President Biden’s recent move to award the prestigious Medal of Freedom to progressive megadonor George Soros has sparked criticism both on social media and from one crime expert who spoke to Fox News Digital. 

"President Biden’s decision to award George Soros the Medal of Freedom is a slap in the face to the citizens and crime victims suffering under the policies and politicians he has promoted," Zack Smith, Heritage Foundation legal fellow and co-author of "Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America's Communities," told Fox News Digital after a weekend ceremony awarding the Medal of Freedom to Soros, via his son Alex, who has taken over the family's $25 billion empire. 

"Soros has been a major donor to far-left politicians and has promoted policies that undermine the rule of law in our country. Given Biden’s embrace of these policies and the funding Soros has provided, this looks like nothing more than an effort to reward and keep happy one of the Left’s major donors (and his family).  It cheapens what should be a prestigious award and gives everyday Americans yet another reason to be disgusted by the current Administration’s actions."

The award, the nation’s highest civilian honor, is given to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values or security of the United States, world peace or other significant societal, public or private endeavors, the White House said in a statement.

'FAILED EXPERIMENT': EXPERTS REVEAL WHY SOROS-BACKED POLICIES TOOK BEATING IN DEEP BLUE STATE

Soros, a mega-Democrat donor, runs a web of non-profits that bankroll various candidates around the world who align with his progressive agenda, including his Open Society Foundations. Soros has given over $32 billion to Open Society Foundations since 1984, according to its website. 

The White House said that Soros’ philanthropy across the world has strengthened democracy, human rights, education and social justice.

NFL LEGEND BRETT FAVRE LEFT 'SPEECHLESS' AS BIDEN HONORS SOROS, CLINTON WITH MEDAL OF FREEDOM

Conservatives on social media disagreed and made the case that giving the medal to Soros sent the wrong message given the alleged effects Soros-backed policies have had on crime. 

"Police officers deserve the Medal of Freedom for dealing with violent criminals set free by Soros prosecutors," GOP Sen. Tom Cotton posted on X. 

"George Soros is responsible for the breakdown of American society," conservative lawyer Marina Medvin posted on X. "His goal is the destruction of the West. He supports illegal immigrants, Antifa, Palestinian terror enthusiasts, campus disrupters, etc. Of course this is all wonderful in Biden’s world. So he’s giving Soros the highest civilian honor."

"A travesty that Biden is giving Soros the Medal of Freedom," Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk posted on X. 

"A clear sign Joe Biden lost his mind or he's not in control, for awarding George Soros a Presidential Medal of Freedom," political commentator Richie Greenberg, who led the effort to recall Soros-backed San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin from office, posted on X.

"Few have risen to the level of criminal justice arch-nemesis as Soros has. This is a slap to countless victims of crime enabled by Soros DAs. Truly disgusting."

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and Open Society Foundations but did not receive a response. 

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also awarded the Medal of Freedom on Saturday, prompting similar outrage from conservatives.

Clinton, the White House said, made "history many times over decades in public service," becoming the first female senator from New York and the first first lady to hold elected office.

Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan contributed to this report

The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating Tesla’s “Actual Smart Summon” remote parking feature after several crash incidents were reported.

NHTSA says it has received reports of 16 incidents involving Tesla’s smart summon feature in 2016-2025 Model S and X vehicles as well as 2017-2025 Model 3s and 2020-2025 Model Ys. The administration’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is probing an estimated 2.6 million vehicles with the parking feature.

Tesla re-launched its remote parking Smart Summon as Actually Smart Summon (or ASS, get it?) last fall, after upgrading it to account for the company’s decision to remove radar and ultrasonic sensors in favor of a camera-only approach. Tesla owners control the vehicle by pushing a button in the Tesla smartphone app. The vehicle then uses cameras to navigate across a parking lot without anyone behind the wheel. Releasing the button on the app stops the vehicle’s movements.

But since the feature was reintroduced under the new moniker, a number of videos of alleged crash incidents have been uploaded on YouTube and other social media platforms. Tesla vehicles are seen scraping up against other vehicles, colliding with parking signs, or running into walls. In fairness, there are also a number of videos showing the remote summon feature working flawlessly, even in crowded parking lots.

