Big Tech congratulates Trump on reelection
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The country’s most prominent tech leaders, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy. congratulated President-elect Trump this week after he reclaimed the White House.
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Trump has had a contentious relationship with tech leaders in recent years, but his return to the Oval Office gives his administration-to-be power over purse strings that will seriously bolster someone’s bottom line — someone like Bezos, whose space firm Blue Origins is vying for contracts against Trump-backer Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and whose Amazon Cloud Services vies for big federal contracts.
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Musk, who made himself omnipresent on the campaign trail in the final weeks, has much to gain. So do the crypto companies that spent big, not just on Trump but on new members of Congress. It’s not clear that a Harris administration would have been any less tech-friendly than a Trump administration, but it’s clear that big tech leaders made their bet — and it paid off.
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Welcome to Tech Friday, a joint project of The Hill and Pluribus News covering tech policy across government.
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Trump considering Robinhood lawyer to run SEC
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President-elect Trump is considering Dan Gallagher, a former Republican commissioner on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and now the top lawyer at the stock trading firm Robinhood, to replace chairman Gary Gensler. Gallagher is a prominent ally of crypto executives. Read more at Reuters.
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TikTok has hopes for Trump admin
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President-elect Trump’s pledge not to ban TikTok will face a test in Congress if he seeks to repeal legislation requiring the firm’s Chinese parent company to divest. But if Congress refuses to act, Trump could refuse to enforce the law, which takes effect after he assumes office. Read more at The New York Times.
Related: The Canadian government has ordered the dissolution of TikTok’s Canadian affiliate, though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration says it won’t block access. Read more at The Washington Post.
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FBI investigates racist texts
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The FBI and at least two attorneys general are looking into a wave of racist text messages sent to Black people urging them to show up to report for slavery. The racist messages have been reported from across the United States; some reference Trump’s election. Read more at The New York Times.
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Trump denies Truth Social sale rumors
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President-elect Trump denied rumors he would sell shares in Truth Social parent company Trump Media & Technology Group. In a post on the site, Trump called on unnamed authorities to investigate those floating rumors of a pending sale. Read more at The Hill.
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Judge dismisses suits against OpenAI
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A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits from the news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet alleging the artificial intelligence giant OpenAI removed copyright management information from articles before feeding them into its ChatGPT platform. The judge said the news outlets could not prove adverse effects from the removal of any copyright information. Read more at The Hill.
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Tesla hits trillion-dollar market cap
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Shares of Tesla soared above $1 trillion in market capitalization on Friday, up more than a quarter since Election Day. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk got a shoutout from President-elect Trump during his victory speech Wednesday morning. Read more at The Hill.
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Magnificent Seven performance this week
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AAPL +2.9%, MSFT +3.4%, GOOG +5.3%, TSLA +33.2%, NVDA +7.2%, AMZN +6.1%, META +4%. NASDAQ-100 Tech Sector index: +6%.
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California AG wants social media warning labels
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California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) is preparing legislation to require warning labels on social media platforms. Bonta said this week he will introduce the legislation, inspired by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, when lawmakers return to Sacramento in January. Read more at Pluribus News.
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Detroit to accept crypto payments
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Detroit will become the largest American city to accept cryptocurrency payments for taxes and fees in an effort to attract new tech businesses. The city will launch a platform to accept payments managed by PayPal in 2025. Read more at Decrypt.
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Nov. 12: Spotify, Shopify and Instacart report third quarter earnings.
Nov. 13: A House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee will hold a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, which we used to call UFOs.
Nov. 15: Alibaba reports third quarter earnings.
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Your Notepad is getting smarter: Microsoft will add AI-powered text editing to Notepad, the basic text editor the company rolled out in 1983. Notepad didn’t even get spell check and autocorrect until July. Read more at The Verge.
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Hoping to praise Catholic saints? Don’t use a hashtag in your posts on the social media platform X, a lesson Pope Francis learned the hilarious way. In a post encouraging Catholics to learn lessons from those who have been sainted, the pontiff used #Saints — to which X automatically added the logo of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, a black-and-gold fleur-de-lis. Read more at The Hill.
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