lmatsakis.bsky.social
senior business editor @wired.com focused on AI, China, and Silicon Valley. Send tips to louise_matsakis.83 on Signal. How I work with sources: https://www.louisematsakis.com/sourcefaq
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one of the biggest assets the US had is that people like my friends were willing to give up their whole lives, sometimes the ability to see their families for years, for the promises of the US, the freedom to be creative, take risks, and work with the top people in their fields
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a number of my closest friends—people who have enriched my life, my community in the US, and who make the world around them a smarter and more compassionate place—originally came to the US from China on student visas
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The Trump administration has described the visa as a way to reduce the federal deficit, but since there's no law outlining the visa, there's no specifics about where the money would go
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One thing we found in our reporting is that a reference to the "Trump Card Visa" has already appeared in application forms for Global Entry, the program that lets you skip the normal immigration line at the airport when you enter the US
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Over the past few weeks, DOGE has been meeting with officials from those agencies to coordinate on the Trump Visa Card initiative, our reporting shows. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has said that he's already sold 1,000 of these gold cards, but it's not clear to who or where the money would go
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In late March, DOGE registered the website "trumpcard.gov," according to federal domain registrar records. The website is connected to other domains associated with immigration services, Customs and Border Protection, and the State Department
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Immigration regulations on the books carefully outline how many green cards the US government can issue each year and under what circumstances. It's not clear what the legal basis is for the Trump Card Visa, but it appears to be moving ahead any way
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This is a good question! As we noted in the story, the White House hasn't clarified whether it believes current immigration law gives it the statutory authority to launch this program, but our reporting indicates it's going ahead anyway
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What I love about Tim's reporting is how it details the revolving door of DC. It's become normalized to take a government job, go to industry, and then go back to the government. For people outside the beltway, this is often really bewildering to see in detail
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Since returning to office, Trump has imposed devastatingly high tariffs on Chinese imports and ended the de minimis exemption, a trade provision that once allowed Shein to import millions of packages to the United States duty-free
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Greer is one of at least three high-ranking Trump officials to have worked for Shein, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy US attorney general Todd Blanche. But despite courting these powerful Republicans, Trump's presidency has devastated Shein so far
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"Nianli’s story is heartbreaking. The images of the FBI raid of Nianli and Professor Xiaofeng Wang’s home brings chills to our spines,” Chen said. “It brings back the fear my family and many others went through."
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Wang’s case has raised concerns among academics that Chinese-born scholars are being intentionally targeted. Gang Chen, an MIT professor who was accused of academic misconduct under the first Trump administration and later had the charges against him dropped, spoke at the same event on Monday
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Nianli Ma said the couple is the victim of what she described as misplaced accusations of academic misconduct. “Our family is determined to fight, not only for ourselves, but for the broader research community who would be impacted if this type of allegation goes unchallenged,” Ma said.
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the ice cream and cold brew is very good
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last thing I wanted to note: I heard from a lot of readers that they were intrigued by Mixue, the Chinese drink and ice cream chain that now has more locations than Starbucks or McDonald's worldwide. Here's the Mixue flagship store in Zhengzhou when I visited in October!
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I'm not saying that China will entirely fill the soft power void left by America, but I think we're seeing an interesting dynamic where at least some Americans are unwilling to blindly accept that China is the enemy, and that could make Trump's tariffs less tenable for a lot of voters
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While the US basically gave up on the idea of soft power and threw the global economy into chaos, an American livestreamer was doing a tour across China, showing his fans impressive skylines and infrastructure in cities like Shanghai
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The American argument against Chinese manufacturing used to be about "slave labor" and intellectual property theft. That's a hard case to make when small business owners are showing customers their factories in China and explaining they simply can't make these things here
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isn't it really important what people want???
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Thank you so much, you don't know how much this kind of public support means to us