But NHTSA is concerned with the incidents that didn’t turn out well. There have not been any injuries reported, but the agency is looking into “multiple crash allegations, involving both Smart Summon and Actually Smart Summon, where the user had too little reaction time to avoid a crash, either with the available line of sight or releasing the phone app button, which stops the vehicle’s movement.”

No ASS-related crashes have been reported through NHTSA’s standing general order that requires companies to report incidents involving automated or autonomous features.

Of course, the crash-reporting rule, and all of NHTSA’s safety investigations into Tesla, are headed into an uncertain future with Donald Trump set to retake the White House. Trump’s top donor and advisor is Elon Musk, who stands to benefit if the incoming administration decides to ignore or shut down all its various investigations into his companies.

The games published under Private Division, Take-Two Interactive’s former indie label, are under new management. Bloomberg reports that the former employees of Annapurna Interactive have formed a new, as-yet-unnamed company that will take over Private Division’s games portfolio.

Last year, Take-Two sold off the indie label to a then unnamed buyer that Bloomberg reports is Haveli Investments, a private equity firm based in Texas. Also last year, the staff at Annapurna Interactive, the games arm of the Annapurna Pictures media company, resigned en masse sparking questions about the fate of its own portfolio of games. The resignations came after negotiations to spin off Annapurna Interactive into its own independent company apparently broke down. Annapurna’s former employees have come together with Haveli Investments to form a new company and Bloomberg reports that Private Division’s existing employees will face layoffs but the details are currently unclear.

The new company will oversee Private Division’s existing and in-development titles including the Lord of the Rings-meets-Animal Crossing game Tales of the Shire, due out in March, and Pokémon developer Game Freak’s forthcoming game codenamed Project Bloom.

Soon, running your own AI model at home could be as routine as using a laptop, thanks to Nvidia’s latest breakthrough in AI supercomputing. On Monday at CES 2025, the company unveiled Project Digits, a personal AI supercomputer priced at […]

The post Nvidia unveils Project Digits, a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer that’s 1,000x more powerful than the average laptop first appeared on Tech Startups.

• Jensen Huang has unveiled a platform called Cosmos to simulate scenarios to train real-world robots.
• Huang likened it to Marvel superhero Doctor Strange simulating millions of versions of the future.
• The Nvidia boss said at CES that physical AI is the "next frontier" of artificial intelligence.

In "Avengers: Infinity War," Marvel superhero Doctor Strange looks into the future to see over 14 million different outcomes of the galactic battle against supervillain Thanos. Jensen Huang thinks it's the kind of power needed to reach "the next frontier of AI."

In a keynote address at CES in Las Vegas on Monday, the Nvidia CEO introduced Cosmos, a platform that aims to make "physical AI" a reality by simulating endless real-world scenarios for robots and autonomous vehicles to study and gain a deeper understanding of their environment.

According to Huang, the path to this next frontier — in which autonomous hardware becomes a common sight in daily life — has been limited until now because of data availability. As he put it, "Physical world data is costly to capture, curate, and label."

That's where Nvidia Cosmos comes in, for Huang at least. "You could have it generate multiple physically-based, physically plausible scenarios of the future," he told the Las Vegas audience. "Basically, do a Doctor Strange."

Nvidia's next frontier is coming

Here's how it works. Cosmos ingests text, image, or video prompts to generate videos with virtual renderings of real-world environments, lighting, and more.

Developers of robots and autonomous vehicles can then use these virtual creations to provide their technology with synthetic data for reinforcement learning — a research technique used to teach AI models — as well as test and validate the models behind the physical AI.

According to an Nvidia blog post, Cosmos can also be used along with Omniverse, the company's platform for creating 3D graphics and metaverses, to "generate every possible future outcome an AI model could take to help it select the best and most accurate path."

Cosmos itself starts with a strong, foundational understanding of real-world environments. It has been trained on 20 million hours of video focusing on everything from humans walking and "dynamic nature" to camera movements, Nvidia said.

