation SEE ALSO Ben Crump Rip's Trump Administrations Decision To End Police Reform Agreement Reached In Wake Of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
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Korea Herald
27-04-2025
- Business
- Korea Herald
[Marcel Fratzscher] EU must revive multilateralism
US President Donald Trump's misguided trade war against the rest of the world could mark the beginning of the end for both his political dominance and his 'Make America Great Again' movement -- but only if Germany and Europe can coordinate a powerful international response. The European Commission and the outgoing German government's biggest mistake was to signal a willingness to concede to Trump's demands, potentially turning his economic blunder into a political victory. It should be clear by now that appeasing Trump will only hasten the collapse of the multilateral trading system and further undermine democratic governance worldwide. The European Union's response will be pivotal in determining whether the Trump administration (which is intent on dismantling the multilateral trading order) or China (which seeks to preserve it) will prevail. European leaders face a clear choice: stand for multilateralism and align with China or side with Trump's MAGA-fied United States. There is no third option. Germany and Europe cannot remain neutral in this conflict. Giving in to Trump's demands by pursuing a bilateral trade agreement would be tantamount to endorsing the end of multilateralism. The EU's ongoing failure to push back against Trump's policies reflects shocking shortsightedness and political naivete. While the direct economic impact of Trump's tariffs on Europe will likely be limited, the long-term consequences -- especially for Germany's export-driven economic model -- could be dire. Yielding to Trump would threaten the very foundation of German prosperity, which depends more than that of any other European country on open global trade grounded in non-discrimination, fairness, and competition. So, how should Germany and the EU respond to Trump's tariffs? The incoming German government -- together with France, the United Kingdom and other European partners -- must defend multilateralism by aligning with China and imposing reciprocal tariffs on American goods. In future negotiations with the US, European leaders must also insist on two key conditions. First, they should call for a renewed commitment to multilateralism as the foundation of the global trade system. That includes not only rolling back tariffs and other trade barriers to pre-crisis levels, but also revitalizing multilateral institutions like the World Trade Organization, which the US has systematically undermined by blocking the appointment of new judges to its appellate body. Importantly, the focus should not be limited to the WTO. Other multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank must also be empowered to play a more active role, particularly in representing and protecting the interests of the weakest economies in the Global South. Second, Europe should push for fair competition and common rules, especially when it comes to regulating US-based tech giants. These companies pay little to no tax and routinely violate EU laws and regulations concerning data protection, ethical standards and market competition. The recent US court ruling that Google has indeed built an illegal monopoly in search underscores the urgency of the issue. As German Finance Minister Jorg Kukies recently observed, European countries are increasingly reliant on services provided by US tech giants. If the EU fails to act now, this harmful dependence will continue to deepen, making Europe even more vulnerable to Trump-style political and commercial blackmail. Reviving multilateralism will also require meaningful concessions and reforms from China, the EU and Germany to help correct global imbalances. Through massive subsidies and other forms of support for domestic firms, China has repeatedly undermined multilateral rules to gain unfair advantages. But Germany also must reduce its own gigantic current account surpluses, which are largely driven by domestic regulations and other structural barriers that make it harder for foreign companies to enter its market. Given that addressing these distortions could offer considerable benefits to American companies, there is good reason to believe that such a balanced trade agreement might appeal to Trump and encourage him to change course. Despite its economic costs, Trump's global tariff war offers Europe a chance to establish itself as a mediator and defender of multilateralism in an increasingly multipolar world. It is high time that Europe stood up for its values and coordinated a unified response with partners like China, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Japan. By provoking a confrontation with all the world's major economies at once, Trump has made a serious strategic miscalculation. Pushing back may cost Europe in the short term, but allowing Trump to prevail and dismantle the multilateral trading system would be far more damaging -- both to the EU economy and to democracy itself. Marcel Fratzscher, a former senior manager at the European Central Bank, is President of the think tank DIW Berlin and Professor of Macroeconomics and Finance at Humboldt University of Berlin. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Top Nippon Steel executive to meet with Commerce's Lutnick at pivotal moment
A top Nippon Steel executive will meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in Washington, seeking the administration's blessing for a MAGA-fied proposal to acquire US Steel, people familiar with the matter told Semafor. Takahiro Mori, the Japanese firm's vice chairman, is expected to meet with Lutnick to discuss Nippon's plan to invest as much as $7 billion into US steelmaking facilities, first reported by Semafor, on top of its $14 billion takeover of US Steel, which Trump previously said he would block. Steel union leaders are also expected to attend tariff announcements at the White House tomorrow. Commerce didn't return requests for comment. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Musk, Bezos, and Zuck are going full alpha male. America's girlbosses are fed up.
