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Trump taps aide to replace U.S. attorney ousted for failing to prosecute president’s adversaries

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President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would be nominating senior White House aide Lindsey Halligan to serve as the top federal prosecutor for the Virginia office that was thrown into turmoil when its U.S. attorney was pushed out Friday.

In a social media post just after he departed the White House for an event at Mount Vernon, Trump wrote he was nominating Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, writing that she “will be Fair, Smart, and will provide, desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!”

The announcement came as Trump pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi to move forward with pursuing cases against some of his political opponents, part of a vow for retribution that has been a theme of his return to the White House.

The nomination would place one of the president’s legal defenders in charge of an office in tumult over political pressure by administration officials to criminally charge New York Attorney General Letitia James, a longtime foe of Trump, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

Erik Siebert, who had been the office’s top prosecutor, resigned amid a push by Trump administration officials to bring charges in the investigation, which stems from allegations of paperwork discrepancies on James’ Brooklyn townhouse and a Virginia home.

The Justice Department has spent months investigating, and there’s been no indication that prosecutors have managed to uncover any degree of incriminating evidence necessary to secure an indictment. James’ lawyers have vigorously denied any allegations and characterized the investigation as an act of political revenge.

Halligan has been part of Trump’s legal orbit for the last several years, including serving as one of his attorneys in the early days of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. She has more recently been enlisted in a White House effort to remove what the administration contends is “improper ideology” from Smithsonian properties.

Earlier Saturday, Trump posted to social media what appeared to be somewhat of an open letter to Bondi, saying he had “reviewed over 30 statements and posts” that he characterized as criticizing his administration for a lack of action on investigations, including the one into James’ dealings. Trump’s message mentioned former FBI Director James Comey, Trump’s longtime foil whom he fired during his first term amid the Russia election interference investigation.

The FBI acknowledged this summer that it was investigating Comey, who was interviewed by the Secret Service after an Instagram post that Republicans insisted was a call for violence against Trump. Comey has said he did not mean the post as a threat and removed it once he realized how it was being interpreted.

Asked as he departed the White House if he was criticizing Bondi, Trump said he just wanted action.

“We have to act fast — one way or the other,” Trump said. “They’re guilty, they’re not guilty — we have to act fast. If they’re not guilty, that’s fine. If they are guilty or if they should be charged, they should be charged. And we have to do it now.”

In announcing Halligan’s nomination soon after on social media, Trump said that Bondi was “doing a GREAT job.”

The selection of Halligan came just hours after another conservative lawyer, Mary “Maggie” Cleary, said in an email to staff that she had been named acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to a copy viewed by The Associated Press.

“While this appointment was unexpected, I am humbled to be joining your ranks,” Cleary, a conservative lawyer who has said she was falsely accused of being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, told employees in the email.

While Siebert said in an email to colleagues Friday evening that he had submitted his resignation, Trump said in a social media post: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!” Trump noted he was backed by the state’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, adding: “Next time let him go in as a Democrat, not a Republican.”

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Billionaire Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale calls elite college undergrads a ‘loser generation’ as data reveals rise in students seeking support for disabilities

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That reality is showing up on a campus. A growing share of college students are seeking medical evaluations for ADHD, anxiety, and depression—and requesting academic accommodations such as extended time on exams and papers. At some of the country’s selective universities, the numbers are striking: more than 20% of undergraduates at Brown and Harvard are registered as disabled. At UMass Amherst, it’s 34%; Stanford, 38%, according to data analyzed by The Atlantic.

While it’s clear that many students requesting accommodations do so for legitimate medical reasons and that increased diagnoses may reflect greater mental-health awareness, some experts have raised concerns about overdiagnosis and whether universities are making it too easy for students to qualify. And the debate has set off a wildfire on social media this week, catching the attention of high-profile business leaders, including Joe Lonsdale, the billionaire venture capitalist and Palantir cofounder.

Lonsdale’s response offered no sympathy. “Loser generation,” he wrote in reaction to a graph showing the rising number of undergraduate students reporting disabilities.

“At Stanford it’s a hack for housing though and at some point I get it, even if it’s not my personal ethics. Terrible leadership from the university.”

He argued that families have been slowly using disability accommodations to give their children an academic advantage—when they might not actually need it.

“Claiming your child has a disability to give them a leg up became an obvious dominant game theoretic strategy for parents without honor in the 2010’s,” Lonsdale wrote earlier this month on X. “Great signal to avoid a family / not do business with parents who act this way.”

And while it’s unclear how many students, if any, are trying to game the system, Lonsdale has made his broader view clear: he doesn’t think universities are preparing young people—or evaluating them—in ways that matter.

“No great companies are interested in the BS games played by universities,” he added.

Fortune reached out to Lonsdale for further comment.

