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US President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday canceled a $590 million contract with Moderna to develop an avian flu vaccine, the US biotech company said.It marked the latest move against vaccines by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has spent decades promoting misinformation about immunization. The contract, announced on January 17 — three days before Trump took office — was for an mRNA vaccine targeting the H5N1 influenza strain, which has been circulating in birds and cattle. Experts have warned the virus could jump to humans and spark a pandemic.American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna disclosed the news as it announced positive results from an early stage clinical trial of 300 people designed to test safety and immune response.”While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis of the Phase 1/2 study of our H5 avian flu vaccine and we will explore alternative paths forward for the program,” said CEO Stephane Bancel in a statement. “These clinical data in pandemic influenza underscore the critical role mRNA technology has played as a countermeasure to emerging health threats.”The statement added Moderna would “explore alternatives” for funding the development and manufacturing of the vaccine.Dr. Ashish Jha, a public health expert who served as former president Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator, reacted with dismay.”The attack on mRNA vaccines is beyond absurd,” he posted on X. “It was President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed that gave us mRNA vaccines.”

Harvard University has agreed to settle a deeply emotional dispute over who has the rights to images of enslaved Africans taken in 1850 by a professor who sought to support a racist theory.The daguerrotypes, a precursor to modern photographs, are considered to be the earliest known images of Black American slaves, who were posed nude and semi-nude “without consent, dignity or compensation,” a 2019 lawsuit stated.The Cambridge institution has agreed to relinquish the images and has offered plaintiff Tamara Lanier a confidential monetary settlement.Lanier says she is a descendant of a slave known only by his first name, Renty, who was photographed nude, and his daughter Delia, who was photographed nude from the waist up, in images commissioned by Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz as supposed evidence of Black inferiority.The images were taken in South Carolina, and Lanier is advocating for them to be transferred to the International African American Museum there. Lanier accused the university of using them for advertising and commercial purposes, and denounced the use of Renty’s image on a cover of a $40 anthropology book it published in 2017.”Since Black Americans were first brought to this country in chains, our pain and trauma have been exploited for capitalistic gain,” said Lanier. Lanier claimed rights to the images 15 years ago, but Harvard has long-disputed the claim that she is Renty’s great-great-great-granddaughter.”As descendants of slaves, familial history and well-documented genealogy are a luxury that many Black Americans do not have,” Lanier said, who relied on her family’s oral history to determine the connection in lineage.In a statement on the settlement, Harvard said they have “long been eager” to steward “the daguerrotypes in a responsible manner.”In his time Agassiz, a Swiss-born biologist, was a renowned scientist who worked in geology. But Lanier’s attorney Ben Crump said Agassiz also supported polygenism, which was “used to justify both the ongoing enslavement of Black people prior to the Civil War and their segregation afterward.”The daguerrotypes were in the possession of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology to date. “Harvard played a role in the darkest chapter in American history,” Lanier said. “This is a small step in the right direction towards fully acknowledging that history and working to rectify it.” The stain of Agassiz’s work has been controversial elsewhere, too. He had an elementary school named after him near Harvard — but local residents successfully demanded the name be changed to honor a long-serving Black principal Maria Louise Baldwin in 2002, citing his scientific racism.

