• A lawyer for Charlie Javice told jurors JPMorgan Chase didn't do enough to vet her startup.
• Prosecutors said Javice defrauded JPMorgan Chase before it bought Frank.
• In openings, prosecutors painted her as a fraud. Her lawyer called her an "incredible young woman."

Prosecutors told a federal jury Thursday that Frank's founder Charlie Javice and her second in command, Olivier Amar, earned millions by defrauding JPMorgan Chase.

The bank purchased the company in 2021 for $175 million after the then-executives said Frank had more than 4 million users.

Prosecutors say that those numbers were dramatically inflated.

"They had nothing close to that," US Attorney Rushmi Bhaskaran said on Thursday. "Through these lies, the defendants became multimillionaires."

Bhaskaran added that the duo "made up fake data" to bolster their user base and then tried to cover it up.

Attorneys for Javice and Amar, who were charged separately, painted a different picture.

Jose Baez, one of Javice's attorneys, said JPMorgan didn't do enough due diligence before purchasing Frank, calling it a "business deal that went wrong."

He called Javice an "incredible young woman" who, at age 28, was savvy enough to secure a one-on-one meeting with Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO.

Baez added that the acquisition was more about acquiring Javice herself than Frank's users.

"They saw something in Charlie, a young female CEO breaking the glass ceiling," Baez said. "That's what JPMorgan negotiated for, and that's what they got."

Meanwhile, Amar's attorney, Jonathan Cogan, referred to his client as an "innocent man" who was dragged into his boss' problems after the prosecution "lumped them together."

Amar, who appeared stoic through much of the proceedings, nodded subtly while Cogan reminded the jury that he's innocent until proven guilty.

"Sometimes, our government gets it wrong," Cogan said. "Sometimes, prosecutors can be overzealous. Sometimes, innocent people get swept up."

Opening statements in the lower Manhattan trial came after nearly two days of jury selection.

Before being selected, jurors were questioned at hushed sidebars about their personal lives, including whether they had ever worked in finance, been a victim of fraud, or had close personal or business relationships with people such as Dimon.

Some prospective jurors were excused after saying that they worked for JPMorgan or other banks. Another was excused after saying she enjoyed watching shows about scams and thinking about the psychology that motivates fraudsters.

"This is not an easy procedure. It was difficult. It took longer than I expected," District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said after the 12 jurors and 4 alternates were selected Thursday.

The jury and its alternates include people who told the judge they worked in sales management or IT, as well as some who worked for the city of New York. Others worked in healthcare or had no job.

Throughout the voir dire process, Javice — dressed in a blouse and pencil skirt — smiled in the direction of jurors and took frequent notes. She appeared personable and chatted with the attorneys on each side of her, playing with her hair while talking.

The trial of Javice and Amar continues Friday.

Correction: February 21, 2025 — Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misspelled the name of a defendant. Olivier Amar is on trial, not Oliver Amar.

• The Trump administration says tariffs on Mexico and Canada will curb fentanyl flow into the US.
• A harm reduction expert warns that tariffs may increase overdoses by disrupting drug supply.
• Canada plans retaliatory tariffs, targeting goods from Trump's political base.

President Donald Trump introduced tariffs on Mexico and Canada as part of an effort to fight drug trafficking, but a harm reduction advocate says that stopping the regular flow of drugs could make overdoses spike.

Trump announced on February 1 that he planned to place 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Trump said at the time that the tariffs were intended to crack down on drug and border policy, particularly to stop the flow of fentanyl into the US.

Trump paused the tariffs for 30 days on February 3 after both countries agreed to tougher border control measures, but he still promised "reciprocal tariffs" on goods imported from any country that levies tariffs on the US.

In posts on Truth Social, Trump has maintained that "drugs are pouring into our Country, mostly through Mexico, at levels never seen before."

Laura Guzman, the executive director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, told Business Insider that Trump's tariffs could make drug overdoses go up if they are successful in slowing the flow of illegal drugs into the country. Harm reduction generally refers to policies and practices that aim to minimize the negative health, social, and legal effects of drug abuse.

"The biggest fear I had when I saw the negotiation to postpone the tariffs, immediately, my reaction was, 'that is not going to be good for the folks that are impacted by both the war on drugs, but also by this tainted drug supply,'" Guzman told BI.

Guzman said that while slowing the rate of fentanyl entering the country is a good idea, there is still a large amount of fentanyl that is produced inside the US that ends up on the streets. She said that disrupting the flow of drugs can create a situation where addicts are mixing drugs that they don't normally use, which can lead to health risks and death. She said mixing drugs can lead to drug contamination where people might take drugs they aren't familiar with or are unaware that they are taking.

"What happens is more dangerous, because then the mixes, the kind of mixes, what it gets mixed with, puts people at risk of not just opiate overdoses, but also increase sedation that results in death," Guzman said.

Guzman said that it is common for harm reduction workers to see spikes in overdose deaths in cities after local police do heavy drug takedowns.

"They do an interdiction, they start arresting, they say how much fentanyl have confiscated, and we very soon start seeing spikes of overdose deaths," Guzman said.

Putting "all the eggs on interdiction"

She was also critical of Mexico, saying that government needs to do more to recognize the ongoing fentanyl crisis impacting both countries. Guzman said that there is "a denial" from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's administration of "the influx of fentanyl from the border."

Sheinbaum said in a statement on February 3 that Mexico rejected claims by the Trump administration that Mexico colluded with criminal organizations.

"If the United States government and its agencies wanted to address the serious consumption of fentanyl in their country, they can combat the sale of narcotics on the streets of their main cities, which they don't do," Sheinbaum said.

Naloxone, a drug that is used to reverse opioid overdoses, is a controlled substance in Mexico, where it is considered a psychoactive drug. Guzman said the country's refusal to recognize naloxone as a life-saving drug shows that it is "putting all the eggs on interdiction and denies the fact that fentanyl is also taking lives on the other side of the border."

Even as the Trump administration leans into fentanyl trafficking as a leading reason for its new tariffs, they have sometimes struggled to defend it.

On NBC's "Meet the Press" on February 2, Kristin Welker asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem why Canada had been hit with more severe tariffs than China.

"Why is the United States punishing Canada, one of its closest allies, more than China, where fentanyl originates?" Welker said.

"We have sent a message this week that we're not just going to enforce our southern border," Noem said. "We're going to put extra resources at that northern border as well. So Canada needs to come to the table."

