A new high-powered microwave system that can knock swarms of drones out of the sky at once is going to "touch every aspect of warfare," according to Epirus founder, Joe Lonsdale. 

"It’s kind of like a Star Trek shield," Lonsdale, founder of Epirus and a co-founder of fast-rising defense technology company Palantir, explained of its Leonidas counter-drone system. "It’s able to turn them off from very far away." 

"This is going to touch every aspect of warfare over the next decade," he told Fox News Digital. "We can knock down some pretty advanced drones." 

Defense tech startup Epirus secured another $250 million in a Series D funding round, which was announced Wednesday, bringing its total venture funding to over $550 million. 

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Epirus’ Leonidas system is a ground-based, directed energy weapon that fires off an electromagnetic pulse to disable swarms of drones, or it can neutralize precision targets. The company aims to help the military shift away from a "1 to 1 mindset to a ‘1 to many’ way of thinking for short-range defense," according to CEO Andy Lowery. 

Drone swarms have been a key frontline tactic in the Russia-Ukraine war because most defense systems are designed to take out one unmanned vehicle at a time. Additionally, in the Middle East, the U.S. has been using multimillion-dollar missiles to shoot down Houthi drones that are built for around $2,000 or less. 

"Swarms of drones is where war is going, and currently you have swarms of drones that are very expensive and very difficult to stop," said Lonsdale. "It's not just drones, they're all sorts of different types of uses for this," he added, predicting that one day the technology might be deployed to freeze up planes in the sky and protect satellites. The technology has already been successful in Defense Department tests on boat motors and other electronics, according to the company.  

"This is just it's just going to touch every aspect of warfare in the next decade." 

Rep. Rob Wittman, vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, warned that the U.S. needs to "run to play catchup" with its adversaries in the counter-UAS space. 

"We are not doing what we need to do," he told Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the National Security Innovation Base Summit in Washington, D.C. "We have failed miserably at counter-UAS. We do okay in CENTCOM [Central Command], but … in places like Langley Air Force Base, we are not where we need to be." 

Dozens of drones hovered over Langley for over two weeks in 2023, and lawmakers say they still have not been provided with an explanation. 

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Epirus won a $66 million contract in 2023 to supply its Leonidas to the U.S. Army, and the technology is believed to be  in the testing phase by Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, according to comments that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George made to Congress last year. 

The rapid rise of unmanned aerial vehicles in war has prompted a defensive race to develop systems to counter them, like high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves. 

"We have a lot of people who are, you know, coming into the [Defense Department]wanting to embrace new technologies," said Lonsdale. "They’re really excited about this." 

The defense entrepreneur suggested there is "tons of waste" in the Pentagon that could be repurposed for new technologies.

"There’s a ton of cronyism. We're seeing tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars you could pull out, depending [on] how aggressive you want to be. And these should be put into cutting-edge technologies that actually deter enemies."

Epirus was valued at $1.35 billion when it raised $200 million in Series C funding, but the company did not disclose its valuation for this round. 

The California-based company will use the new cash influx to expand into international and commercial markets and expand manufacturing in the U.S. 

The company is also planning to open a new simulation center in Oklahoma to train soldiers in counter-drone warfare. 

As part of his acquisition of Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk called on the social media giant's CEO to detail what he accomplished during the work week – years before he employed the same tactic on federal employees while serving in his capacity as chair of the Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration. 

Musk roiled the federal workforce on Saturday when he posted to X that employees would need to list their accomplishments for the previous week or risk losing their jobs. 

But this isn't the first time Musk has used the tactic: He did the same amid his purchase of Twitter in 2022, before he overhauled the social media behemoth, including axing top brass. 

"What did you get done this week," Musk had texted former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in April 2022, months before he purchased Twitter and ultimately renamed it X. 

Musk helped resurrect the text exchange over the weekend on X, when he responded to an account that shared a "how it started, how it’s going" post that showed a screenshot of Musk’s text to Agrawal, accompanied by a screen shot of a Musk X post on Saturday directed at federal employees. 

"Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week," Musk wrote on X on Saturday. "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation." 

"To be clear, the bar is very low here," Musk wrote. "An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write." 

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Musk, who positioned himself as "free speech absolutist" amid the Twitter purchase, bought the social media platform in 2022 after it came under fire from conservatives and free speech advocates for censoring conservative viewpoints. 

The tech giant had "permanently" banned former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, drawing ire from conservatives and free speech advocates. It also blocked the New York Post’s 2020 story on Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop – and suspended some conservative accounts from the site, such as satire website Babylon Bee in 2022 after it awarded transgender Biden administration official Rachel Levine a fictitious "Man of the Year" award. 

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Musk’s text to the then-Twitter CEO asking what he accomplished for the week came as the two sparred over Musk’s critical messages aimed at the social media platform, including asking publicly that year, "Is Twitter dying?" The text messages were revealed in court documents released in 2022. 

Months later, in October 2022, Musk officially acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal, making waves when he entered its headquarters that month carrying a bathroom sink in a video he posted to X with the caption, "Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!"

Musk went on to fire the social media company’s top executives, including Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and general counsel Vijaya Gadde. Musk explained on X recently that Agrawal was fired due to reported productivity issues. 

"Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired," he posted to X on Saturday.

All in, roughly 70% to 80% of Twitter's approximate 8,000 employees were fired or exited the company following Musk’s purchase. Musk took a hatchet to the company’s work from home policy, and remarked that the company was overstaffed and needed to be trimmed of staffers who did not contribute much to its operations. 

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"We just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed," Musk said on Fox News in 2023. "Turns out you don't need all that many people to run Twitter."

"If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out," he said at the time. 

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Musk’s comments reflect those he’s made in the second Trump administration as the chair of DOGE, which is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in the search for overspending, corruption and mismanagement. 

DOGE’s work comes as President Donald Trump ordered the federal workforce to return to the office after five years of remote work stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and has vowed to clean house of bad actors within the government and ax overspending. 

Musk said on Saturday that federal employees would receive an email directing them to list their accomplishments from the week prior, with the DOGE leader adding later that day that the assignment should take less than five minutes to accomplish. 

Employees have until 11:59 pm on Monday to send the list or lose their employment, according to emails regarding Musk's directive that were sent by the Office of Personnel Management.

Musk's message followed Trump remarking that he has been pleased with Musk and DOGE's work investigating various federal agencies for government overspending, fraud and mismanagement, but that he would like to see Musk "get more aggressive." 

Musk responded on X: "Will do, Mr. President!"

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Some Democratic lawmakers, unions and activists have called for federal employees to buck the order, while a handful of government departments and agencies, such as the FBI and Department of Defense, told staff to hold off on responding to the email, as respective officials will handle auditing their own staffers. 

"This is a good opportunity for mass civil disobedience. Musk has no authority to do this," Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten, for example, posted to X on Saturday evening. "Encourage all federal employees to report to work, prepare GFY letters and continue to demonstrate the public service and patriotism he lacks." The acronym GFY is internet slang typically meaning "go f--- yourself."

"It takes a remarkable combination of arrogance and stupidity to think that this is the best use of time for our intelligence officers, VA workers, air traffic controllers, and everyone else we depend on to do their job well," he continued.

Agents with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will no longer wear body cameras during field operations after a social media post publicized how to identify individual agents.

"All U.S. Border Patrol Agents will cease the use of body-worn cameras (BWC) in all operational environments," CBP said in a statement to NewsNation, which originally reported the news.

The directive comes after a post on Reddit claimed that the mobile application BLE Radar, which uses Bluetooth to scan for low-energy devices such as phones, smartwatches and speakers, can also track CBP body cameras from a distance of 100 yards and can also trigger improvised explosive devices.

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CBP officials sent out a directive following the post informing agents of a "potential security risk" while immediately pulling body cameras from use in the field.

"Pending completion of investigation and risk mitigation, all Agents will stand down the use of their BWCs [body worn cameras] until further notice. Additional guidance and information will be disseminated as it is received," the directive said.

Sources told NewsNation that the cameras used by CBP agents are Avon body cams, which the social media post claims are devices BLE Radar, which was developed by F-Droid, can detect.