Can you smell the testosterone? Suddenly, America's top CEOs seem to be taking their cues from Logan Roy, Rambo, and, most conspicuously, Donald Trump. Jiujitsu-fighting, MAGA-fied Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's podcast to bemoan corporate culture for becoming "neutered" and called instead for "aggression," saying "masculine energy" is "good" and criticism of it had gone too far. Jamie Dimon has gone on f-bomb-filled screeds about how coddled employees need to get back to the office. A buff Jeff Bezos has laid down the hammer at The Washington Post, demanding editors give him a "hell yes" to affirm they're all in on "personal liberties and free markets." Elon Musk, emboldened by Trump to be more "aggressive," is shouting "chainsaw!" as he makes brutal cuts to the federal bureaucracy. And even if that Zuck-Musk cage match got canceled, the ready-to-rumble spirit persists: Musk posted to X earlier this month that he "literally challenged Putin to one-on-one physical combat over Ukraine." Not in the least surprised by all this chest-thumping: women in business. I spoke to several female founders, along with psychologists and sociologists, who see the resurgent machoism in corporate America — and the related dismantling of DEI programs, RTO mandates, layoffs, and calls for "intensity" — as the onset of a new era of backlash. On the one hand, some women fear that aggressive company culture in the Trump 2.0 era may push them out of corporate positions and continue trends like underrepresentation in the tech sector. On the other, some see it as galvanizing. "The backlash is a sign that we're making serious progress," says Maureen Clough, the host of "It Gets Late Early," a podcast about ageism in the workplace, sharing the sentiment of several women I spoke to. "Now we know who these people are," she adds. "The masks and the gloves are off." While some see these displays of strongmanhood as a means of placating — and fending off regulatory action from — the Trump administration, others see it as seizing the political moment to opportunistically return to masculine norms in the workplace. It's "not about money, it's more about them wanting to have the playground they've always had," says Sapna Cheryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. Jennifer Berdahl, a professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, uses a similar analogy. "It's like boys in a sandbox but scaling it to billionaires. It's the concept of precarious manhood: Almost no matter how much you succeed, it's just never enough." She adds, "What they're really calling for is for dominance contests to go free, almost like a gladiator arena." The gladiator games don't just play out among the top alphas — those down the chain watch and learn. After Musk called a researcher a "retard" on X, for example, the use of the slur soon tripled on the platform, a study from Montclair State University found. In a January article titled "Is corporate America going MAGA?" an (ironically) anonymous banker told the Financial Times, "I feel liberated. We can say 'retard' and pussy' without the fear of getting canceled." Gen Z men are less likely than millennial men to say the term "feminist" describes them, according to a 2023 survey from the Survey Center on American Life. Almost half of them said they feel men face discrimination in the US. Meanwhile, only 49% of women feel women in the US are treated with respect and dignity, down from 66% in 2015, a Gallup survey found. Many women are fed up. And, tired of waiting on corporate America, they're increasingly building their own arenas. Over the past decade, women have made significant, if uneven, gains in the corporate workforce. Women now make up 10.4% of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies, up from just 4.6% in 2015. The overwhelming majority of this small group is white. Women are now outpacing men in becoming entrepreneurs; today they own nearly 39% of American businesses, increasing the number of women-led companies by 13.6% between 2019 and 2023, a 2024 Wells Fargo report said. Firms owned by men grew by just 7% in the same time period. In Silicon Valley, however, Zuckerberg's "masculine energy" quip doesn't track with reality. As of 2022, women made up just 22% of tech workers. That's the same proportion of jobs they held in 2005, the year after Facebook was founded. Women accounted for 16% of first-time VC-backed entrepreneurs and only 9% of entrepreneurs who get VC-backing for two startups, according to a 2024 paper that looked at aggregate data from Pitchbook. The promises of the girlboss era, meanwhile, have come up short. In the 2010s, Sheryl Sandberg called on ambitious women to "lean in." Work hard enough, assert yourself, and you can have it all. But the girlboss was an empty caricature, idolizing women who'd squeezed their way into the C-suite while trying old leadership tactics and wearing high heels. They were feminine and white, often thin and privileged. And, as Michelle Obama famously said of "leaning in" in 2018, "That shit doesn't work all the time." A sprinkling of female founders and executives in a world run by men hasn't transformed it: Toxic workplaces still emerged at several women-led companies. Steph Korey of Away was outed as a Slack bully (she apologized). Glossier workers reported discrimination and mistreatment under founder and former CEO Emily Weiss's tenure (Weiss apologized, too). Elizabeth Holmes lied to investors and risked lives (she apologized, and is serving an 11-year prison sentence). Sandberg herself is facing new allegations of toxic behavior: A new memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former policy director at Facebook (now Meta), claims that Sandberg had a young assistant sleep in her lap and demanded the author join her in bed on a private jet. The book, "Careless People," also highlights the ways women at Facebook felt leadership had failed them. Meta has slammed the book as inaccurate, calling it a "mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives." A