It is perhaps an understatement to say that Donald Trump is obsessed with popularity. Throughout his time in the limelight, he has repeatedly made it clear just how much he cares about polls — so much so that he’s made some up out of whole cloth and even called to “investigate” ones that showed he had low approval ratings, which he called “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS.” He often exaggerates his political mandate and refers to his November victory as a historic landslide despite the fact that he didn’t even win a popular-vote majority.But since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has been doing very unpopular things, and it shows: According to a recent New York Times poll, two-thirds of respondents described Trump’s second term as “chaotic,” 59 percent said it’s “scary,” and 54 percent disapproved of his overall job as president. And though his approval rating has been improving in recent weeks, the overall number is still negative.More specifically, Trump’s most high-profile moves have been opposed by the majority of Americans. An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed that two-thirds of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of tariffs. A CNN poll found that a majority of Americans opposed deporting immigrants to a Salvadoran prison. And only 17 percent of Americans support deporting legal immigrants who participated in protests against Israel, according to the New York Times.Given the way Trump is governing, it can sometimes seem like how the majority of people feel doesn’t matter to the president, leading to more despair among those who disapprove. But is it actually true that polls and public opinion no longer influence Trump’s decisions? The takeaway, told through examples from the past four months, is more hopeful.Trump doubles down on birthright citizenship, deportationsOne of the most obvious examples of public opinion failing to sway the president comes from Trump’s handling of immigration, especially when it comes to the most controversial aspects of his policy. For years, Trump has railed against birthright citizenship, saying that the United States shouldn’t automatically give citizenship to people born on American soil. In his second term, one of Trump’s first executive orders was an attempt to end birthright citizenship, even though it’s enshrined in the US Constitution. The order, which has since been blocked by the courts, has little public support. An NPR/Ipsos poll in February, for example, found that only 31 percent of Americans support ending birthright citizenship. In May, the same poll found that only 28 percent of Americans favored Trump’s executive order. But that hasn’t made Trump stop his crusade against birthright citizenship, and his administration has taken the case up all the way to the Supreme Court.Another area where Trump has shown little, if any, movement despite public outcry is deportations. His administration deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian immigrant and Maryland resident, sending him to the notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador along with other deportees the administration has alleged are gang members. The Trump administration admitted that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was the result of an “administrative error.”A New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 31 percent of Americans approved Trump’s handling of this case, and another poll showed that only 26 percent of Americans believed that Abrego Garcia should remain in El Salvador. Despite that, and the fact that the courts have ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, the president has been unwilling to do so. On X, the White House said that he would be “never coming back.”The same New York Times/Siena poll also found that only 17 percent of Americans support moves to deport legal immigrants for expressing their views about Israel. But the Trump administration has continued its effort to deport green card holders and revoke student visas for those who participated in pro-Palestinian protests.Trump has also shown little interest in how people feel about the more minor issues that seem to be his pet projects. Only a quarter of Americans seemed to like the idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico — but Trump is so fixated on leaving his imprint on that body of water that he has a map labeling it the Gulf of America in the Oval Office. The White House even banned Associated Press reporters from accessing presidential events because their outlet still refers to it as the Gulf of Mexico. Large majorities also oppose Trump’s idea to annex Canada and Greenland, but that hasn’t stopped him from talking about his plans to do so. But Trump is still largely complying with the courts — for nowOn the other hand, there are examples of Trump at least pretending to fall in line with public opinion. Take, for example, Trump’s delicate dance when it comes to how the administration handles court rulings. Defying the judicial branch is a red line for many voters. A Pew poll found that 78 percent of Americans believe that Trump should obey federal courts, and 88 percent believe that Trump should abide by Supreme Court rulings. A New York Times/Siena poll similarly showed that only 6 percent of Americans believe that Trump should ignore Supreme Court rulings. And a Fox News poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe that the president must follow the Supreme Court. Trump has clashed with the courts and even defied some of their orders. But despite all of his complaining about the courts, Trump hasn’t gone so far as to be openly defiant. His administration, for example, still publicly states that it’s complying with the courts even when it’s not, knowing that explicitly rejecting court orders will likely prompt some backlash. And while there have been a few standout cases, as in the case of Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has, for the most part, gone through the court process and abided by the rulings. They paused federal layoffs, for example, restored student visas, and released detained immigrants per court orders. Even as his administration finds ways to slow-walk court orders, Trump has said that he would “never defy” the Supreme Court. “I wouldn’t do that,” he told Time magazine in a recent interview. “I’m a big believer in the Supreme Court, and have a lot of respect for the justices.”Trump sidelines Elon MuskFor months, it seemed like Trump’s championing of Elon Musk was one of the starkest signs that he truly did not care about what his constituents think. The Tesla CEO was tasked with leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has wreaked havoc across agencies in the federal government. DOGE has been responsible for mass layoffs of federal workers and has proposed cuts to all sorts of programs, including Social Security. Musk himself had an outsize presence at the start of the Trump administration — even appearing in TV interviews alongside the president.Musk’s role in the Trump administration was designed to be temporary, with his status as a “special government employee” lasting 130 days. But at the start of Trump’s presidency, White House officials predicted that Musk’s role would be more permanent and that he would last longer than the 130-day limit that his status provides.That, however, doesn’t seem to be the case. Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of Musk. And one of Musk’s most public setbacks came after he campaigned heavily in favor of the Republican in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, only for the Democrat to win by 10 points.Soon after that election, Trump signaled to his Cabinet that they will be seeing less of Musk. According to Politico, “Trump is increasingly mindful of next year’s midterms and making sure he doesn’t jeopardize his House majority. He’s kept a careful eye on the town hall outrage over DOGE, even as Republicans have chalked those scenes up to coordinated liberal stagecraft.” Trump, who made a habit of mentioning Musk’s work earlier on in his administration, has even stopped bringing him up nearly as much in public, something that his fellow Republicans in Congress have also done. Trump walks back tariffsPerhaps the ultimate example of Trump heeding public opinion comes from one of his most chaotic policies. When he came into office, Trump promised to impose taxes on imports from allies and foes alike. And since then, his plan can best be described as on again, off again.On the day he was inaugurated, for example, Trump announced he would impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting on February 1. A Reuters/Ipsos poll at the time showed that a majority of Americans opposed slapping a tax on imports from the United States’ two largest trading partners, with only 37 percent of Americans supporting tariffs on Canada. Just two days after the tariffs went into effect, Trump announced he would implement a 30-day pause, claiming that he was satisfied with his agreement with the two countries over their border policies.A similar story played out when Trump finally announced his broader tariff policy, which imposed import taxes on the vast majority of countries. In the days and weeks that followed, poll after poll showed Americans were unhappy with the policy, with one poll showing that some two-thirds of Americans opposed Trump’s tariffs. Notably, financial markets were also rattled, and stock prices plunged. Trump then scaled back and paused his tariffs, focusing his trade war with China as opposed to the whole world. And eventually, Trump started walking back how aggressive he was willing to be on China as well.What does this all mean?A lot of Americans who oppose Trump might feel helpless during this second term, seeing little reason to protest or express their discontent. But just because Trump is term-limited and doesn’t have to win another election doesn’t mean that public anger won’t influence his administration. One of the fears of a second Trump term was that Trump would be emboldened and even more reckless than he was in his first. But there still seems to be evidence that despite governing in a deeply polarizing and unpopular way, Trump is probably swayed by the polls. That’s not to say that protests would stop the administration from implementing its agenda, but it is to say that if there’s enough discontent, Trump has shown that he might adjust his priorities. And with enough public outcry, Trump, like other presidents, sometimes scales back some of his more controversial policies to make them more palatable. It’s hard to predict just how much hold public opinion has over Trump, or when bad poll numbers might prompt him to reverse course, but he clearly cares about his legacy, what the overall public thinks about his performance as president, and, maybe most importantly, how his party will fare in the midterms next year. Trump would love nothing more than to still have a majority in Congress for the last two years of his presidency. So when it comes to which areas he might be willing to move on in order to cater to the broader electorate, it’s likely going to be issues that have staying power and could haunt the GOP in 2026. That’s likely why he panicked about tariffs and blinked: Not only are they deeply unpopular, but the potential negative consequences on prices and the overall economy might make Republicans less electable, just as historic inflation hurt Democrats’ chances last cycle. Expressing discontent over Trump’s policies also has a ripple effect that goes beyond how Trump might respond to one poll or protest here or there. When Trump first launched his retribution campaign against law firms and his assault on universities, some institutions cowered and bent to his will. But over time, as Trump grew more emboldened while the public grew more wary, some institutions started to fight back. At the end of the day, Trump’s power is derived from the people, and he is not immune to pushing his luck. See More:

weerapat1003 - stock.adobe.com News Capital One pushes out data tokenisation Organisations using the Databricks and Snowflake platforms will be able to use Capital One’s Databolt tool to secure their data By Cliff Saran, Managing Editor Published: 21 May 2025 11:15 The software arm of Capital One has expanded the availability of a tool that enables IT departments to improve their data security using data tokenisation. The business-to-business software division of the financial services company has made its Databolt data tokenisation software available on two major data platforms – Databricks and Snowflake. Capital One describes its implementation of data tokenisation as the process of replacing raw data with a digital representation. In a blog post discussing the benefits of the technology, the company said: “In data security, tokenisation replaces sensitive data with randomised, nonsensitive substitutes, called tokens, that have no traceable relationship back to the original data.” Application areas include using data tokenisation to secure corporate data when training artificial intelligence (AI) models and protecting personally identifiable data, to comply with data protection regulations like General Data Protection Regulation and payment card regulations such