US Customs and Border Protection seized more than 21,000 pounds of fentanyl at the Mexican border last year, according to the agency. The agency seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced retaliatory tariffs if Trump's tariffs go into effect. Some tariffed goods target Trump's political base, covering items like Florida oranges and Kentucky bourbon.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Egg prices are high due to the bird flu.
• Avocados, already more pricy this year, may follow suit thanks to potential tariffs.
• Consumers are facing higher breakfast prices as a result.

Savor the taste of that avocado toast with eggs because it is about to get more expensive.

From avian diseases to tariffs, there are multiple forces at work driving the price increases on your breakfast.

In January, the price of eggs hit a record high at an average of $4.95 for a dozen, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The price of eggs rose in part because of the bird flu outbreak that has spread to dairy cattle and, in some cases, to humans. As a result, millions of birds have been killed, making eggs not just more expensive but also harder to find on the shelves.

Avocados are likely about to follow suit, though for different reasons.

Some 90% of the avocados consumed in the US come from Mexico, a nation that President Donald Trump hit with a 25% tariff on February 1. He later announced the tariffs would be delayed by a month, after which he may still impose them.

Tariffs are taxes on foreign goods imported to the US, and they prompt importers to raise their prices to compensate for the added tax and cover their bottom line. As a result, the consumer usually bears the brunt of the price increase.

Even pre-tariff, avocados, at an average of $0.91 each, were already 17% more expensive in the first week of February than they were during the same period last year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Gary Williams, an emeritus professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M, said avocados are elastic goods, so people will buy them regardless of the price.

"A tariff on avocado imports is basically a tax on US avocado consumers and most tariff revenue would be paid by US consumers," Williams told BI.

Price hikes on breakfast ingredients are already impacting consumers.

In New York City, customers are paying more for their breakfast sandwich, the beloved bacon, egg, and cheese. Waffle House customers, meanwhile, will face a $0.50 surcharge for each egg they order.

Though it's uncertain how long disease outbreaks and trade wars will last, one thing is certain: some of our favorite breakfasts may soon feel more like luxuries than daily staples.

• Sam Altman says OpenAI's ChatGPT 4o is the "best search product on the web."
• Altman had a cheeky exchange Saturday with Aravind Srinivas, CEO of AI search startup Perplexity.
• Altman added that ChatGPT 4o, which was recently updated, would "get much better" soon.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said the company's latest update to ChatGPT 4o makes it the "best search product on the web."

ChatGPT 4o is "pretty good" and is "soon going to get much better," Altman said in a post on X on Saturday. He retweeted posts complimenting the chatbot's writing skills as "unbelievably good" and "human like."

The GPT-4o model (with an "o" that stands for omni) was initially released in May and impressed users with its ability to handle text, audio, and images as inputs and outputs.

OpenAI recently touted GPT 4o's "smarter model" that offers "more relevant, current, and contextually accurate responses, especially for questions involving cultural and social trends."

It wasn't immediately clear if Altman was referring to a new ChatGPT 4o update or the one outlined by the company on January 29. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Altman's comments about GPT 4o's search capabilities came during a cheeky exchange with Aravind Srinivas, the founder and CEO of Perplexity, a search-focused AI startup.

Srinivas, who previously worked at OpenAI, replied to Altman's post about a GPT 4o update, saying, "sorry what's the update?"

Altman responded that "among many other things, it's the best search product on the web" and suggested Srinivas "check it out."

Srinivas replied that his company had just released a deep research agent.

In Altman's response, he told Srinivas to "keep cooking out there," and that he was "proud."

ChatGPT's search market share rose from June to November 2024, challenging Google's dominance in the lucrative space, according to research from Evercore ISI.

• US President Donald Trump has called for reciprocal tariffs on other countries.
• Trump recently ordered 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum and an added 10% tariff on Chinese goods.
• Economists warn Trump's tariffs may raise inflation and hurt US consumers.

President Donald Trump has called for "reciprocal tariffs" on countries that impose such levies on American goods.

"On trade, I have decided, for purposes of fairness, that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them. No more, no less," Trump said from the Oval Office on Thursday.

He added that other countries have been "charging us vastly more than we charge them, but those days are over."

In similar remarks on Wednesday teasing the tariffs announcement, Trump said the "world has taken advantage of the US for many years."

"If they are charging us 130% and we're charging them nothing, it's not going to stay that way," Trump had said on Monday.

Trump's new directive comes just as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lands in the US on Wednesday for a two-day visit.

Trump has called India a "tariff king" in his first term and has repeatedly complained about the country's levies on imports.

India's average tariff is above 10%, compared to the US's average tariff of 2.3% in 2023.

Since taking office, Trump has been widening his trade war against trading partners.

On Monday, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports. The tariffs, which are set to take effect on March 12, could contribute to price hikes in construction, cars, and travel.

Earlier this month, Trump also placed a 10% tariff on imports from China. In response, Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs on coal, crude oil, agricultural machinery, and some vehicles.

Shortly after taking office, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on most goods from Canada and Mexico. He later announced that those tariffs would be delayed 30 days after he reached a deal with both countries to strengthen border security.

Economists and analysts are grappling with the impact of Trump's tariffs, which are expected to increase inflation.

John Veroneau, a former deputy US trade representative, said Trump should clarify his trade agenda.

"Tariffs will not increase US manufacturing: technology, rather than trade, has been primarily responsible for the fifty-year decline in manufacturing jobs," wrote Veroneau, who is a partner in the Covington & Burling law firm, in a February 11 post on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

Instead, employment has declined as factories can operate with more machines and fewer people, he added.

"Tariffs hurt American consumers and export-oriented manufacturers who lose sales when US trading partners impose their new tariffs in response," wrote Veroneau.

• Three weeks into Donald Trump's second term, the makeup of Elon Musk's DOGE staff is becoming clearer.
• BI saw a list of about 30 White House DOGE staffers; nearly all are early- or mid-career professionals.
• They include tech advisors, a former Clarence Thomas clerk, and a former McKinsey consultant.

Software developers. Former Supreme Court clerks. An ex-McKinsey consultant. Corporate financiers.

Three weeks into the second Trump administration, the composition of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team is becoming clearer.

White House records seen by Business Insider show about 30 people now work for the White House's DOGE office. At least four of the names haven't been previously reported. Among them are Kendall Lindemann, 24, who worked for a healthcare firm founded by the senior DOGE official Brad Smith, and Adam Ramada, 35, an investor whose firm took a stake in a SpaceX supplier last year.

Other new names are Kyle Schutt, 37, a tech startup worker who was most recently employed at an AI interviewing software company, and Austin Raynor, 36, a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Raynor was interviewed on NTD news in November, outlining how Trump could challenge birthright citizenship.