Internet giants are diving deeper into e-commerce with digital aides that know shoppers’ likes, let them virtually try clothes on, hunt for deals and even place orders.The rise of virtual personal shoppers springs from generative artificial intelligence (AI) being put to work in “agents” specializing in specific tasks and given autonomy to complete them independently.”This is basically the next evolution of shopping experiences,” said CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino. Google last week unveiled shopping features built into a new “AI Mode”.It can take a person’s own photo and meld it with that of a skirt, shirt or other piece of clothing spotted online, showing how it will look on them.The AI adjusts the clothing size to fit, accounting for how fabrics drape, according to Google head of advertising and commerce Vidhya Srinivasan.Shoppers can then set the price they would pay and leave the AI to relentlessly browse the internet for a deal — alerting the shopper when it finds one, and asking if it should buy using Google’s payment platform. “They’re taking on Amazon a little bit,” Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart said of Google.The tool is also a way to make money from AI by increasing online traffic and opportunities to show ads, Greengart added.The Silicon Valley tech titan did not respond to a query regarding whether it is sharing in revenue from shopping transactions.- Bartering bots? -OpenAI added a shopping feature to ChatGPT earlier this year, enabling the chatbot to respond to requests with product suggestions, consumer reviews and links to merchant websites.Perplexity AI late last year began letting subscribers pay for online purchases without leaving its app.Amazon in April added a “Buy for Me” mode to its Rufus digital assistant, allowing users to command it to make purchases at retailer websites off Amazon’s platform.Walmart head of technology Hari Vasudev recently spoke about adding an AI agent to the retail behemoth’s online shopping portal, while also working with partners to make sure their digital agents keep Walmart products in mind.Global payment networks Visa and Mastercard in April each said their technical systems were modernized to allow payment transactions by digital agents.”As AI agents start to take over the bulk of product discovery and the decision-making process, retailers must consider how to optimize for this new layer of AI shoppers,” said Elise Watson of Clarkston Consulting.Retailers are likely to be left groping in the dark when it comes to what makes a product attractive to AI agents, according to Watson.- Knowing the customer -Analyst Zino does not expect AI shoppers to cause an e-commerce industry upheaval, but he does see the technology benefitting Google and Meta.Not only do the Internet rivals have massive amounts of data about their users, but they are also among frontrunners in the AI race.”They probably have more information on the consumer than anyone else out there,” Zino said of Google and Meta.Tech company access to data about users hits the hot-button issue of online privacy and who should control personal information.Google plans to refine consumer profiles based on what people search for and promises that shoppers will need to authorize access to additional information such as email or app use.Trusting a chatbot with one’s buying decisions may spook some people, and while the technology might be in place the legal and ethical framework for it is not.”The agent economy is here,” said PSE Consulting managing director Chris Jones.”The next phase of e-commerce will depend on whether we can trust machines to buy on our behalf.”

Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced he was leaving his role in US government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill.”As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” he wrote on his social media platform X.”The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump’s bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people.Musk — who was a constant presence at Trump’s side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses — also complained that DOGE had become a “whipping boy” for dissatisfaction with the administration.”I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday.Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.”A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday.The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk.”The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk’s social network, X, after the tech titan’s comments aired.All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added.But Musk’s comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign.- ‘Whipping boy’ -Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again.Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism.”DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X’s latest launch on Tuesday.”Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE’s failure to achieve all of its goals — although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors.”The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he said. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down.Musk’s own businesses suffered in the meantime.Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm’s profits slumped.”People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” Musk told the Post.Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars — the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean.The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump.

Nvidia on Wednesday reported earnings that topped market expectations, with a $4.5 billion hit from US export controls being less than the Silicon Valley chip juggernaut had feared.However, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress warned in an earnings call that export constraints are expected to cost the AI chip titan about $8 billion in the current quarter.Nvidia in April notified regulators that it expected a $5.5 billion hit in the recently-ended quarter due to a new US licensing requirement on the primary chip it can legally sell in China.US officials had told Nvidia it must obtain licenses to export its H20 chips to China because of concerns they may be used in supercomputers there, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.The new licensing rule applies to Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs, with bandwidth similar to that of the H20.”China is one of the world’s largest AI markets and a springboard to global success,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in an earnings call.”The platform that wins China is positioned to lead globally; however, the $50 billion China market is effectively closed to us.”Nvidia cannot dial back the capabilities of its H20 chips any further to comply with US export constraints, winding up forced to write off billions of dollars on inventory that can’t be sold or repurposed, according to Huang.”The US has based its policy on the assumption that China cannot make AI chips,” Huang said.”That assumption was always questionable, and now it’s clearly wrong.”China’s AI is moving on without Nvidia technology, while that country’s chip-makers innovate products and ramp up operations, according to Huang.”The question is not whether China will have AI; it already does,” he said.”The question is whether one of the world’s largest markets will run on American platforms.”The new requirements resulted in Nvidia incurring a charge of $4.5 billion in the quarter, associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations “as demand for H20 diminished,” the chip-maker said in an earnings report.US export constraints stopped Nvidia from bringing in an additional $2.5 billion worth of H20 revenue in the quarter, according to the company.Nvidia said it made a profit of $18.8 billion on revenue of $44.1 billion, causing shares to rise more than four percent in after-market trades.- Hot demand -Huang said demand for the company’s AI-powering technology remains strong, and a new Blackwell NVL72 AI supercomputer referred to as a “thinking machine” is in full-scale production.”Countries around the world are recognizing AI as essential infrastructure — just like electricity and the internet — and Nvidia stands at the center of this profound transformation,” Huang said.Nvidia high-end GPUs are in hot demand from tech giants building data centers to power artificial intelligence.The company said its data center division revenue in the quarter was $39.1 billion, up 10 percent from the same period last year.The market had expected more from the unit, however.”Nvidia beat expectations again but in a market where maintaining this dominance is becoming more challenging,” said Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne.”The China export restrictions underscore the immediate pressure from geopolitical headwinds but Nvidia also faces mounting competitive pressure as rivals like AMD gain ground,” said Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne.Revenue in Nvidia’s gaming chip business hit a record high of $3.8 billion, leaping 48 percent and eclipsing forecasts.The AI boom has propelled Nvidia’s stock price, which has regained much of the ground lost in a steep sell-off in January triggered by the sudden success of DeepSeek.China’s DeepSeek unveiled its R1 chatbot, which it claims can match the capacity of top US AI products for a fraction of their costs.”The broader concern is that trade tensions and potential tariff impacts on data center expansion could create headwinds for AI chip demand in upcoming quarters,” analyst Bourne said of Nvidia.