as PCI DSS for ecommerce transactions. Tokenisation is seen as an alternative to encryption, but is generally easier to integrate into existing IT systems. It effectively gives cyber security chiefs the ability to remove sensitive data from IT systems, which reduces the impact of data loss due to an IT security breach. It’s a technique used in financial services to protect payment data. Among the benefits, according to Capital One, is that tokenisation preserves the length and format of data. Data tokenisation also maintains database relationships. This means it can be implemented in existing IT systems and applications without breaking how the applications process the data. Analysis from McKinsey suggests that tokenised market capitalisation could reach around $2tn by 2030, driven by tokenisation of financial assets. Tokenisation is also a fundamental part of how large language models work where it is used to convert words and sentences into numerical values that can then be processed. Read more stories about securing data How non-fungible tokens can be used to manage health data: Non-fungible tokens will give patients more ownership and control over their health data and improve its transparency in healthcare research, according to SingHealth clinicians. How to create a data security policy, with template:  When it comes to data security, the devil is in the details. One critical detail organisations shouldn't overlook is a succinct yet detailed data security policy. Capital One said its implementation of data tokenisation through Databolt enables companies to tokenise sensitive data directly within Databricks and Snowflake, making it easier for companies to protect their sensitive data where it resides. According to Capital One, this means IT security leaders can strengthen data security without slowing down innovation. Desikan Madhvanur, senior vice-president, and chief product and technology officer at Capital One Software, said: “Today’s companies are managing data across a vast ecosystem. Integrating Databolt with Databricks and Snowflake is key to helping companies secure their data where it resides so they can confidently build applications and deploy AI models knowing their data is protected.” Databolt provides data tokenisation via the Databricks Unity Catalog. Capital One said the integration allows Databolt customers to define tokenisation policies, ingest Databricks user groups for role-based access control, initiate tokenisation jobs and configure workflows. It’s also available on the Snowflake Marketplace. Here, Databolt uses Snowpark Container Services and the Snowflake Native App Framework to provide native integration with the data platform. According to Capital One, the integration means sensitive data does not need to leave a customer’s Snowflake environment. Capital One said the integration of Databolt on the Snowflake platform allows customers to deploy their tokenisation engine directly in their Snowflake environment, define access for tokenisation based on pre-existing Snowflake roles and access tokenisation functionality through user-defined functions. In The Current Issue: UK critical systems at risk from ‘digital divide’ created by AI threats UK at risk of Russian cyber and physical attacks as Ukraine seeks peace deal Standard Chartered grounds AI ambitions in data governance Download Current Issue Mobile Pixels Glance monitor range – Inspect-a-Gadget RAD RHEL, Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite  – CW Developer Network View All Blogs

Microsoft’s head of security for AI, Neta Haiby, accidentally revealed confidential messages about Walmart’s use of Microsoft’s AI tools during a Build talk that was disrupted by protesters. The Build livestream was muted and the camera pointed down, but the session resumed moments later after the protesters were escorted out. In the aftermath, Haiby then accidentally switched to Microsoft Teams while sharing her screen, revealing confidential internal messages about Walmart’s upcoming use of Microsoft’s Entra and AI gateway services.Haiby was co-hosting a Build session on best security practices for AI, alongside Sarah Bird, Microsoft’s head of responsible AI, when two former Microsoft employees disrupted the talk to protest against the company’s cloud contracts with the Israeli government.“Sarah, you are whitewashing the crimes of Microsoft in Palestine, how dare you talk about responsible AI when Microsoft is fueling the genocide in Palestine,” shouted Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the protest group No Azure for Apartheid, and a former Microsoft employee who was fired for holding a vigil outside Microsoft’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza.Walmart is one of Microsoft’s biggest corporate customers, and already uses the company’s Azure OpenAI service for some of its AI work. “Walmart is ready to rock and roll with Entra Web and AI Gateway,” says one of Microsoft’s cloud solution architects in the Teams messages. The chat session also quoted a Walmart AI engineer, saying: “Microsoft is WAY ahead of Google with AI security. We are excited to go down this path with you.”We asked Microsoft to comment on this protest and the Teams messages, but the company did not respond in time for publication.The private Microsoft Teams messages shown during the disrupted Build session. Image: MicrosoftBoth of the protesters involved in this latest Microsoft Build disruption were former Microsoft employees, with Vaniya Agrawal appearing alongside Nasr. Agrawal interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and CEO Satya Nadella later during the company’s 50th anniversary event last month. Agrawal was dismissed shortly after putting in her two weeks’ notice at Microsoft before the protest, according to an email seen by The Verge.This is the third interruption of Microsoft Build by protesters, after a Palestinian tech worker disrupted Microsoft’s head of CoreAI on Tuesday, and a Microsoft employee interrupted the opening keynote of Build while CEO Satya Nadella was talking on stage.This latest protest comes days after Microsoft announced last week that it had conducted an internal review and used an unnamed external firm to assess how its technology is used in the war in Gaza. Microsoft says that its relationship with Israel’s Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is “structured as a standard commercial relationship” and that it has “found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.”See More:

