Politics

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era

Published

1 week ago

January 10, 2025

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era

Mark Zuckerberg kept the circle of people who knew his thinking small.

Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, tapped a handful of top policy and communications executives and others to discuss the company’s approach to online speech. He had decided to make sweeping changes after visiting President-elect Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving. Now he needed his employees to turn those changes into policy.

Over the next few weeks, Mr. Zuckerberg and his handpicked team discussed how to do that in Zoom meetings, conference calls and late-night group chats. Some subordinates stole away from family dinners and holiday gatherings to work, while Mr. Zuckerberg weighed in between trips to his homes in the San Francisco Bay Area and the island of Kauai.

By New Year’s Day, Mr. Zuckerberg was ready to go public with the changes, according to four current and former Meta employees and advisers with knowledge of the events, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential discussions.

The entire process was highly unusual. Meta typically alters policies that govern its apps — which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads — by inviting employees, civic leaders and others to weigh in. Any shifts generally take months. But Mr. Zuckerberg turned this latest effort into a closely held six-week sprint, blindsiding even employees on his policy and integrity teams.

On Tuesday, most of Meta’s 72,000 employees learned of Mr. Zuckerberg’s plans along with the rest of the world. The Silicon Valley giant said it was overhauling speech on its apps by loosening restrictions on how people can talk about contentious social issues such as immigration, gender and sexuality. It killed its fact-checking program that had been aimed at curbing misinformation and said it would instead rely on users to police falsehoods. And it said it would insert more political content into people’s feeds after previously de-emphasizing that very material.

In the days since, the moves — which have sweeping implications for what people will see online — have drawn applause from Mr. Trump and conservatives, derision from fact-checking groups and misinformation researchers, and concerns from L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups that fear the changes will lead to more people getting harassed online and offline.

Inside Meta, the reaction has been sharply divided. Some employees have celebrated the moves, while others were shocked and have openly castigated the changes on the company’s internal message boards. Several employees wrote that they were ashamed to work for Meta.

On Friday, Meta’s makeover continued when the company told employees that it would end its work on diversity, equity and inclusion. It eliminated its chief diversity officer role, ended its diversity hiring goals that called for the employment of a certain number of women and minorities, and said it would no longer prioritize minority-owned businesses when hiring vendors.

Meta planned to “focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background,” Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources, said in an internal post that was relayed to The New York Times.

In interviews, more than a dozen current and former Meta employees, executives and advisers to Mr. Zuckerberg described his shift as serving a dual purpose. It positions Meta for the political landscape of the moment, with conservative power ascendant in Washington as Mr. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. More than that, the changes reflect Mr. Zuckerberg’s personal views of how his $1.5 trillion company should be run — and he no longer wants to keep those views quiet.

Mr. Zuckerberg, 40, has regularly spoken to friends and colleagues, including Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and Meta board member, about concerns that progressives are policing speech, the people said. He has also felt railroaded by what he views as the Biden administration’s anti-tech posturing, and stung by what he sees as progressives in the media and in Silicon Valley — including in Meta’s work force — pushing him to take a heavy hand in policing discourse, they said.

Meta declined to comment.

In an interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg said it was time to go “back to our original mission” by giving people “the power to share.” He said he had felt pressured by the Biden administration and the media to “censor” certain content, adding, “I have a much greater command now of what I think the policy should be, and this is how it’s going to be going forward.”

The latest changes were catalyzed by Mr. Trump’s victory in November. That month, Mr. Zuckerberg flew to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Meta later donated $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund.

At Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg began preparing to change speech policies. Knowing that any moves would be contentious, he assembled a team of no more than a dozen close advisers and lieutenants, including Joel Kaplan, a longtime policy executive with strong ties to the Republican Party; Kevin Martin, the head of U.S. policy; and David Ginsberg, the head of communications. Mr. Zuckerberg insisted on no leaks, the people with knowledge of the effort said.

The group worked on revising Meta’s “Hate Speech” policy, with Mr. Zuckerberg leading the charge, they said. They changed the name of the policy, which lays out what to do with slurs, threats against protected groups and other harmful content on its apps, to “Hateful Conduct.”

That effectively shifted the emphasis of the rules away from speech, minimizing Meta’s role in policing online conversation. Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Martin were cheerleaders of the changes, these people said.