Germany’s new top diplomat on Wednesday sought to stress unity with the United States on Ukraine, warning of further sanctions if Russia does not budge in stalled negotiations to end the war.Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who assumed his role this month as center-right Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office, met in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”We, Germany and the United States, have a common position regarding Ukraine,” Wadephul told reporters after the meeting. “We need to find a negotiated solution.” US President Donald Trump took office vowing to end the war and blaming his predecessor Joe Biden for the invasion. But Trump has voiced growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has not accepted a Ukrainian-backed US proposal of a 30-day ceasefire.Wadephul said that Europeans were ready to “tighten the screws” on Russia and noted that sanctions bills are being prepared in the US Congress.”Both Europe and the United States are willing to draw consequences if this does not happen,” he said of Russia coming to the negotiation table.Merz earlier Wednesday said that Germany will “do everything” to make sure that the damaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia does not resume deliveries of natural gas to Europe.The stance shows the sharp shift in Germany since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.The last Christian Democratic chancellor, Angela Merkel, had rebuffed pressure from the United States and supported the pipeline, arguing that it not only provided energy to Europe’s largest economy but incentivized Russia to work with Europe.Merz has also voiced growing concern about Israel’s offensive in Gaza, where aid has begun to enter in a heavily controlled trickle after a two-month blockade.The situation in Gaza has become “dramatically more precarious,” Wadephul said.Germany and the United States have traditionally been among Israel’s top supporters. Wadephul in Washington visited a makeshift memorial outside the Capital Jewish Museum where a gunman last week shot dead two Israeli embassy employees.Wadephul was visiting as Rubio celebrated his 54th birthday. As a gift, the German FM presented Rubio with a framed poster of a game played in Frankfurt by the sports-loving top US diplomat’s hometown Miami Dolphins.

US firms have warned the Federal Reserve that the cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs will likely be borne by consumers, according to minutes of the bank’s most recent rate decision.Since returning to office in January, Trump has embarked on a stop-start tariff rollout that has unnerved investors and shaken global financial markets. The Fed’s meeting on May 6 and 7 took place after Trump had announced a 90-day pause on the most severe levies he had threatened against dozens of trading partners, and shortly before the White House unveiled trade deals with China and Britain, helping to soothe some market concerns. At that meeting, policymakers voted to hold the US central bank’s benchmark lending rate between 4.25 and 4.50 percent as they continued to fight inflation, which remains above the Fed’s long-term target of two percent. “Many participants remarked that reports from their business contacts or surveys indicated that firms generally were planning to either partially or fully pass on tariff-related cost increases to consumers,” the Fed said in its minutes of the meeting, published Wednesday. Participants also “noted that the Committee might face difficult tradeoffs if inflation proves to be more persistent while the outlooks for growth and employment weaken,” the Fed warned in its minutes. The Fed has a dual mandate to act independently to tackle both inflation and unemployment. The views of Fed officials chime with the opinions of many economists, who see Trump’s levies as inflationary and bad for growth. Trump and his allies insist that tariffs are one part of a wider policy mix, and that the US president’s overall package of economic plans — including tax cuts and deregulation — should boost economic growth. Given the high tariff-related uncertainty, Fed officials decided that it was prudent to keep rates where they were. “Participants agreed that with economic growth and the labor market still solid and current monetary policy moderately restrictive, the Committee was well positioned to wait for more clarity on the outlooks for inflation and economic activity,” the Fed said. 

