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Wake up, the running influencers are fighting again. In the hot seat this week is popular running influencer Kate Mackz, who faces heavy backlash over the latest guest on her running interview series: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Mackz, who has nearly 800,000 followers on TikTok, has previously featured notable figures such as political commentator Dana Perino and biohacker-in-chief Bryan Johnson. On Wednesday, she released her newest interview with Leavitt, who declined to run any miles but did give Mackz a tour of the White House. @katemackz I cant believe you get to wake up and be here every single day, Mackz said as she and Leavitt took a stroll through the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room and Leavitts office. Notably absent is the mention of policy or actual politics. The interviewfilmed for both TikTok and Mackzs podcastcomes as the White House intensifies its outreach to nontraditional media, including influencers and podcasters, whose impact on the 2024 election hasnt gone unnoticed. While some view this as a savvy response to a shifting media landscape, critics note that the influencers being granted access tend to lean pro-Trumpor at least avoid asking hard questions. Truly surreal to walk through a place with so much history and meaning, Mackz wrote in the video’s caption. Like much of American politics today, the comments section was deeply divided. Some followers praised the video. Others were less impressed. Oh Kate, this is disappointing, one wrote. Read the room, girl, added another. “The fact she wasn’t even runningyou put a torch to your platform for a video that doesn’t even fit your own brand,” a third follower commented. (Fast Company has reached out to Mackz for comment.) One particularly pointed comment reportedly came from Hope Walz, daughter of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, who asked Mackz to unpin her earlier interview with her fatherposted in the lead-up to the electionfrom the top of her page. As of this writing, the video remains pinned and has over 4.4 million views. While the comment is no longer visible, Walz posted her own video yesterday in response, where she discusses running as a political act. You know who taught me that? she says. Tim Walz. @hopewalz running is political!!! #fyp #running original sound – hopewalz In her video, Walz highlights the privilege embedded in the running worldaccess to safe spaces, healthcare, and climate protectionsand criticizes the current administrations cuts to mental health funding, food banks, and environmental programs. We should not be normalizing these people, she says. Im not going to tell anyone what to do with their page, but I think it is insulting to my dad to leave a certain video pinned, especially when he stands for quite literally the opposite of what this administration is doing. You do not get to both-sides this.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump just won’t let go of his ongoing battle against Harvard. In the latest move against the Ivy League school, Trump on Friday said he will revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status. It’s another attempt to defund Harvard, which has flat-out refused to comply with the administration’s long list of demands for higher education institutions, requiring the university to make sweeping changes in order to keep its $2.2 billion in federal fundingwhich the administration has since frozen, prompting Harvard to sue the administration, leaving it to the courts to decide. Those demands include ending DEI on campus; taking actions aimed at ending antisemitism, including when it limits free speech; and trying to enforce or at least have a say in what professors can ultimately teach on campus. “We are going to be taking away Harvards Tax Exempt Status. Its what they deserve!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.In response, Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton told NBC News that not only was there “no legal basis to rescind its status,” but also revoking the university’s tax-exempt status “would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission . . . [and] result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs . . . [and] more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America. Harvard, like most major colleges and universities, is a tax-exempt organization. Trying to pull one university’s funding would likely be challenged in court, as many of Trump’s executive orders have been issued just 100-some days into his second term. (Harvard’s federal income tax exemption as an educational institution is mandated under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. As an educational institution, Harvard is also exempt from state income tax in Massachusetts, where it is located.) Harvard’s unwillingness to back down has created a target on its backbecause if one university, one law firm, or one state can stand up to Trump, it could pave the way for others to do the same. For example, since Harvard boldly refused to comply with the administration’s demands earlier this month, a number of other schools have followed with some form of resistance. In the weeks following Trump’s decision to try to pull nearly all of Harvard’s $2.2 billion in federal funding, 170 college presidents, including those of Princeton University and Brown University, signed a letter rebuking the administration’s “overreach.” The American Association of Colleges and Universities said in a statement: “As leaders of Americas colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Although Harvard has a vast endowment of $53.2 billion, it relies on several other sources beyond that for its funding, and can only tap about 20% of it for discretionary spending to go toward covering the money lost by Trumps funding freeze. In fact, the majority of Harvard’s endowment has restrictions that stipulate how exactly the Ivy League university can spend that money.