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The directive comes as both CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have ramped up enforcement efforts in the weeks since President Donald Trump took office, an effort that was a cornerstone of the president's campaign to return to the White House.

Since the beginning of February, the daily average of gotaways, or illegal immigrants who successfully enter the U.S. without being apprehended, at the southern border has fallen to just 132 per day, a 93% drop from highs seen under former President Joe Biden, a senior Department of Homeland Security source told Fox News.

Data obtained by Fox News showed that during FY 2023, 670,674 known gotaways were recorded by the agency, or more than 1,800 per day.

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CBP did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

Fox News’ Bill Melugin and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: The White House is launching a Rumble account as its presence on social media grows larger, Fox News Digital exclusively learned. 

A White House official told Fox Digital that it will launch a Rumble account on Monday morning similar to its YouTube account as part of President Donald Trump’s plan "to reach the American people where they are and provide unparalleled transparency and accountability in government." 

Rumble is a video platform founded in 2013 as an alternative to YouTube, which has a long track record of accusations surrounding censoring and limiting conservative content.

"We thank President Trump and his entire team for their commitment to free speech and transparency, and we are extremely proud that Rumble is now a small part of White House outreach to the people of America and the world. At Rumble, we fight every day for the innate human right of self-expression, and we connect people directly to the marketplace of ideas to avoid the screeners and censors of Big Tech, the corporate media and governments around the globe," Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski told Fox News Digital. 

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Rumble is a publicly traded company that most recently reported hosting 67 million monthly users in the third quarter of 2024, which is roughly a 26% increase from 53 million users in its previous quarter. On election night alone, the platform saw a peak of 1.8 million concurrent viewers, Fox Digital learned. 

The Rumble initiative comes as the White House’s social media engagement has increased under the Trump administration compared to President Biden’s tenure. 

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The Trump administration’s White House accounts on X and Instagram racked up 4,685,265 total engagements in the first two weeks, compared to the Biden administration’s 4,134,845 during its first two weeks, according to data provided to Fox Digital. The figures reflect a 13% increase in social media engagement in Trump’s first two weeks or a difference of 550,420 engagements.

A White House official noted that when the Biden administration began in 2021, the White House account on X, which was at the time known as Twitter, began with a running start of 1.6 million followers. Under new X rules, however, the second Trump administration’s X account began with zero followers.

"Despite this 1.6M follower advantage, our engagement still surpassed theirs," the White House said of the difference.

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Long before Trump jumped into politics ahead of the 2016 election, the real estate tycoon’s love of social media, specifically Twitter, had long been on display. Trump would frequently weigh in on pop culture, politics, the media and even Diet Coke on the social media platform ahead of taking office for his first administration. He remarked after his 2016 win that Twitter was crucial to speaking directly to voters.

"Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, because I get the word out. … I might not be here talking to you right now as president if I didn't have an honest way of getting the word out," he said in 2017.

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In his second administration, the White House has further leaned into social media to reach voters, including launching a new social media account in January aimed to hold "fake news accountable."  

"Welcome to the official Rapid Response account of the Trump 47 White House. We will be supporting President Donald J. Trump's America First agenda and holding the Fake News accountable for their lies. Let's Make America Great Again!" the X account, Rapid Response 47, posted in its first message on Jan. 27. 

The account has since posted dozens of interview clips highlighting what the White House describes as false rhetoric about the administration from Democrat lawmakers, "misleading" articles promoted by mainstream outlets, and touting work the administration has accomplished.

A new bipartisan bill intended to shield children under 13 from harmful content on social media does not apply to YouTube Kids, which parental rights advocates warn still feeds transgender ideology and DEI videos to minors. 

Parental rights advocates who spoke to Fox News Digital also took issue with the bill, deemed the Kids Off Social Media Act, over its restrictions on the algorithm, suggesting the measure constitutes "government overreach." 

The bill was introduced by Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., and is expected to go to mark-up on Wednesday. In an online question-and-answer fact sheet, Schatz's office said YouTube Kids does not fit the definition of social media under the bill, nor do video games and other platforms like wireless messaging, educational platforms and teleconferencing. 

Upon visiting the YouTube Kids site, users are prompted to determine whether they are a parent or a child. It tells parents they must set up an account for their children and can block videos or channels they do not like. Among the content available to children on the site are videos made by "queer" creators, including from the accounts Queer Kid Stuff, Nickelodeon and CBC Kids News, advocates note. Other popular videos center on DEI, such as explaining "systemic racism" to children. 

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"I don't think that we should just exclude apps from scrutiny because they say kids in them. You know, we're all familiar with the so-called gender-affirming care, which isn't really helpful or caring in any way. We've learned that, right? So the title of something shouldn't just allay our fears. I don't know why YouTube Kids has been excluded," Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice told Fox News Digital. 

"What we have seen on YouTube Kids, I've seen personally myself, is evidence of transgender ideology being fed to kids," she explained. "We know that trans activists have been targeting children. We know that there are vulnerable children who see this content. They often will click on it. Sometimes the algorithm will feed them more of that content. And so I think it's very concerning. I don't want parents to just say, this is meant for children and everything's okay." 

"We have always said it, Moms for Liberty, we do not co-parent with the government.," Justice said. "So I really would like to continue to tell parents they need to be involved. They need to be the ones that are making those choices." 

"There's a tidal wave of evidence barreling down on the United States showing that so-called gender-affirming care is bad for children," she said, championing President Donald Trump's executive action to remove DEI and gender ideology from classrooms. "We do not want our children indoctrinated, indoctrinated to think that they were born in the wrong body. This is a horrible message. Stopping the natural, healthy development of children is criminal. And so the idea that you have a website that is feeding kids content around gender, ideology or DEI is extremely concerning. And it is worrisome that perhaps parents think, well, it's YouTube Kids, so it's safe." 

Reached by Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for YouTube defended the YouTube Kids app but did not address the legislative proposal directly.

"The YouTube Kids app puts parents in the driver’s seat," the spokesperson said. "Parents can choose what their kids see and what they don’t see. They have control over the content their kids watch and can easily go into the app to curate a list of allowed channels or block content from their child’s profile through the ‘approved content only’ setting."

Meanwhile, Justice highlighted separate legislative measures introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to protect children online, including one bill introduced last session that would require age verification in the app store. 

Lee is not listed as a co-sponsor of the Kids Off Social Media Act, which would prohibit social media platforms from allowing children under the age of 13 to create or maintain social media accounts, but does not include a parental consent provision. That bill would not require users to present a government ID to gain access to social media and instead requires social media companies to use data about their users, including pictures they post, channels they follow or the date of birth they require upon sign-up to determine if a child is on their platform. 

As for another aspect of the Kids Off Social Media Act, Justice said she was concerned that the bill bans "algorithmic boosting" for children under 17. Under the bill, social media platforms would not be able to use machine learning to follow exactly how long children watch posts and what they click on to learn what makes each individual child stay on the platform the longest. 

Schatz's office argued that social media companies exploit kids for profit in this way, but Justice said her main concern is the government controlling the algorithm. 

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"If your son likes hockey, and it gives you more hockey information, well, I don't know that that would bother me," Justice said, explaining that she met a fellow mom who told her she goes on her children's social media accounts and "trains" the algorithm to pull up more conservative political content so that her teenagers are exposed to another perspective outside mainstream media. 

"So I just think there are a lot of questions about who's controlling the algorithm," Justice said. "We know that there are oftentimes really dangerous content that can affect children's mental health. We have evidence of that. And so we want to be really careful about how that algorithm is being used. And again, I just don't know that I want the government making those decisions for my family." 

Another parental rights advocate, Cat Parks, the former vice chair of the Texas GOP, told Fox News Digital that her primary concern with the Kids Off Social Media Act is that it "represents unnecessary government overreach in an area where parents need to have ultimate authority." Parks said the "real issue here is that it's parents who need to be informed to be able to make the correct decisions for their children, not something that's mandated by the government." 

"As a parent, I'm very involved in my son's online presence and approve what platforms that he's allowed to interact with. So what I don't want, I don't want government to be able to strip my ability for my child's feed to be personalized or for me as a parent to choose and make the decisions about what he has access to," Parks said.