Since January 20, the DOGE team has moved quickly to dismantle federal agencies, reduce staff, slow down enforcement, and gain access to the digital systems that help shepherd trillions of taxpayer dollars. While the US DOGE Service is part of the White House Office, the White House hasn't released details about its inner workings or staff; the list seen by BI helps shed light on the powerful young squadron tasked with remaking the federal government.

Most of the more than two dozen people on the White House DOGE staff are early-career professionals in their 20s and 30s. They have backgrounds primarily in tech but also in finance, law, and politics. BI confirmed their backgrounds through public records, including social media profiles and legal filings.

The records categorize nearly all of the DOGE staffers as volunteers. Wired earlier reported that the DOGE engineer Luke Farritor — who is also on the list seen by BI — posted to Discord looking for software engineers. He said the position would be "paid," but not by whom, according to the outlet.

The records seen by BI don't include the names of some DOGE affiliates who have appeared in legal filings and news reports as working for other agencies, such as the Treasury employees Tom Krause and Marko Elez. Elez resigned from the Treasury Department last week after The Wall Street Journal reported on racist social media posts from an account linked to him; Musk said on X one day later that he would rehire him.

Beyond the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the executive order behind DOGE called for agencies to create their own "DOGE Teams," and people linked to Elon Musk have popped up in employee directories at the Treasury Department, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, and other agencies, news reports say. Some of the people listed as White House DOGE staff are also employees of other agencies.

The White House didn't reply to a request for comment.

Here's a breakdown of the DOGE team.

Tech

Tech workers make up the largest chunk of the DOGE team on the list reviewed by BI.

Some are veteran software engineers. Schutt was most recently the chief technology officer at Kerplunk, an AI interviewing software startup, and has a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech.

Schutt didn't respond to a request for comment.

Others on the list are relatively junior. Edward Coristine is 19, and Farritor, 23, a former SpaceX intern, was a senior at the University of Nebraska when he was named a Thiel Fellow last year.

Two close associates of Musk are also on the list. Steve Davis, who was trained as an aerospace engineer, now leads The Boring Company, Musk's tunneling company; Jehn Balajadia has been described as Musk's assistant. The New York Times reported that she was also listed as a Department of Education employee.

Davis and Balajadia didn't respond to requests for comment.

Finance

Some White House DOGE staff have corporate finance and management backgrounds.

Lindemann graduated from the University of Tennessee's business college in 2022. She worked for McKinsey for about two years, according to her LinkedIn profile, and in 2024 left for Russell Street Ventures, the health industry investment firm run by Smith, the senior DOGE official. Smith worked at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the first Trump administration. Lindemann worked at Russell Street Ventures as a venture associate, an entry-level job in the venture capital industry.

Lindemann, Davis, McKinsey, and Russell Street Ventures didn't respond to requests for comment.

According to campaign finance records, the White House DOGE staffer Ramada is a Miami venture capitalist who donated more than $1,000 to Republican fundraising committees last year. One of his companies, Spring Tide Capital, invested in Impulse Space, which was founded by a SpaceX employee and has contracted with SpaceX.

Ramada and Spring Tide Capital didn't respond to a comment request.

Law

There are five lawyers listed as part of the DOGE White House staff, and the majority have clerked for conservative Supreme Court justices.

Raynor, a graduate of the University of Virginia's law school, clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court term that started in October 2016 and spent time as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell. During Trump's first term, he served as an assistant to the solicitor general. He has argued in front of the Supreme Court at least eight times. He was most recently a senior attorney and special counsel for the Supreme Court practice at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian organization.

Raynor's November TV segment and Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship used similar language, though Raynor wasn't the first person to make such arguments.

Raynor declined to comment when reached by BI.

Other names on the list, which have been previously reported, include Jacob Altik, Keenan Kmiec, and Stephanie Holmes. Altik was selected to clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch for the term starting in October 2025, while Kmiec clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as for Samuel Alito while Alito was still a federal circuit judge. James Burnham, who ProPublica described as DOGE's general counsel, clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch and was previously a partner at the law firm Jones Day.

Politics

Of the list of White House DOGE staffers, only one appears to have previously worked in politics. Chris Young, who Musk hired as an advisor over the summer to help his get-out-the-vote work, was most recently a senior political advisor at PhRMA, a trade association that advocates on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. He was previously a national field director for the Republican National Committee. He didn't respond to a request for comment.

Have a tip? Know more? Reach Jack Newsham via email ([email protected]) or via Signal (+1-314-971-1627). Do not use a work device.

• President Donald Trump's executive orders have faced a slew of legal roadblocks.
• Judges have blocked orders on birthright citizenship, transgender inmate rehousing, and spending.
• Trump's tariff plans for Canada and Mexico were paused after negotiations.

Some of President Donald Trump's boldest moves during his new administration's seismic first three weeks have been grounded before ever taking flight.

The administration and its Department of Governmental Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, the world's richest man, promised a list of swift-moving changes to the US government's operations. While some of those plans have progressed, others were put on hold, either in the courts or by the administration itself.

The White House says this is all part of a long game that Trump, ultimately, will win.

"Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful," Harrison Fields, the principal White House deputy press secretary, told BI on Friday.

And as for Trump's walked-back plans to hit our closest neighbors with tariffs — that was an all-out victory, said another White House spokesman, Kush Desai, who said Trump changed course on Mexico and Canada after "critical concessions" from both countries.

Still, much of Trump 2.0 remains on ice for now.

For those who haven't been able to keep up with the firehouse of actions announced by the White House and DOGE, here are the key ones that have been held up — for now.

A 'fork in the road' resignation offer

A federal judge in Massachusetts delayed Trump's plan to root out federal employees with buyout offers.

On January 28, the Trump administration gave just over two million government workers the chance to resign and maintain full pay and benefits until September 30. The so-called "fork in the road" resignation offer was a strategy straight out of Musk's playbook.

US District Judge George O'Toole Jr. on Thursday extended the buyout deadline until at least Monday, just hours before the actual deadline. The order came in response to a lawsuit brought by labor union groups. A Trump administration official told BI that over 40,000 federal workers had taken the buyout as of Wednesday.

Musk's DOGE and the Treasury

The White House launched another fiscal bombshell on February 3 when Trump told reporters he had given Treasury data access to Musk, whose DOGE is tasked with cutting government spending.

The idea that DOGE would have access to the personal information of millions of Americans — including anyone who had ever paid taxes, taken a federal loan, or collected Social Security — resulted in another legal challenge.

On Thursday, a federal judge in California set strict interim limits on the Treasury data, banning DOGE from accessing it directly.

