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    Not just Braveheart: black Scots become TikTok hit among African Americans

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    It began with a good-natured rant about the Scottish summer weather and has developed into a global conversation about history, diaspora and diversity on both sides of the Atlantic.Last week, Torgi Squire uploaded a TikTok post that any Scottish parent could relate to: why is it, he asked, that without fail the washout summer weather always improves the week that the kids go back to school?The 43-year-old high school teacher from Glasgow ended with his usual sign-off, wishing everyone “a belter of a day”, and thought nothing more of it. The internet had other ideas.The post was picked up by a US weather reporter and Squire’s comments were suddenly filling with African Americans expressing their amazement and delight at discovering a black man with a strong Scottish accent. But it didn’t stop there: black Scots on TikTok found themselves flooded with questions from their American cousins and seized the opportunity to respond with high calibre banter, as #blackscottishtiktok generated thousands more posts.“It’s been a whirlwind,” says Squire, who teaches design and technology. His original post has racked up nearly 4m views, and he’s since welcomed more than 200,000 new followers.“Americans are kept in a bit of an echo chamber by their media, and their only point of reference for Scotland is either Braveheart, Brave or Shrek. They don’t seem to have much awareness of the diaspora, particularly when it comes to the UK, which is maybe why they’ve reacted with so much curiosity.“But it’s not just Americans. I’ve had comments from people in England too, so there’s still surprise at a black person with a Scottish accent on both sides of the Atlantic.”View image in fullscreenScotland is certainly more diverse than when he was growing up in the 1980s – “of the 1,400 kids at my secondary school, only four were black and three of them were related to me”.“In my experience Scotland is a welcoming place and while there is still racism, it’s isolated and Scottish people are very good at calling it out. Perhaps because there are far fewer black people than somewhere like America, we tend to treat each other more like community.”When Ellie Koepplinger, who posts about race and politics on TikTok, saw the initial interest in Squire’s content, she thought: “This is going to be huge.”“Then other black Scottish people started to chime in and it was really exciting.”Koepplinger, who grew up in Glasgow and lived in the US for nine years, added her own post about being mixed heritage in Scotland: “It feels like finally people are understanding that we have our own racial politics.”But the interest from across the Atlantic has a more practical edge, she suggests: “Trump has made America so hostile to black people that having so many people talking about their positive experience in Scotland has got a huge amount of interest from people who are really keen to leave the States.”The flurry of content has also prompted some fruitful conversations among black Scots themselves, she adds. “It’s been really interesting to hear other Scottish people talk about the racism and the challenges they’ve experienced in Scotland. The black community in Scotland is fairly fragmented because it’s small, but it’s a population that’s excited to grow.”View image in fullscreenManny Daphey, a 20-year-old student, soon found his own content getting pushed by the TikTok algorithm, doubling his following as Americans flocked to his videos. “I was pretty blown by surprise, suddenly everyone was interacting and it felt like speaking to my long-lost cousins.”A few negative comments have been vastly outweighed by a barrage of positivity, he says: “Lots of Americans are very intrigued about living in Scotland, saying they want to visit.” Perhaps inevitably, there are also some women who appreciate a handsome face with a Scottish accent. American women can be “very direct” he says.When Roy Wood Jr, comedian and host of CNN’s Have I Got News For You US, arrived in Edinburgh a few days ago, he was ready to take in some shows at the festival. Instead, he’s been diverted on to a TikTok odyssey, travelling across the central belt to interview black Scots and prove to his fellow Americans they do indeed exist.In one of his posts Wood makes the point that part of the reason why black Americans don’t know about black Scots is because their schools “barely teach them about black people in America”.“People can laugh about dumb Americans not knowing there are black people in Scotland but this tells us a lot about the differences between education systems and what governments define as history.”In his interviews with Scottish creators, Wood says a common thread is the sense that black Scots are suddenly able to connect online in a way that wasn’t so familiar in the real world. “Coming from the States, I found there’s no black neighbourhood, no exclusive cultural enclave for black people in Scotland, so there was a common feeling of ‘now we’ve found each other’.”Wood tracked down Squire in Glasgow and the pair made a post together. “It’s an opportunity for black people across the whole diaspora to converse with one another.”“The conversations I’ve had in the past week have really enriched my life,” adds Squire. “It makes me happy that people are coming together.” More

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      White House launches official TikTok account after Trump vowed ban in 2020

