Senator Cynthia Lummis and at least one other Republican in Congress are reportedly critical of US President Donald Trump for offering the top holders of his memecoin a dinner and White House tour.
According to a May 2 CNBC report, Lummis said the idea that the US president was offering exclusive access to himself and the White House for people willing to pay for it “gives [her] pause.” She wasn’t the only member of the Republican Party to be critical of Trump’s memecoin perks, announced on April 23, roughly three months after the then-president-elect launched the TRUMP token.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to charge people to come into the Capitol and take a tour,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, according to NBC News.
Despite Lummis’ reported “pause” over the president’s actions, on May 2, she posted a video to X of herself speaking on the Senate floor, saying she was “particularly pleased” by Trump’s support of legislation to establish a strategic Bitcoin (BTC) reserve in the United States. The Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide, or BITCOIN, Act would seemingly codify Trump’s executive order to create a national crypto reserve.
The launch of the TRUMP coin on Jan. 17 was met with outrage from many lawmakers and figures in the crypto industry, who pointed to potential conflicts of interest and implications of allowing foreign actors to channel funds directly to Trump. The criticism continued after Trump announced that a group of the top memecoin holders would have the opportunity to apply for a White House tour and dinner.
“Trump once claimed he is so rich he cannot be bought,” said Craig Holman, a government ethics expert with the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “But his obsession with money means he apparently can be bought for a meme.”
Calls for impeachment over ties to crypto
Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, called for Trump’s impeachment during an April 25 town hall, claiming the memecoin dinner represented “selling access for what are effectively payments directly to him.” During his first term, Trump was impeached twice in the House of Representatives but acquitted after the Senate votes fell short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.
At the time of publication, it was unclear who, if any, of the memecoin holders would attend the May 22 dinner with Trump. Usernames from the TRUMP leaderboard have led to speculation that staunch supporters like Tron founder Justin Sun and Tesla CEO Elon Musk could be among the attendees. As of May 2, neither the individuals nor the companies have made any formal announcements.
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to “juice engagement” by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights. Systrom said the tactics represent “a force that’s hurting us,” comparing them to those used by social media companies to expand aggressively. “You can see some of these […]
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Your usual host Kirsten has passed the reins to me, Rebecca Bellan, for the day, and I want to talk about Aurora Innovation and its last-minute save. […]
Next week, Google will begin allowing kids under 13 who have parent-managed Google accounts to use its Gemini chatbot, according to The New York Times. The Times reports that Gemini will be available to kids whose parents use Family Link, a Google service that enables families to opt into various Google services for their child. A Google […]
A recently released Google AI model scores worse on certain safety tests than its predecessor, according to the company’s internal benchmarking. In a technical report published this week, Google reveals that its Gemini 2.5 Flash model is more likely to generate text that violates its safety guidelines than Gemini 2.0 Flash. On two metrics, “text-to-text […]
Apple and Anthropic are teaming up to build a “vibe-coding” software platform that will use generative AI to write, edit, and test code for programmers, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The iPhone maker is planning to roll out the software internally, according to Bloomberg, but hasn’t decided if it will launch it publicly. The system is […]
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
A senior State Department official demanded records of communications with journalists, European officials, and Trump critics
A previously unreported document distributed by senior US State Department official Darren Beattie reveals a sweeping effort to uncover all communications between the staff of a small government office focused on online disinformation and a lengthy list of public and private figures—many of whom are longtime targets of the political right.
The document, originally shared in person with roughly a dozen State Department employees in early March, requested staff emails and other records with or about a host of individuals and organizations that track or write about foreign disinformation—including Atlantic journalist Anne Applebaum, former US cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, and the Stanford Internet Observatory—or have criticized President Donald Trump and his allies, such as the conservative anti-Trump commentator Bill Kristol.
The broad requests for unredacted information felt like a “witch hunt,” one official says—one that could put the privacy and security of numerous individuals and organizations at risk. Read the full story.
—Eileen Guo
The US has approved CRISPR pigs for food
Most pigs in the US are confined to factory farms where they can be afflicted by a nasty respiratory virus that kills piglets. The illness is called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS.