Justice argued that the onus is on parents to shield their children from harmful content, and while there may be a role for government to play, "it's really kind of murky as to what that role is going to be." 

"We know that the algorithm is addicting," she said. "I know that it wants you to keep scrolling and feeds you more information that it thinks that you'd be interested in. It's just a question of what is that information now – transgender ideology, gender ideology. We're working to wipe it off the face of the map. So, hopefully, that type of content won't be as prevalent. But again, the bottom line is parents need to be active, engaged and involved in what their children are accessing online." 

"I don't want the government to be my kid's daddy," she added. "They have a father, and he's a great one, and we'll make good decisions for our kids together." 

Most apps have age restrictions, but Schatz's office cited a 2023 United Kingdom regulatory study that found nearly 40% of children ages 8–12 still use social media platforms. 

In the question-and-answer document, Schatz's office also said the bill "does not prevent LGBTQ+ youth from accessing relevant resources online." 

EXCLUSIVE: As the Trump administration works to keep TikTok legally available in the United States, the wildly popular app has suppressed content critical of President Donald Trump, according to a new report shared exclusively with Fox News.

TikTok maintains the report has reached a false conclusion, and that the researchers used terms subjected to additional safety measures because they’ve been associated with election misinformation or profanity.

The report, from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) at Rutgers University, contained findings that "highlight TikTok's ability to act as a powerful influence tool, adaptable to partisan politics, but with no inherent incentive for transparency or accountability."

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"What you're seeing is not sweeping policies around content moderation that can be battle tested by the public or by researchers," said Adam Sohn, an NCRI board member. "TikTok seems to be just sort of picking and choosing their policies based on political expediency, and that's a big concern."

NCRI said it analyzed TikTok, X, and Instagram "to evaluate their handling of specific hashtags associated with the 2020 election controversy" and that researchers received a response that "explicitly indicated content suppression based on TikTok’s enforcement of its community standards."

The group said terms such as "#RiggedElection," "#VoterFraud," "#StopTheSteal," and "#StolenElection" returned no results on TikTok in the U.S. Researchers said that when they searched using software that swapped their domestic location for one overseas, those terms produced video results.

Screen grabs provided by NCRI show a Jan. 24 TikTok search for "#F***JoeBiden" that returned 37,000 results. A search the same day for "#F***Trump" returned none. Three days later, Fox News replicated the search and there were videos listed under both. 

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"The concern is that the Chinese Communist Party and Bytedance and TikTok itself can consistently tweak its algorithm to cover up its tracks," Sohn said.

"Our policies and algorithms haven't changed in the last week," said a TikTok spokesperson.

The company maintains hashtags regarding the 2020 election controversies have promoted election misinformation, which is why they’ve been unavailable. TikTok contends that because the anti-Trump and anti-Biden search terms contain profanity, the app can limit those results. The company also says it’s experiencing technical issues as it’s trying to return its service to normal.

Last year, Congress passed a bipartisan law that would ban TikTok if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, failed to sell the app by Jan. 19. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law. ByteDance still owns TikTok, but Trump signed an executive order delaying the ban’s enforcement for 75 days while his administration tries to negotiate an agreement for the app to comply with the law and keep it operating in the U.S. 

NCRI has issued several reports on TikTok, concluding its search algorithm produced results to construct a favorable view of China’s government. TikTok has denied that allegation, calling NCRI’s work "flawed" and "clearly engineered to reach a false, predetermined conclusion." In its arguments against TikTok, the Justice Department under the Biden administration cited NCRI’s reports.

Cybersecurity experts told Fox that algorithms for apps like TikTok are held closely by their parent companies and can be difficult to evaluate.

"Doing sort of this community management of these vast social media platforms, especially TikTok, which is so popular, is a Herculean task," said Theresa Payton, a cybersecurity expert and the White House Chief Information Officer in the George W. Bush administration. "It could be that as they were making tweaks to handle capacity, to be able to more closely evaluate things that could be perceived as election interference, things that are considered hate speech."

Others note social media companies have sizable teams working with automated software to moderate content on their platforms.

"Someone interprets something as in terms of a violation [that] may not match with someone else – it all sort of has to add up to a pattern," said Pete Pachal, the Founder of The Media Copilot, a newsletter on AI changing media and journalism. "In the report, they do a very good job of showing that this pattern of supposed repression … content not appearing in searches does tend to happen more in one direction, and that should arouse a certain amount of suspicion."

FIRST ON FOX: This week the U.S. tech sector was routed by the Chinese launch of DeepSeek, and Sen. Josh Hawley is putting forth legislation to prevent that from happening again. 

Hawley’s bill, the Decoupling America’s Artifical Intelligence Capabilities from China Act, would cut off U.S.-China cooperation on AI. It would ban exports or imports of AI technology from China, ban American companies from conducting research there, and prohibit any U.S. investment in AI tech companies in China. 

"Every dollar and gig of data that flows into Chinese AI are dollars and data that will ultimately be used against the United States," said Hawley, R-Mo., in a statement. "America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary."

His is one of the first bills introduced directly in response to the DeepSeek market shakeup of the past few days.

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DeepSeek’s release of a new high-profile AI model that costs less to run than existing models like those of Meta and OpenAI sent a chill through U.S. markets, with chipmaker Nvidia stocks tanking on Monday before slowly gaining ground again on Tuesday. 

The surprise release displayed how China's economic competitiveness has far outpaced the ability of U.S. business leaders and lawmakers to agree on what to do about it. 

Unlike other legislation to thwart China's profiting off U.S. innovation, Hawley's bill would cover any AI-related technology instead of specific entities, which has prompted the Chinese to seek out loopholes through other companies. 

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Microsoft and OpenAI are now reportedly investigating whether DeepSeek could have accessed and used their data to train its own Chinese model, Bloomberg News reported. 

White House artificial intelligence czar David Sacks told Fox News there is "substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI’s models." 

President Donald Trump on Monday said DeepSeek’s arrival on the scene "should be a wakeup call" for America’s tech companies after the new low-cost AI assistant soared to number one on the Apple app store over the weekend. 

"The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser focused on competing," Trump said. 

But the president said it was ultimately a good thing if the world had access to cheaper, faster AI models. "​​Instead of spending billions and billions, you'll spend less, and you'll come up with, hopefully, the same solution," Trump said.

In his final week in office, President Joe Biden issued a rule slapping export controls on AI chips, with his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, arguing that the U.S. was only six to 18 months ahead of China in the AI sector. 

U.S. officials are now looking at the national security implications of DeepSeek, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who added that the Trump administration was working to "ensure American AI dominance."

President Donald Trump signaled Saturday a deal could be underway soon to "save" TikTok from a looming ban, and Republican state attorneys general – many skeptical of the app's security – are waiting to see if it comes to fruition.

"I have spoken to many people about TikTok and there is great interest in TikTok," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on a flight to Florida, Reuters reported. 

The reported deal Trump is working on involves partnering with software company Oracle and a group of outside investors to take control of the app's operations. According to sources familiar with the matter, ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, would maintain a stake in the platform under the proposed deal. However, Oracle would take control of data management and software updates, leveraging its existing role in supporting TikTok’s web infrastructure, two sources told Reuters.

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"President Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to save TikTok, and there’s no better dealmaker than Donald Trump," Trump's national press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously told Fox News Digital.

Several Republican state attorneys general have actively pursued actions to ban TikTok, citing national security concerns and potential data privacy issues. In December 2024, 22 attorneys general, including those from Virginia and Montana, filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the "divest-or-ban" law against TikTok. The law mandates that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, divest its U.S. operations or face a potential ban due to national security concerns.

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also initiated legal action against TikTok earlier this month, alleging "TikTok lied about its safety standards and concealed the truth about the prevalence of inappropriate and explicit material," according to his office's news release. Paxton's lawsuit doesn't mention the app's ban.

A source close to several Republican state attorneys general told Fox News Digital on Monday that they're confident if anyone can make a deal to protect the U.S. from the Chinese Communist Party, it's Trump, but if it poses a threat to national security, then it should be banned. 

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Republicans aren't the only ones concerned about TikTok. Several Democratic state attorneys general have actively pursued legal actions against the social media app, too. In October 2024, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James, along with 12 other states and the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit alleging that TikTok exploits and harms young users and deceives the public about the social media platform’s dangers.

