All posts tagged: U.S. News Decision Points

Influencer Bots, Bad Bets and Grocery Bills: The Week in Review | U.S. News Decision Points

Influencer Bots, Bad Bets and Grocery Bills: The Week in Review | U.S. News Decision Points

Artificial intelligence is filling up our social media feeds and driving up prices, but the physical world still has its perks – like this week’s beautiful spring weather. I’m Sidney Slon, and here’s the week in review. Monday To start the week, Olivier examined the rise of AI-generated influencers and why AI is making it harder to determine reality from fiction on social media. Many of the content creators posting about last week’s Coachella, the popular music and arts festival held every year in Southern California, were not all real people, The Verge reports. A number of influencer posts showed AI-generated avatars with celebrities or around the festival grounds. In many cases, the posts attracted millions of views despite featuring glitches and “uncannily attractive figures,” author Jess Weatherbed wrote. But it’s not just Coachella content that’s being AI-generated. The New York Times reviewed a multitude of right-leaning social media videos that featured a diverse group of people using the same script soliciting comments from Trump supporters. The accounts did not identify they were AI-generated but …

Tariff Refunds Are Coming. Just (Probably) Not for You. | U.S. News Decision Points

Tariff Refunds Are Coming. Just (Probably) Not for You. | U.S. News Decision Points

The federal government this week launched a platform to process refund requests to comply with the Supreme Court ruling in late February that President Donald Trump’s signature tariffs were illegal. And you almost certainly won’t see a dime. That’s because reimbursements are limited to “importers of record and authorized customs brokers” – the people who paid the tariffs directly. If a business passed that cost on to you in the form of a higher price, you may have paid for the tariff, but you did not pay it to the government. The odds are, therefore, that the millions of Americans who paid more because of the duties won’t see any of the estimated $166 billion the feds collected from the tariffs Trump levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The administration said in a court filing that more than 330,000 importers had paid tariffs on more than 53 million import entries. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says repayments (via the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or CAPE) “will generally be issued within …

Are Your Taxes Too High? Most Say Yes | U.S. News Decision Points

Are Your Taxes Too High? Most Say Yes | U.S. News Decision Points

It’s tax season. And you’re not happy about it. If a new survey from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center is correct, then about 60% of you say the feeling that some wealthy people and corporations don’t pay their fair share bothers you “a lot.” At the other end of the spectrum, 12% say the same about the feeling some poor people don’t pay their fair share. The proportion of Americans who say they pay more than they should, given what they get from the government, has risen to 60%. That’s up from 56% in 2023, 49% in 2021, and 51% in 2019. Sign Up for U.S. News Decision Points Your trusted source for breaking down the latest news from Washington and beyond, delivered weekdays. By clicking “Sign Up”, you will receive the latest updates, including emails, from U.S. News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors, and you agree to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. (I’m not sure what was going on in 2021, but Pew’s numbers show that was a …

Trump Asks America to ‘Just Hold On’ | U.S. News Decision Points

Trump Asks America to ‘Just Hold On’ | U.S. News Decision Points

The first State of the Union address of President Donald Trump’s second term is now in the books. I have covered these supernovas of political rhetoric since 1998, so let me tell you what I saw in a speech that stretched all over the policy landscape over the course of nearly two hours. The Surprise SOTU Forgive me for starting with the stagecraft rather than the substance. But this was the surprise State of the Union – every few minutes, the showman-turned-president sprang a theatrical moment on his audiences in the chamber and watching at home. Not quite 15 minutes into his remarks, Trump made good on his promise to have the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team at the event. The athletes, each wearing a smile and sporting a shiny gold medal, walked down the aisles of the press area of the gallery above the floor of the House of Representatives. While that had been telegraphed, what happened next had not: Trump announced that he was awarding the team’s goalie, Connor Hellebuyck, the Presidential Medal …