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      The White House launched an official TikTok account on Tuesday, as Donald Trump continues to permit the Chinese-owned platform to operate in the US despite a law requiring its sale.“America we are BACK! What’s up TikTok?” read a caption on the account’s first post, a 27-second clip, on the popular video-sharing app.The account had about 4,500 followers an hour after posting the video. Trump’s personal account on TikTok meanwhile has 15.1 million followers, though his last post was on 5 November 2024 – election day.Trump has a soft spot for the popular app, crediting it with helping him gain support among young voters when he defeated Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, in the November 2024 presidential election.“The Trump administration is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said as the account went live.A federal law requiring TikTok’s sale or a ban on national security grounds was due to take effect the day before Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.But the Republican president, whose 2024 election campaign relied heavily on social media and who has said he is fond of TikTok, put the ban on pause.TikTok is a tremendously popular social media app with 170 million users in the US. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, said in April that it had been in discussion with the US government regarding a solution for the app. It added that any agreement “will be subject to approval under Chinese law”.In mid-June, Trump for the third time extended the deadline for the popular video-sharing app by another 90 days to find a non-Chinese buyer or be banned in the United States.That extension is due to expire in mid-September.The idea of banning TikTok originated with Trump in 2020, who said the Chinese-owned app posed a danger to national security. It quickly became a bipartisan issue and Congress overwhelmingly voted to ban the app last year, which faced a legal challenge but was ultimately affirmed by the supreme court. The original deadline for the TikTok ban was 19 January.Trump switched his stance on TikTok after joining the app while campaigning for president last year, amassing nearly 15 million followers and hosting the TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Chew also attended Trump’s inauguration.While Trump had long supported a ban or divestment, he reversed his position and vowed to defend the platform – which boasts almost 2 billion global users – after coming to believe it helped him win young voters’ support in the November election.Trump’s official account on X, formerly Twitter, has 108.5 million followers – though his favored social media outlet is Truth Social, which he owns, where he has 10.6 million followers.The official White House accounts on X and Instagram have 2.4 million and 9.3 million followers, respectively.Dara Kerr contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Is ‘chic’ political? In Trump 2.0, the word stands for conservative femininity

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      The idea of “chic” is a fashion-world cliche. At best it is a know-it-when-you-see-it vibe, at worst a lazy adjective chosen by a writer to describe something that reminds her of Jane Birkin. It feels inoffensive enough. But now, “chic” has become something of a lightning rod online – a shorthand for a type of conservative-coded aesthetic.It began last month, when a creator named Tara Langdale posted a video to her TikTok following of just over 30,000 in which she sipped from a long-stemmed wine glass and read off a list of things she finds “incredibly UN-chic”. Wearing stacks of gold bracelets and a ballet-pink manicure, Langdale called out fashion choices like tattoos, Lululemon, visible panty lines, baggy denim and hunting camouflage as unchic, because, to her, these choices seemed “cheap”.“Remember, money talks, wealth whispers,” Langdale said.The not-entirely-serious video racked up views and sparked a conversation about how style preferences can carry political baggage. “This is giving mean girl,” one user wrote in the comments. “Classism isn’t chic, hope this helps,” wrote another. “Voting for Trump is unchic,” went a third. Many took particular issue with Langdale’s anti-tattoo stance, which they saw as stuffy or downright rude.View image in fullscreenSuch comments came with a strong dose of projection: Langdale, a lifestyle influencer, does not post about politics, sticking to fashion, makeup or motherhood. Nevertheless, many in the fashion TikTok community felt her commentary on “chic” aligned with the feminine aesthetic of Trump 2.0, where the rigid and airbrushed beauty standards of Maga officials such as Karoline Leavitt, Kristi Noem and Nancy Mace are celebrated.“Chic is starting to feel like a conservative dogwhistle that polices women’s looks,” said Elysia Berman, a creative director and content creator based in New York who posted a takedown of Langdale’s unchic list. “What chic has come to mean to a lot of people is a very narrow definition of elegance. It’s this thin, white, blonde woman who speaks softly and is basically Grace Kelly.”The ideal vision of womanhood from Donald Trump’s first term was caked foundation and clumpy mascara, as seen on the likes of Kimberly Guilfoyle and Lara Trump. But the facial augmentation and overly sexy aesthetic tied to the president’s inner circle – see “Ice Barbie” Noem, who posts full glam videos while deporting immigrants – does not necessarily match that of the president’s more social media savvy supporters, many of whom are now opting for a sleeker presentation.Momfluencers and tradwives celebrate RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” policies while wearing breezy milkmaid dresses. Evie Magazine, a politically conservative version of Cosmo, appropriates the trending visuals of feminist magazines with headlines that decry body positivity and promote vaccine skepticism. As the New York Magazine writer Brock Colyar described young Republicans at a post-election night party: “Many are hot enough to be extras in the upcoming American Psycho remake.”The word “chic” has always been tied to a French, or francophile, sense of femininity, usually in reference to a woman who subscribes to Vogue and innately understands how to look good. But those turning it into a dirty word on TikTok, taking note of how it aligns with a changing conservative aesthetic, see it as having a more prescriptive, even oppressive, meaning for women’s fashion.Suzanne Lambert, a DC-based comedian whose “conservative girl” mock makeup tutorials went viral earlier this year, described the right’s obsession with all things ultra-feminine as “just this soulless, boring kind of fashion”.“Republicans are more focused on assimilating than we are on the left, so it makes sense that they all end up looking the same,” Lambert said.Ultimately, anyone who’s attempting to look chic – or wealthy – is probably neither of those things. Those TikTok imitators who equate chicness with pearls and a Leavitt-esque tweed shift dress? “They think it’s giving Reagan, but it’s really giving Shein,” said Lambert.(Ironically, some of the unchic pieces on Langdale’s list – Lululemon leggings, Golden Goose sneakers, a Louis Vuitton carryall bag – come with hefty price tags and could connote liberal elitism.)In an email, Langdale said that her definition of chic had nothing to do with politics. “Chic by definition means simplicity and timelessness,” she wrote. “Reading a neutral palette as ‘conservative’ conflates style choice with ideology. Conservatism as a moral or political stance varies widely across cultures and religious communities, so tagging a fitting tank top and trousers as ‘Republican’ is lazy stereotyping.”Langdale called chic “this year’s version” of “old money” dressing, a TikTok trend that prioritized subdued, luxury items over the loud, brash and individualistic. “You can own every item on my unchic list and still be considered chic,” she wrote. “Labeling an item chic or unchic speaks only to its aesthetic, not a person’s style or worth.The conversation around chic is ongoing. Other creators, inspired by Langdale’s video, posted about what they considered chic in their niches. A medical student said it was “incredibly chic” to color coordinate scrubs with personal accessories; an office worker considered not letting colleagues in on their personal lives the height of chicness.Kat Brown, a 25-year-old New Yorker who works in fashion PR, made a video talking about how it’s “not chic” to be overly trendy, with chicness coming from a more sustainable wardrobe. “Smart consumption is chic,” Brown said. “Chicness is more reflective of your resourcefulness and creativity, rather than any sort of socioeconomic element.”For all the angst on chic-Tok, true insiders probably aren’t paying much attention. Fashion editors often make lists of words they consider so dull and unspecific that they prohibit writers from using them in copy; “chic” is usually right at the top. And when a word like chic is so bland to begin with, who cares if its wielded as an insult? As a British couturier played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the 2017 period drama Phantom Thread bemoaned of “chic”: “That filthy little word. Whoever invented that ought to be spanked in public. I don’t even know what that word means.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘HillmanTok’: how The Cosby Show inspired resistance to Trump’s war on Black education

