The stakes are high, because A.I. is the first technology in a long time that can favor the little guy. For most of the last century, size was destiny. A big company could afford an IT department, in-house lawyers, a finance team and analysts poring over its data, and the corner store could not.
However, a U.S. District Court judge responding to a lawsuit brought by the three outlets — CNN, MS Now and Politico — issued a restraining order directing the White House to lift the prohibition. Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by Trump in 2017, ruled that the media outlets had shown a “high likelihood of success” with their claim that their due-process rights had been violated.
Afrikaners, it should be noted, have a long history of supporting and implementing white supremacy. It was Afrikaners who led the South African government after World War II, when it created a formal system of racial apartheid.
While national headlines have focused on federal funding cuts and demands for compliance of elite private research universities, we shouldn’t lose sight of local impacts. All institutions rely on federal support for research and student aid. Those demands were accompanied by unsupported claims or selective evidence of institutional wrongdoing that do not follow the federal government’s own guidelines for regulatory action.