While Trump tried to ban the app from U.S. access during his first administration, he credited TikTok for reaching young voters during the 2024 presidential campaign. 

TikTok went dark earlier this month after ByteDance had nine months to sell TikTok to an approved buyer but opted, along with TikTok, to take legal action against the law. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law, citing national security risks because of its ties to China.

The app was reinstated for U.S. users the following day, with Trump promising an executive order to extend TikTok's sale. 

"Welcome back!" the TikTok message read. "Thank you for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!"

Fox News Digital has reached out to TikTok for comment.

Fox Business' Alexandra Koch, Bradford Betz and Landon Mion contributed to this report.

Millions of people across the country are expected to tune in to President-elect Donald Trump's second inauguration ceremony. Television networks, online publications and social media outlets are preparing for the big event. The way inaugurations have been presented to the public has changed drastically over the years.

"We must think big and dream even bigger," Trump said during his first inaugural address in 2017.

Tens of millions of people watched his first address in real time – both on television and through online streaming. But inaugural addresses and analysis of the speeches were not always available immediately. In 1789, when George Washington was sworn in for the first time, his speech was not available to the public until several days later.

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Thomas Jefferson became the first president to have his inauguration speech printed in a newspaper the same day he gave his address in 1801. The National Intelligencer printed the speech on the morning of Jefferson’s inauguration.

James Polk was the first president to have his address reported by telegraph. It was also the first time a speech was shown in a newspaper illustration, by the Illustrated London News.

Drawings were the main visual for inaugurations for another 12 years, until photography became more frequently used. James Buchanan was the first president to have a photograph taken at his swearing-in. Another 40 years later, video was used to record inaugurations for the public.

William McKinley was the first president to appear on a movie camera during his inaugural address in 1901. Only silent films were available then, but that would change over the years as inaugural addresses began to incorporate audio.

In 1921, Warren Harding was the first to use loudspeakers to address the crowd attending his inauguration in person. Four years later, Calvin Coolidge was the first to have his inaugural broadcast nationally by radio. The White House Historical Association estimates his 1925 address reached more than 23 million radio listeners. Herbert Hoover gave the first multimedia inaugural. His 1929 address was the first recorded on a talking newsreel.

"It is a dedication and consecration under God to the highest office in service of our people," Hoover said during his address.

After World War II, an increasing number of Americans bought television sets for their homes. By 1949, almost all major cities had at least one local television station, and 4.2 million American homes had TV sets. Harry Truman became the first president to have his inauguration broadcast live that year. More than a decade later, John F. Kennedy had his address broadcast in color for the estimated 500,000 Americans who had color television sets.

"Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country," Kennedy famously said during his inauguration speech.

Ronald Reagan sought to bring the pageantry of inauguration events to Americans across the country. His inaugural committee hosted around 100 satellite inaugural balls that were broadcast in 32 cities.

"Almost 200 years ago, at the first inaugural, people came by stagecoach. This time, people all over America, millions of people, are attending this one by satellite," Reagan said during a ball at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

More than a decade later, Bill Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997 was available on the internet via livestream. Clinton had signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 just a year before at the Library of Congress.

"Ten years ago, the internet was the mystical province of physicists; today, it is a commonplace encyclopedia for millions of schoolchildren," Clinton said during his inaugural address. "As we look back at this remarkable century, we may ask, ‘Can we hope not just to follow, but even to surpass the achievements of the 20th century in America?'"

With the growth of the internet, social media use also expanded.

"We have always understood that when times change, so must we," Barack Obama said at his second inaugural address in 2013.

Obama was the first president to join Twitter. His 2013 address generated more than 1 million tweets. According to Pew Research, around 51% of Americans owned a smartphone at the time. When Trump was sworn into office in 2017, that percentage rose to 77%. Cellphone carriers installed extracellular antennas ahead of the address for the massive crowd that would be sharing photos and videos from the day’s events on social media.

When Joe Biden gave his address in 2021, his inaugural committee relied on technology for nearly every aspect of the event. The coronavirus pandemic forced much of Biden’s festivities to move online.

"The world is watching all of us today. So, here is my message to those beyond our borders: America has been tested, and we have come out stronger for it," Biden said during his address.

OpenAI has partnered with a new AI initiative led by a group co-founded with outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry that has pushed left-wing causes and has several board members aligned with Democrats. 

OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman, is backing an initiative known as AI 2030, which is aimed at shaping "public dialogue about U.S. competition against China on AI," Politico reported in October.

The initiative is led by the "non-partisan" think tank American Security Project (ASP), where Kerry was a founding member and served two stints on the board of directors. 

ASP has promoted the idea that climate change is a national security threat, and argued on its website that pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal was a bad idea that "harms national security." The group previously received a $500,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation "for use by its World War Zero initiative, an effort to achieve action and mobilization through awareness and public education to halt the increase of global carbon emissions."  The Rockefeller Foundation has dished out tens of millions of dollars to left-wing causes.

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Kerry’s former chief of staff David Wade, who gave Hunter Biden rapid response help as the Burisma scandal swirled, currently sits on the board of directors and recently authored an op-ed in The Hill explaining how AI in the U.S. has reached its "Sputnik moment," outlining the need to compete with China on AI.

Former Obama Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who called then-President Trump an "embarrassment" in 2018, also sits on the board of ASP.

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Rep, Don Beyer, D-Va., who is also on the board at ASP, has publicly opposed Trump's tariff policies, calling them "idiotic" and "illegal" in a 2023 press release.

In 2018, ASP promoted an op-ed by Board Member Matthew Wallin in which he criticized Trump's diplomatic tactics against Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

In 2017, Wallin amplified the debunked media narrative in a post on X, then Twitter, that Trump called White supremacists at the deadly Charlottesville rally "good people."

Chris Lehane, who serves as OpenAI’s Head of Global Policy, is the author of the infamous and controversial "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" memo promoted by then-first lady Hillary Clinton dismissing the Monica Lewinsky scandal as part of a right-wing media conspiracy. 

Along with being a longtime Democratic Party consultant, Lehane has recently contributed money to help former Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. 

Altman recently followed other tech titans and made a substantial $1 million gift to Trump’s inauguration in his personal capacity, but has faced scrutiny for previous high-dollar donations to left-wing efforts, including a $250,000 donation to a Democratic super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge during the 2020 election. 

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Altman has donated to hundreds of Democrats in recent years compared to just one Republican, Newsweek reported this past summer. He was also recently tapped to be a co-chair for the incoming Democratic mayor of San Francisco’s transition team. 

In addition to hosting a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang at his San Francisco home in late 2019, Altman has donated over $1 million to Democrats and Democratic groups, including $600,000 to the Sen. Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, $100,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and over $150,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He also gave thousands to state Democratic parties and top Democrats in the House and Senate.

In 2014, Altman co-hosted a fundraiser for the DNC at Y Combinator’s offices in Mountain View, California, which was headlined by then-President Obama.

Following Trump's victory in November, Altman posted on X, "congrats to President Trump. i wish for his huge success in the job."

"It is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values," he added. 

During Altman’s tenure from 2014 to 2019 as the CEO of Y Combinator, an incubator startup that launched Airbnb, DoorDash and DropBox, he talked about China in multiple blog posts and interviews. In 2017, Altman said that he "felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco" and that he felt like an expansion into China was "important" because "some of the most talented entrepreneurs" that he has met have been operating there. 

Altman’s résumé and AI efforts have drawn the ire of Trump ally Elon Musk in recent years. Musk said last year, "I don’t trust OpenAI. I don’t trust Sam Altman. And I don’t think we ought to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy."

Musk, who has been involved with a highly publicized legal tussle with Altman, has also said that OpenAI's ChatGPT function is infected with the "woke virus."

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot whose core function is to mimic a human in conversation. Users across the world have used ChatGPT to write emails, debug computer programs, answer homework questions, play games, write stories and song lyrics, and much more. 