If robots and autonomous vehicles are to become a widespread reality, as other industry leaders like Elon Musk think, they'll need a highly sophisticated understanding of these kinds of scenarios.

"It's really about teaching the AI, not about generating creative content, but teaching the AI to understand the physical world," Huang said.

There's a good reason Huang is talking up physical AI. While Nvidia has grown by roughly $3.3 trillion since the start of the generative AI boom, thanks to high demand for its chips needed to train AI models, the business isn't completely free of threats.

Some of Nvidia's Big Tech customers, such as Amazon and Google, are developing chips of their own to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. The company made 87.7% of its $35.1 billion revenue last quarter from its chip and data center business.

As Business Insider's Emma Cosgrove also notes, the semiconductor industry has historically been brutal. Companies typically experience boom and bust cycles as interest in niche chips can come in waves. There is an incentive then for Huang to diversify Nvidia's sources of income.

Time will tell if Cosmos can offer the path forward to Nvidia's next frontier. Development of robots that can navigate complex world environments has taken shape slowly, despite companies like Google, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI deploying increasing amounts of capital on developing these technologies.

Huang himself noted during his CES keynote that he expects autonomous vehicles to represent the "first multi-trillion dollar robotics industry."

With autonomous cars already on the road in certain locations from companies like Waymo and Cruise, this could be the case. During CES, Huang shared that Nvidia had struck a new partnership with Toyota to help power its autonomous vehicle ambitions.

Getting to a world where robots roam freely among humans will take considerably more effort, however. Huang will hope that Cosmos starts to provide the superpowers needed to pull off such a feat.

• The Department of Government Efficiency is hiring "a very small number" of full-time paid employees.
• DOGE said it is recruiting for engineering, HR, IT, and finance roles.
• Job application and compensation details remain sparse.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency is recruiting for "a very small number" of full-time, salaried positions, according to its X account.

As of early January, the commission is looking for people to fill software engineering, information security engineering, HR, IT, and finance roles.

DOGE is an advisory committee that aims to significantly cut the federal budget — Musk said he wants to slash $2 trillion in spending — and pare back regulations. It exists outside of the federal government and does not have the power to change laws or agencies, though its leaders have already exerted influence over legislative actions, like a recent spending bill.

Applicants for the HR, IT, and finance roles were instructed in an X post — which functions as a job listing — to DM the commission's account their resume and some bullet points about their interest. Those applying for software engineering and information security engineering jobs were told in a separate post to send bullet points "demonstrating exceptional ability" and a phone number over direct message.

In November, Musk said in an X post that employees at DOGE would not be compensated; it remains unclear how many salaried positions are available. That same month, DOGE's X account said in a post that "thousands of Americans" have expressed interest in working at the commission and that applicants must be willing to work more than 80 hours per week. Musk and Ramaswamy would, the post said, look at the top 1% of applicants.

In a recent blog post, a former tech executive, Vinay Hiremath, said that he applied to work at DOGE and had eight calls before getting in and being added to Signal groups.

"I was immediately acquainted with the software, HR, and legal teams and went from 0 to 100 taking meetings and getting shit done," he wrote in the post, noting that he worked at DOGE for four weeks.

Though DOGE is actively recruiting, details about specific employees remain sparse. In early December, President-elect Donald Trump announced that William Joseph McGinley will serve as the commission's counsel. He also announced on Truth Social that Katie Miller, who was deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term and is married to incoming deputy chief of policy Stephen Miller, will be joining the commission.

Representatives for Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, and DOGE's X account did not immediately respond to a direct message.

• Big-name managers mostly performed well in 2024, but some under-the-radar players soared.
• Managers like Glen Kacher's Light Street and David Rogers' Castle Hook returned 60% last year.
• Jason Mudrick's firm returned more than 31%, a person close to the manager said.

The biggest hedge funds in the world — names like Citadel, D.E. Shaw, and Millennium — had good years in 2024, as Business Insider has reported.

While most of these funds failed to match the S&P 500's 23% gain, their investors love their consistency and risk management.

But allocators also have a need for managers that can take big bets and rip past peers and the market in a good year, as seen in the growth and interest in Chris Rokos' eponymous fund.