spokesperson for Sandberg's Lean In organization declined to comment on the memoir, but directed me to its website for information about ways Lean In sees itself as evolving to help women of all backgrounds navigate barriers and biases they may face at work. Even if you have more women, they'll still assimilate to the workplace culture you have. Erika Lucas, founder of StitchCrew Women have proved they can behave just as badly as men — but even when they're on their best behavior or make minor missteps, they're hit with harsh criticism men are more likely to evade. A 2020 study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that men are more valued than women when they "take charge." The "founder mode," hands-on, direct style of management can backfire for women — as Airbnb CEO and founder mode proselytizer Brian Chesky posted on X last fall: "Women founders have been reaching out to me over the past 24 hours about how they don't have permission to run their companies in Founder Mode the same way men can. This needs to change." "Even if you have more women, they'll still assimilate to the workplace culture you have," says Erika Lucas, the founder of StitchCrew, a nonprofit focused on fostering equitable entrepreneurship, and VEST, a women's peer network and investment fund. "Women are being conditioned to fit into this meritocracy, or fit within these toxic systems because that's all we have." As Cheryan puts it, "masculine defaults" are diffuse in the workplace "because men made companies in their image. The return of those defaults are pushing more women to ditch corporate America and go out on their own, says Lucas. "The reason why we're seeing more women-led companies starting is because corporate America is not working for women." When companies won't offer work-from-home policies or flexibility that working parents need, it can embolden people to become more entrepreneurial and build under their own terms. "Oftentimes the easiest way to find that is to build it yourself," says Jaclyn Pascocello, the founder of Fabrik, a networking space for people to grow their communities, noting that it's still not easy to launch a company. But in this climate of ascendant machoism, she says, she is seeing a collective of women coming together at Fabrik and starting to build companies to address issues sometimes ignored by men. Those can include solutions for women's health and caregiving. "It really feels like there's a ton of women trying to lift each other up," she said. But oversimplifying "masculine" or "feminine" traits to fit narrow boxes "is doing everyone a disservice," says Ashley Rose, the cofounder and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Living Security. "You need to find people that possess the traits that work well in your culture." Similarly, the concept of DEI has been misrepresented and turned into a dirty acronym by the political right, says Virginia Cumberbatch, a global DEI strategist and consultant. While DEI implementation has been lacking and its results disappointing at some firms, there are ways for new and old companies to create initiatives to foster diversity, even in the current political climate. "We've allowed DEI to be a catchall that's kind of lost its meaning," Cumberbatch says. DEI, she says, shouldn't be thought of as a blanket fix. Equity looks different in the work of a university or an architecture firm. And companies that are serious about building diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments need to give authority to the people who work in it at a senior level. "It has to be pervasive in every dimension of your organization or your brand, or it is just rhetoric," she says. There's no business case for stifling diversity. Many studies have found that having a diverse staff is good for companies financially, and benefits like extended parental leave, caregiving resources, and flexibility help with employee retention and burnout. And Big Tech businesses have ballooned in value while they publicly called for diversity, but they ride the tides of public opinion. Personalities that are power-obsessed often swing politically to hold onto their prestige. With that reality exposed, some women are changing their responses. Vanessa Jupe, the founder of Leva, a platform to support new parents, says she became more politically active in the 2024 election and supported Kamala Harris' campaign by canvassing her neighborhood and donating money. Some Facebook groups dedicated to campaigning for Harris have morphed into places of action, with members organizing to write letters and calling lawmakers to express frustration with the Trump administration. Escalating tactics could include strikes, sit-ins, picketing, and actions like the late February economic blackout targeted at large retailers. "There's a full-frontal assault on women and people of color," Jupe says. "The time to play nice is not now. You cannot have kid gloves on when you're fighting against really silly bullies." The era of the girlboss is long dead. No singular trope or central figure has taken its place in 2025 — which may be a good thing. "Nobody should be made into a hero," Lucas says. "My hope for women is that we start building power collectively." That also means pushing for change by showing that companies can be "successful because you actually operate it in a different way," Cheryan says. Women have stopped thinking they can "have it all" by leaning in, and instead are calling on men to do more at home and work toward more equitable workplaces — and opting out of marriage and traditional corporate America if they don't. Leaders who are willing to disrupt corporate culture norms have an enormous opportunity to lure top talent away from workplaces that aren't. We're not likely to see a few women rising through the ranks and joining the boys on stage in a cage match — and that's for the best, but there's a culture shift unfolding that could allow them to make something new. Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends. Read the original article on Business Insider