Lonsdale’s complicated history with higher education

Though a Stanford alum himself, Lonsdale has a complicated history with the institution and higher education more broadly.

In the early 2010s, while serving as a mentor in a Stanford tech entrepreneurship course, Lonsdale was accused of sexual assault by a student—and banned from mentoring undergraduates for 10 years and from campus entirely. The assault charges were later dropped, but Lonsdale acknowledged violating a rule prohibiting consensual relationships between mentors and students.

Less than a decade later, in 2021, Lonsdale cofounded his own school—the University of Austin—with Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, and others. The institution prides itself on freedom of speech and overcoming the “mediocrity” of traditional higher education. It welcomed its first group of undergraduates last fall and remains unaccredited.

The school has drawn support from Lonsdale’s fellow Palantir cofounder and Stanford alum Alex Karp, who has also criticized the college system.

“Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp, Palantir’s CEO, told CNBC earlier this year.

Instead, the 58-year-old said Palantir is building a new credential “separate from class or background,” that is the “best credential in tech.”

“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian,” Karp said during an earnings call earlier this year. “No one cares about the other stuff.”



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Exclusive: Crypto startup LI.FI raises $29 million for cross-blockchain price discovery tool

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When businesses decide to engage with crypto, they quickly discover the landscape is fragmented across numerous blockchains. If they want to move assets between different chains, they must often rely on a technology called bridging that can prove insecure and expensive. Philipp Zentner, cofounder and CEO of LI.FI, created his company to address these issues. The startup provides businesses with price comparisons of exchange rates and bridging fees. It also aims to find businesses the most efficient and cost-effective pathway for each transaction. 

On Thursday, LI.FI announced that it raised $29 million in funding led by Multicoin and CoinFund, bringing the total capital to about $52 million. Zentner did not disclose the company’s valuation. 

“You can think of us like a combination of Google Flights and Google Maps,” he said in an interview with Fortune. “[We’re] a competitive price comparison and transaction pathfinding for businesses in crypto finance.”

The businesses that LI.FI partners with are fintechs, brokerage apps, trading desks, wallets, and neobanks. The startup has more than 800 partners, including Robinhood, Binance, and Kraken. The company says that its value proposition is that its service allows companies to go to market faster and saves them time on research, integration, and maintenance. 

Zentner says that LI.FI is profitable and generates revenue through transaction fees, though he declined to disclose specific revenue numbers. It has $8 billion in monthly transaction volume as of October, which is about seven times more than its monthly volume from a year prior. The company has more than 100 employees. 

“As crypto trading becomes a core feature inside mainstream fintech apps, the hardest problem is…making fragmented blockchains, liquidity, and execution work seamlessly together,” said Spencer Applebaum, investment partner at Multicoin Capital, in a statement. “LI.FI Protocol gives fintechs and web3 wallets a single API to offer both trading and cross-chain asset movement, handling on-chain routing and execution behind the scenes.”

With the new funding, LI.FI plans to expand into different transaction domains, including perpetual futures, yield opportunities, prediction markets, and lending markets. Zentner says with the new capital he also aims to hire more employees.

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A San Francisco woman just gave birth in a Waymo robotaxi — and Waymo says it’s not the first time

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 Self-driving Waymo taxis have gone viral for negative reasons involving the death of a beloved San Francisco bodega cat and pulling an illegal U-turn in front of police who were unable to issue a ticket to a nonexistent driver.

But this week, the self-driving taxis are the bearer of happier news after a San Francisco woman gave birth in a Waymo.

The mother was on her way to the University of California, San Francisco medical center Monday when she delivered inside the robotaxi, said a Waymo spokesperson in a statement Wednesday. The company said its rider support team detected “unusual activity” inside the vehicle and called to check on the rider as well as alert 911.

Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, declined to elaborate on how the vehicle knew something was amiss.

The company has said it has cameras and microphones inside as well as outside the cars.

The taxi and its passengers arrived safely at the hospital ahead of emergency services. Jess Berthold, a UCSF spokesperson, confirmed the mother and child were brought to the hospital. She said the mother was not available for interviews.

Waymo said the vehicle was taken out of service for cleaning after the ride. While still rare, this was not the first baby delivered in one of its taxis, the company said.

“We’re proud to be a trusted ride for moments big and small, serving riders from just seconds old to many years young,” the company said.

The driverless taxis have surged in popularity even as they court higher scrutiny. Riders can take them on freeways and interstates around San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

In September, a Waymo pulled a U-turn in front of a sign telling drivers not to do that, and social media users dumped on the San Bruno Police because state law prohibited officers from ticketing the car. In October, a popular tabby cat named Kit Kat known to pad around its Mission District neighborhood was crushed to death by a Waymo.



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