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      In 1987, the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World made its US TV debut and followed the elder child, Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet), as she studied at her parents’ alma mater. The fictional historically Black college (or HBCU), Hillman, would go on to become a byword for Black excellence. “The influence of kids wanting to go to school, period, I think is very powerful,” one of the stars of the series, Jasmine Guy, said while touring HBCU campuses with her former castmates in 2024, 35 years after the sitcom ended. “Because they could see themselves there.”Hillman College is credited with driving record levels of enrollment at actual HBCUs in the 1980s and 90s, and remains a source of inspiration for Black creatives to this day. The actor-screenwriter Lena Waithe had the fabled campus in mind when she launched her production company, Hillman Grad. “I want to call it something that is close to my heart, and that is the world of A Different World and what that show represented for me and so many other people,” she said.View image in fullscreenFour decades later, that fantasy world lives on and finds itself reckoning with the reality of a second Donald Trump administration hellbent on rolling back diversity programs and gutting the Department of Education. On TikTok, the hashtag HillmanTok has become a free online space where Black scholars share their expertise in subjects that the administration is trying to excise from libraries and school curricula. Anyone who scrolls to their content on TikTok and sticks around for the lesson is part of the class. “I’m mindful of the weight of this particular teaching and this particular time,” says Leah Barlow, a liberal studies professor at North Carolina A&T, the country’s largest HBCU. “Honestly, it feels a little ancestral.”Last fall, Barlow posted an introductory two-minute TikTok video for her African studies class; 250,000 users subscribed to the class channel overnight and within a week it hit 4m views. “I thought it was going to be a trend for a short time, and then we’d move on to the next thing,” says Barlow, who posted the video on the same day Trump retook office and rescinded a federal TikTok ban.But then a sixth-grade math teacher named Cierra Hinton seized on the enthusiasm and started the hashtag HillmanTok. She encouraged Black educators to post instructional videos under the banner, and was inundated with hashtagged submissions. Like Black Twitter and Black Lives Matter, another digital social justice movement was born – the world’s first crowd-sourced HBCU. In an emotional response video, Hinton took a measure of satisfaction in helping “people come together and build something that is bigger than we ever imagined, something that means so much”.HillmanTok class subjects run the gamut from US history to mathematics to culinary arts. There are even electives on African American food studies and Stem careers. “I am finally about to post the syllabus,” Carlotta Berry says in the greeting for her Engineering 101 HillmanTok course. “You can learn asynchronously by watching any of my videos.”The HillmanTok educators aren’t limited to real-world academics like Berry, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. Shannan E Johnson, a former creative executive at the Syfy channel, has a course on screenwriting. The music journalist Touré has a course on the prehistory of hip-hop. “This is actually a reprise of the class I did 20 years ago at NYU,” he joked. “We’re overenrolled, as usual.”Just as A Different World regularly dealt with weighty subjects such as war, homelessness and the Aids epidemic at the risk of losing advertiser support, HillmanTok also offers culturally urgent lessons on resistance and restorative justice. “People have always been trying to limit and marginalize the impact and effect of Black education,” says Jelani Favors, the director of North Carolina A&T’s Center of Excellence for Social Justice. “But it was those teachers opening up their classroom doors, pouring into young idealists and finding ways to unlock their potential to engage in the deconstructing of Jim Crow and white supremacy.”This is all happening against the backdrop of a Black college enrollment gap in which Black men account for 26% of the student body. All the while Maga donors add insult to injury by trashing the value of HBCU education overall. “Howard was not Harvard,” the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel said in a dig at the former vice-president Kamala Harris’s scholarship at Howard University, the most prestigious HBCU. “You couldn’t even point this out [when she was running]. This is probably a racist thing to say.”That’s just the start of the slights against HBCUs, which were founded to provide educational opportunities for Black students at a time when it was illegal or impossible to attend college in the US. A 2023 investigation by the Biden administration found that HBCUs had missed out on more than $13bn in federal funding for more than three decades because state governors blocked the funds. North Carolina A&T, which has a 14,000-student enrollment, was owed more than $2bn alone. HBCUs could well end up suffering more under Trump, who has made a U-turn from allocating $250m in funding to freezing educational grants and loans – which is how most HBCU students