"It is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, that’s true. We can make much better ones. The reason to develop AI at all, in terms of impact on our lives and improving our lives and upside, this will be the greatest technology humanity has yet developed," Altman said in a 2023 interview with ABC News. "The promise of this technology, one of the ones that I'm most excited about, is the ability to provide individual learning — great individual learning for each student."

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In recent months, OpenAI has reportedly been quietly pitching its products to the U.S. military and pursuing defense contracts, Forbes reported.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for OpenAI said, "America has to win the AI race, and that is why Americans from both sides of the aisle are united in supporting policies that help the US maintain its competitive edge against China." 

"ASP is a nearly twenty-year-old bipartisan organization that works with legislators, retired flag officers, subject matter experts, and groups from across the political spectrum to produce high quality research and forge bipartisan consensus on emerging threats to our national security," an ASP spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

"While OpenAI is one of many donors for AI Imperative 2030, we ensure an equal balance of opinions informed by independent experts and Consensus for American Security members, including Julia Nesheiwat, Ph.D., former Trump Homeland Security Advisor, and Neil Chatterjee, former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Trump. We also recently hosted a roundtable featuring Nazak Nikakhtar, another former Trump official."

The statement continued, "The primary objective of AI Imperative 2030 is to ensure that the U.S., not China, wins the race for AI supremacy. China aims to surpass the U.S. and lead the world in AI by 2030. We can’t let that happen. President Trump has been a leader in creating bipartisan consensus that the U.S. needs to compete more vigorously with China, and we look forward to working with his administration and the Republican Congress to design effective and cost-efficient policies towards this goal."

Fox News Digital's Nikolas Lanum, Cameron Cawthorne and Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.

This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Friday she will be addressing her state’s share of the national youth mental health crisis by planning to give parents the power to sue Big Tech companies and "hold bad actors accountable."

Sanders will also be addressing the issue at the World Economic Forum next week in Davos, Switzerland. She will join "The Anxious Generation" author Jonathan Haidt to discuss the role of smartphones and social media in causing harm to America’s youth.

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At Davos, Sanders will also join Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for a bipartisan session discussing state priorities and state governments’ role in a presidential transition – as President Biden yields to President-elect Trump.

As for the Big Tech issue, Sanders told Fox News Digital that protecting children is paramount to her administration.

"In the past decade, across America, anxiety, depression and suicide among teens have skyrocketed, and the culprit is clear: unrestricted access to phones and social media," she said.

"Under my leadership, Arkansas will act to empower parents and protect kids."

FLASHBACK: SANDERS GIVE SOTU RESPONSE

"I look forward to … Davos to talk about this critical issue and how my administration is stepping up to hold Big Tech accountable."

In terms of addressing Big Tech’s alleged role in accentuating the nationwide youth mental health crisis, Sanders noted that she had previously launched a phone-free-school pilot program in 2024. The program offers schools state funding for phone pouches to prevent use during the school day.

Sanders, whose father, Mike Huckabee, previously served as Arkansas governor, said she plans to update the state’s Social Media Safety Act as well.

In terms of holding Big Tech responsible in the mental health crisis, Sanders said that "modern threats … require modern solutions."

"Nowhere is that truer than with our kids," she said in her State of the State.

"In the past decade, across America, suicide rates among teens have tripled, self-harm among girls has risen by nearly 200%, and depression among teenagers has increased by 150%. The culprit is clear: unrestricted access to phones and social media."

She had invited a Centerton, Ark., mother whose 16-year-old son took his own life after going from an active, sports-loving teen to one who spent more and more time watching social media videos on his phone.

The boy’s mother tried to take his phone away, and he eventually retreated to his room, where within 13 minutes he had already taken his own life.

"Months later, reeling from grief," Sanders said, "[The boy’s mother] decided to go through [his] phone. She got on his TikTok, and what she saw shocked her: video after video giving step-by-step instructions on how to take his own life."

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"We will give moms like [her] the right to sue Big Tech companies under state law, so that they can hold bad actors accountable."

In a recent New Yorker interview, Haidt – the author appearing with Sanders at Davos – expressed shock at the difference between the "You’re sitting too close to the television, your eyes will burn out" generation and the new generation being warned about the pitfalls of social media.

"The technological environment in the '90s was miraculous. We loved it. The millennial generation grew up on it. Their mental health was fine. . . . And then in 2012 and 2013: Boom. The graphs go way, way up. Mental health falls off a cliff. It’s incredibly sudden," Haidt said.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to accept an invitation from President-elect Donald Trump to attend his inauguration.

Chew will be seated front and center on the dais with other VIP guests and fellow tech executives Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

A source familiar with the plans confirmed to Fox News Digital that the inaugural committee had extended the invite to Chew after The New York Times first reported it.

The inauguration on Jan. 20 will come one day after TikTok plans to shut down operations within the U.S. 

Trump is now considering an executive order to suspend enforcement of the law requiring TikTok to divest from Chinese-owned ByteDance or face a ban in the U.S. for 60 to 90 days, according to the Washington Post, to buy time to negotiate a sale or some other solution. 

Trump’s defense of TikTok marks a reversal from his position in 2020, when he tried to block the video-sharing app in the U.S. and force its sale to a U.S. company. 

TRUMP SAYS FATE OF TIKTOK SHOULD BE IN HIS HANDS WHEN HE RETURNS TO WHITE HOUSE

"I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok," Trump said last month. The incoming president has more than 14 million followers on the app. He met with the company's executives in Mar-a-Lago last month.

In wide, bipartisan fashion, Congress passed a law last year implementing the ban-or-sale policy, arguing the CCP uses the app to spy on Americans and spread propaganda, and ByteDance has long said TikTok is not for sale. 

Reports have emerged of U.S. billionaires like Musk and Kevin O'Leary lining up to put in offers for TikTok's U.S. operations. 

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Last week, the Supreme Court considered a challenge to the law that will take effect on Jan. 19. It has not yet issued a decision but is expected to allow the law to go forward. If the court upholds the law — as a lower court did last month — TikTok's days in the U.S. would be numbered.

Trump could also push Congress to repeal the law, or direct his Department of Justice not to enforce it. His attorney general nominee Pam Bondi declined to say whether she would enforce the ban during a confirmation hearing this week. 

Trump took U.S. foreign policy watchers by surprise last month when he invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to his inauguration, though Xi is not expected to attend the inauguration. 

Despite chronic hacking by the Chinese, Trump seems to be coming in with a diplomatic tone toward Xi and his government, keeping them on their toes about Trump’s longtime promise to institute tariffs as high as 60% on their exports to the U.S. 

"We have a good relationship with China. I have a good relationship," Trump told CNBC last month. "We've been talking and discussing with President Xi some things."

Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon has pledged to have tech billionaire Elon Musk "run out" of the White House amid fiery debate over H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers.

Bannon made the remarks about Musk, who President-elect Trump has tapped to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Bannon’s former employer, Breitbart, published excerpts of the interview in English.

"I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day," said Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser. "He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person."

"He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy," Bannon continued. "I made it my personal thing to take this guy down. Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore."

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Bannon’s spat with Musk appeared to be over immigration, specifically Musk’s support of H-1B visas that allow U.S. companies to hire foreign workers for specialty occupations and is overwhelmingly used by the tech industry.

"This thing of the H-1B visas, it's about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious," Bannon said.

Software engineers and others in the tech industry have used H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers and say they are a critical tool for hard-to-fill positions. It has long been controversial for some conservatives, who say it is abused by tech companies to bring in cheap labor to replace American workers.

Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an H-1B visa himself and defended the industry's push to bring in foreign workers.

"There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent," he said in a post. "It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley."

Online debate over H-1B visas led Musk to label those in the Republican Party opposed to the visas as "hateful, unrepentant racists," and emphasize the need for "a meritocratic society."

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Bannon said Musk "should go back" to South Africa. 

"Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, White South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?" Bannon said.

"He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money," Bannon said of Musk. "His aggregation of wealth, and then — through wealth — power: that's what he's focused on."

Bannon was released from prison in October after completing a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena related to a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, incident at the U.S. Capitol. 

While Musk’s influence on the incoming Trump administration remains unclear, Trump has appeared to side with the tech billionaire on the matter of H-1B visas.

"I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them," Trump said in an interview with the New York Post last month. "I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program."

