Trump to order ‘national energy emergency,’ issue ‘memorandum on inflation’ as part of executive actions
Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump will order a “national energy emergency” and issue a “presidential memorandum on inflation” as part of a slew of executive actions meant to boost the U.S. economy on his first day in office, incoming White House officials told reporters Monday morning.
As part of these actions, which are expected to be signed “as soon as possible,” the officials said, Trump will “put an end to the [Biden administration’s] electric vehicle mandate.” Another order will focus solely on Alaska, which officials said has “an incredible abundance of natural resources.”
Officials said these moves were not only intended to spur the economy and bring down costs, but also “strengthen our nation’s national security,” citing the impending “AI race with China.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced plans Tuesday to replace fact-checkers with a user-based system known as “community notes.”
Fact-checkers who were put in place in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 election have proven to be “too politically biased” and have destroyed “more trust than they’ve created,” particularly in the United States, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted by the company.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg added.
The policy shift will make the platform more generally permissive toward user posts, especially on some controversial subjects such as immigration and gender, the company said. Zuckerberg also acknowledged that the change may mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff.”
The decision will impact content moderation on Meta-owned platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, which count nearly 4 billion users worldwide.
Critics of the move said it reflected a partisan effort to align Meta with President-elect Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the company for alleged anti-conservative bias. Proponents, meanwhile, praised the decision as a sign of renewed emphasis on free speech rather than content policing.
Experts who spoke to ABC News said it’s difficult to know exactly what motivated the company, but they said both explanations are plausible.
Meta may view the decision as an opportunity to jettison a policy targeted by conservatives and curry favor with Trump, while shifting the company toward a permissive stance on speech that Zuckerberg has previously avowed, the experts said.
“Zuckerberg knew he’d have a fight on his hands to change the basic tenets of Facebook,” Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who studies content moderation, told ABC News. “The question is: Why now?”
Meta did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Meta launched the fact-checking program in the heat of intense scrutiny leveled at the company regarding the spread of misinformation on the platform during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The initiative came under criticism from prominent Republicans, including Trump, who accused the company of anti-conservative bias in its evaluation of user posts.
Tension between Meta and Trump intensified in early 2021, when the company banned Trump’s accounts from its platforms in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. At the time, Zuckerberg called the risks of allowing Trump on the platform “simply too great.”
In recent years, however, the social media platforms have shifted toward a conservative-friendly, laissez-faire approach to speech, Sol Messing, a research associate professor at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics and a former research scientist at Facebook, told ABC News.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk acquired then-Twitter, now X, in October 2022, moving soon afterward to weaken the platform’s content moderation rules and emphasize a “community notes” approach. Last year, Meta reinstated Trump’s accounts.
“There’s been a shift rightward in terms of attitudes toward free speech in Silicon Valley and perhaps this decision is part of that,” Messing added.
Lately, Meta and Zuckerberg have appeared to warm toward Trump. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration last month, after having foregone a donation to Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
On Monday, Meta appointed Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a Trump ally, to the company’s board of directors. The move came days after Meta named former Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan as its new chief global affairs officer.
“It’s very difficult to ignore this [fact-checking] announcement in terms of the timing of those moves, as well,” Messing said, noting other potential reasons for the move such as cost-cutting or skepticism about the role of experts in policing content.
For his part, Trump appears to believe he influenced the policy change. When asked at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday whether Meta’s new content moderation policy came in response to his previous criticism of the company, Trump said, “Probably.”
Still, there is reason to believe the policy change brings Meta’s content moderation approach into closer alignment with views previously expressed by Zuckerberg, some experts said.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Meta referred to a graduation speech delivered by Zuckerberg at Georgetown University in 2019 in which he advocated for loose restrictions on speech.
“Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous,” Zuckerberg said at the time.
Goldman, of Santa Clara University, said Zuckerberg may be seizing upon Trump-era opposition toward content moderation.
“It’s plausible that Zuckerberg all along has felt Facebook was doing too much content moderation, and he has finally decided to express that view more forcefully,” Goldman said. “It’s not a new view for Zuckerberg to be questioning the value of content moderation.”
Luigi Mangione is seen inside the police station in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Dec. 9, 2024/Obtained by ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione is facing a second-degree murder charge in New York City in connection with the brazen shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan as new details emerge about the suspect and a potential motive, according to police.