cover tuition. Last month, he signed an executive order to close the Department of Education – a critical lifeline for HBCUs, which have a much harder time fundraising than predominantly white institutions.View image in fullscreenThat HillmanTok is poised to become a resource for a Black student population that could find itself locked out of the traditional college experience makes it more relevant than just another Khan Academy, YouTube University or MasterClass. Inevitably, that momentum faces new headwinds from the rush to capitalize on the Hillman name – not unlike the Black Lives Matter movement did at the end. Some HillmanTok supporters have taken exception to attempts to sell merchandise and live events under the name. What’s more, as a number of trademark claims have been filed for the name, Black TikTok users have raised concerns about a white business interest winning control.“Anytime something looks like it’s going to make some money or turn into a movement, you see this,” says the Howard University law professor Nicole Gaither, who adds that the case for each filing also holds potential ramifications. It just really depends on how the US Patent and Trademark Office is going to view this. “Lena Waithe has Hillman registrations that are related to entertainment services, but she also has education services related to manners and etiquette. And she sells apparel,” Gaither aded.While that plays out in the background, Barlow remains strictly committed to the work. Last month TikTok and the United Negro College Fund hosted an event in Washington to connect HillmanTok instructors with Capitol Hill lawmakers and bring awareness to inclusive education and Black history preservation. While there, Barlow conducted TikTok interviews with the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and the representative Jasmine Crockett for her class. Crockett implored her students to “take advantage of this moment and realize we don’t have a million Leahs running around. Please value her and value your education.”HillmanTok continues a tradition of Black self-determination through education that dates back to the flouting of anti-literacy laws during slavery. “We always find a way, regardless of what is happening – we, meaning Black people,” says Barlow. “We have always been resilient, autonomous and used agency to get information where it needs to go.”View image in fullscreenThe Hillman brand wasn’t always such an easy sell. Where The Cosby Show was largely written and produced by white people for white audiences as a showcase for Black respectability, A Different World boldly entrusted young Black creatives with the task of relating the cultural experiences that young Black students were having in real time. A Different World faced bitter critical reception when it debuted. One newspaper reviewer called it “a greed-motivated sitcom” in a slam of the show’s creator, Bill Cosby – who patterned the college after the women’s HBCU Spelman College, where he was once a major benefactor.After that rough first season, control over the sitcom was passed to the Fame alumna Debbie Allen (sister of The Cosby Show matriarch Phylicia Rashad) – who not only brought her own college experience at Howard into the production process, but also an army of Black writers and consultants. She empowered actors to give feedback and introduced clauses into their contract that freed them up to write and direct episodes, adding to the show’s diverse perspectives. For a kicker, Allen enlisted Aretha Franklin to record the theme song.Also in the middle of that first season, Bonet became pregnant with her first child, Zoë, with her then husband Lenny Kravitz. Cosby, scoffing at the cultural optics of Denise being portrayed as an unwed mother in college, had Bonet written off the series and reabsorbed into The Cosby Show. “I thought that show just wasn’t going to come back because she was and is the star,” Guy said. But after reconfiguring around the romance between Whitley (Guy) and Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison), A Different World became a ratings colossus alongside The Cosby Show and a mainstay in Black households for generations.Among others, the sitcom introduced the world to Jada Pinkett Smith and the Oscar winners Halle Berry and Marisa Tomei – who took the role playing Bonet’s white roommate after Meg Ryan passed. (It certainly worked out for the both of them.) And unlike with The Cosby Show, the disgraced Cosby’s involvement has not dinted A Different World’s popularity over the years. (He only appears briefly in the pilot.) Last fall, the cast reunited for a national HBCU tour to spark enrollment and scholarship fundraising and found that many of the students who remain inspired by the show had been born long after its initial 144-episode run.In February, A Different World finally made its debut on Netflix – six months after the streamer announced the development of an Allen-produced sequel that would focus on the Hillman experience of Whitley and Dwayne’s daughter, with the pilot to begin shooting over the summer. It remains to be seen whether this new version of the series will address Magaworld’s assault on Black education. It wouldn’t be the same show if it didn’t. “The issues we were dealing with then,” said the series co-star Dawnn Lewis, “we’re still dealing with in some shape or form today.”HillmanTok roll call: five to follow