Then, Saturday morning, another federal judge temporarily blocked a slew of people — including special government employees (like Musk), political appointees, and government employees not assigned by the Treasury — from accessing the Treasury's payment systems. The judge also ordered those who had gained new access to the systems to destroy all copies they may have made of materials and records they downloaded.

In the order, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer cited the risk of "disclosure of sensitive and confidential information" and the "heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking."

A freeze on federal spending

On January 27 — the first full Monday of Trump 2.0 — Trump budget officials dropped a bombshell memo ordering the temporary freezing of "all federal financial assistance" beginning 5 p.m. the following day, so that the spending could be reviewed. In an instant, the future of billions of dollars in federal funding was thrown into question.

The shockwaves were just as swift, even in the hours before the freeze was to take place. Medicaid portals used by states to access federal reimbursement quickly shut down across the country. Head Start funds were frozen in some states. Officials in California wondered if FEMA wildfire assistance was at risk.

Judges presiding over two hastily-drafted lawsuits issued separate injunctions blocking the freeze, including a federal judge in DC whose order came down minutes before the 5 p.m deadline.

The next day, Matthew Vaeth, director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent out a second memo. It said that the first memo is no longer in effect.

Backing off from tariff threats

Trump touted his plans to impose new 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and they were set to go into effect on Tuesday.

The announcements were met with retaliatory plans from both countries, where leaders said they'd enforce their own tariffs on American products.

The expected trade war rattled the markets. On Monday, stocks and crypto tumbled, while the US dollar and oil climbed.

In the end, though, these tariffs that left American investors scrambling were put on hold.

Trump and Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, struck a deal on border policy, delaying the expected tariff on Mexican imports for 30 days. Similarly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau negotiated a pause until March for that set of tariffs.

A similar threat of 25% tariffs on goods from Colombia was put on hold after the country agreed to accept all deportation flights from the US.

An additional 10% tariff on imports from China did go into effect Tuesday, and was quickly matched by retaliatory tariffs on US exports to that country.

Bid to end birthright citizenship

Trump's executive order seeking to abolish the constitutional right of birthright citizenship has been indefinitely blocked by two separate federal judges.

A judge in Washington state issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the order on Thursday, just a day after a Maryland judge did the same. The order — one of the first signed by Trump after he was sworn into office — has been challenged in the courts by more than 20 Democratic-run states and immigrant rights advocates who have argued it violates the 14th Amendment.

Judge John Coughenour of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington temporarily halted the order on January 23, calling the move to end automatic citizenship to US-born children of parents who are in the country illegally "blatantly unconstitutional."

Coughenour issued his Thursday ruling following the decision by Maryland US District Judge Deborah Boardman. Boardman wrote that Trump's order "conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent, and runs counter to our nation's 250-year history of citizenship by birth."

Dropping USAID into the 'wood chipper'

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2,200 USAID employees on paid leave.

The workers, some of whom are overseas, were set to go on leave just before midnight Friday.

Musk said in an X post on Monday that he had "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, however, filed a lawsuit against the administration's USAID cuts on Thursday, arguing that the moves to dismantle it were made without congressional authorization.

Constitutional law experts told Business Insider that dismantling the agency without congressional approval is indisputably illegal.

Forcing transgender women inmates into men's prisons

Trump's Day One order to house transgender women into men's men's facilities at federal prisons has also been blocked in the courts.

The order says the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary shall "ensure that males are not detained in women's prisons" and calls to end gender-affirming care for transgender inmates. It was challenged in two lawsuits brought by a handful of transgender women in prison.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, DC, granted the plaintiffs' request for a temporary restraining order on Tuesday. In his order, Lamberth wrote that the plaintiffs "have straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow" if the restraining order request was denied.

Lamberth's order followed a separate ruling by US District Judge George O'Toole in Massachusetts, who also issued a temporary restraining order on January 26.

• Super Bowl star Travis Kelce said it would be a "great honor" to have Donald Trump at the game.
• In response, Trump called Kelce the "absolute best tight end in football."
• Trump earlier said he hates Taylor Swift, Kelce's popstar girlfriend.

President Donald Trump has a history of "Bad Blood" with Taylor Swift, but that isn't stopping Travis Kelce, Swift's boyfriend, from laying down the welcome mat for the president ahead of Super Bowl weekend.

The Kansas City Chiefs tight end said it would be "awesome" and a "great honor" for the president to attend the Super Bowl in New Orleans this Sunday, when the Chiefs will face off against the Philadelphia Eagles.

"No matter who the president is, I know I'm excited because it's the biggest game of my life," Kelce said on Wednesday. "Having the president there — you know, it's the best country in the world, so it will be pretty cool."

It will be the first time a sitting president has attended the Super Bowl. Trump said on Truth Social that he planned to give an interview before the game.

Trump called Kelce the "absolute best tight end in football (Ever!)" in a post on Truth Social on Friday morning, adding that it will be a "great game."

The warm exchange between Trump and Kelce, however, comes months after the president announced his dislike of Swift, who endorsed Kamala Harris before the presidential election.

"I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!" he wrote in a Truth Social post in September.

Swift has been a regular presence at Kelce's games and is widely expected to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday, putting the president and the popstar on a possible collision course.

A spokesperson for Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Evangelical leaders are pushing back on President Donald Trump's cuts to foreign aid.
• Trump and Elon Musk have targeted USAID in their sweeping cost-cutting efforts.
• Some of the actions have been "damaging and wasteful," a leader of an evangelical organization said.

"Let's bring God back into our lives," President Donald Trump said Thursday morning.

While most evangelical leaders would agree with the spirit of Trump's comments at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, some have begun to push back on his recent executive actions.

At a press panel following the event, a group of faith leaders, including members of the evangelical community that has long been a base of support for Trump, said they were concerned about the president's recent moves to dismantle the US Agency for International Development as part of his cost-cutting efforts.

"We affirm that there are aspects of our foreign aid programs that should be ended and others that could be reformed for greater effectiveness," Galen Carey, the vice president of government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals, said. "However, this review and reform can be achieved without the wholesale disruption of the many programs that are working well and saving lives."

Founded in 1942, the National Association of Evangelicals represents millions of people from over 40 denominations. As a nonpolitical religious group, it participates in advocacy work but does not endorse politicians.

"We affirm the goal of eliminating wasteful spending throughout government but caution against hastily pursued measures that will prove costly. The abrupt closure of many effective aid programs will mean that some of the money already spent will have been wasted," Carey said. "Commodities will be lost and food will rot, medicines expire. Other supplies may be stolen or misappropriated because the staff and the partners are not allowed to receive them."