Trump has in the past criticized the H-1B visas, calling them "very bad" and "unfair" for U.S. workers, and even unveiled a "Hire American" policy that directed changes to the program to try to ensure the visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants.

Fox News Digital's Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: A select group of tech industry titans and venture capitalists will gather in Washington, D.C., this week to welcome the incoming Trump administration and celebrate new opportunities for global innovation in artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship. 

Presidents and CEOs from companies on the cutting edge of AI tech and their big financial backers, along with personnel from the incoming administration, will attend a dinner on Thursday organized by Outside the Box Ventures, a firm founded last year by journalist-turned-investment banker Katherine Tarbox, along with Laurent Bili, the French ambassador to the U.S.

The list of those invited to Thursday's dinner includes "DOGE" chief Elon Musk, Silicon Valley investor and GOP mega-donor Peter Thiel, NVCA chief executive Bobby Franklin, incoming White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks, OpenAI's Sam Altman, investor Joe Lonsdale and Narya co-founder Colin Greenspon.

"This gathering represents more than discussion. We hope it symbolizes a new chapter in public-private collaboration to harness technology’s transformative power for the nation’s future," a source close to the planning told Fox News Digital. The event comes days before President-elect Trump is inaugurated as the nation's 47th president.

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America's leading entrepreneurs want to seize what Microsoft's Brad Smith has called a "golden opportunity for American technology and economic competitiveness." The aim is for the joined forces of industry leaders and government resources that Trump brought together for Operation Warp Speed, his first administration's lauded COVID-19 vaccine program, to be reproduced for advancements in AI. 

The participation of Bili reflects how France is interested in being a leader in AI, with a global action summit on the rapidly developing technology to be held in Paris this February, and believes the U.S. is a valuable partner in this effort. 

"We believe this is the hottest ticket for tech and venture capital up to the inauguration," the source said. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Franklin, the CEO of the National Venture Capital Association, the industry trade group for venture capital, confirmed he plans to attend. He told Fox News Digital there is great excitement in his industry for several of Trump's hires who have backgrounds in venture capital, including Sacks, a billionaire tech executive, and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

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"One of our challenges is always educating, and there's always a lack of understanding of what the venture industry does, how it works with entrepreneurs, how it creates great tech and drugs and everything else in the economy," Franklin said. "And so having folks that understand that coming into the administration is a wonderful, welcome situation from our perspective." 

The dinner comes at a critical juncture for the U.S., which leads the world in AI startups but faces tough competition from China and other foreign adversaries. 

American companies received more than 40% of global AI funding in 2023, surpassing China and the European Union combined. That same year, U.S. venture capital firms unleashed $17.9 billion in funds for AI startups, contributing to the leaps and bounds in generative AI tech popularized by ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Grok from xAI.

More than 10,000 AI-related patents have been filed by U.S. entities in the past five years, showcasing the deep bench of American innovators that Franklin and others believe Trump stands ready to support.

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But analysts warn that China's recent developments in AI technology pose a challenge to American dominance in this field and may even threaten U.S. national and economic security.

A recent report published by American Edge Project cautions that "China is rapidly advancing its own open-source ecosystem as an alternative to American technology and using it as a Trojan horse to implant its CCP values into global infrastructure."

The report called China's progress "both significant and concerning." 

"Chinese-developed open-source AI tools are already outperforming Western models on key benchmarks, while operating at dramatically lower costs, accelerating global adoption. Through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which spans more than 155 countries on four continents, and its Digital Silk Road (DSR), China is exporting its technology worldwide, fostering increased global dependence, undermining democratic norms, and threatening U.S. leadership and global security."

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There is a broad expectation that the Trump administration will let the private sector lead the way as the U.S. confronts China. Whereas the Biden administration prioritized establishing "guardrails" for AI development through regulatory bodies, analysts for Perkins Coie note that Trump has promised to revoke a Biden-era executive order that set policy for federal agency AI purchases and uses. The 2024 Republican platform claimed Biden's policy "hinders innovation and imposes Radical Leftwing Ideas," apparently in reference to requirements that the National Institute of Standards and Technology create guidance to ensure AI models are unbiased and do not discriminate based on race or sex.

Additionally, Trump's appointment of Sacks as AI czar signals his thinking on AI is in line with Sacks' associates Musk and Thiel, who each co-founded PayPal and favor a deregulatory agenda. 

"The new czar will likely be tasked with coordinating with federal agencies and outside stakeholders to ensure consistent guidance regarding AI use in the federal government. We would expect Sacks to be less focused on the potential harms of AI and more focused on promoting and facilitating AI innovation with fewer restraints," Perkins Coie said. 

Thursday's gathering is a strictly nonpartisan event, though Silicon Valley's high interest in building relationships with a Republican administration would seem to signal shifting political priorities. 

Previously, issues like immigration and climate change distanced Big Tech from the GOP. And when Trump first ran for president, his populist MAGA movement was an unknown factor that led many entrepreneurs to keep that distance. 

But a growing recognition of AI as a national priority has appeared to bridge that gap. So has a more clearly defined Trump, with key players in his second administration that have ties to the venture capital world.

"You know, it was certainly a political outsider that won in 2016," Franklin said. "Now, he's not an outsider."

MAGA Republicans are offering an outpouring of support for TikTok ahead of a ban looming over the social media platform that is set to take effect later this month. 

"Trump won the election because he listened to first-time voters like myself and joined TikTok to get his message to us directly," RNC Youth Advisory Council Chair Brilyn Hollyhand told Fox News Digital of the impending ban. "He didn’t need paid influencers or cringey trends like his failed opponent. All he had to do was go where Gen Z was, TikTok, and lay out his plan."

Representatives of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, are set to deliver arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to request the nation’s highest court to delay a ban on the app that is set to take effect a day ahead of the inauguration. President Biden signed legislation into law in April that gave TikTok's parent company until Jan. 19 to sell it or face a U.S. ban.

If the Supreme Court does not halt the ban, U.S. TikTok users will no longer be able to download the app, and internet providers will be prohibited from allowing access to the site. 

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The looming ban originated out of concern that American users’ data is gathered by the Chinese government, but MAGA Republicans and content creators who spoke with Fox Digital balked at the reasoning as insincere. 

"I have done, if not, the deepest possible dive on all of the concerns associated with the platform, especially for my daily show when I share my opinions and commentary on what's going on in culture and politics," TikTok creator and TPUSA commentator Isabel Brown, who has more than 500,000 followers on TikTok, told Fox Digital in a phone interview. "And we've confronted this potential ban of the platform for at least nine months to a year now … the complaints that I'm hearing, from particularly politicians, largely center around national security."

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"But I have a very hard time believing that the true argument to censor TikTok is based in a national security concern when we still have documented evidence of virtually every single American social media company. Meta, Twitter, YouTube, etc, selling your data under the table to your own government and/or the Chinese Communist Party and even the Russian government as well." 

"Heck, we even have records of Airbnb selling American data to the Chinese Communist Party. So there doesn't seem to be a lot of willingness to truly protect the cyber and personal information security of American citizens from the government en masse, it seems to only be focused on TikTok as a platform itself," Brown continued. 

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President-elect Donald Trump's supporters praising TikTok comes after the former and upcoming president made big inroads with Gen Z, especially young male voters, in the last cycle. A Fox News Voter Survey published after the election found that men aged 18-44 supported Trump at 53% compared to Vice President Kamala Harris at 45%. 

"​​We're talking about an app that nearly 200 million Americans, 75% of whom are Gen Z, use every single day as our primary source of news, and according to some studies, even as our primary web browser search tool, so more than Google … and I have found that the opportunity for virality – to have a conversation with as many people as possible – on Tiktok is unparalleled on any other social media platform," Brown said. 

A Republican strategist told Fox News Digital that TikTok is by all intents and purposes a "conservative platform." 

"By all means, TikTok is a conservative platform now - if you take a look at how Trump dominated his competition, there’s no argument against the value this platform has, and I don’t think there’s a world where Trump doesn’t fulfill his promise to save it," the strategist said. 

The GOP insider added that "the fact that [Sen. Mitch] McConnell and [former Vice President Mike] Pence want to ban this thing means it needs to be saved." 