      @amfamstudies Clip highlights from North Carolina A&T’s Leah Barlow from her actual African American studies course.

      @toureshow The music journalist offers a deep rewind on the prehistory of hip-hop.

      @dr.clo.flo The University of Oklahoma education studies professor Christy Oxendine unpacks the history of US education.

      @drdre4000 The Holy Cross chemistry professor Andre Isaacs puts the fun in functional groups.

      @iamalawyerinreallife The Atlanta defense attorney Danielle Obiorah shows civil servants how to protect themselves against Doge cuts in Federal Employee Rights 101. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump extends deadline for TikTok sale to non-Chinese buyer to avoid ban

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      Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order to extend the TikTok ban deadline. This is the second time the president will have delayed the ban or sale of the social media app, and will punt the deadline to 75 days from now.The TikTok deal “requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed”, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform on Friday.ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, issued a statement in response to the executive order: “ByteDance has been in discussion with the U.S. Government regarding a potential solution for TikTok U.S. An agreement has not been executed. There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”Congress passed a law last year forcing TikTok to either divest or sell its assets in the US. The law stemmed from concerns that the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, could use the social media platform to manipulate Americans. The first deadline to ban or force the sale of the app was 19 January. But, on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to delay that decision to 5 April. Now the new deadline will be in mid-June.Earlier this week, the president met with potential buyers for TikTok and said his administration is “very close” to a deal. Among those who’ve reportedly thrown in bids are a consortium of investors led by the software giant Oracle, asset manager Blackstone, Amazon, Walmart, billionaire Frank McCourt, a crypto foundation, and the founder of the adult website OnlyFans.TikTok is a tremendously popular social media app with 170 million users in the US. Investors and corporations see huge appeal with owning the app and its secretive algorithm.ByteDance has said it has no plans to sell TikTok and in previous court filings said a divestiture “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally”.After announcing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, Trump hinted on Thursday aboard Air Force One that he might lessen the trade penalties on China if ByteDance were to approve a sale. The country faces a 54% tariff on goods imported to the US. “We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say we’ll approve a deal, but will you do something on the tariffs. The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” he said.In his Truth Social post Friday, Trump reiterated that sentiment, saying: “We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!).skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark,’” he continued. “We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” More