“We do have a lot of evidence in this case,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.
“When he was found he was in possession of the same New Jersey fake identification that was used at the hostel” on New York’s Upper West Side before Thompson was gunned down on Dec. 4, she said.
The gun 26-year-old Mangione was allegedly found with on Monday “looks very similar” to the gun used in the murder, “with a similar suppressor,” Tisch said. “So there’s a lot of reasons that we feel very strongly that he is the person of interest.”
Officers allegedly found a black 3D printed pistol and a black silencer, which was also 3D printed, according to the criminal complaint filed in Blair County, Pennsylvania.
“The pistol had one loaded Glock magazine with six nine-millimeter full metal jack rounds. There was also one loose nine-millimeter hollow point round,” according to the complaint.
NYPD Chief of Detective Joe Kenny described the weapon as a “ghost gun,” meaning it had no serial number and was untraceable.
Mangione, who was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday, remains in the custody of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections pending his extradition to New York.
The NYPD was “thrilled” to get the call from Altoona police that they had a person of interest in custody, Tisch told “GMA.”
Kenny said “the key to this case” was releasing the photo of the suspect’s face to the media and the public.
“That picture reached Pennsylvania,” where he was recognized at a McDonald’s on Monday morning, he said.
“We are grateful as a city to that person,” Tisch said.
“We had collected early in the investigation some forensic evidence, some DNA evidence, some fingerprints, so we were very confident that we were ultimately going to get to the right person,” Tisch added.
When Mangione was arrested he had several handwritten pages on him that appeared to express a “disdain for corporate America” and indicated “he’s frustrated with the health care system in the United States,” Kenny said.
“Specifically, he states how we are the No. 1 most expensive health care system in the world, yet the life expectancy of an American is ranked 42 in the world,” Kenny said.
Whether Mangione has a personal connection to UnitedHealthcare is unknown, Tisch said, but the writings mention UnitedHealthcare by name, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
The sources described the handwriting as sloppy and included these quotes: “These parasites had it coming” and “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”
Police are now looking at Mangione’s travel at various points across the United States and out of the county within the past year, the sources said.
Mangione, a Maryland native and Ivy League graduate, was also charged in New York with possession of a loaded firearm, possession of a forged instrument and criminal possession of a weapon.
He was charged with five crimes in Pennsylvania, including carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to authorities and possessing “instruments of crime,” according to the criminal complaint.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — A frustrated Gov. Kathy Hochul has called for federal assistance after the latest drone sighting temporarily shut down an airport Friday night, the latest in a series of mysterious occurrences taking part across the country.
Officials at Stewart International Airport, located roughly 60 miles north of New York City, said they shut down their runways for an hour after the Federal Aviation Administration alerted them that a drone was spotted in the area around 9:30 p.m.
“There were no impacts to flight operations during the closure,” the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement.
Hochul said in a statement Saturday that the incident is the latest drone sighting in the state since mid-November and expressed her frustration.
“This has gone too far,” she said.
Hochul said she has called on the New York State Intelligence Center to probe the drone sighting incidents but called on the federal government to do more.
Specifically, she called on Congress to pass the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act, which would strengthen the FAA’s oversight of drones and give more authority to state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate the activity.
“Extending these powers to New York State and our peers is essential. Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden Administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our critical infrastructure and our people.”
Residents and officials have been looking for answers after drones have been seen hovering in the sky in several locations, especially in central New Jersey, since mid-November. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and several members of Congress have also called for the federal government to investigate the sightings.
The White House downplayed some of the concerns of residents in a press briefing Thursday with national security communications adviser John Kirby saying “many” of the reported drone sightings appear to be lawfully operated manned aircraft.
He said they have been unable to “corroborate some of the reported sightings” using their detection techniques, but are still investigating.
In the meantime, the FAA and federal officials are taking precautions because of the drones.
The agency issued a temporary no-drone zone during Saturday afternoon’s Army-Navy Game taking place at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland. President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance are scheduled to attend the game.
The FAA has also imposed temporary drone flight restrictions in New Jersey over the Picatinny Arsenal military base in Morris County and Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in Somerset County in response to the reported drone activity.
ABC News’ Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.