Ahead of the new year, Sen. Mitch McConnell filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, urging justices to reject ByteDance’s request to delay the ban. 

"The topsy-turvy idea that TikTok has an expressive right to facilitate the CCP censorship regime is absurd," McConnell’s counsel Michael A. Fragoso wrote in the friend of the court brief. "Would Congress have needed to allow Nikita Khrushchev to buy CBS and replace The Bing Crosby Show with Alexander Nevsky?" 

While former Vice President Mike Pence’s nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom, filed a similar amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court last month. 

"The CCP does not respect free speech, either in China or in America. The First Amendment is not, and should not be read as, a means of granting the Chinese government the power to do what the American government could not: manipulate what Americans can say and hear," the group wrote.  

Advancing American Freedom President Tim Chapman told Fox News Digital that Trump's first administration "had this right the first time" when Trump initially worked to ban TikTok before the former and upcoming president reversed his opinion on the app. 

"The Trump administration had this right the first time when they planned to ban TikTok through executive authority for the very same concerns that exist today. Political strategists salivating over clicks and followers does not mean that the national security implications have changed," Chapman said. 

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Emily Wilson, political commentator and host of podcast "Emily Saves America," told Fox News Digital that she can see both sides of the argument surrounding the looming TikTok ban but that instituting a ban would be "hypocritical against free speech."

"The TikTok ban is controversial, I see two sides to it. I see it as an app that’s very left leaning and consumes way too much of people’s time but it is sometimes the only place I get info about stories that should be breaking world wide. At the same time it can be dangerous. It can radicalize young people. One day you wake up on TikTok and young Americans are saying they’re supportive of Osama bin Laden," Wilson told Fox Digital. 

"It seems to be an app leaning towards being anti-American and brainwashing young kids. At the end of the day, if I say to ban it it’s hypocritical against free speech. I just don’t want it harming young people," she added. 

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Trump himself has made a 180-degree turn on TikTok. Under his first administration, in 2020, Trump tried to ban the app from the U.S. market over national security concerns. His executive order, however, was eventually blocked in federal court.

Fast-forward to 2024 amid the campaign cycle, and Trump joined the app in June during the campaign cycle and has since racked up nearly 15 million followers and 107 million likes as supporters flocked to his content on the platform. Trump also filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court last month, which supported neither party in the case, arguing the fate of the platform should be left up to his administration. 

"Today, President Donald J. Trump has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to extend the deadline that would cause TikTok’s imminent shutdown, and allow President Trump the opportunity to resolve the issue in a way that saves TikTok and preserves American national security once he resumes office as President of the United States on January 20, 2025," Trump spokesman and incoming White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital last month. 

"President Donald J. Trump (‘President Trump’) is the 45th and soon to be the 47th President of the United States of America," the brief states. "On January 20, 2025, President Trump will assume responsibility for the United States’ national security, foreign policy, and other vital executive functions." 

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman, Paul Steinhauser and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report. 

Leaders in the tech industry are urging the Biden administration not to add a new regulation that will limit artificial intelligence exports, citing concerns it is overbroad and could diminish the United States' global dominance in AI.  

The new rule, which industry leaders say could come as early as the end of this week, effectively seeks to shore up the U.S. economy and national security efforts by adding new restrictions on how many U.S.-made artifical intelligence products can be deployed across the globe. 

"A rule of this nature would cede the global market to U.S. competitors who will be eager to fill the untapped demand created by placing arbitrary constraints on U.S. companies' ability to sell basic computing systems overseas," stated a Monday letter from Jason Oxman, the president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), sent to Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo. "Should the U.S. lose its advantage in the global AI ecosystem, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to regain in the future."

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The process to place new export controls on artificial intelligence goes back to October 2022, when the Biden administration's Commerce Department first released an updated export framework aimed at slowing the progress of Chinese military programs. Details of the new incoming export controls surfaced after the Biden administration called on American tech company NVIDIA to stop selling certain computer chips to China the following month.

In an update to the rule the following year, the Biden administration announced the initiation of a public notice and comment period. Finally, last month, as the president's term in the White House winds down, the administration published two new updates to the rule that added more limits to the proposed export controls. The rule is now in its final stages before it will be formally published in the Federal Register.

"The Bureau of Industry and Security’s ('BIS') proposed Interim Final Rule ('IFR') is a highly complex and wildly overbroad attempt to regulate Artificial Intelligence and GPUs in the name of national security," Ken Glueck, the executive vice president at Oracle, wrote in a blog post Sunday that was published to his company's website. 

"For over half a century, bipartisan consensus has held that the best way to achieve U.S. technological leadership is to regulate technology with a light touch. As a result, American companies have continued to lead each successive generation of technology, from the personal computer to the Internet, to mobile, to the cloud, and now Artificial Intelligence."

In addition to fears that the new regulations will stifle economic growth in the domestic AI sector, some critics have also argued that blocking American AI manufacturers from selling their computer chips around the globe could actually benefit China. 

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"The Biden administration is trying to force other countries to pick a side – the United States or China – and it is likely going to discover that if it issues this ultimatum, many will pick China," Stephen Ezell, vice president of global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said in a Tuesday statement published on the foundation's website. 

"Moreover, the United States should be countering efforts by China and Russia, which recently launched an AI Alliance Network among BRICS countries, to offer its own allies and partners access to AI data, models, and computer resources," he added.

Ezell and others also highlighted the rushed nature of the new proposed rule on export controls, arguing that hurrying to get it finalized has been at the cost of adequate industry input on the new regulations. 

"We respectfully caution against making such a swift and significant shift in policy during this transitional period, and without meaningful consultation with industry," the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a Monday statement. The group encouraged the Biden administration to "hand over the policymaking process" to the incoming Trump administration because it will "ensure there is appropriate opportunity for government and industry leaders, together with our global partners, to thoughtfully address this critical matter."

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It is uncertain exactly how the incoming administration might approach this issue. Trump has signaled he is not afraid to initiate new trade deals and could potentially use the export controls as leverage.

However, the president-elect said following his November election victory that a focus of his second term will be to "win the A.I. arms race with China (and others)."

"With U.S. Energy Dominance, we will drive down inflation, win the A.I. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World," Trump wrote in an email announcing former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as the new head of the Interior Department.  

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

The decision by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to end Facebook's work with third-party fact-checkers and ease some of its content restrictions is a potentially "transformative" moment for the platform, experts said, but one that is unlikely to shield the company from liability in ongoing court proceedings.

The updates were announced by Zuckerberg, who said in a video that the previous content restrictions used on Facebook and Instagram — which were put into place after the 2016 elections — had "gone too far" and allowed for too much political bias from outside fact-checkers.

Meta will now replace that system with a "Community Notes"-style program, similar to the approach taken by social media platform X, he said. X is owned by Elon Musk, the co-director of the planned Department of Government Efficiency.

"We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship," Zuckerberg said. "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

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The news was praised by President-elect Donald Trump, who told Fox News Digital that he thought Meta's presentation "was excellent."  "They have come a long way," Trump said.

Still, it is unlikely to ease the legal liability for Meta, which in recent months has been hit with the possibility of a multibillion-dollar class action lawsuit stemming from a privacy scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. 

The Supreme Court in November rejected Meta's effort to block the lawsuit, leaving in place an appellate court ruling that allowed the class action suit to move forward. 

Meta has also been the target of multiple Republican-led investigations in Congress. Republicans on the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government probed Meta's activity and communication with the federal government and the Biden administration last year as part of a broader investigation into alleged censorship. 

The platform also came under scrutiny by the House Oversight Committee in August, as part of an investigation into claims that the platform suppressed information about the July 13 assassination attempt of Trump. 

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Combined, these factors make it unlikely that Meta will see its legal problems go away anytime soon, law professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley told Fox News Digital in an interview.

"Facebook is now looking at a tough patch ahead," he said. "Not only do the Republicans carry both houses of Congress as well as the White House, but there is ongoing litigation in the social media case in Texas."

Additionally, the Supreme Court's conservative majority is also unlikely to be sympathetic to the views of Meta in any case centered on First Amendment protections and rights to free speech.