Mr. Zuckerberg decided to promote Mr. Kaplan to Meta’s head of global public policy to carry out the changes and deepen Meta’s ties to the incoming Trump administration, replacing Nick Clegg, a former deputy prime minister of Britain who had handled policy and regulatory issues globally for Meta since 2018. The night before Meta’s announcement, Mr. Kaplan held individual calls with top conservative social media influencers, two people said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg made the new speech policies public in his Instagram video. Mr. Kaplan appeared on “Fox & Friends,” a mainstay of Mr. Trump’s media diet, saying Meta’s fact-checking partners “had too much political bias.”

(Fact-checking groups that worked with Meta have said they had no role in deciding what the company did with the content that was fact-checked.)

Among its changes, Meta loosened rules so people could post statements saying they hated people of certain races, religions or sexual orientations, including permitting “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.” The company cited political discourse about transgender rights for the change. It also removed a rule that forbade users to say people of certain races were responsible for spreading the coronavirus.

Some training materials that Meta created for the new policies were confusing and contradictory, two employees who reviewed the documents said. Some of the text said saying that “white people have mental illness” would be prohibited on Facebook, but saying that “gay people have mental illness” was allowed, they said.

Meta locked access to the policies and training materials internally late on Thursday, they said, hours after The Intercept published excerpts.

The company also removed the transgender and nonbinary “themes” on its Messenger chat app, which allows users to customize the app’s colors and wallpaper, two employees said. The change was reported earlier by 404 Media.

That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said.

Some employees were livid at what they saw as efforts by executives to hide changes to the “Hateful Conduct” policy before it was announced, two people said. While people across the policy division typically view and comment on significant revisions, most did not have the opportunity this time.

On Workplace, Meta’s Slack-like internal communications software, employees began arguing over the changes. In the @Pride employee resource group, where workers who support L.G.B.T.Q. issues convene, at least one person announced their resignation as others privately relayed to one another that they planned to look for jobs elsewhere, two people said.

In a post this week to the @Pride group, Alex Schultz, Meta’s chief marketing officer, defended Mr. Zuckerberg and said topics like transgender issues had become politicized. He said Meta’s policies should not get in the way of allowing societal debate and pointed to Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case, as an example of “courts getting ahead of society” in the 1970s. Mr. Schultz said the courts had “politicized” the issue instead of allowing it to be debated civically.

“You find topics become politicized and stay in the political conversation for far longer than they would’ve if society just debated them out,” Mr. Schultz wrote. He said looser restrictions on speech in Meta’s apps would allow for this kind of debate.

Mr. Zuckerberg traveled to Palm Beach, Fla., this week, four people with knowledge of his activities said, and on Friday was said to have been at Mar-a-Lago.

In his interview with Mr. Rogan, Mr. Zuckerberg denied making sweeping changes to appease the incoming Trump administration, but said the election did influence his thinking.

“The good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this cultural pulse,” he said. “We got to this point where there were these things that you couldn’t say that were just mainstream discourse.”

Theodore Schleifer, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.

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Politics

Trump Signs Executive Order in Attempt to Delay TikTok Ban

Published

5 hours ago

January 20, 2025

Press Room

Trump Signs Executive Order in Attempt to Delay TikTok Ban

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday to delay enforcing a federal ban of TikTok for 75 days, even though the law took effect on Sunday and it is unclear that such a move could override it.

The order, one of Mr. Trump’s first acts after taking office, instructs the attorney general not to take any action to enforce the law so that his administration has “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward.” The order is retroactive to Sunday.

As he signed the order, Mr. Trump told reporters that “the U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok” if a deal for the app is reached, without going into detail. He said he thought TikTok could be worth a trillion dollars.

The order could immediately face legal challenges, including over whether a president has the power to halt enforcement of a federal law. Companies subject to the law, which forbids providing services to Chinese-owned TikTok, may determine that the order does not provide a shield from legal liability.

The federal law banning TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, mandated that the app needed to be sold to a non-Chinese owner or it would be blocked. The only workaround provided by the law is a 90-day extension if a likely buyer is found. Even then, it is unclear if that option is viable, given that the law is already in effect. The law also restricts how much of a TikTok stake can remain under foreign ownership.

By seeking to override the federal law, Mr. Trump raised serious questions about the limits of presidential power and the rule of law in the United States. Some lawmakers and legal experts have expressed concerns about the legality of an executive order, particularly in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law on Friday and the national security concerns that prompted legislators to draft it in the first place.