After over four years of fighting, including in the courts, Epic Games’ Fortnite is back on Apple’s U.S. App Store. Disagreements with Epic and Apple started with when the former wanted to take payments directly from its players, bypassing Apple and its 30% cut on purchases. After years of legal back and forth, a decision earlier this month sided with Epic, which seemed to signal Fortnite’s imminent return on iOS. But Apple didn’t immediately comply, holding up Fortnite’s reinstation and looking to appeal the court’s decision. “Although Apple’s contracts may permit it to reject an app for lawful reasons, the Injunction provides that Apple may no longer reject an app—including Fortnite—because its developer chooses to include an external purchase link,” Epic noted at the time. “Likewise, if the Injunction is to have any teeth, Apple cannot reject an app on the ground that its developer has sought to enforce the Injunction’s prohibitions.” Apple has now budged, and Fortnite is available for download on its store again. The fight between these companies will have major ramifications across the industry, as it opens the door for publishers to work around the cut that digital store owners usually take from purchases. GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

Microsoft’s head of security for AI, Neta Haiby, accidentally revealed confidential messages about Walmart’s use of Microsoft’s AI tools during a Build talk that was disrupted by protesters. The Build livestream was muted and the camera pointed down, but the session resumed moments later after the protesters were escorted out. In the aftermath, Haiby then accidentally switched to Microsoft Teams while sharing her screen, revealing confidential internal messages about Walmart’s upcoming use of Microsoft’s Entra and AI gateway services.Haiby was co-hosting a Build session on best security practices for AI, alongside Sarah Bird, Microsoft’s head of responsible AI, when two former Microsoft employees disrupted the talk to protest against the company’s cloud contracts with the Israeli government.“Sarah, you are whitewashing the crimes of Microsoft in Palestine, how dare you talk about responsible AI when Microsoft is fueling the genocide in Palestine,” shouted Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the protest group No Azure for Apartheid, and a former Microsoft employee who was fired for holding a vigil outside Microsoft’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza.Walmart is one of Microsoft’s biggest corporate customers, and already uses the company’s Azure OpenAI service for some of its AI work. “Walmart is ready to rock and roll with Entra Web and AI Gateway,” says one of Microsoft’s cloud solution architects in the Teams messages. The chat session also quoted a Walmart AI engineer, saying: “Microsoft is WAY ahead of Google with AI security. We are excited to go down this path with you.”We asked Microsoft to comment on this protest and the Teams messages, but the company did not respond in time for publication.The private Microsoft Teams messages shown during the disrupted Build session. Image: MicrosoftBoth of the protesters involved in this latest Microsoft Build disruption were former Microsoft employees, with Vaniya Agrawal appearing alongside Nasr. Agrawal interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and CEO Satya Nadella later during the company’s 50th anniversary event last month. Agrawal was dismissed shortly after putting in her two weeks’ notice at Microsoft before the protest, according to an email seen by The Verge.This is the third interruption of Microsoft Build by protesters, after a Palestinian tech worker disrupted Microsoft’s head of CoreAI on Tuesday, and a Microsoft employee interrupted the opening keynote of Build while CEO Satya Nadella was talking on stage.This latest protest comes days after Microsoft announced last week that it had conducted an internal review and used an unnamed external firm to assess how its technology is used in the war in Gaza. Microsoft says that its relationship with Israel’s Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is “structured as a standard commercial relationship” and that it has “found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.”See More:

Macworld Just when you think Apple’s long-running dispute with Epic Games is finally over, someone manages to find a way to spin it out even longer. There’s always time for one more lawsuit, one more appeal, one more acrimonious tweet. And if two multibillion-dollar corporations can’t find a way to resolve their differences amicably, what hope have the rest of us? At the end of April, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued what felt at the time like a conclusively unambiguous ruling demanding that Apple comply instantly with previous measures and adding more on top. The company, it was made plain, will not merely have to allow other payment systems within iOS apps, but refrain from sabotaging them with satirically high fees and off-putting verbiage. That should have been that, but Cupertino is still feeling punchy. Epic thought, not unreasonably, that its Fortnite game would now be allowed back on the App Store, having originally been kicked off for the practices which Apple has just been told it must allow. But life is full of surprises. “Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission,” Epic tweeted on May 16, “so we cannot release to the U.S. App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union.” But here’s the kicker: Epic promptly decided to retaliate by taking the game dark on iOS worldwide, including versions delivered through Epic’s own store. That might sound like cutting off your nose to spite your face, but this will hurt Apple too. And users. In fact barely anyone will have a nose by the time this is over. On the face of it, it makes little sense to prevent Fortnite from returning to iOS. It’s an immensely popular game with hundreds of millions of players across a wide range of platforms, and being able to play it on iPhone makes the iPhone a more appealing device. Even if Apple made zero revenue from sales and in-app purchases, it would still be worth having the title on iOS purely for the sake of user happiness. Conversely, refusing to allow it generates masses of bad PR and resentment, which is poison to a company that depends so much on its image. In this particular case, that zero-revenue idea isn’t entirely inconceivable, because Epic is a big enough company with a reputable enough storefront that it could (assuming the judge’s ruling isn’t watered down on appeal) cut Apple entirely out of the transactional loop. But most games developers don’t have that luxury. They will, at the very least, offer their own and Apple’s payment systems side by side, and I’m convinced that most