Tuesday, January 28, 2025

January 28, 2025

Good morning,

Welcome to the news for independent thinkers

Leading the News . . .

The Day DeepSeek Turned Tech and Wall Street Upside Down . . . On Monday, the mood turned sour. DeepSeek, a dark-horse power in artificial intelligence, emerged from China. That rattled big tech stocks, led by a plunge of almost $600 billion in Nvidia, which only last week was the world's most valuable company. Nvidia's fall marked the largest one-day loss in market value for any public company. Last week DeepSeek released an AI model that appeared to perform on par with a cutting-edge counterpart from OpenAI, the U.S. firm at the heart of the AI craze. The twist: Creative engineering tricks meant DeepSeek needed far less computing power. Wall Street Journal

So much for the Nvidia monopoly.

Trump calls China's AI DeepSeek breakthrough 'a wakeup call' — but 'positive' if true

Politics

Trump Justice Department Fires Officials Who Worked With Jack Smith . . . Over a dozen officials who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith's team to prosecute President Donald Trump are being fired, a Department of Justice official confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Acting Attorney General James McHenry determined the officials could not be trusted in "faithfully implementing the president's agenda," Fox News reported. Daily Caller News Foundation

White House orders freeze on 'all federal financial assistance' . . . President Trump's budget office has ordered all federal agencies to temporarily pause the disbursement of "all federal financial assistance" besides Social Security and Medicare.

The order could disrupt tens of billions of dollars in payments for domestic infrastructure projects, climate initiatives, foreign aid and diversity education that is disbursed to states and local governments. The move creates confusion in Washington and the states as officials scramble to figure out how to navigate the pause. Washington Times

Culture

2025 Will Be the Tipping Point for School Choice . . . In the past five years, the number of students benefitting from school choice has more than doubled. In 2020, fewer than 600,000 children nationwide were accessing the learning environment of their family's choice using a K-12 education savings account, tax credit scholarship, or school voucher. Now there are about 1.2 million K-12 students benefiting from school choice. Much of this enrollment growth has been driven by the recent rise in universal school choice policies. Daily Signal

National Security

Trump's Border Crackdown: Week 1 In Review . . . In the immediate days after Trump's inauguration, ICE arrested 538 illegal aliens on Thursday, 593 on Friday, 286 on Saturday, 956 on Sunday, and 1,179 on Monday. ICE has carried out those arrests in a number of U.S. cities, including Sacramento, California; Boston; and Chicago. Over the weekend, the Trump administration directed ICE to ramp up daily arrests of criminal illegal aliens to 1,200 to 1,500 daily. Daily Signal

Kristi Noem joins immigration raid to catch 'dirtbags' in major sanctuary city . . . Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined an immigration enforcement raid in New York City on Tuesday, and saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers nab what she called a "dirtbag" in the sanctuary city. "Just now. Enforcement operation in NYC. Criminal alien with kidnapping, assault & burglary charges is now in custody - thanks to @ICE," Noem said on X alongside a video of an arrest. "Dirtbags like this will continue to be removed from our streets." Fox News

Mexican cartels fire at Border Patrol agents as Trump ramps up enforcement . . . U.S. Border Patrol agents exchanged gunfire with suspected cartel members near the U.S.-Mexican border on Monday, as the U.S. government's response against criminal migrants continues to intensify. The gunfire exchange – which happened exactly one week after President Donald Trump began ramping up border security on his first day in office – occurred at around 2 p.m. local time near Fronton, Texas. Fox News

Trump issues executive order to create 'Iron Dome for America' . . . President Donald Trump issued an executive order to build an Iron Dome for America on Monday night. He categorized the need for the "next-generation missile defense shield" as an integral part of a strong national defense against "peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems." Washington Examiner

The dome would primarily intercept missiles in space, not from the ground.

Comer launches investigation into sanctuary cities, invites mayors to testify . . . House Oversight Chairman James Comer on Monday launched an investigation into sanctuary cities, requesting documents and communications related to their policies and their impact on public safety. Comer sent the requests to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and invited the mayors to testify in front of the committee on Feb. 11. Just the News

International

Germany in deep economic crisis . . . The German economy is in deep crisis, with gross domestic product likely to contract 0.1% this year, the BDI industry association said on Tuesday, putting it on track for three years of declining growth for the first time since reunification. At the same time, the euro zone will grow by 1.1% and the global economy by 3.2%, BDI said, indicating Germany will remain one of the currency bloc's laggards in economic terms. Reuters

Money

Trump says Microsoft in talks to acquire TikTok . . . President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok and that he would like to see a bidding war over the app. TikTok, which has about 170 million American users, was briefly taken offline just before a law requiring its Chinese owner ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban took effect on Jan. 19. Reuters

Because why would we want our children to stop scrolling long enough to read a book?

You should also know

Indiana man pardoned by Trump is fatally shot during traffic stop . . . An Indiana man was fatally shot by a deputy during a traffic stop just days after he was pardoned by President Donald Trump for a misdemeanor related to the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. Matthew Huttle, 42, of Hobart was killed Sunday by a Jasper County sheriff's deputy, authorities said. State police are investigating. They said the deputy tried to arrest Huttle when "an altercation took place between the suspect and the officer, which resulted in the officer firing his weapon and fatally wounding the suspect. Associated Press

The Scientific Fight Over Whether Aging Is a Disease . . . An improving scientific understanding of the biology of aging is leading some scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs to argue that aging is a disease. It's a major driver of illness and death, they say, and classifying it as such could make it easier to get drugs approved to treat aging itself, rather than just age-related health problems. Wall Street Journal

Google Maps caves to Trump as it renames Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America . . . Google Maps has caved to President Donald Trump's demands and will change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The change will be visible in the U.S. once it is officially updated in the U.S. Geographic Names System, Google said in an X post on Monday. But the name will still remain Gulf of Mexico on Google in Mexico. Outside of the two countries, users will see both names on Google Maps. Daily Mail

Jim Acosta leaving CNN after being pulled from network's programming schedule . . . CNN anchor Jim Acosta is reportedly leaving the network after he was officially pulled from its programming schedule. The Status newsletter reported Monday that Acosta was expected to leave CNN after it was announced last week that his 10 a.m. ET program was being replaced with "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown" in the network's latest reshuffling. Fox News

Guilty Pleasures

66 million-year-old fish vomit discovered in Denmark . . . A piece of fossilised vomit dating back to the time of the dinosaurs has been discovered in Denmark. Local fossil hunter Peter Bennicke found the fossil at Stevns Klint - a Unesco-listed coastal cliff in the east of the country. The self-declared "fossil geek" said he came across some unusual-looking fragments which turned out to be pieces of sea lily - an underwater species related to starfish and sea urchins - in a piece of chalk. BBC

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