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had signed the law, which passed overwhelmingly in Congress last year, forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban. TikTok had faced security concerns that the Chinese government could use it to spread propaganda or collect U.S. user data. The law levies financial penalties on app stores and cloud computing providers unless they stop working with the app.

TikTok briefly went dark for U.S. users over the weekend, but returned Sunday following Mr. Trump’s social media announcement that he was planning an executive order. While the app was working again for people who have already downloaded it, it vanished from Google’s and Apple’s app stores on Saturday and remained unavailable on Monday.

Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep TikTok online have major implications for its users. The app has reshaped the social media landscape, defined popular culture and created a living for millions of influencers and small businesses that rely on the platform.

In the executive order, Mr. Trump said that his constitutional responsibilities include national security. It says he wants to consult with advisers to review the concerns posed by TikTok and the mitigation measures the company has taken already.

The administration will “pursue a resolution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans,” according to the order, which called the law’s timing “unfortunate.”

The attorney general will send letters to companies covered by the law to tell them “that there has been no violation of the statute” and they won’t be held liable for providing services to TikTok during the 75 days, the order said.

That might not be enough reassurance, some legal experts said.

“I don’t think it’s consistent with faithful execution of the law to direct the attorney general not to enforce it for a determinate period,” said Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. “And even if that’s OK, the president doesn’t have the authority to eliminate the law itself and remove liability for the people who violate it while it’s not being enforced.”

TikTok and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Google declined to comment.

TikTok’s ties to China have long raised national security concerns, including with Mr. Trump. Near the end of his first term in 2020, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that would bar app stores from making TikTok available for download. He then pushed for an American company to buy the app, but those efforts fizzled when he lost re-election.

Last year, the effort was revived by Congress and Mr. Biden signed it into law in April. The law targeted app stores, like those run by Apple and Google, and cloud computing companies. It said those companies could not distribute or host TikTok unless the app was sold to a non-Chinese owner by Jan. 19.

Mr. Trump then reversed positions. He joined the app in June and said on television in March that there are young people who would go “crazy” without TikTok.

“I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Mr. Trump said as he signed executive orders Monday evening.

TikTok challenged the law in federal court, saying it impeded its users’ rights to freedom of speech as well as the company’s own First Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the law in December. TikTok appealed to the Supreme Court, which on Friday also upheld the law.

TikTok and some Democrats made a last-ditch effort to stop the law from taking effect. But on Saturday, TikTok stopped operating in the United States and disappeared from Apple’s and Google’s app stores a few hours before midnight. Users grieved its disappearance.

On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump announced on Truth Social that he would “issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.” He said he would not punish companies that had violated the law to keep the app online.

Hours later TikTok restored its service to U.S. users and welcomed them back with a message: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”

As he signed executive orders in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump was asked why he had changed his mind about the app.

“Because I got to use it,” he said.

Tripp Mickle and Nico Grant contributed reporting.

Sapna Maheshwari contributed reporting

Politics

Nancy Pelosi slams Trump’s ‘shameful’ pardons of Jan. 6 defendants

Published

6 hours ago

January 20, 2025

Press Room

Nancy Pelosi slams Trump’s ‘shameful’ pardons of Jan. 6 defendants

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., slammed President Donald Trump on Monday night for pardoning more than 1,000 people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots.

Trump signed pardons for approximately 1,500 defendants who were charged with crimes stemming from the attack on the U.S. Capitol, fulfilling a promise he made in December to act quickly and pardon them.

Trump also commuted the sentences of six people on Monday, including the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys extremist groups.

BIDEN TAKES DEPARTING JAB AT TRUMP, SAYS HE WAS A ‘GENUINE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY’

President Donald Trump signed pardons for approximately 1,500 defendants who were charged with crimes stemming from the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

But Pelosi called the move “shameful,” and said to remember the “courage” of law enforcement “heroes” who “ensured that democracy survived.”

“The President’s actions are an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution,” Pelosi, who didn’t attend Trump’s inauguration Monday, said in a statement posted to X.

“It is shameful that the President has decided to make one of his top priorities the abandonment and betrayal of police officers who put their lives on the line to stop an attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power,” Pelosi said.