users would vastly, vastly prefer to buy through the official App Store. Ask yourself this: How easy is it to find jailbreaking instructions online? And yet, how many (or how few) people do you know who actually jailbreak their iPhones? While following this saga, it’s occurred to me that I don’t actually want to buy iOS apps from alternative stores. I just want that to be an option because competition is healthy and would encourage Apple to lower fees and generally treat developers better. Having a bunch of different places to go whenever I want to buy something new or update what I’ve got is a dismaying prospect; I don’t want to enter my payment details in a dozen different websites and constantly worry about whether they can be trusted. But other people might. The App Store itself is one of Apple’s all-time great products, delivering such a reassuring, frictionless one-stop-shop experience that software became for the first time an impulse buy. It won’t lose its magic just because there’s another option. I get why Apple tried to maintain its control of iOS app installs and purchases; it has shareholders to think about and can’t just wave away swathes of revenue without pushback. But the vigor and uncompromising fierceness with which the company has defended that revenue stream has been alarming, to say the least, and may prove costly too. At multiple points in the saga Apple could have yielded a little and reached a compromise acceptable to all parties: allowed sideloading under strict limits; allowed third-party payment systems with a moderate instead of laughably high revenue cut. Instead it pushed and fought and, as the judge put it, “willfully chose not to comply.” And now it appears to be pursuing petty revenge which will hurt itself just as much as the opposition, for no clear rational reason. Saying that someone never knows when they’re beaten sounds like a compliment (“People should know when they’re conquered.” “Would you, Quintus? Would I?”) but often it just means suffering more than you need to for a lost cause. Apple lost this war, and choice was the winner. Now it needs to accept the result and get on with making that outcome work for its users… who are, after all, supposed to be the priority. Foundry Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too. Trending: Top stories Apple is doomed because Apple isn’t doomed. Mahmoud Itani reveals 10 hidden Apple Watch features you’ve probably never used–but should. If the iPhone 17 Air is anything like the Galaxy S25 Edge, I don’t want it. The first thing Jason Cross installs on every new Mac is this little free emoji utility. If iPadOS 19 is going to be more like the Mac, it needs these 9 features stat. Podcast of the week When WWDC rolls around in June, it’ll be two years since Apple announced visionOS and the Apple Vision Pro. In episode 934 of the Macworld Podcast, we examine the state of Apple’s spatial computing platform and what Apple could have in store at WWDC and beyond. You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site. Reviews corner iPad Air (M3) review: Only slightly better, but still the best. Verbatim TurboMetal SSD review: Stylish portable drive. PowerPhotos 3 review: Time-saving Apple Photos tool for power users on the Mac. EcoFlow Power Hat review: A sun hat with solar panels. The rumor mill Apple is reportedly working on the hybrid Mac we all want–and it could arrive in 2028. Folding and curved iPhones are both predicted in 2027 ‘product blitz.’ In fact the iPhone 18’s edgeless curved display seems like a certainty now. iOS 19 will reportedly use AI to extend the iPhone’s battery life. Software updates, bugs, and problems A bizarre iPhone bug is causing some audio messages to fail. Here’s why. iOS 18.5 may be a minor update, but it has one major iPhone upgrade. Apple’s months-old C1 modem has a serious security flaw. And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

After being unceremoniously booted off Apple’s App Store in 2020, Epic Games’ Fortnite is finally back. Take note, though — it’ll only show up on iPhones and iPads for searches made within the U.S., at least for now.  Recommended Videos The return of Fortnite marks the end of a nearly five-year ban caused by Epic Games’ implementation of a direct payment system that bypassed Apple’s in-app purchase fees, an act that violated the tech giant’s App Store rules. In a message posted on X on Tuesday, Epic Games’ founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said: “Thanks to everyone who supported the effort to open up mobile competition and #FreeFortnite from the very beginning.” Sweeney added: “And thanks to all of the folks who initially sided with Apple then later came around to the winning side, supporting app developer rights and consumer rights.” Epic Games has been battling away in the courts to get the popular title back on the App Store. It scored a big win at the end of last month when a U.S. court ruling forced Apple to allow apps to include external payment links without charging commissions on those transactions.  After Epic Games recently submitted Fortnite for inclusion in the U.S. App Store, Apple has finally approved it, though not before some additional legal issues and delays just last week. If you search for Fortnite on the App Store outside of the U.S., however, it still won’t show up as Apple continues to fight in other regions. But in the European Union, for example, the game continues to be accessible via alternative platforms such as the Epic Games Store and AltStore. Fortnite was allowed back on the U.S. App Store after the recent court ruling found that Apple had violated a previous injunction in 2021 by continuing to restrict competition and prohibit alternative payment methods in its App Store. The judge ordered Apple to comply with the earlier order, forcing it to allow Fortnite’s return and to permit external payment links in apps. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers made several scathing comments about Apple in her ruling last month, criticizing the tech behemoth for deliberately undermining her 2021 injunction, saying that Apple aimed to “sustain a revenue stream worth billions in blatant violation of this court’s injunction.” She even went so far as to refer an Apple executive to federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation into their conduct in the case. The Fortnite saga was essentially a landmark battle over digital marketplace power, one that shone a light on the struggle between app developers and platform owners like Apple in areas of control, competition, and the right to offer alternative payment options outside walled-garden ecosystems.

