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The Trump administration is calling on white men who believe they faced discrimination at work to file their complaints to a federal civil rights agency. The head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission urged white men to formally register their complaints with the government this week in a video posted to X. Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws, EEOC Commission Chair Andrea Lucas said. Lucas urged white men who qualified to contact the EEOC as soon as possible and pointed them to the agencys website and its explainer on DEI-related discrimination. The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL race and sex discrimination including against white male employees and applicants, Lucas wrote. The EEOCs priorities have shifted dramatically during the second Trump administration. The EEOC, born out of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was created to protect Americans from workplace discrimination and harassment. Given its origins, the agency had a historic focus on protecting minority employees from racial discrimination, but in more recent years its mission included investigations into instances of discrimination over gender, disability, age and national origin. At the same time that the EEOC is collecting complaints from white men, the agency has dropped six of its own cases representing transgender people who alleged workplace discrimination based on their gender identities. Dismantling diversity The Trump administration has deployed the EEOC in a very specific way over the course of the year, steering the agency toward its broader goals of dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In March, the EEOC and the DOJ released a joint press release along with new documentation warning employers against unlawful DEI-related discrimination that could be interpreted to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Far too many employers defend certain types of race or sex preferences as good, provided they are motivated by business interests in diversity, equity, or inclusion, Lucas said. But no matter an employers motive, there is no good, or even acceptable, race or sex discrimination. While the subtext was clear from the EEOCs recent changes, Lucas said the quiet part out loud on X. The Trump administration is keen to highlight perceived examples of anti-white discrimination in the country, and its willing to pull all the levers of government in pursuit of that goal. The White Houses framing of race in America increasingly reflects the language of once-fringe white nationalist theories, including debunked claims about a genocide of white South Africans and recent calls for remigration mass deportation for non-white immigrants. Trump himself has an extensive history of racist ideology, has repeatedly aligned himself with white nationalists and continues to promote a language of grievance around anti-white sentiment while stripping away federal policies designed to promote racial diversity. The EEOC has an unusual structure, but that hasnt been enough to block Trumps efforts to weaponize it during his second term. The agency is a commission made up of five members, with no more than three allowed to be from the same political party. The president can appoint commissioners, who serve a five year term, and can designate a chair to steer the agency, but generally the EEOC is designed to be bipartisan by definition, limiting the potential influence of whoever sits in the White House and keeping the commission independent. Quickly after taking office in January, Trump fired two of the federal agencys three Democratic commissioners an unprecedented departure from the commissions traditional five year terms. After filling one of the open slots with a lawyer who served in the Department of Education during his first term, two EEOC positions sit vacant, with one Biden appointee remaining in her role and two Trump appointees setting the agenda.
Category:
E-Commerce
The livestream of a YouTube content creator talking about investments mysteriously appeared to take over a White House website, raising questions about whether the site was hacked. The livestream appeared for at least eight minutes late Thursday on whitehouse.gov/live, where the White House usually streams live video of the president speaking. It’s unclear if the website was breached or the video was linked accidentally by someone in the government. The White House said in a statement that it was aware and looking into what happened. The video that appeared on the government-run website featured some of a more than two-hour livestream from Matt Farley, who posts as @RealMattMoney, as he answered financial questions. Farley said in an email to The Associated Press on Friday that he had no idea what happened. If I had known my stream was going to go super public like that I would be dressed a bit nicer and had a few more pointed topics! And it likely wouldnt have been about personal finance, Farley wrote. President Donald Trump‘s administration and campaign have had a series of digital security breaches and challenges over the last year. In May, government officials began investigating after elected officials, business executives, and other prominent figures received text messages and phone calls from someone impersonating Susie Wiles, the Republican president’s chief of staff. Last year, Iran hacked into Trumps campaign. Sensitive internal documents were stolen and distributed, including a dossier on Vice President JD Vance, created before he was selected as Trumps running mate. Michelle L. Price, Associated Press Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.
