Alex Jones asks judge to halt sale of Infowars site to The Onion
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(New York) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused The Onion and Sandy Hook Elementary School families of “collusive bidding” and asked a bankruptcy court judge to halt the sale of his Infowars platform.
Jones, who defamed the Sandy Hook families by calling the 2012 massacre a hoax and the parents of the 20 first graders actors, called The Onion’s winning $1.75 million bid “sheer nonsense” because it’s half of what the losing bidder offered.
The Onion began a “systematic effort to confuse Mr. Jones’s personal public following with messages espousing gun control in a manner such that Mr Jones’s personal public following would be utterly confused and misled,” Jones said in an overnight court filing.
His request follows a similar push for an injunction by First United American Companies, which is affiliated with Jones through the sale of dietary supplements.
The plaintiffs nor the trustee immediately responded to Jones but the trustee has previously called the auction result legitimate and asked the court for approval.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump has raised few policies on the campaign trail more often than tariffs, which he says would rejuvenate manufacturing, create jobs, restrain immigration and help bankroll childcare, among other benefits.
In recent days, he has claimed another advantage of tariffs: They don’t require support from Congress. “I don’t need Congress, but they’ll approve it,” Trump said at a campaign event in Smithton, Pennsylvania, on Monday. “I’ll have the right to impose them myself if they don’t.”
Some economists have said higher tariffs could expand certain areas of U.S. manufacturing, but the policy risks rekindling inflation since importers would likely offset tax payments with higher prices. A potential trade war could hurt U.S. exporters and slow hiring, they said.
However, Trump is largely accurate in his description of the wide latitude enjoyed by the president in setting and implementing some tariffs, experts said. But, they added, Trump’s ambitious tariff agenda could test the limits of that authority, drawing court challenges and opposition from Congress with results that are difficult to predict.
“Will we get a reckoning if Trump gets elected and does what he says he wants to do?” Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who studies trade policy, told ABC News. “I think we’ll get one very quickly.”
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, a representative of the Republican National Committee pointed to remarks made by Trump at a campaign event in Georgia on Tuesday.
“The word tariff properly used is a beautiful word,” Trump said. “A lot of bad people didn’t like that word, but now they’re finding out I was right, and we will take in hundreds of billions of dollars into our Treasury and use that money to benefit the American citizens.”
“And it will not cause inflation, by the way. And you know, I took in from China hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs, and I had no inflation. We didn’t have any inflation — 1.2% — we had essentially no inflation,” Trump added. (Inflation did not exceed 3% during Trump’s term in office. The pace of price increases fell to near-zero levels early in the COVID-19 pandemic before rebounding to about 1.3% at the end of his term, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.)
On the campaign trail, Trump has promised a sharp escalation of tariffs enacted during his first term. Trump has proposed tariffs of between 60% and 100% on Chinese goods. Envisioning a wide-reaching tariff policy, Trump has also proposed a tax as high as 20% on all imported products.
The Constitution affords Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties” as part of its remit to “provide for the common Defence [sic] and general Welfare of the United States.”
That section of the founding document granted Congress control over tariff policy, Inu Manak, a fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News. But, in recent decades, the legislative branch has increasingly handed over such power to the executive.
“For more than 80 years, Congress has delegated extensive tariff-setting authority to the President,” the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan group made up of congressional staff, wrote in a February report.
During his first term, Trump invoked laws from that period to enact tariffs. Steel and aluminum tariffs drew upon national security powers afforded by a measure signed into law more than 50 years earlier. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods depended upon a law from 45 years beforehand, which President Joe Biden invoked in service of tariffs of his own.
“Congress didn’t really push back,” Manak said.
Trump could use similar authority to move ahead with a plan for tariffs between 60% and 100% on Chinese products, experts said. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the executive to gain temporary tariff authority in response to an adverse trade policy taken up by another country. Trump could use the measure to justify tariffs on China in a fashion resembling his first term, Lovely said.
“Probably yes,” Lovely added, though she noted that the time limit on the authority could require Trump to apply for a second round of approval from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, a government agency.
Universal tariffs of up to 20% on all imported goods would likely demand legal mechanisms with little or no precedent, experts said. Trump could declare a national emergency and draw upon the Trading with the Enemy Act, which includes emergency authority to impose tariffs. Then-President Richard Nixon used the law to impose a 10% tariff on all goods over a four-month stretch in 1971.
Trump could avail himself of another lever of power: The International Economic Emergency Powers Act. It allows the president to stop all transactions with a foreign adversary that poses a threat, which could include, in theory, a potential tax on imports, experts said. However, a set of universal tariffs would mark an unprecedented use of the 1977 law.
“All our trading partners pose an unusual, extraordinary threat?” Alan Wolf, a former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization, said earlier this month in a blog post for the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “That would simply be too large a power grab to have been within what Congress intended in this statute.”
Trump could face court challenges that may reach as high as the Supreme Court, some experts said. The threat of such a move could also draw opposition from Congress, which could seek to repeal or amend the law.
“I don’t know if there would be enough pressure from Congress because as we saw last time, they went along with him,” Manak said.
The lack of close precedent makes it challenging to anticipate how Congress or the courts will act, Lovely said. Opposition could also come from foreign nations that impose retaliatory tariffs, straining some industries and prompting additional pressure on elected officials.