Epic’s super-popular free-to-play battle royale game, Fortnite, is finally available to download and play on the iOS App Store in the United States after being removed from it in 2020. This return to the store follows recent pressure from a federal judge urging Apple to allow Fortnite back on its digital marketplace. Suggested ReadingKotaku Goes Hands-On At The Apple Developer Showcase Share SubtitlesOffEnglishview videoSuggested ReadingKotaku Goes Hands-On At The Apple Developer Showcase Share SubtitlesOffEnglishEarlier this month, federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers—who has been involved with this court battle since the start—ruled that Apple can no longer take a cut from purchases made outside of apps and blocked the tech giant from restricting how developers can point people to third-party payment options. The judge also ruled that Apple must immediately stop blocking or hindering devs from including third-party payment options. This led to Epic announcing that, now that it could freely include its own payment system, it would return Fortnite to the App Store in the United States. But Apple, which is appealing the ruling, wouldn’t provide approval for Fortnite to return as part of its standard app approval process. This move prompted Epic to request that the court step in. On Monday, Judge Rogers issued an order warning Apple that if it didn’t comply with the court’s demands, it could wind up back in court needing to explain itself. “Apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing,” said the judge. “However, if the parties do not file a joint notice that this issue is resolved, and this Court’s intervention is required, the Apple official who is personally responsible for ensuring compliance shall personally appear at the hearing hereby set for Tuesday, May 27, 2025.”Seems like, for now at least, Apple has decided to avoid another legal fight in court, and Fortnite is now back on the App Store after 1,741 days. “We back fam,” posted Epic CEO Tim Sweeney shortly after the game went live on the App Store. Of course, Apple is appealing the judge’s orders as it fights to control its App Store and take a cut of every transaction made in official apps on iOS devices. Apple has the resources to continue fighting in court, and I expect that this isn’t the end of this legal war between Epic and Apple that started nearly five years ago when Epic decided to sidestep Apple’s policy of taking a cut of every in-app transaction. That move led to Fortnite being removed from the App Store and the subsequent years of court battles. For now though, players can log into Fortnite on their iPhones and iPads once more.

SSRN Meet the Author: Robert Bird Robert Bird is a professor of business law and the Eversource Energy Chair in Business Ethicsat the University of Connecticut. He conducts research in legal strategy, business ethics, compliance, employment law, and related fields. Bird has authored over eighty academic publications, including articles in the American Business Law Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, Law and Society Review, Boston University Law Review, Boston College Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Robert has received sixteen research-related awards – including the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) best international paper award, distinguished proceedings award, and the Holmes-Cardozo best overall conference paper award – and various teaching-related awards, such as the outstanding article of the year award two years in a row from the Journal of Legal Studies Education, and the student-selected Alpha Kappa Psi Teacher of the Year award. Robert is also a manuscript reviewer for several journals and is a past president of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business, the international academic organization for professors of law in schools of business. He spoke with SSRN about the importance of legal education within business schools and how legal knowledge provides value to organizations, both for their bottom line and for creating businesses for good. Q: Your main research and teaching focus has surrounded the intersection of business and law. What is it about the relationship between these two that led you to explore it further? A: As an undergraduate management information systems major at Fairfield University, I became interested in how legal issues impacted the development of new technologies. I remember writing a paper in the early 1990s on the legal and ethical implications of expert systems, a predecessor to today’s artificial intelligence. When I began my dual JD/MBA degree at Boston University, I found both fields fascinating. Business rewards people who have effective problem-solving skills, strong communication skills, and the ability to lead. Legal studies emphasize thinking on your feet, clear and persuasive legal writing, and an enduring sense of justice and fairness. Law school helped me to connect disparate ideas in a novel and creative way. Business school helped me solve complex problems and connect thought to action. The disciplines, at least to me, seemed to naturally work together, and I found it irresistible to explore more deeply. I do not teach in a law school. I’m a lawyer in a business school. For years I felt like a cat in a dog show. The disciplines think in a fundamentally different manner. Traditionally, business faculty research as social scientists, while law faculty emphasize the humanist side of knowledge. Business faculty are skilled at statistical analysis and modeling, while law faculty are adept with abstract ideas and interpretation of textual knowledge. This has its challenges and its opportunities. In a law school, I doubt any professor questions the importance of law in business. In a business school, I initially had to address fundamental questions: “Why do our business students need to know the law? Can’t they just call a lawyer?” Having to respond to these kinds of questions has made me a better teacher and scholar. Initially, my standard answer was that “lawyers are important because they keep our students out of trouble, and they prevent