Category:
E-Commerce
The government took stakes in a number of private companies during 2025, and it’s likely to continue making equity investments while Donald Trump remains in office. Whether or not this is a wise long-term strategy is an ongoing debate, with strong opinions on both sides. The practice represents a new industrial policy thats meant to tie the executive branch of government closer to companies it considers essential to national security and economic prowess. The Trump administration hopes its a more robust approach than subsidy grants in rebuilding critical supply chains domestically, reducing reliance on China, and ensuring key industries remain under U.S. control. But it also puts the government in the venture capital businesswhich may not be a good fit for politicians and bureaucrats. The government now perceives itself as a source of capital and the markets perceive them as a source of capitalits not going to stop, said former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on a recent episode of The Informed Board, a podcast from Skadden Arps. And it may not be easy for a private company to say no. Any business that either sells a lot of stuff to the federal government or gets a lot of subsidies from the federal government is going to be a target, he added. I think its extraordinarily dangerous. And the reason I think its not going to go away is that regardless of the outcome, I think this is where the Republican Party is, Mulvaney said. “And its where the Democrat Party has wanted to be for a long time. The U.S. government has taken equity shares in private companies before, but only in times of war or economic crisis, and never as a normal feature of industrial policy, as the Trump administration views it. The government took a minority stake in Chrysler in the early 1980s when the company faced bankruptcy. During the 2008 financial crisis, the government took equity stakes in AIG, General Motors, Citigroup, Bank of America, and others. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Treasury received equity warrants in airlines, including Delta, United, and American, in exchange for payroll support.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested that the administration is considering expanding the practice of buying equity to include defense contractors. The U.S. and Intel The governments biggest equity investment is the troubled chipmaker Intel. The Trump administration said in August that it would take a 9.9% stake, using $8.9 billion of CHIPs and Science Act grant money that had already been earmarked for the company. Intel finance chief David Zinsner said the governments investment was meant to incentivize Intel to keep majority control over its contract chip-fabrication business. The bigger picture is that the U.S. economy, including the defense industry, is increasingly reliant on the powerful chips used to train and run AI models, and the vast majority of those are made in Taiwan by TSMC. The U.S. could benefit greatly if Intel could fabricate equally advanced chips in the U.S. Taiwan is a potential geopolitical flash point because its a mere 85 miles away from China, and while the island has its own government, the Chinese government denies its sovereignty and claims it as its own. Other bets In July, the Defense Department paid $400 million for a 15% stake in the rare earth minerals company MP Materials (MP), making the Pentagon the companys largest shareholder. The deal includes a $150 million loan to help MP build a heavy rare earth separation plant in California. The government received a golden share in Nippon Steel in exchange for approving the Japanese companys proposed merger of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp. The golden share doesnt represent equity in Nippon, but it does give the U.S. veto power in certain kinds of business decisions, as well as a right to appoint a board member. In October, the Department of Energy loaned the Canadian mining company Lithium Americas Corp. (LAC) and its Thacker Pass lithium mine project $2.26 billion in exchange for a 5% stake in both LAC and the mining venture. In October, the Department of Defense paid $35.6 million for a 10% stake in the Canadian company Trilogy Metals, which is developing the Ambler Access Road infrastructure project in Alaska to access metals like copper, cobalt, and zinc. In November, the Commerce Department said it intended to use $50 million in CHIPs Act money to buy a significant stake in the private rare-earth magnet producer Vulcan Elements. The Pentagon also intends to loan Vulcan another $620 million to help it build a large facility for neodymium iron boron magnets. Risky business There is a real purpose behind the stakes. The government isnt putting tax dollars into golf courses or TV networks (not yet, anyway). The investments are targeted at weak spots in the supply chains that the government and its suppliers need to support U.S. economic interests and national security. That was the core idea behind the CHIPs Act, too. After the government dispenses grants to private sector companies, equity investments allow the government to have something to show for them. And the equity ownership often affords the government some direct influence over the operations and plans of the company.Prominent progressives have championed this sort of thing. In 2022, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren proposed that CHIPS Act beneficiaries give Uncle Sam an equity stake for that reason, but the measure failed. Sanders and Warren also wanted to attach prohibitions against CHIPs grant recipients from using the funds to buy back stock, to offshore U.S. jobs, or to discourage unionization. Under Trump 2.0, the government is making bets on private-sector companies using tax money without the consent of Congress or the voters. What could go wrong? If the company falls on hard times, the governments equity could shrivel, and the tax dollars that bought it could vanish. In a broader sense, Republicans, especially small-government conservatives, have historically been hesitant to back private companies, out of fear of appearing as if the government is picking winners in the marketplace. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that the government’s buying into private companies could turn innovative manufacturers into state-owned enterprises and hrm U.S. competitiveness. Still, the governments investment has been met with criticism. The Cato Institutes Scott Lincicome writes in a Washington Post op-ed that government equity stakes represent a dangerous turn in American industrial policy, adding that it abandons decades of market-oriented principles and risks politicizing Intels decision-making. With the U.S. government as its largest shareholder, Intel will face constant pressure to align corporate decisions with the goals of whatever political party is in power, he cautions. All of these companies saw their stock prices rise, in some cases dramatically, after their government investments were announced. And most of the companies are still doing well. Intel stock has gained about 53% (calculated from the preannouncement opening price to the closing price on December 18). MP Materials shares have risen 8%. Trilogy Metals is up 113%. Lithium Americas is down 35%.
Category:
E-Commerce
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