Donald Trump’s expanding crackdown on elite universities is prompting some international students to abandon applications to campuses in the United States and spreading stress and anxiety among those already enrolled.The president has upended the country’s reputation among foreign students, who number around one million, as he presses a campaign against US universities he sees as obstructing his “Make America Great Again” populist agenda.He has blocked Harvard hosting international scholars in a maneuver being challenged legally, targeted non-citizen campus activists for deportation, and most recently suspended student visa processing across the board.Harvard applied mathematics and economic student Abdullah Shahid Sial, 20, said the Trump administration’s campaign against US universities that the president accused of being hotbeds of liberal bias and anti-Semitism had been “dehumanizing.””It’s really unfortunate that this is the case for 18, 19, and 20-year-olds who came here without any family, and in most cases, haven’t been to the US before,” said Sial, who is from Pakistan and hopes to be able to return to Harvard next academic year.Sial said he advised acquaintances to have backup plans if US colleges became inaccessible, and that a friend applied to Harvard’s law school, as well as Columbia’s, and two less reputable British institutions — ultimately opting to go to the UK.”He definitely liked Harvard way more (but) he doesn’t want this amount of uncertainty surrounding his education,” Sial said.Karl Molden, a Harvard government and classics student from Austria, said Trump’s move to block the university hosting and enrolling foreign students meant he was unsure if he would be able to return after summer vacation.- ‘In the dark’ -While that decision — affecting some 27 percent of the overall Harvard population — was paused by a judge pending a hearing Thursday, the move still threw student plans into chaos.”I kind of figured I would be in the target group of Trump. I’m personally right in the middle of it, so an option for me would be to study abroad… I have applied to study at Oxford because of all the action” taken by Trump, said Molden, 21.”It’s just really hard.”Harvard academics say they have already started to feel the impact of Trump’s vendetta against the school, in feedback from colleagues based outside the United States. “I’ve already heard this from professors in other countries who say ‘we encourage our best students to go to the United States’,” Harvard professor Ryan Enos told AFP at a noisy rally against Trump’s policies Tuesday, adding “we wonder if we can tell them that anymore.”The halt to visa processing revealed this week is reportedly to allow for more stringent screening of applicants’ social media — and protest activity.”International students already represent the most tracked and vetted category of nonimmigrants in the United States. It is a poor use of taxpayer dollars,” said the NAFSA Association of International Educators non-profit.Trump meanwhile continued his assault on Harvard, saying university leaders have “got to behave themselves.”Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” he said Wednesday in the White House.One Spanish student of politics and statistics, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, told AFP she would not be deterred from pursuing her planned year abroad at Columbia University.”It’s scary, because we think to ourselves that all our activity on social networks could be monitored, for example if we like pro-Palestinian posts or anti-Trump posts. All of that could see us denied a visa,” she said.Students due to return to Harvard after the summer break are in limbo pending a ruling on Harvard’s exclusion from the foreign student system.”I’m completely in the dark,” said 20-year-old Alfred Williamson, a Welsh-Danish physics and government student in his second year at Harvard.”As for my other options, and like all other international students, I’m just clinging on to the hope that Harvard will win this battle against the White House.”Sial, the Harvard student from Pakistan, said foreign students like him were “made to fight this battle which no one signed up for.””It’s really unfortunate that it’s come down to that.”