BI identified a few hedge funds that have been around, but are not as recognizable as their industry subsector peers — though that might change after their impressive performance.

Big-name macro funds, for example, had strong years thanks to geopolitical events like the US election that many were able to capitalize on. Rokos, PointState, and Rob Citrone's Discovery Capital Management all recorded large gains — but none of these bigger names matched the 60% gain by David Rogers' Castle Hook.

Rogers, a former investor in George Soros' family office, launched Castle Hook with fellow Soros alum Joshua Donfeld in 2016 with capital from billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller. The manager now runs $4.4 billion, a person close to the firm said.

Tiger Cub Light Street Capital, run out of California by Glen Kacher, is smaller and less well-known than other firms linked to Tiger Management's late Julian Robertson like Tiger Global, Coatue, and Viking Global. But Light Street's 59.4% gain last year and Kacher's AI focus is sure to draw attention.

Kacher posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, that his "AI5 basket" outperformed the Magnificent 7 last year. There is some overlap between the two groups of stocks, specifically Nvidia and Microsoft, but the other holdings in his basket are semiconductor and AI infrastructure companies such as Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom.

Meanwhile, when stocks are soaring, there's often a lack of interest in credit managers, especially those playing in distressed space. But Jason Mudrick's $4 billion firm managed to pull out a market-beating year, a person close to the firm told BI.

The person said Mudrick Capital made 31.7% for the year and ended 2024 by investing up to $50 million in flailing British flying taxi startup Vertical Aerospace to bail the company out.

By comparison, the average credit fund, according to Hedge Fund Research, returned less than 10% through November 2024.

• Netflix's "Emilia Pérez" won four Golden Globes on Sunday, including the award for best musical or comedy.
• The film is expected to win big during awards season, including at the Oscars.
• But the film is facing growing criticism.

"Emilia Pérez" is a frontrunner for this year's Oscars, but as award season begins, a growing number of fans and critics are turning against it.

The Netflix film, starring Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Karla Sofía Gascón, is a cross-genre crime musical about a Mexican cartel boss who fakes her death so she can transition.

Variety reported that Netflix bought the film for approximately $12 million after it premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. While it wasn't a hit on the platform, it could boost Netflix's reputation if it wins big at the Oscars in March.

"Emilia Pérez" bagged four Golden Globes on Sunday, including the award for best musical or comedy motion picture over fan-favorite films including "Wicked," "The Substance," and "Challengers."

Some film fans criticized the decision, arguing that it is better than its competitors.

Here are the controversies surrounding the film, explained.

Fans mocked what they view as a bizarre musical number in the film

"Emilia Pérez" received rave reviews before it premiered on Netflix last November, but the general public seemingly hasn't been won over.

In one scene that went viral, a doctor sings about the gender reassignment surgeries he has performed.

Users on X who saw the clip out of context mocked the musical number, while others who had seen the film called it boring.

Film fans reignited criticism by resharing the scene after "Emilia Pérez" won at the Golden Globes on Sunday.

Gomez's performance and her Spanish language skills have also been criticized.

Eugenio Derbez, a Mexican actor who starred in 2021's "Coda," called her performance "indefensible" last December on the Mexican entertainment podcast "Hablando de Cine."

After Gomez said sorry and that she did the best she could with the time she was given, Derbez apologized the next day for his "thoughtless" comments.

Others have complained about how the film portrays trans identity

At first glance, it would seem progressive for a film about a trans person to win multiple Oscars, as an openly trans actor is yet to win an Academy Award. But critics say the film doesn't uplift the community, partly because it includes transphobic tropes, such as describing a transwoman as "half male/half female."

In November 2024, the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD called the film "a step backward for trans representation" and shared several negative reviews from critics who are trans.

On January 6, Gascón told Vanity Fair: "Many are running a negative, nasty campaign against the film, so anything that I say, they will use it to make their case bigger.

"When something has a big impact and is liked by many, others hate it just for existing."

When asked about critics who are trans panning the movie, Gascón said: "Being LGBTQ, having those labels, does not remove your stupidity, just like heterosexuality does not remove your stupidity.