DOJ SEEKS TO BLOCK JAN. 6 DEFENDANTS FROM ATTENDING TRUMP INAUGURATION

U.S. President Donald Trump sings a second executive order during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of his second presidential term, in Washington, U.S. January 20, 2025. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The Justice Department reported that approximately 140 police officers were assaulted during Capitol storming on Jan. 6, 2021. That included law enforcement members from both the U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Donald Trump signs pardons for January 6 defendants in the Oval Office

President Donald Trump announced at his inaugural parade at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., he would issue pardons for the so-called “hostages.” (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

Trump announced earlier on Monday at his inaugural parade at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., he would issue pardons for the so-called “hostages.”

“Tonight I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages, pardons to get them out,” Trump said at the parade at Capital One Arena. “I’m going to the Oval Office and we’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people.

So far, judges or a jury after a trial have convicted roughly 250 people who faced charges for their involvement in the riot, and more than 1,000 had pleaded guilty to crimes as of January.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Diana Stancy is a politics reporter with Fox News Digital covering the White House.

Politics

Trump immediately flexes presidential powers: 1,500 pardons and a raft of executive orders

Published

6 hours ago

January 20, 2025

Press Room

Trump immediately flexes presidential powers: 1,500 pardons and a raft of executive orders

President Trump quickly flexed the sweeping powers of the presidency following his second inauguration at the Capitol on Monday, signing a slate of executive orders that would radically alter U.S. policy if allowed to stand.

He also pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of his loyalists — more than 1,500 people — who stormed the same Capitol building in a failed attempt to illegitimately keep him in power four years prior, repeatedly referring to them as “hostages.”

“We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” Trump said during an evening signing ceremony at the Oval Office — a reference to the fact that many of those defendants were in prison for serious offenses such as assaulting police officers.

Trump’s orders reflected an aggressive start to the conservative agenda he promised on the campaign trail, aimed at reining in illegal immigration, strengthening U.S. manufacturing and the broader economy, rolling back LGBTQ+ rights, reinforcing American dominance abroad and bending the sprawling federal bureaucracy to his will.

At an evening rally in Washington, D.C., that was held in lieu of an outdoor parade because of frigid temperatures, Trump sat at a desk and used black markers to sign nine orders.

The first, he said, undid about 80 “destructive, radical actions” made by President Biden — having to do with issues including immigration, the COVID-19 pandemic, voting rights, “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives, protections for LGBTQ+ people, the operation of prisons by private entities, tackling climate change and other environmental protections.

The other orders withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and informed the United Nations of that decision; placed freezes on new federal regulations and most federal hiring while his administration gets into place; mandated federal workers return to in-person work full time; and sent directives to federal agencies to protect free speech, end the “weaponization of government” for political purposes, and find ways to decrease inflation and high costs for average Americans.

Trump said he also would later sign other orders — such as one mandating that agencies preserve all records pertaining to his own prosecution on various federal charges under the Biden administration. And he renewed campaign promises to take other actions, such as ending federal taxes on tipped wages.

Trump concluded the event by tossing the markers he’d used to sign the orders into the crowd, to big cheers from his supporters.

Soon after, Trump was back in the Oval Office signing more orders and the pardons. One order announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the World Health Organization, while another purported to end the long-established constitutional guarantee of U.S. citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

Trump commuted the sentences of 14 people — including some of the highest-profile Jan. 6 defendants — to time served, and granted full pardons to everyone else convicted of offenses from that day. The Justice Department recently estimated that it had charged more than 1,500 people, including 590 with assaulting, resisting, impeding or obstructing law enforcement.

As of November, nearly 1,000 had pleaded guilty, more than 200 had been found guilty at trial, and more than 600 had been sentenced to time behind bars.

Trump’s pardons followed a last-minute decision by Biden to flex the same power on his way out of the White House by pardoning members of Congress and their staffers who had investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, as well as other former U.S. officials who have drawn Trump’s ire for having challenged his authority in the past.

The orders, which Trump also described in some detail in his inaugural speech Monday morning, reflected just how starkly divided the nation has become politically — and the degree to which Trump feels emboldened to shirk tradition and legal precedent as the first president to win a nonconsecutive second term in the White House in the last 132 years.