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off from striking Iran as he voiced optimism about nuclear talks his administration is holding with Tehran.Iran said that it may consider allowing Americans to inspect its facilities as part of the United Nations nuclear watchdog if a deal is reached.Trump, asked if he had told Netanyahu in a call next week not to take any action that could disrupt the diplomacy, said: “Well, I’d like to be honest, yes I did.”Pressed on what he told the Israeli premier, Trump replied: “I just said I don’t think it’s appropriate, we’re having very good discussions with them.”He added: “I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution. “I think they want to make a deal, and if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.” Tehran and Washington have in recent weeks held five rounds of talks focused on the issue — their highest-level contact since Trump in 2018 withdrew from a previous deal negotiated by former president Barack Obama.Trump on a visit to Qatar earlier in May voiced optimism at reaching a new agreement with Iran that avoids military conflict.Israel sees cleric-ruled Iran, which supports Hamas militants in Gaza, as its top enemy. Israel has repeatedly threatened strikes on its nuclear facilities, after pummelling Iranian air defenses in rare direct combat.- ‘Reconsider accepting Americans’ -Iran denies Western charges that it is seeking a nuclear weapon, insisting its program is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes.Trump, withdrawing from the Obama-era deal in 2018, imposed sweeping sanctions that include pressuring all countries not to buy Iranian oil.”Countries that were hostile to us and behaved unprincipledly over the years — we have always tried not to accept inspectors from those countries,” Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami told reporters, referring to staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).Tehran “will reconsider accepting American inspectors through the agency” if “an agreement is reached, and Iran’s demands are taken into account,” he said.President Masoud Pezeshkian, currently on an official visit to Oman, thanked the Gulf state for its mediation efforts between the longtime adversaries, which have had no formal diplomatic ties since 1979.Iranian Foreign Minister and top negotiator Abbas Araghchi, who is accompanying Pezeshkian in Oman, said that “the date for the new round of negotiations will probably be clarified within the next few days.”While welcoming the negotiations, Iranian officials have repeatedly declared uranium enrichment “non-negotiable.” Trump administration officials have publicly insisted that Iran not be allowed to enrich any uranium — even at low levels for civilian purposes, as allowed under Obama’s 2015 deal.”The continuation of enrichment in Iran is an inseparable part of the country’s nuclear industry and a fundamental principle for the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters.”Any proposal or initiative that contradicts this principle or undermines this right is unacceptable.”Iran currently enriches uranium up to 60 percent — the highest level of any non-nuclear weapons state. That rate is still below the 90 percent threshold required for a nuclear weapon, but far above the 3.67 percent limit set under the 2015 deal.

The United States said Wednesday it will refuse visas to foreign officials who block Americans’ social media posts, as President Donald Trump’s administration wages a new battle over free expression.Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who has controversially rescinded visas for activists who criticize Israel and ramped up screening of foreign students’ social media — said he was acting against “flagrant censorship actions” overseas against US tech firms.He did not publicly name any official who would be denied a visa under the new policy. But last week he suggested to lawmakers that he was planning sanctions against a Brazilian Supreme Court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, who has battled X owner and Trump ally Elon Musk over alleged disinformation.The administration of Trump — himself a prolific and often confrontational social media user — has also sharply criticized Germany and Britain for restricting what the US allies’ governments term hate and abusive speech.Rubio said the United States will begin to restrict visas to foreign nationals who are responsible for “censorship of protected expression in the United States.””It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on US soil,” Rubio said in a statement.”It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States,” he said.”We will not tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty, especially when such encroachments undermine the exercise of our fundamental right to free speech.”Rubio has said he has revoked the US visas for thousands of people, largely students who have protested against Israel’s offensive in Gaza.Among the most visible cases has been Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who had written an opinion piece in a student newspaper criticizing the school’s position on Gaza.Masked agents arrested her on a Massachusetts street and took her away. A judge recently ordered her release.Rubio on Tuesday suspended further appointments for students seeking visas to the United States until the State Department drafts new guidelines on enhanced screening of applicants’ social media postings.- Anger at Brazilian judge -Social media regulation has become a rallying cry for many on the American right since Trump was suspended from Twitter, now X, and Facebook on safety grounds after his supporters attacked the US Capitol following his defeat in the 2020 election to Joe Biden.In Brazil, where supporters of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro similarly stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court in 2023 after Bolsonaro’s election loss, Moraes has said he is seeking to protect democracy through his judicial power.Moraes temporarily blocked X across Brazil until it complied with his order to remove accounts accused of spreading disinformation.More recently he ordered a suspension of Rumble, a video-sharing platform popular with conservative and far-right voices over its refusal to block the account of a user based in the United States who was wanted for spreading disinformation.Germany — whose foreign minister met Wednesday with Rubio — restricts online hate speech and misinformation, saying it has learned a lesson from its Nazi past and will ostracize extremists.US Vice President JD Vance in a speech in Munich in February denounced Germany for shunning the far-right, noting the popularity of its anti-immigrant message.In an essay Tuesday, a State Department official pointed to social media regulations and said Europeans were following a “similar strategy of censorship, demonization and bureaucratic weaponization” as witnessed against Trump and his supporters.”What this reveals is that the global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy,” wrote Samuel Samson, a senior advisor for the State Department’s human rights office.”Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people.”