Trump campaigned on the promise to reduce government spending and has appointed Elon Musk and the new Department of Government Efficiency to spearhead changes that they say could save the government as much as $2 trillion.

Musk has highlighted departments, agencies, and expenses that he says are a "crazy waste" of taxpayer dollars.

While legal experts told Business Insider that some of the cuts may not be lawful and some of Trump's executive orders have been shut down by the courts, many of the changes have left some nongovernment organizations that rely on federal aid reeling.

Emily Chambers Sharpe, the director of Health and Nutrition at World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization, said the "stop-work orders have made things really challenging for us in the last few weeks."

Carey said there is an "urgent need" for clarity around the announcements.

"Indiscriminate stop-work orders issued with little or no advanced notice have created chaos and confusion on the ground. This is damaging and wasteful," Carey said. "Some of our members and partners are experiencing crippling cashflow crises, necessitating mass layoffs and abrupt termination of services with no time for responsible transitions."

Gabriel Salguero, the National Latino Evangelical Coalition president, said he has seen how US foreign aid saves lives.

"The President just finished saying he wants to be known as a peacemaker and as a person who builds bridges, and we think that foreign aid and PEPFAR are two key instruments or two key tools to contribute to that legacy," he said, referring to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The long-running foreign aid program former President George W. Bush launched in 2003 is also on the chopping block.

Carey said the drastic actions may sour how other nations view the United States.

"Community relationships will suffer, and it'll be hard to rebuild organizations that are destroyed in this way. Much goodwill toward the US and gratitude for our assistance may be lost," he said. "We urge the administration to rethink the assumption that effective international assistance does not benefit our national security, peace and prosperity."

• Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is working to remake the federal government.
• Musk wants to reduce spending, which includes reducing the number of federal workers.
• A group of unions is pushing back.

Some of the world's largest unions are organizing to counter Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

In an opposition campaign called the "Department of People Who Work for a Living," the AFL-CIO said it sought to hold DOGE accountable.

"We will hold DOGE and Elon Musk accountable because we are certain that the people who keep our food and medicine safe know more about how to make government efficient than an outsider whose companies benefit from the very agencies he is infiltrating," Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, a federation that represents nearly 15 million people in over 60 national and international unions, said in a press release on Wednesday.

Tensions over Musk's effort to cut federal spending, which includes reducing the federal workforce, are on the rise. Protesters, including Democratic leaders, rallied outside the Treasury Department on Tuesday. They accused the department of giving DOGE unlawful access to sensitive information. On Monday, three federal employee unions sued the Treasury Department.

For its part, DOGE sees the reductions as necessary to reign in government spending and lower the deficit.

"DOGE is saving the Federal Government approx. $1 billion/day, mostly from stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI, and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations," DOGE said in a post on X in January.

Musk is no stranger to union ire. The billionaire has said that he disagrees "with the idea of unions" and as Tesla's CEO, Musk has resisted unionization efforts.

Trump and Musk are also working to overhaul the US Agency for International Development, which is set to put nearly all of its staff on administrative leave beginning on Friday.

"Working people have seen this movie before: so-called efficiency experts who come into the workplace without background knowledge and cut the workforce to make more profit," AFL-CIO said in its press release. "That model might work in the private sector, but government services aren't lines on a spreadsheet — they have real-world impacts on actual people in communities across the country."

• Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer says things may 'need to change' as companies threaten to incorporate elsewhere.
• Elon Musk has led the charge to leave Delaware after a court rejected his Tesla pay package.
• Delaware remains a top destination to incorporate, especially among Fortune 500 companies.

Some corporations — led in part by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — are threatening to abandon Delaware and incorporate elsewhere.

Delaware's newly-inaugurated Gov. Matt Meyer, however, says he intends to lure them back.

"The fact is Delaware is the best location in the world for a company to incorporate, and that's thanks to our legal expertise dating back to 1792. But let's be clear: If any entity leaves Delaware, we're going to work to win them back," Meyer told Business Insider.

Nearly 2.2 million entities — "more than ever," Meyer said — are registered in Delaware, including two-thirds of all Fortune 500 companies, according to the state's Division of Corporations.

Meyer said it remains a "competitive environment," though, and that his state needed to take challenges to its corporate laws seriously.

"Any company thinking about leaving, we're actively reaching out, we're talking to them, we're understanding what the issues are and understanding what ways we can do better," he said. "And for those entities that have already made the decision to leave, we're going to continue to work hard to earn their trust and hopefully to have them come back."

Musk called on corporations to re-incorporate elsewhere after a Delaware court rejected his $55 billion Tesla pay package. Both Tesla and SpaceX left Delaware last year, reincorporating in Texas.

Bill Ackman, the billionaire CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, said in an X post on Saturday that he planned to move his management company out of Delaware to reincorporate in Nevada or Texas.

"Any lawyer still recommending incorporation in Delaware at this point should be sued for malpractice," Musk posted on X in reference to Ackman's statement. "Texas or Nevada actually respect shareholder rights."

Meyer said that issues like the balance of shareholder and management rights need to be addressed.

"It's really important we get it right for Elon Musk or whoever the litigants are in Delaware courts," he said. "We're cognizant that there may be some things that need to change. We're going to work on them."

Though he's been in office for less than two weeks, Meyer said he has already met with "leading corporate legal brass" and state government leaders to chart a path forward.

"I think within the coming weeks you're going to see some things rolled out that will help move our state forward and bring us into 2025 and beyond to make sure we're protecting and growing the corporate franchise," he said.

"It certainly beats going to Vegas and rolling the dice," he added.

A spokesperson for Delaware Courts declined to comment.

• Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman says he is moving his management company out of Delaware.
• It follows similar statements from companies like DropBox, Meta, and SpaceX.
• Some corporations are turning against Delaware, historically considered a business-friendly state.

Bill Ackman, the billionaire CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, says he will move his management company out of Delaware to reincorporate in Nevada.

His announcement, which came in a post on X on Saturday morning, was in response to news that DropBox was making a similar move. "We are reincorporating our management company in Nevada for the same reason. Top law firms are recommending Nevada and Texas over Delaware," Ackman said.

Pershing Square Capital Management declined to comment further.

Other high-profile public companies have also announced their exit from Delaware, former President Joe Biden's home state, over the last year as some corporations turn against the historically business-friendly state.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent much of 2024 encouraging companies incorporated in Delaware to leave after a judge repeatedly struck down his $55 billion Tesla compensation package, which a shareholder lawsuit argued was excessive. The decision prompted Musk to move SpaceX to Texas.