The House investigations and litigation have both forced more of Meta's actions into public view— something Turley said expects to come under further scrutiny in the discovery process in Missouri v. Biden, a case that centers on allegations of political censorship.

"That discovery is still revealing new details," Turley said. "So Meta understood that in the coming months, more details would be forthcoming on its censorship program."

Still, he said, this "could be a transformative moment," Turley said. 

"And an alliance of Zuckerberg with [Elon] Musk could turn the tide in this fight over free speech," Turley said. "And as one of Zuckerberg's most vocal critics  I welcome him to this fight."

Former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya ripped Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday after the billionaire announced he would get rid of Facebook’s fact-checking program.

The third-party fact-checking system will be replaced with community notes similar to X, Zuckerberg said in a video.

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The company’s system was put into place after the 2016 election and was used to "manage content" and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to "political pressure," executives said, but admitted the system has "gone too far." Political bias from the fact-checkers appeared to be one of the main issues.

Tafoya appeared on OutKick’s "Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich" to talk about Zuckerberg’s decision. Dakich asked her what gave Zuckerberg the right to do the about-face now.

"Absolutely nothing. This is not unique to Facebook. I had a guest on my podcast yesterday, Gad Saad, a professor out of Canada, so much has gone on up there under the Justin Trudeau administration that has been really similar," Tafoya said. "People being absolutely wiped out of their professions. We’re talking doctors, researchers, professors, medical experts because they either said something kind of cutesy that someone was uncomfortable with.

META ENDS FACT-CHECKING PROGRAM AS ZUCKERBERG VOWS TO RESTORE FREE EXPRESSION ON FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM

"This suppression of human thought, this suppression of human opinion, is completely antithetical to America and free speech. People don’t see it happening or they’re OK with it. This should be massive, flashing red light.

"Mark Zuckerberg knows what he did was wrong, and now he’s going to try and fix it and hope we just say, ‘Oh, good for you, you fixed it, Mark.’"

Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News Digital earlier Tuesday that using community notes is a better option.

"Instead of going to some so-called expert, it instead relies on the community and the people on the platform to provide their own commentary to something that they’ve read," Kaplan explained, noting that if a note gets support from "the broadest cross-section of users," that note can be attached to the content for others to see.

"We think that’s a much better approach rather than relying on so-called experts who bring their own biases into the program," Kaplan said.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

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The Republican attorneys general of Virginia and Montana recently filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to require TikTok to sever its ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the fate of the social media platform in the U.S. remains uncertain.

The amicus brief, filed Friday, came the same day President-elect Trump filed an amicus brief of his own, asking the Supreme Court to pause the TikTok ban and allow him to make executive decisions about TikTok once he is inaugurated.

In an announcement, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said he, along with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and other state legal officials, had recently petitioned the Supreme Court to uphold the divest-or-ban law against TikTok.

The social media company has been intensely scrutinized over its parent company, ByteDance, which is connected to the CCP. In his brief, Miyares argued whistleblower reports prove ByteDance has shared sensitive information with the CCP, including Americans' browsing habits and facial recognition data.

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"Allowing TikTok to operate in the United States without severing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposes Americans to the undeniable risks of having their data accessed and exploited by the Chinese Communist Party," Miyares said in a statement. "Virginians deserve a government that stands firm in protecting their privacy and security.

"The Supreme Court now has the chance to affirm Congress’s authority to protect Americans from foreign threats while ensuring that the First Amendment doesn’t become a tool to defend foreign adversaries’ exploitative practices."

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Trump's brief said it was "supporting neither party" and argued the future president has the right to make decisions about TikTok's fate. Steven Cheung, Trump's spokesman and the incoming White House communications director, told Fox News Digital Trump's decision-making would "preserve American national security."

"[The brief asked] the court to extend the deadline that would cause TikTok’s imminent shutdown and allow President Trump the opportunity to resolve the issue in a way that saves TikTok and preserves American national security once he resumes office as president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2025," Cheung said.

Trump's brief notes he "has a unique interest in the First Amendment issues raised in this case" and that the case "presents an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national-security concerns on the other."

"As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means," Trump's brief said.

Fox News Digital's Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

Congress's bipartisan task force on artificial intelligence (AI) released its long-anticipated report this week, detailing strategies for how the U.S. can protect itself against emerging AI-related threats while ensuring the nation remains a leader in innovation within this rapidly evolving sector.

Responses to the report, which sought to strike a "flexible sectoral regulatory framework," were positive and with mixed concerns. 

"The Task Force report offers a thoughtful and forward-thinking framework that balances AI's transformative economic potential with the imperative to address legitimate safety concerns," said Dr. Vahid Behzadan, a professor in the computer science department at the University of New Haven. "That said, there's still work to be done."

He pointed to the importance of developing an "international collaboration strategy," especially with U.S. allies, the need to establish "clearer priorities among the many recommendations provided" and the need for more guidance on market competition and consolidation. 

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The Center for AI Policy, a nonpartisan research organization based in the nation's capital, issued a press release that commended lawmakers for their work on the report. But the group echoed Behzadan's remarks about the need for more detail.

"The body of the report does not contain enough detail about how or when these frameworks will be created," the group said after the report's release. It also expressed concern over the report's lack of emphasis on "catastrophic risks" posed by AI.

"Congress has deliberated on AI for two years now, and it is time to start moving forward with decisive action," the press release stated. 

Yaron Litwin is the chief marketing officer for Canopy, a digital parenting app and an expert in how AI technology is revolutionizing parental control and internet safety. He said "we need faster" and "stronger" protections than what was laid out in the report. "To me, the report appears more business-friendly than not."

The report pointed out that it would be "unreasonable to expect Congress to enact legislation this year that could serve as its last word on AI policy." But while Congress may be slow to act, some states have already moved the ball forward on regulating AI, and experts who spoke to Fox News Digital said the report could serve to bolster those efforts.

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Lawmakers in Colorado enacted the first comprehensive piece of AI legislation this year, which placed certain obligations on developers of "high-risk artificial intelligence systems." Meanwhile, in California, lawmakers passed a bill this month aiming to regulate AI in health care.

"These federal soft law standards could work alongside state efforts to protect consumers and give businesses clear, consistent, and science-based federal guidelines," said Tatiana Rice, Deputy Director for U.S. Legislation at the Future of Privacy Forum, a nonprofit that explores challenges posed by technological innovation. Rice pointed out that an increasing number of state AI laws "include carveouts or assumptions of compliance if businesses adhere to federally recognized standards," and she noted that Congress's approach will likely "make it easier for businesses to meet legal requirements, incentivize consumer trust and safety, and reduce regulatory complexity."

Craig Albright, Senior Vice President of U.S. Government Relations for the Business Software Alliance, posited that the report could likely encourage states "to be more aggressively [sic] next year than what we are expecting to see in Congress."

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On the issue of whether the 25-page report strikes the balance that lawmakers were hoping for in terms of balancing regulation with the need to foster innovation, experts who spoke to Fox News Digital expressed optimism.

"The House AI Working Group report strikes the right tone," Dakota State University President José-Marie Griffiths told Fox News Digital. Griffiths has advised both the Senate and White House on AI policy, including Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., co-chair of the Senate AI Caucus. 

"While there will always be debate over regulation versus not enough government oversight, the report is a step in the right direction," said Griffiths. "With the development of any new technology, regulation requires a nuanced and flexible approach. My recommendation going forward will be for Congress to pick and choose to legislate on specific aspects of AI policy."

Griffiths' reaction to the report was echoed by others who warned that in such a rapidly evolving industry, it will be critical not to get trigger-happy with regulations that could soon become obsolete.

"It is encouraging that the report suggests taking an incremental approach to AI policy," said JD Harriman, a partner at Foundation Law Group who has worked as outside patent council at technology corporations like Apple and Pixar. "Many areas of technology have been stifled by over-regulation before a complete understanding of the technology was undertaken."

"The task force’s honesty – ‘We don’t know what we don’t know’ – is both refreshing and daunting," added Cassidy Reid, the founder of Women in Automation, a nonprofit group that supports women in the tech sector. "It acknowledges the speed of AI’s evolution but raises a bigger question: Are we ready to govern something so inherently unpredictable?"