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      in US Politics

      TikTok ban deadline looms in US amid last-minute takeover bids

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      Once again, the future of TikTok in the US is at stake. After a years-long tussle over whether or not to ban the app in the country, the deadline for the company to divest or sell its assets to a non-Chinese owner is up again on 5 April.A handful of potential buyers have said they’re interested in the tremendously popular social media app and various news reports have floated other types of deals, including an investment from the Donald Trump-friendly venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz or a bid from Amazon. Trump signed an executive order in January to postpone a ban-or-divest deadline until April; earlier this week he said he would “like to see TikTok remain alive”. But the path forward for TikTok, and its 170 million US users, remains murky.ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has said it has no plans to sell the app and in court filings said that divestiture “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally”. ByteDance and TikTok did not return requests for comment.The idea of banning TikTok originated with Trump in 2020, who said the Chinese-owned app posed a danger to national security. It quickly became a bipartisan issue and Congress overwhelmingly voted to ban the app last year. In January, the US supreme court sided with Congress and unanimously upheld a federal law requiring TikTok divest or be banned. The deadline was initially set for 19 January.The night before the deadline, TikTok shuttered the app with a message that read: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.” Apple and Google also removed it from their app stores, because under the federal law they would be penalized for distributing it. In its message, the social media company said: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”On 20 January, Trump’s first day in office, he issued the executive order that extended the ban-or-divest deadline by 75 days. Now that cutoff date is looming.While initially proposing to ban TikTok, Trump made an about-face last year while campaigning for president, having joined the app and amassed millions of followers. In September, he posted to his Truth Social account “FOR ALL THOSE THAT WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!” Since then, he’s been working to make good on that pledge.On Tuesday, CBS reported that Trump has been considering final proposals for TikTok. Those include plans from a long list of investors in the private equity, venture capital and tech industries. Among those investors are asset manager Blackstone, business software company Oracle, e-commerce giant Amazon, a crypto foundation and the founder of OnlyFans. Oracle is reportedly leading a coalition bid with several investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, according to the FT.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOracle, which was co-founded by Trump ally Larry Ellison, has been looking to buy a lucrative stake in TikTok for years. The software company already houses all of TikTok’s US user data on its cloud infrastructure platform, a deal that came about in 2022 to address security concerns.“It is highly unlikely that TikTok will go dark again. All signs point to a deal or another extension,” said Kelsey Chickering, a principal analyst for Forrester. “If TikTok divests in the US, the real question is whether its algorithm comes with the sale. TikTok without its algorithm is like Harry Potter without his wand – it’s simply not as powerful.” More

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      Trump floats easing tariffs on China in return for TikTok deal

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      Donald Trump has said he would be willing to reduce tariffs on China to get a deal done with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the social media app used by 170 million Americans.He acknowledged the role China would play in any agreement. “With respect to TikTok, and China is going to have to play a role in that, possibly in the form of an approval, maybe, and I think they’ll do that,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “Maybe I’ll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done,” he added.Trump’s comment suggests the sale of TikTok’s is a priority for his administration and important enough to use tariffs as a bargaining chip with Beijing.TikTok did not immediately comment.ByteDance has a 5 April deadline to find a non-Chinese buyer for TikTok or face a US ban on national security grounds that was supposed to have taken effect in January under a 2024 law.The move is the result of concern in Washington that TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance makes it beholden to the Chinese government and that Beijing could use the short video app to conduct influence operations against the US and collect data on Americans.In February and earlier this month, Trump added levies totalling 20% to existing tariffs on all imports from China.Getting China to agree to any deal to give up control of a business worth tens of billions of dollars has always been the biggest sticking point to getting any agreement finalised. Trump has used tariffs as a bargaining chip in the TikTok negotiations in the past.On 20 January, his first day in office, he warned that he could impose tariffs on China if Beijing failed to approve a US deal with TikTok.Vice-president JD Vance has said he expects the general terms of an agreement that resolves the ownership of the social media platform to be reached by 5 April.Reuters reported last week that White House-led talks among investors are coalescing around a plan for the biggest non-Chinese backers of ByteDance to increase their stakes and acquire the video app’s US operations, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.The future of the app used by nearly half of all Americans has been up in the air since a law – passed with overwhelming bipartisan support – required ByteDance to divest TikTok by 19 January.The app briefly went dark in January after the US supreme court upheld the ban, but flickered back to life days later once Trump took office. Trump quickly issued an executive order postponing enforcement of the law to 5 April and said last month that he could further extend that deadline to give himself time to shepherd a deal.The White House has been involved to an unprecedented level in the closely watched deal talks, in effect playing the role of investment bank.Free speech advocates have argued that the ban unlawfully threatens to restrict Americans from accessing foreign media in violation of the first amendment of the US constitution. More