A few years ago, a British company called Genus set out to design pigs immune to this germ using CRISPR gene editing. Not only did they succeed, but its pigs are now poised to enter the food chain following approval of the animals this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly health and biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 The US has closed a China tariff loophole The costs of plenty of goods are likely to shoot up in response. (NYT $) + But China is still extremely dependent on US-made car chips. (WSJ $) + Chinese retail giant Temu is pivoting its business model. (Bloomberg $) + Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound. (MIT Technology Review)
2 DOGE’s future is looking uncertain It’s fallen far short of its goal to slash $2 trillion in spending. (WP $)+ No more late-night ice cream for Elon Musk. (CNBC) + DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Microsoft is hiking the price of its Xbox games console By a whopping 27% in the US. (The Guardian) + Apple estimates that the tariffs will add $900 million to its costs. (WP $) + But Apple isn’t announcing any price increases (yet.) (TechCrunch) + Here’s what is—and isn’t—getting pricier under the tariffs. (Vox)
4 Tech giants have been accused of deliberately distorting AI rankings A new study claims they’re making untrue claims about the best models. (New Scientist $) + It accuses benchmark organisation LM Arena of unfair practices. (TechCrunch) + The site’s operators refute the findings, saying its conclusions are wrong. (Ars Technica)
5 Europe wants to replicate America’s military-industrial complex And US contractors are likely to benefit. (WSJ $) + US soldiers may finally be able to repair their own equipment. (404 Media) + Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI will move forward A judge rejected OpenAI’s attempt to dismiss the case. (FT $)
7 What a post-4Chan internet looks like What was once contained to a tiny corner of the web is now commonplace. (New Yorker $) + How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)
8 How North Korea infiltrates the US Fully remote coders are not who they appear to be. (Wired $)
9 You no longer need a password to open a new Microsoft account The company’s gone passkey-first. (The Verge)
10 Fecal transplants are a possible way to treat gut disease And the approach is becoming more mainstream. (Undark) + How bugs and chemicals in your poo could give away exactly what you’ve eaten. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“What about the next Taylor Swift?”
—US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria questions how powerful musical AI tools will affect up-and-coming musicians during Meta’s copyright court battle, Wired reports.
One more thing
Your boss is watching
Working today—whether in an office, a warehouse, or your car—can mean constant electronic surveillance with little transparency, and potentially with livelihood-ending consequences if your productivity flags.
But what matters even more than the effects of this ubiquitous monitoring on privacy may be how all that data is shifting the relationships between workers and managers, companies and their workforce.
We are in the midst of a shift in work and workplace relationships as significant as the Second Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And new policies and protections may be necessary to correct the balance of power. Read the full story.
—Rebecca Ackermann
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
Most pigs in the US are confined to factory farms where they can be afflicted by a nasty respiratory virus that kills piglets. The illness is called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS.
A few years ago, a British company called Genus set out to design pigs immune to this germ using CRISPR gene editing. Not only did they succeed, but its pigs are now poised to enter the food chain following approval of the animals this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The pigs will join a veryshort list of gene-modified animals that you can eat.It’s a short list because such animals are expensive to create, face regulatory barriers, and don’t always pay off. For instance, the US took about 20 years to approve a transgenic salmon with an extra gene that let it grow faster. But by early this year its creator, AquaBounty, had sold off all its fish farms and had only four employees—none of them selling fish.
Regulations have eased since then, especially around gene editing, which tinkers with an animal’s own DNA rather than adding to it from another species, as is the case with the salmon and many GMO crops.
What’s certain is that the pig project was technically impressive and scientifically clever. Genus edited pig embryos to remove the receptor that the PRRS virus uses to enter cells. No receptor means no infection.
According to Matt Culbertson, chief operating office of the Pig Improvement Company, a Genus subsidiary, the pigs appear entirely immune to more than 99% of the known versions of the PRRS virus, although there is one rare subtype that may break through the protection.
This project is scientifically similar to the work that led to the infamous CRISPR babies born in China in 2018. In that case a scientist named He Jiankui edited twin girls to be resistant to HIV, also by trying to remove a receptor gene when they were just embryos in a dish.
That experiment on humans was widely decried as misguided. But pigs are a different story. The ethical concerns about experimenting are less serious, and the benefits of changing the genomes can be measured in dollars and cents. It’s going to save a lot of money if pigs are immune to the PRRS virus, which spreads quite easily, causing losses of $300 million a year or more in the US alone.
Globally, people get animal protein mostly from chickens, with pigs and cattle in second and third place. A 2023 report estimated that pigs account for 34% of all meat that’s eaten. Of the billion pigs in the world, about half are in China; the US comes in a distant second, with 80 million.
Recently, there’s been a lot of fairly silly news about genetically modified animals. A company called Colossal Biosciences used gene editing to modify wolves in ways it claimed made them resemble an extinct species, the dire wolf. And then there’s the L.A. Project, an effort run by biohackers who say they’ll make glow-in-the-dark rabbits and have a stretch goal of creating a horse with a horn—that’s right, a unicorn.
Both those projects are more about showmanship than usefulness. But they’re demonstrations of the growing power scientists have to modify mammals, thanks principally to new gene-editing tools combined with DNA sequencing that lets them peer into animals’ DNA.
Stopping viruses is a much better use of CRISPR. And research is ongoing to make pigs—as well as other livestock—invulnerable to other infections, including African swine fever and influenza. While PRRS doesn’t infect humans, pig and bird flus can. But if herds and flocks could be changed to resist those infections, that could cut the chances of the type of spillover that can occasionally cause dangerous pandemics.