While promising the return of a “golden age of America” under his watch, Trump declared two national emergencies — one to do with southern border crossings, and the other to do with energy independence. He promised several measures to address each, including closing the border entirely to asylum seekers — in part by reinstating his “Remain in Mexico” policy and sending military troops to the border — and by clearing away federal energy regulations so that oil and gas producers can “drill, baby, drill.”

In an early sign of the policies being implemented, immigrants with asylum claims at the southern border were told Monday that scheduled interviews they had with U.S. Customs and Border Protection had been canceled.

Trump said he would declare that there are only “two genders” — a swipe at transgender people that echoed attacks by Trump’s campaign — and revoke regulations intended to transition the nation toward electric vehicles. He said he would institute many new tariffs on foreign goods, launch a new “external revenue service” to collect the associated revenue, and launch a new Department of Government Efficiency to reduce waste — the last of which would be led by Elon Musk, the owner of X and Tesla and the world’s richest man.

Trump also said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and take the Panama Canal from Panama.

“With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Trump said during his inauguration speech in the Capitol Rotunda. “It’s all about common sense.”

Whether Trump’s directives will survive and how quickly they will be implemented remains unclear. Survival of the most controversial and legally dubious decrees will depend on the courts, experts said. Implementation will depend in part on how quickly Trump can get his Cabinet appointments confirmed by the Senate and stand up his new government, they said.

Advocates for immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and other targeted groups joined liberal leaders — including in California — in promising to fight back against Trump’s agenda, including in court if necessary.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said last week that his office would be watching what Trump does Monday and responding in kind — including with the help of pre-written legal briefs anticipating certain actions that the state will argue in court are illegal.

San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu said Monday that Trump had delivered a “dark, dangerous and authoritarian vision for our country,” and that his office would be analyzing Trump’s executive orders in coming days and weeks and “will do everything in our power to protect San Francisco and our residents from illegal federal action.”

The Jan. 6 pardons could result in swifter action, and less resistance — given that a president’s pardon powers are generally unquestioned.

Attorneys for some of the imprisoned defendants said before the inauguration that they were watching Trump’s actions closely and would be poised to respond with legal motions seeking their clients’ immediate release.

In addition to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack, Biden also pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who helped lead the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who has called out Trump’s handling of the insurrection.

All had been threatened with potential criminal charges and investigation by Trump and his supporters. Biden called them public servants who “have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”

Trump called Biden’s pardons “unfortunate” and “disgraceful.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the former chair of the Jan. 6 committee, issued a statement on behalf of the committee’s former members, in which he said they were grateful to Biden.

“We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law,” Thompson said, “but for upholding it.”

One of the committee members, Sen. Adam B. Schiff of California, said he was proud of the committee’s work and believed Biden’s grant of pardons to its members was “unnecessary, and because of the precedent it establishes, unwise.”

However, Schiff — one of Trump’s favorite targets for derision — said he also understood why Biden had issued the pardons “in light of the persistent and baseless threats issued by Donald Trump and individuals who are now some of his law enforcement nominees.”

The exercise of presidential powers on a new president’s first day in office — or his last, in Biden’s case — is not new.

Presidents have often issued pardons on their way out of office, and they have always fought to meet campaign promises and show policy results quickly.

The notion that a president should be judged by their accomplishments within their first “100 days” in office has been a “touchstone” of American politics since at least the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Congressional Research Service analyst Ben Wilhelm wrote in a formal analysis of executive orders and presidential transitions last year.

However, in recent decades, the number of executive orders issued early on in new administrations has increased, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, Wilhelm noted. That is in part as incoming presidents have issued orders undoing the orders of their predecessors.

Biden did it to undo orders by Trump. On Monday, Trump did it to undo orders by Biden.

Trump on Monday suggested his “Day 1” actions were especially warranted. He said he had been saved by God from assassination attempts during the campaign so that he could “make America great again,” and repeatedly cited a “mandate” from voters to carry out his agenda — suggesting his victory over Biden in November was monumental.

Trump did amass a sizable victory in the electoral college, and swept to victories across the nation’s swing states. However, his popular vote margins — both as a percentage of overall votes and by raw votes — were historically small.

Out of more than 152 million votes cast, Trump won by just over 2 million. And he won fewer than 50% of the total vote — at 49.9%, compared to 48.4% won by Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the Associated Press. That means that while Trump does enjoy massive support for his agenda, there are also nearly as many Americans who voted against him and that agenda.