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      in US Politics

      The pink protest at Trump’s speech shows the Democrats aren’t coming to save us

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      Pretty (pathetic) in pinkHappy International Women’s Day (IWD), everyone! I’ve got some good news and some bad news to mark the occasion.The bad news is that a legally defined sexual predator is leading the most powerful country on earth and we’re seeing a global backlash against women’s rights. “[I]nstead of mainstreaming equal rights, we are seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said in his IWD message.The good news, for those of us in the US at least, is that the Democrats have a plan to deal with all this. Or rather, they have wardrobe concepts of a plan. On Tuesday night, Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol. Some members from the Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC), including Nancy Pelosi, decided to protest by … wait for it … wearing pink.“Pink is a color of power and protest,” the New Mexico representative Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the DWC, told Time. “It’s time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear.”The pink outfits may have been loud but the message the Democrats were sending was far from clear. They couldn’t even coordinate their colour-coordinating protest: some lawmakers turned up wearing pink while others wore blue and yellow to support Ukraine and others wore black because it was a somber occasion.Still, I’ll give the DWC their due: their embarrassing stunt seems to have garnered at least one – possibly two – fans. One MSNBC columnist, for example, wrote that the “embrace of such a traditionally feminine color [pink] by women with considerable political power makes a stunning example of subversive dressing”.For the most part, however, the general reaction appears to have been that this was yet another stunning example of how spineless and performative the Democrats are. Forget bringing a knife to a gunfight – these people are bringing pink blazers to a fight for democracy. To be fair, there were a few other attempts at protest beyond a pink palette: the Texas representative Al Green heckled the president (and was later censured by some of his colleagues for doing so) and a few Democrats left the room during Trump’s speech. Still, if this is the “opposition”, then we are all doomed.Not to mention: even the pink blazers seemed a little too extreme for certain factions of the Democratic party. House Democratic leadership reportedly urged members not to mount protests and to show restraint during Trump’s address. They also chose the Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin to give the Democratic response to Trump’s speech. While Slotkin tends to be described as a sensible centrist voice by a lot of the media, she’s very Trump-adjacent. Slotkin is one of the Democratic senators who has voted with Trump the most often and, last June, was one of the 42 Democrats to vote with the GOP to sanction the international criminal court (ICC) over its seeking of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for destroying Gaza. Human rights advocacy groups have warned that attacking the ICC like this undermines international law and the ability to prosecute or prevent human rights violations across the world. It speaks volumes about the US media and political class that a senator standing against international law can be called a centrist.This whole episode also speaks volumes about the Democrats’ plan for the future: it’s growing increasingly clear that, instead of actually growing a spine and fighting to improve people’s lives, the Democratic party seems to think the smartest thing to do is quietly move to the right and do nothing while the Trump administration implodes. I won’t caution against this strategy myself. Instead, I’ll let Harry Truman do it. Back in 1952, Truman said: “The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time.”Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that the Democrats are not coming to save us. We must save ourselves. That means organizing within our local communities and learning lessons from activists outside our communities. It means being careful not to normalize creeping authoritarianism and it means recognizing the urgency of the moment. The warning signs are flashing red: we need to respond with a hell of a lot more than a pink wardrobe.Make atomic bombings straight again!DEI Derangement Syndrome has reached such a fever-pitch in the US that a picture of the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan has been flagged for deletion at the Pentagon. Apparently, it only got the job because it was Gay.Can a clitoris be trained to read braille?The Vagina Museum addressed this very important question on Bluesky.One in eight women killed by men in the UK are over 70A landmark report by the Femicide Census looks at the deaths of 2,000 women killed by men in the UK over the last 15 years and found that the abuse of older women hasn’t had as much attention as it should. “We have to ask why we see the use of sexual and sustained violence against elderly women who are unknown to the much younger men who kill them,” the co-founder of the Femicide Census told the Guardian. “The misogynistic intent in these killings is clear.”Bacterial vaginosis (BV) may be sexually transmitted, research findsWhile this new study is small, its findings are a big deal because BV is super common – affecting up to a third of reproductive-aged women – and has long been considered as a “woman’s issue”. Treating a male partner for it, however, may reduce its recurrence.How astronaut Amanda Nguyen survived rape to fight for other victimsAfter being assaulted at age 22, Nguyen got a hospital bill for $4,863.79 for her rape kit and all the tests and medication that went along with it. She was also informed that it was standard practice for her rape kit to be destroyed after six months. “The statute of limitations is 15 years because it recognises that trauma takes time to process,” Nguyen told the Guardian in an interview. “It allows a victim to revisit that justice. But destroying the rape kit after six months prevents a survivor from being able to access vital evidence.” After her traumatic experience, Nguyen successfully fought for the right not to have your rape kit destroyed until the statute of limitations has expired, and the right not to have to pay for it to be carried out.Female doctors outnumber male peers in UK for first timeIt’s a significant milestone in what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession.There’s an Israeli TikTok trend mocking the suffering of Palestinian childrenThis is one of those things that would be front page of the New York Times if it were directed at Israelis but is getting relatively little attention because of how normalized the dehumanization of Palestinians is. It’s also just the latest in a series of social media trends mocking Palestinian suffering.Florida opens criminal investigation into Tate brothers“These guys have themselves publicly admitted to participating in what very much appears to be soliciting, trafficking, preying upon women around the world,” the state attorney general said.The week in pawtriarchyJane Fonda, a committed activist, has always fought the good fight. But she’s also apparently fought wildlife. The actor’s son recently told a Netflix podcast that Fonda once “pushed a bear out of her bedroom”. While that phrase may mean different things to different people, in this instance it was quite literal. Fonda apparently scared off a bear who had entered her grandson’s room and was sniffing the crib. Too bad nobody was there to snap a photo of the escapade – it would have been a real Kodiak moment. More