Much of the concern for these established public companies is a series of recent Delaware court rulings, including the one on Musk's pay package, that further empower shareholders to challenge executive decisions.

Meta, which maintains a corporate structure that gives CEO Mark Zuckerberg near total control, is also considering leaving Delaware to reincorporate in Texas or another state, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on whether it was considering reincorporating outside of Delaware, saying only that it had no plans to move its headquarters to California.

Billionaire CEOs like Ackman, Zuckerberg, and Musk hope that courts in other states, such as Texas or Nevada, will be less permissive of lawsuits from shareholders and boards of directors.

Correction: January 25, 2025 — The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta Platforms is discussing moving its incorporation from Delaware, citing people familiar with the matter. An earlier version of this article reported that Meta itself said it was considering such a move.

• Costco and the Teamsters union have reached a tentative deal to avoid a strike.
• Costco Teamsters represents 18,000 workers nationwide who were ready to walk off the job.
• The deal will now be presented to the union's membership for a vote, a Teamsters spokesperson told BI.

Costco and the Teamsters union have reached a tentative agreement to avoid a strike, the union told Business Insider.

The union said the deal would now go to its membership for a vote and that further details would follow.

Costco Teamsters represents 18,000 workers nationwide who were ready to walk off the job after their contract expired at 11:59 p.m. PT Friday.

On January 19, Costco's unionized workers "overwhelmingly" voted in favor of a strike in their strike authorization vote, which received 85% support among those who voted. In a press release at the time, Costco Teamsters accused the company of failing to "bargain constructively" and propose a contract that "reflects the company's record-breaking profits."

"The Costco Teamsters National Negotiating Committee has reached a tentative agreement for a new contract. Additional details will be shared soon. The tentative agreement will be presented to the membership for a vote," the union, Teamsters, said in a statement.

Matt McQuaid, a Teamsters spokesperson, told BI on Friday morning that the outstanding issues at the bargaining table were wages, pensions, and increased protections of union rights.

"The Teamsters are committed to securing a fair and reasonable agreement but are prepared to take action if the wholesale giant fails to deliver," the union previously said in a social media post.

Ahead of Friday's strike deadline, Costco announced in a memo that its next Employee Agreement, which is set to go into effect in March and covers nonunion workers for three years, would include successive pay raises that push compensation to over $30 an hour for workers at the top of its pay scale.

Costco did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, which was made outside regular working hours.

• Some 18,000 Costco workers might walk off the job on Saturday when their contract expires.
• Ahead of the deadline, Costco announced pay raises for non-union employees.
• That move might have unintended consequences, a legal expert told BI.

The clock is ticking for Costco to strike a deal with 18,000 unionized warehouse workers threatening to strike.

The company has been negotiating with the union, Costco Teamsters, ahead of the expiration of their existing contract at the end of the day on January 31.

Against that backdrop, the company announced this week in a widely circulated memo that its 2025 Employee Agreement, which covers its nonunionized employees, would include successive pay raises that push compensation to over $30 an hour for workers at the top of its pay scale. A spokesperson from Costco did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Andrea Schneider, a law professor at Yeshiva University who is an expert in conflict resolution, told Business Insider that Costco likely made the announcement to lessen "the incentive for a strike" by assuaging concerns about stagnant wages. Compensation is commonly the motivating factor behind a work stoppage.

She added that the pay raise proposal could be the same one that Costco management offered the union. While it's a smart PR move, it might have unintended consequences, she said.

"I think Costco's response to immediately grant the salary increases to everybody is in some way to lessen that chatter and to say, 'Well, you don't need the Teamsters. We'll take good care of you. Trust us to do the right thing,'" Schneider said. "Now, the Teamsters are in a position where they have to get more than what the non-unionized would get."

Matt McQuaid, a Teamsters spokesperson, told BI that wages, pensions, and increased protections of union rights are the outstanding issues at the bargaining table on which the parties have yet to agree.

"There are still 18,000 unionized workers who know their worth and are demanding it," McQuaid said in a statement. "Don't forget Costco wouldn't even be entertaining this increase if not for the immense pressure the Teamsters are putting on them to respect their employees."

On social media, the Teamsters said Costco is offering low raises compared to the $7.4 billion in profits the company reported last year.

"So how's the company rewarding workers? By proposing less than 3 percent raises, kicking workers just $1 in the first year of a new contract. That's not even enough to buy a Costco hot dog," the union said in a Facebook post.

Earlier this month, the union voted "overwhelmingly" to go on strike should the company and the union fail to reach an agreement by the Friday night deadline.

With such strong support within the union, Schneider said Costco may have put itself in a tricky spot despite trying to protect its worker-friendly image.

"In some ways, they've made it more difficult for themselves because the union is not going to back down unless there's something more," she said. "Either there's going to be more money for the union, which is, I think, going to be very hard, or there's going to be some other kinds of benefits or protections or something like that that has to roll out for the union because the Teamsters need to demonstrate their worth. These 18,000 members are paying union dues, they're taking time to organize, they're threatening the strike. They've got to get something for that."

• Trump signed an executive order to implement tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.
• He has been threatening the tariffs on the three countries and others for months.
• Canada and Mexico have vowed to impose retaliatory tariffs against the US.

Canada and Mexico have hit straight back at President Donald Trump's latest tariffs, vowing to impose retaliatory levies on the US.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Saturday that Canada would impose 25% tariffs on C$155 billion (around $106 billion) of US goods, some of which will go into effect on Tuesday and others in three weeks' time.

Mexico's President, Claudia Sheinbaum, said in a post on X that she had also ordered retaliatory tariffs.

"I instruct the economy minister to implement Plan B that we have been working on, which includes tariff and non-tariff measures in defense of Mexico's interests," she wrote.

The Trump administration said Saturday it had imposed a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on China. On Sunday, the president reacted to Canada's retaliation, saying it would "struggle to exist" without US subsidies.

"We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don't need anything they have," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

China's Ministry of Commerce, meanwhile, accused the United States in a statement released Sunday of violating World Trade Organization rules with the tariff.

The ministry said China would file a lawsuit with the WTO against the United States and take "corresponding countermeasures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests."

Economists expect many firms to pass increased costs caused by tariffs onto customers, and several companies have already said they are preparing to raise prices in response. Electronics, groceries, and apparel are among the most likely products to see price increases.

The White House said the tariffs will work to deliver Trump's campaign promises. Regarding his proposed first round of tariffs, an official told Business Insider that "Trump has been clear about his desire to end the fentanyl crisis, and it's time for Mexico and Canada to join the fight as well." Trump has said a tariff on China would also help fight the fentanyl problem.