companies from being investigated by regulators that result in costly penalties.” No less important, however, is that lawyers can’t be present for every decision a manager makes, and some bad business decisions result in irreversible liability. Businesspeople need to know how the law works in order to minimize their legal risks. Today, I very much value my business school affiliation. Legal knowledge can also be used as a source of strategic value for the company. If business people see law as a domain that is just as value-creating as finance and marketing and operations, they will take the law more seriously. They will increase their respect for the rule of law. As a result, you’ll have a company that is inherently primed to act with integrity, follow ethical values, and be socially responsible. That is valuable because what is unethical today is often illegal tomorrow. I think studying business is interesting because company operations are intertwined with some of the most important issues in society. Companies are making money, but they’re also impacting the societies in which they sell products. Law focuses on justice, equity and fairness, and I was interested in how companies can not only add value to their bottom line but also help build a better world: business that respects human rights, business that aspires to ethical and sustainable goals. Business schools that know the importance of legal knowledge will give their students a legal education, and those students are more likely to graduate as moral agents for change. Q: In your new book, “Legal Knowledge in Organizations,” [which was released in March 2025,] you discuss how legal knowledge can greatly benefit firms by providing them with a distinct competitive advantage. In doing so, you lay out five pathways that firms use to pursue legal strategies. So now going back a ways, in your paper “Pathways of Legal Strategy,” which was included in the Stanford Journal of Law, Business, and Finance in 2008 and was later posted on SSRN, you talk similarly about five pathways. How have you developed the concept of these pathways over time, leading now to your recent book? A: I have been interested in how legal knowledge can be a source of value since 2001, when I just started full-time teaching. I still have an inexplicably pink sheet of paper upon which I scribbled the date and title “Ideas for Managerial Law for Strategic Advantage.” Because legal knowledge is so important in the organization, I was interested in how legal knowledge is used by companies, how it can be a source of value for companies, and how legal experts within organizations can deploy legal knowledge. So much of what is written about law in business relates to litigation and conflict. I wanted to learn more about how legal and business experts can work together successfully. Those ideas scribbled on that sheet of paper later became the foundation for my recently published book. However, twenty years ago there was limited research on how to use legal knowledge as a source of value for organizations. I looked at a number of companies and how they behaved, and I noticed that there were five different pathways – or patterns – that companies seemed to follow. There’s an avoidance pathway, where the companies ignore legal rules and circumvent enforcement. A firm following the conformance pathway perceives law as little more than a box to be checked, after which you move on to the more important aspects of business. In the prevention pathway, firms will take business steps to avoid legal problems, such as implementing business policies that prevent legal liability from appearing in the first place. This is where most companies believe their best practices are, with legal and compliance experts. However, there are two additional pathways: the value pathway perceives law as a source of competitive advantage and shows how legal knowledge can help you open up new markets, manage legal risk more efficiently and have more resources than your competitors do. Then finally, the transformative pathway uses legal knowledge to fundamentally change how the organization works. That means building a culture of integrity in the organization, enduring respect for legal rules, and supporting a close partnership between legal experts and businesspeople that generates a long-term competitive advantage that rivals cannot easily match. These pathways are explored in more detail in my book. The book also highlights how legal knowledge helps managers better understand and manage legal risk in a dynamic fashion. This can result in a first mover advantage in a new market. Companies can use the law to capture value in a way their rivals haven’t, and sustain that advantage, because they’re more versed in how the laws work than their competitors. I have applied these pathways of legal strategy to business challenges ranging from whistleblower laws to cannabis regulation. There’s a rich volume of information in this book. I also focus on legal risk management, and I apply an acronym called VUCA, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Each of those four risk management techniques presents a distinct risk but also a distinct opportunity that can help companies assess risk, effectively avoid legal liability, and generate value through a well-coordinated response. The VUCA method perceives legal risk in a novel way, enabling firms to manage legal risk better than their rivals. Q: Of the five pathways you just discussed, the fifth, transformation, can bring significant benefits, but it is one that you’ve said few companies can successfully achieve, as it requires the company to rethink the way the entire organization works. What are some of the barriers that might prevent well-meaning companies from following the transformation pathway? A: The transformation pathway requires a fundamental change in the culture of the organization that fully embraces the value of legal knowledge as a strategic asset. However, there are two primary barriers that prevent this from happening. One barrier is that lawyers will sometimes be too risk averse and will focus on the technical nature of law rather than integrating