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget plan would slash non-defense domestic spending by $163 billion while increasing expenditures on national security, according to White House statements Friday. The plan shows a desire to crack down on diversity programs and initiatives to address climate change. But it doesn’t include details about what Trump wants on income taxes, tariffs, entitlement programs or the budget deficita sign of the challenge confronting the president when he’s promising to cut taxes and repay the federal debt without doing major damage to economic growth. Budgets do not become law but serve as a touchstone for the upcoming fiscal year debates. Often considered a statement of values, this first budget since Trump’s return to the White House carries the added weight of defining the Republican president’s second-term pursuits, alongside his party in Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the plan showed fiscal discipline given the problems of persistently high budget deficits. The budget released on Friday did not, in fact, include a forecast on government borrowing. President Trumps plan ensures every federal taxpayer dollar spent is used to serve the American people, not a bloated bureaucracy or partisan pet projects, Johnson said. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the cuts could ultimately be more extreme than what the administration has proposed, noting that the budget doesn’t provide funding levels for programs such as Head Start. President Trump has made his priorities clear as day: he wants to outright defund programs that help working Americans while he shovels massive tax breaks at billionaires like himself and raises taxes on middle-class Americans with his reckless tariffs,” Murray said. The budget seeks to cut discretionary spending by a total of 7.6% next year, but includes a 13% increase in national security spending. The State Department and international programs would lose 84% of their money and receive $9.6 billion, a cut that reflects the existing efforts by adviser Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency. The Housing and Urban Development Department would get a $33.6 billion cut, while the Health and Human Service Department would receive $33.3 trillion less and the Education Department’s spending would be reduced by $12 billion. The Defense Department would get an additional $113.3 billion and Homeland Security would receive $42.3 billion more. The IRS and FBI would lose money, while the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program would be ended. There would be $980 million less for college students in work-study programs, as well as similarly sized cuts for adult education and instruction for learning English. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would lose nearly $3.6 billion under the plan, while the National Institutes of Health would face a steep cut of almost $18 billion. The budget would eliminate more than $15 billion for infrastructure-related programs tied to climate change and $1.3 billion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The White House budget plan arrives as Trump has unilaterally imposed what could hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases in the form of tariffs, setting off a trade war that has consumers, CEOs and foreign leaders worried about a possible economic downturn. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russell Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025, provided contours of a so-called skinny version of topline numbers only regarding discretionary spending. Administration officials said a fuller budget will come soon with plans to address the drivers of the annual deficit. The nation’s estimated $7 trillion-plus federal budget has been growing steadily, with annual deficits fast approaching $2 trillion and the annual interest payments on the debt almost $1 trillion. That’s thanks mostly to the spike in emergency COVID-19 pandemic spending, changes in the tax code that reduced revenues and the climbing costs of Medicare, Medicaid and other programs, largely to cover the nation’s health needs as people age. The nation’s debt load, at $36 trillion, is ballooning. Democrats are prepared to assail Trump’s budget as further evidence that the Republican administration is intent on gutting government programs that Americans depend on. Congress is already deep into the slog of drafting of Trump’s big bill of tax breaks, spending cuts and bolstered funds for the administration’s mass deportation efforta package that, unlike the budget plan, would carry the force of law. But deep differences remain among the Republicans, who are trying to pass that big bill over the objections of Democrats. “We are awaiting some final calculations on a few of the tax components, and we expect to be able to complete that work on a very aggressive schedule, Johnson said. It’s Congress, under its constitutional powers, that decides the spending plans, approves the bills that authorize federal programs and funds them through the appropriations process. Often, that system breaks down, forcing lawmakers to pass stopgap spending bills to keep the government funded and avoid federal shutdowns. Vought is also expected on Capitol Hill in the weeks ahead as the Trump administration presses its case to Congress for funds. Among the more skilled conservative budget hands in Washington, Vought has charted a career toward this moment. He served during the first Trump administration in the same role and, for Project 2025, wrote an extensive chapter about the remaking of the federal government. Vought has separately been preparing a $9 billion package that would gut current 2025 funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which involves the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. Trump signed an executive order late Thursday that instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ad federal agencies to cease funding for PBS and NPR. Vought has said that package of so-called budget rescissions would be a first of potentially more, as the Trump administration tests the appetite in Congress for lawmakers to go on record and vote to roll back the money. Lisa Mascaro and Josh Boak, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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