Here are all the countries Trump has targeted with his trade proposals so far.

China

China was a key focus for tariffs on the campaign trail. While campaigning, Trump proposed a 60% tariff on all goods imported from China, alongside a 10% to 20% tariff on imports from other countries.

Once Trump took office, though, his ideas for tariffs on China appeared to narrow. On January 21, he suggested a 10% tariff on imports from China into the United States beginning on February 1 "based on the fact that they're sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada."

The Trump administration cited the fentanyl crisis on Saturday as the impetus for the new tariffs.

China is a major electronics supplier to the United States, so cellphones, computers, and games could get more expensive.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, told reporters on January 22: "We believe that there's no winner in a trade or tariff war, and we will firmly uphold our national interests."

Canada and Mexico

The new tariffs make good on an earlier threat Trump posted in November on his social media platform, Truth Social. He indicated at the time that he would impose tariffs on those two countries on his first day in office if they didn't strengthen their border policies.

The US imports many key goods from both Mexico and Canada. Americans receive $92 billion in crude oil from Canada, as well as billions of dollars worth of vehicles and vehicle parts. In addition to car parts, Mexico also supplies $25 billion worth of computers to the United States.

Russia

Trump said on January 22 that he would place tariffs on imports from Russia if the country did not end the Ukraine war soon.

"If we don't make a 'deal,' and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

According to Census data, the US imported $4.57 billion worth of goods from Russia in 2023, which made up just 0.14% of total imports that year. Given how little the country exports to the United States, consumers would probably see few effects if a tariff on Russia was implemented.

Colombia

After Colombia's president turned away two flights from the US that carried deported migrants, Trump threatened the country with a 25% tariff. He said that in one week, the Colombia tariff would be raised to 50%.

"We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!" Trump said on Truth Social.

Colombia's president Gustavo Petro responded in a statement that his country would receive Colombians "on civilian planes, without treating them like criminals." The White House then withdrew its threat but warned it could be reinstated if Colombia failed to honor its agreement.

Key goods the US imports from Colombia include coffee and bananas, which would likely get more expensive under tariffs.

BRICS nations

On November 30, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would impose a 100% tariff on the BRICS group unless they committed to not creating a separate currency that competes with the US dollar.

BRICS consists of nine countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.

Pharmaceutical preparations, crude oil, and household goods are the top imports from countries in the BRICS group, excluding China. The Trump administration did not announce any tariffs on the BRICS nations on Saturday.

Denmark

Trump said during a press conference on January 7 that he would "tariff Denmark at a very high level" if the country didn't agree to cede control of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, to the United States.

The president has not offered further details on that claim, nor have any such tariffs been implemented. The Financial Times reported that Trump and Denmark's premier, Mette Frederiksen, had a call to discuss the threat, during which  Frederiksen reportedly emphasized that Greenland was not for sale.

The US primarily imports medicinal products and machinery from Denmark.

• DeepSeek's success has put Silicon Valley on edge about Chinese competition.
• After DeepSeek released its latest model, AI investors panicked.
• Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, said the market's reaction to DeepSeek was "unjustified."

Silicon Valley is melting down over DeepSeek, an emerging Chinese competitor in AI, but Meta's AI chief says the hysteria is unwarranted.

DeepSeek caused alarm among US AI companies when it released a model last week that, on third-party benchmarks, outperformed models from OpenAI, Meta, and other leading developers. It did so with subpar chips and, it said, vastly less money.

Bernstein Research found that DeepSeek priced its models significantly below equivalent models from OpenAI: DeepSeek's latest reasoning model, R1, cost $0.55 for every 1 million tokens inputted, while OpenAI's o1 reasoning model charged $15 for the same number of tokens. A token is the smallest unit of data an AI model processes.

The news hit the markets Monday, triggering a tech sell-off that wiped out $1 trillion in market cap. Nvidia — known for its premium chips, which can cost at least $30,000 — lost almost $600 billion.

Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist for Facebook AI Research, however, says there's a "major misunderstanding" about how the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in AI will be used. In a Threads post, LeCun said the huge sums of money going into US AI companies were needed primarily for inference, not training AI.

Inference is the process in which AI models apply their training knowledge to new data. It's how popular generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT respond to user requests. More user requests means more inference is required, and processing costs increase.

LeCun said that as AI tools become more sophisticated, the cost of inference will rise. "Once you put video understanding, reasoning, large-scale memory, and other capabilities in AI systems, inference costs are going to increase," LeCun said, adding, "So, the market reactions to DeepSeek are woefully unjustified."

Thomas Sohmers, a founder of Positron, a hardware startup for transformer model inference, told Business Insider he agreed with LeCun that inference would account for a larger share of AI infrastructure costs.

"Inference demand and the infrastructure spend for it is going to rise rapidly," he said. "Everyone looking at DeepSeek's training cost improvements and not seeing that is going to insanely drive inference demand, cost, and spend is missing the forest for the trees."

This means that, as its popularity grows, DeepSeek is expected to handle more requests and spend a significant amount on inference.

A growing number of startups are entering the AI inference market, aiming to simplify output generation. With so many providers, some in the AI industry expect the cost of inference to drop eventually.

But this applies only to systems handling inference on a small scale. The Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has said that for models like DeepSeek V3 that provide free answers to a large user base, inference costs are likely to be much higher.

"Frontier model AI inference is only expensive at the scale of large-scale free B2C services (like customer service bots)," Mollick wrote on X in May. "For internal business use, like giving action items after a meeting or providing a first draft of an analysis, the cost of a query is often extremely cheap."

In the past two weeks, leading tech firms have stepped up their investments in AI infrastructure.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced more than $60 billion in planned capital expenditures for 2025 as the company ramps up its own AI infrastructure. In a post on Threads, Zuckerberg said the company would be "growing our AI teams significantly" and had "the capital to continue investing in the years ahead." He did not say how much of that would be devoted to inference.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank set to funnel up to $500 billion into AI infrastructure across the US.

• Mark Zuckerberg says it's too soon to gauge DeepSeek's impact on Meta's AI spending.
• DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, says it can build powerful models at a fraction of US costs.
• Zuckerberg calls for an open-source AI standard that is "American."

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, says it's too soon to tell what kind of impact DeepSeek will have on the company's AI spending.

During Meta's earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg was asked by an analyst how DeepSeek — the Chinese AI startup that sent Silicon Valley into a tailspin by building powerful models at a reported fraction of the cost — will impact Meta's own investments in AI.