“There’s just a whole lot of uncertainty,” Lovely said.
(NEW YORK) — Much like its fellow fast food competitors slashing prices and offering special discounts to lure in customers, Arby’s is adding a new deal to its menu with its Double the Meats Meal.
For just $7, the new Double the Meats Meal includes a Double Roast Beef or Double Beef ‘N Cheddar sandwich, along with a medium fry and medium drink.
The Double Roast Beef sandwich boasts two times the amount of slowly roasted, thinly sliced-to-order, signature roast beef piled high on a toasted sesame seed bun.
The Double Beef ‘N Cheddar also piles on a double portion of roast beef, topped with cheddar sauce and zesty Red Ranch, served on a toasted onion roll.
The new deal comes on the heels of similar promotions and discounts from Arby’s competitors. In June, McDonald’s launched a $5 Meal Deal that includes a McDouble or McChicken sandwich, small french fries, a four-piece Chicken McNuggets and a small soft drink. Earlier this month, the fast food giant extended the popular deal through December.
Several other fast food chains including Burger King, Wendy’s, Starbucks and Taco Bell have rolled out comparable discounts, hoping to entice customers looking to stretch their dollars as much as possible.
(NEW YORK) — For the first time in its history, Instagram on Tuesday announced the launch of accounts designed specifically for teenage users with built-in privacy protections.
The new accounts, called “Teen Accounts,” will be automatic for all Instagram users under the age of 18, both for teens already using the app and for those signing up.
By default, Instagram users younger than 16 will need a parent’s permission to change their account settings.
The changes — expected to impact tens of millions of users — were announced by Instagram head Adam Mosseri in a live interview on ABC News’ Good Morning America.
“They’re an automatic set of protections for teens that try to proactively address the top concerns that we’ve heard from parents about teens online,” Mosseri said on GMA. “Things like who can contact them, what content they see and how much time they spend on their device … all without requiring any involvement from the parent.”
Mosseri said the rollout of Teen Accounts starts Tuesday with new users signing up for the app, while existing teen users will see their accounts switch to the new Teen Accounts model within 60 days.
Among the changes put in place by Instagram include a new privacy setting that, by default, places all teen users in private accounts. In order to switch to a public account, teens under age 16 will need a parent’s permission.
Under the private account setting, teens will need to accept new followers and only people whom they accept as followers can see their content and interact with them.
In addition, teen users will now automatically only be able to message with people they follow, or are already connected to, and parents will have a new tool in their settings that allows them to see with whom their teen has recently been messaging.
With the new accounts, teens will have the power to choose the age-appropriate topics they want to see more of on Instagram, like sports or art, and parents will also be able to see the topics their teens choose.
In order to limit the amount of time spent on Instagram, all Teen Accounts will be placed in “sleep mode” between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., while parents can also adjust their child’s time settings — including limiting access completely overnight — in the parental supervision tool.
Another change for Teen Accounts is that they will automatically be placed in more restrictive content settings, which will limit the content they see in search functions like Reels or Explore from accounts they don’t follow, according to Instagram.
Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety for Meta, the parent company of Instagram, told GMA the company is also implementing new ways to verify users’ ages.
“We are building technology to try to identify if you’ve lied about your age and then move you into those stricter settings,” Davis said. “This is a challenging area for industry, which is why, on top of building that technology that will try to identify age liars and put them into those protective settings, we also will have moments where, if we get a strong signal, we will ask you to age verify.”
Davis said that parents will be able to monitor their teens’ account and adjust their settings from their own Instagram accounts.
“The idea is to really make it simpler, so they [parents] have their own center that they can go and look and see what the privacy setting is for their teen,” she said.
Changes spurred by parents and teens
The changes for teen Instagram users come amid mounting evidence showing the dangers of social media for young users.
Social media use is linked with symptoms of depression and anxiety, body image issues, and lower life satisfaction for some teens and adolescents, research shows. Heavy social media use around the time adolescents go through puberty is linked with lower life satisfaction one year later, one large study found.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who previously issued an advisory highlighting a crisis in youth mental health, has said he believes being on social media “does a disservice” to kids early in their teen years. Noting the crisis among kids, the American Psychological Association last year issued the first guidance of its kind to help teens use social media safely.
In January, while testifying at a Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, publicly apologized to parents, caregivers and loved ones of young people who they say were harmed due to social media use, telling them, “It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.”
In his apology, Zuckerberg also emphasized Meta’s efforts on safety, adding, “This is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”
Davis said the newly-announced changes to Instagram for teen users came after conversations with parents and teenagers around the world.
She said the company focused on making it simpler for parents to know how, when, and with whom their teens are engaging on Instagram.
“We’ve had these incremental changes along the way as we’ve been working back and forth with parents and experts,” Davis said of previous safety changes for teen users. “What we’re really trying to do here is standardize a lot of this approach.”
She added of the new features, “There are these broad protections that we have in place, and if your teen wants to change them, and they’re under the age of 16, they have to come to you for permission, they’ve got to invite you in. It’s just a different way of thinking about things.”
Parents and caregivers as well as teens can learn more about Teen Accounts by visiting Instagram.com/teenaccounts.