"What bothers me is that the people that say things like that just sitting down at home doing nothing. If you don't like it, go and make your own movie. Go create the representation you want to see for your community."

Gascón added that the trans experience is not a monolith.

Juan Barquin, a critic of the movie who is trans and was mentioned in the Vanity Fair article, responded in an X post on Monday, telling Gascón to "go fuck herself" and give her money to make her own trans movie.

Another trans critic mentioned in the piece, Drew Burnett Gregory, said: "I've watched many trans actors and writers attach themselves to cis artists in the hopes of helping their careers.

"It's not a position I envy. When the dust settles and the awards are doled out, it's the cis people who have benefited while the trans people can barely get work."

On Monday, Jeremy O. Harris, a Tony-nominated playwright and actor, shared a Instagram story post criticizing the outlet THEM and other LGBTQ+ detractors of "Emilia Pérez," arguing its success could open doors for representation.

Some criticized how Mexico is portrayed

"Emilia Pérez" is mostly set in Mexico, but the film's director, Jacques Audiard, is French, and the movie was made in France. In addition, one Mexican-born actor has a lead role: Adriana Paz. Gomez is American and has Mexican heritage; Saldaña's parents are Dominican and Puerto Rican; and Gascón is Spanish.

Users on X, including Mexican actors and cinematographers, argued the film doesn't accurately portray Mexico, its culture, and people.

Rodrigo Prieto, a Mexican, Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on "Barbie," "Killers of the Flower Moon," and "The Wolf of Wall Street," told Deadline last November that he was "unhappy" the film was not shot in Mexico and didn't include more Mexican people in the production.

"The whole thing is completely inauthentic," Prieto said. "Yes, they had dialogue coaches but I was offended that such a story was portrayed in a way that felt so inauthentic.

"It was just the details for me. You would never have a jail sign that read 'Cárcel' it would be 'Penitenciaria'. It's just the details, and that shows me that nobody that knew was involved. And it didn't even matter. That was very troubling to me."

In December 2024, casting director Carla Hool told a SAG-AFTRA foundation Q&A that her team searched across Mexico and Latin America for the lead roles.

"We wanted to keep it really authentic, but at the end of the day, the best actors who embodied the characters are the ones right here," Hool said, adding that they changed the backgrounds of Gomez and Saldaña's characters' because they aren't native Mexicans.

This further angered critics.

Representatives for Gascón, Netflix, and THEM, did not immediately respond to a comment request from Business Insider.

• Trump wouldn't rule out using military force to take Greenland and retake the Panama Canal.
• The president-elect made the remarks during a major press conference just days before his 2nd term.
• Denmark has emphatically stated that Greenland isn't for sale.

President-elect Donald Trump isn't ruling out using military force in an effort to gain control of Greenland and retake control of the Panama Canal.

During a Tuesday press conference, Trump was asked if he'd assure the world that he wouldn't use military or economic coercion to secure the sovereign territory and the vital waterway, respectively.

The president-elect in his response reinforced the critical economic importance that he sees in Greenland and the Panama Canal.

"I can't assure you," he said. "I'm not going to commit to that. It might be that you'll have to do something."

"We need Greenland for national security purposes," he continued. "People don't even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up."

Late last year, Trump spoke about possibly taking back control of the Panama Canal from Panama as well as his wish to secure Greenland from Denmark. He also floated buying Greenland in 2019.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark earlier on Tuesday said that "Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders," adding that the strategic Arctic island is "not for sale."

Uber will use Nvidia’s new generative world model simulation tool, Cosmos, and cloud-based AI supercomputing platform, DGX Cloud, to support the development of autonomous vehicle technology, the companies announced at CES 2025. Cosmos is being marketed to robotics and autonomy companies as a tool that generates physics-based videos from a variety of inputs, including 9,000 […]

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Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! It’s good to be back.  This week, we’re looking at the wild ride that was Bench’s shutdown and acquisition; dozens of companies that are hiring in the fintech space; lawsuits against PayPal; an IPO update; and more! This edition is a bit longer than normal since we were on a hiatus […]

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