"They have advances that we will hope to implement in our systems, and that's part of the nature of how this works, whether it's a Chinese competitor or not," Zuckerberg said, adding DeepSeek had done "a number of novel things" that Meta is "still digesting."

But he said that probably won't change how Meta is investing in AI, at least for now.

"It's probably too early to really have a strong opinion on what this means for the trajectory around infrastructure and capex and things like that," Zuckerberg said.

Zuck says major AI infrastructure will still be needed

Meta and other US tech companies have recently faced questions on when their heavy investments on AI would start paying off. That scrutiny hit new levels this month when DeepSeek said it trained its AI models for a fraction of the cost that its US rivals spent, causing some tech stocks to tumble.

Last week, Zuckerberg said Meta planned to spend between $60 billion to $65 billion in capital investments in 2025.

During the earnings call on Wednesday, he defended those investments, saying that while the use of Meta's AI computing infrastructure could change, the need for it will not disappear.

"If anything, some of the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on," he said, adding: "At this point, I would bet that the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale that we want to."

Open source, but American

On the earnings call, Zuckerberg also reaffirmed his commitment to open-source AI with a notable caveat: It should follow American standards.

"There's going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard," Zuckerberg said. "We take that seriously, and we want to build the AI system that people around the world are using."

Earlier in the call, he highlighted a shift in the relationship between Big Tech and Washington, pointing to a more supportive US administration that backs American companies in the global AI race.

"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," he said. "I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, previously said that the lesson to take away from DeepSeek's success wasn't that China's AI is "surpassing the US," but rather that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones."

• This year will be pivotal for Meta's relationship with the government, Mark Zuckerberg said.
• The Trump administration defends US tech companies, the Meta CEO said during the company's earnings call.
• He also doubled down on Meta's shift from fact-checkers to community notes.

Mark Zuckerberg said 2025 will be a "big year" for redefining Meta's relationship with the federal government.

The tech CEO made the comment during Meta's earnings call on Wednesday as the tech giant reported that it beat revenue estimates for the fourth quarter.

"This is also going to be a big year for redefining our relationship with governments," Zuckerberg said. "We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading company, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad. I'm optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

Zuckerberg and his company have been working to maintain a positive relationship with President Donald Trump's administration.

The company donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration, and Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, attended the inauguration ceremony alongside a slew of other tech moguls.

"Facebook is used by more than 3 billion monthly actives, and we're focused on growing its cultural influence, and I'm excited this year to get back to some OG Facebook," Zuckerberg said on the earnings call. "I think we're going to build some awesome things that shape the future of human connection."

Meta announced earlier this month that it was replacing its fact-checkers with community notes, a style of content moderation similar to what Elon Musk's X has in place.

"I believed in free expression for quite a while," Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. "People don't want to see misinformation, but you need to build an effective system that gives people more context. What we found over time is that the community notes system, I think, is just going to be more effective than the system that we had before."

The decision prompted praise from some business leaders, but also came with some controversy. The International Fact-Checking Network's director, Angie Holan, told BI the fact-checking on Facebook "was never about censorship but about adding context to prevent false claims from going viral."

• Trump settled his lawsuit against Meta for about $25 million, his lawyer confirmed.
• The lawsuit followed Trump's 2021 Facebook suspension after the January 6 riot.
• Most of the settlement funds will support Trump's presidential library, his lawyer said.

President Donald Trump has signed an agreement in which Meta would pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg after being suspended from Facebook in 2021 following the January 6 riot.

Trump signed the settlement papers Wednesday in the Oval Office, his attorney John Coale confirmed to Business Insider. He said much of the $25 million settlement paid by Meta would go toward Trump's presidential library.

A Meta spokesperson also confirmed the settlement to BI.

The settlement agreement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal just as Meta was due to report their quarterly earnings. Meta leaders were uncharacteristically late to the call.

Zuckerberg did not address the settlement, but said during the earnings call that this would be a "big year for redefining our relationship with governments."

"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," Zuckerberg said. "And I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

It's the latest in a string of efforts by the company and its CEO to stay in Trump's good graces. Trump had previously threatened to throw Zuckerberg in jail.

Following Trump's election win, Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Zuckerberg and his wife also attended Trump's inauguration, sitting up front alongside other tech moguls.

Meta isn't alone in its donations to the future Trump library. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump. Court documents said the money would go toward the president's library.

In addition to Meta, Trump also sued other tech companies in 2021, accusing them of censorship. Meta banned Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts following January 6, citing policy violations, including posting false claims about the 2020 election.

Trump also sued Twitter, now called X, and YouTube as well as their leaders, for suspending his accounts. A federal judge dismissed Trump's lawsuit against Twitter in 2022. The suit against YouTube appeared to have been "administratively closed" in 2023, according to court records.

• Timothée Chalamet hosted 'SNL' and joked about AI's role in education.
• AI is being integrated into classrooms around the world.
• While it could help with personalized learning, AI's use in education has risks.

Timothée Chalamet hosted NBC's 'Saturday Night Live' this weekend. In one skit, he and the cast poked fun at the use of AI in education.

In a scene set in a classroom, cast members playing students tuned into an AI podcast meant to help them learn.

Some of the answers given by the AI hosts — played by Chalamet and cast member Bowen Yang — were humorously false, referencing AI's tendency to "hallucinate" and sometimes provide users with bizarre answers to prompts.

"The school has invested in a new AI program that takes your textbooks and turns them into an educational podcast," Ego Nwodim, portraying a teacher, said in the skit. "The technology isn't perfect, but they make it sound so casual that it doesn't even feel like homework."

After Yang experienced a glitch, the pair attempted to explain photosynthesis.

"What do plants eat if it's not, like, burgers?" Chalamet asked.

"Thank you for asking me that," Bowen said. "Plants, legit, eat light."

By the end, Chalamet and Yang undergo an existential crisis during which they question where they came from.

"Do we exist?" Chalamet asked.

"What are we? Who made us?" Yang asked. "Now, I'm mad. Now, I want revenge."

AI technology is now a major part of most industries, including business, entertainment, and law, so it's not surprising that it's also becoming a tool in the teacher's toolbox.

Local media reported this month that in Arizona, students at a virtual academy will be taught by AI for two hours each day. In London, high school students prepared for exams with personalized learning using AI, which replaced their teachers.

"Students will benefit enormously from AI-powered adaptive learning, which allows every student to learn at their own pace rather than having to keep pace with a class, which often progresses too quickly for some students and too slowly for others," a coprincipal from the David Game College told BI in August.

However, educators have also had to grapple with the pitfalls of AI, like plagiarism and wrong information.