There’s a chance the Genus pigs could turn out to be the most financially valuable genetically modified animal ever created—the first CRISPR hit product to reach the food system. After the approval, the company’s stock value jumped up by a couple of hundred million dollars on the London Stock Exchange.
But there is still a way to go before gene-edited bacon appears on shelves in the US. Before it makes its sales pitch to pig farms, Genus says, it needs to also gain approval in Mexico, Canada, Japan and China which are big export markets for American pork.
Culbertson says gene-edited pork could appear in the US market sometime next year. He says the company does not think pork chops or other meat will need to carry any label identifying it as bioengineered. “We aren’t aware of any labelling requirement,” Culbertson says.
This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly health and biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here.
US crypto exchange Kraken has detailed a North Korean hacker’s attempt to infiltrate the organization by applying for a job interview.
“What started as a routine hiring process for an engineering role quickly turned into an intelligence-gathering operation,” the company wrote in a May 1 blog post.
Kraken said the applicant’s red flags appeared early on in the process when they joined an interview under a name different from what they applied with and “occasionally switched between voices,” apparently being guided through the interview.
Rather than immediately rejecting the applicant, Kraken decided to advance them through its hiring process to gather information about the tactics used.
International sanctions have effectively cut North Korea off from the rest of the world, and the country’s ruling Kim family dictatorship has long targeted crypto companies and users to top up the country’s coffers. It’s stolen billions worth of crypto so far this year.
Kraken reported that industry partners had tipped them off that North Korean actors were actively applying for jobs at crypto companies.
“We received a list of email addresses linked to the hacker group, and one of them matched the email the candidate used to apply to Kraken,” it said.
With this information, the firm’s security team uncovered a network of fake identities used by the hacker to apply to multiple companies.
Kraken also noted technical inconsistencies, which included the use of remote Mac desktops through VPNs and altered identification documents.
Kraken CSO @c7five recently spoke to @CBSNews about how a North Korean operative unsuccessfully attempted to get a job at Kraken.
The applicant’s resume was linked to a GitHub profile containing an email address exposed in a past data breach, and the exchange said the candidate’s primary form of ID “appeared to be altered, likely using details stolen in an identity theft case two years prior.”
During final interviews, Kraken chief security officer Nick Percoco conducted trap identity verification tests that the candidate failed, confirming the deception.
“Don’t trust, verify. This core crypto principle is more relevant than ever in the digital age,” Peroco said. “State-sponsored attacks aren’t just a crypto or US corporate issue — they’re a global threat.”
North Korea pulls off biggest-ever crypto hack
North Korea-affiliated hacking collective Lazarus Group was responsible for February’s $1.4 billion Bybit exchange hack, the largest ever for the crypto industry.
North Korean-linked hackers also stole more than $650 million through multiple crypto heists during 2024, while deploying IT workers to infiltrate blockchain and crypto companies as insider threats, according to a statement released by the US, Japan and South Korea in January.
In April, a subgroup of Lazarus was found to have set up three shell companies, with two in the US, to deliver malware to unsuspecting users and scam crypto developers.
Crypto exchange Kraken has completed its acquisition of the futures trading platform NinjaTrader and reported its first quarter revenues jumped 19% year-on-year to $471.7 million.
Kraken said in a May 1 report that its NinjaTrader acquisition would give its US customers access to the traditional derivatives market, aligning with its plans to expand its offerings and be the go-to platform for all types of trading.
NinjaTrader is a registered Futures Commission Merchant with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Last month, it rolled out trading for over 11,000 stocks and exchange-traded funds to certain US clients.
The deal, which Kraken dubbed the largest ever between a crypto and traditional finance firm, allows NinjaTrader to expand to the UK, continental Europe and Australian markets and comes as Kraken is preparing for an initial public offering in early 2026. The company is exploring a debt package worth between $200 million and $1 billion to facilitate that transaction.
Kraken revenue, trading volume falls on Trump’s return
Kraken’s $471.7 million revenue in Q1 marked a 19% increase from the year-ago quarter but a 6.8% fall from Q4 2024.
The exchange reported that trading volume fell 9.6% quarter-over-quarter to $208.7 billion while the value of its custodied assets fell 18% to $34.9 billion over the same time.
Kraken attributed the drop to a “slowdown in overall market trading activity” as US President Donald Trump’s threats of implementing sweeping tariffs triggered an 18% fall in the crypto market cap over the quarter.
Key metrics from Kraken’s Q1 report. Source: Kraken
Kraken is one of several crypto platforms that saw record or near-record highs in trading activity in Q4 as Trump’s November election win sparked larger-than-usual market volatility.
Kraken said that despite a “softening market,” its adjusted EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — jumped 1% from the previous quarter to $187.4 million.
The firm also saw the number of funded accounts on its platform increase 10% quarter-on-quarter to 3.9 million, signaling “deeper client engagement.”
Reuters reported on April 18 that Kraken restructured its workforce after Arjun Sethi was appointed as co-CEO last October. Sethi has laid off around 400 employees since.