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      in US Politics

      Tom Cotton gingerly steps on Trump’s toes as he eviscerates TikTok in book

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      Tom Cotton stands a better chance of becoming Senate majority leader than a Republican presidential nominee. After all, with Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Arkansas senator worked to undermine Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election – an unforgivable sin in Trumpworld.Cotton branded those who stormed the Capitol “insurrectionists” – a label he previously affixed to those who rioted amid protests over the police murder of George Floyd.In 2022, Cotton mulled a presidential run, taking multiple trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. He never announced and Trump again claimed the prize. Cotton’s dream may never die but for now he is chair of the Senate intelligence committee and the third-ranking Republican in the upper chamber – not a bad perch from which to publish his latest book.With Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, Cotton seeks to shine a light on a major threat to US interests. In the process, he gingerly steps on Trump’s toes; trashes Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk; and repeatedly dings TikTok, which is owned by China but also by Jeff Yass, a professional investor and a convert of convenience to Trump’s cause. Cotton may come to regret all three moves as missteps.He obliquely criticizes Trump regarding Chinese investment in US educational institutions. “A senior Chinese Communist purchased New York Military Academy, Donald Trump’s alma mater, and then appointed several of his Chinese associates to its board of trustees,” Cotton writes. That sale was finalized in 2015. “The Department of Defense has granted the academy hundreds of thousands of dollars since its Chinese takeover,” Cotton adds. Federal records show such grants made during Trump’s first term, between 2017 and 2021.Elsewhere, the senator slams Musk for “chasing Chinese dollars”. For 2024, Tesla reported revenues from China of $20.94bn.On top of being the driving force of Trump’s evisceration of the federal government, via the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk is chief executive of companies including Tesla and SpaceX, which in turn owns Starlink internet. In such roles, Cotton writes, “Musk told China’s state television, ‘I’m very confident that the future of China is going to be great and that China is headed towards being the biggest economy in the world and a lot of prosperity in the future.’” This hardly sounds like “America first” or “Make America great again”.Cotton groups Musk with American “tech titans” he views as putting profit ahead of the national interest, including the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta. Collectively, writes Cotton, they have “shamefully supplicated China’s Communist rulers”.But the senator reserves a special place in hell for TikTok.“No social-media app has harmed our kids more than TikTok,” he declares. “If your kid uses TikTok, I urge you to stop reading now and immediately delete the account.”Here, Trump and Cotton are no longer on the same page. In 2020, Trump branded TikTok a threat to national security and sought to force its divestment. But now money, votes and vengeance appear to have supplanted national interest.For starters, there is Yass, co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, a trading company that holds a 15% stake in ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok. Yass is also a key funder of the Club for Growth, a deep-pocketed and libertarian-minded tax-exempt organization. Trump met with him late last winter. His thinking on TikTok changed. As it happens, Yass hasn’t donated to Cotton since 2013.Now Trump looks to rescue TikTok and ByteDance, a move Cotton openly criticized. On taking office, Trump imposed a 75-day moratorium on the deadline, under US law, for ByteDance to find a US buyer. At the inauguration, Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok, sat alongside Tulsi Gabbard, now director of national intelligence.Cotton has bitten his lip. “Our point in passing that law,” he told Fox News, was not to ban TikTok in the US. Rather, it was to compel ByteDance to divest, and ostensibly have a “TikTok that is not influenced by Chinese communists”. For the moment, TikTok remains in such control.In his book, Cotton urges Americans to shun “avoid other Chinese apps like Temu, Alibaba, Shein, WeChat, and Alipay. A few dollars savings or a little extra convenience isn’t worth the threat to your family’s privacy and data security or the indirect help these apps provide to the Chinese communists.” Talk about timing.Kash Patel, the new FBI director, is an investor in Elite Depot, Shein’s corporate parent. The Wall Street Journal blared: “Trump’s FBI Pick Stands to Make Millions From Fashion Brand Shein … Critics question potential conflicts of interest in owning shares of [a] foreign company with China ties.” Patel values his Elite Depot stock between $1m and $5m.Cotton voted to confirm. “Congratulations, FBI Director Patel!” he posted. “America will be safer and more secure with Kash leading the FBI.”Trump has helped Shein and Temu, mail-order retailers, stay great. Initially, Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese imports and closed the “de minimis” loophole, which had enabled packages from China valued at less than $800 to be processed duty-free. Then Trump reversed himself. The loophole stood.As for data security and privacy, so close to Cotton’s heart? Musk and the boys of Doge are hoovering that stuff up as you read.Cotton remains a China hawk and an economic nationalist, but is no longer a darling of Trumpworld. In the run-up to the vote to confirm Gabbard as DNI, Cotton and John Thune, the Senate’s majority leader, received a stern warning from Matt Boyle of Breitbart, a Trump-adjacent media organ.“They will be heroes assuming they usher Tulsi to confirmation but if Tulsi is not confirmed then Cotton and Thune are in deep personal trouble with the base. I’m optimistic on this one at this point. The consequences of failure are too dire.”Love is conditional. Cotton lives to fight another day.

      Seven Things You Can’t Say About China is published in the US by HarperCollins More