their decisions into the strategy of the firm. The other barrier is that managers do not receive sufficient legal education to appreciate the importance of law or productively communicate with their legal team. If a manager does not know what the law is or how the law works, the manager can’t ask questions of their legal counsel such as, “Can you build me a legal strategy? Can you work with me as a strategic partner?” One of my key missions is to highlight the critical importance of legal education in business schools. At schools like the University of Connecticut, we are committed to that legal education. Every student that earns an undergraduate degree or an MBA receives at least one course in business law and ethics. These students understand what law is, how law works, and why it’s important to companies. Some business schools don’t require legal knowledge to get an MBA. Their students graduate with their business degree, and even though they have this elite pedigree, they don’t understand the law. They have not learned how to read a contract, legally hire and fire an employee, avoid insider trading, deal with regulators, negotiate with counter parties, protect the environment, and a variety of other legal issues that companies face every day. No business school should bestow a business degree on a student whose entire legal knowledge comes from watching reruns of Law & Order. Law is a critical part of business education. If they don’t get legal education, they’re not going to think of their lawyers as anything more than litigators. Lawyers can be so much more valuable than that: they can be strategic partners, they can be thought leaders, they can help change the culture of the organization to one that’s committed to integrity, which is not only good for society, but improves the bottom line. Legal knowledge is the last great untapped source of competitive advantage in organizations. My recently published book helps unlock that value for anyone who wants to read it. Q: What aspects of the book do you think are especially timely now? A: Right now, regulations are more complex, more comprehensive, and more punitive than at any other time in business history. Changes in presidential administrations, and radical shifts in how legal rules are enforced, do not create a steady state for companies. All that does is create turbulence for firms and increase their cost of operations. Companies can’t take efficient risks, and they can’t optimally plan for the future. Managers need legal knowledge now more than ever in order to handle the legal standards that are in a state of almost constant change. In addition, law is critical for the global economy. Today, respect for the rule of law and the adherence to following the rule of law is being challenged in a way that it hasn’t in decades. Companies need the rule of law to survive. Unwise firms see the rule of law as just another burden or obligation or another box that needs to be checked. In fact, legal mandates establish the rules of global markets. Legal rules provide certainty in terms of their regulatory obligations, especially when they’re well written. Legal knowledge also helps companies understand how to manage their workforce and how to protect the environment. Q: You’ve said in previous discussions, regarding why rules and regulations are so complex, that “words are finite and imprecise tools that are trying to govern and account for an infinite number of situations.” How would you suggest laws be structured in order to be succinct while still managing to capture an array of scenarios and account for possible loopholes? Where is that balance? A: Legal regulation needs to be as simple as it needs to be, and no simpler. What does that mean? That means there are a bunch of ways to make laws functional and effective. First is that legislators need to be careful to draft rules that do not have deliberate opacity. The more specificity you can provide, the more guidance you have for firms. That said, if there is too much specificity, where firms lack the flexibility to respond to mandates, then the law becomes convoluted. Complex laws aren’t necessarily bad. Sometimes laws have to be complex to meet their goals. Convoluted laws, however, are unnecessarily complex, and that’s the kind of law that drafters need to avoid. This may sound counterintuitive, but Americans enjoy the significant freedom where there is strong, consistent, and well-written regulation. For example, almost every city and town in the U.S. has traffic lights. Laws that require people to listen to traffic lights restrict freedom because they stop you from getting where you need to go, while others can cross the road. But if everyone just ignored traffic lights, there would be more traffic jams, accidents, and even deaths. Getting from one place to another would be much harder. Delivering goods and services would be more difficult. So, while traffic lights restrict freedom on one level, they actually increase the freedom of people overall to get where they need to go safely and quickly. The same goes for markets. Without strong and well-written regulation, you create chaos. Law is an accelerant for commercial transactions. Laws help prevent corruption in markets. Laws enable companies to make and enforce contracts. Laws protect intellectual property rights. Laws enable free and fair global trade. Laws keep the peace so that business can flourish. You want strong business; you need strong legal rules. You want an efficient market; you need efficient regulation. Law and business go hand-in-hand to make a functioning society and global market thrive. Q: You have many papers on SSRN, which have been frequently downloaded over the past twenty-plus years. Are there any in particular that you’d like to highlight? A: I am currently studying the harmful impact that corporate tax avoidance has on society, and how tax avoidance can be more effectively prevented. I have an article talking about the moral economy against tax avoidance. A moral economy in this context is a network of beliefs that society has about certain economic practices. These beliefs arise from collectively held notions of fairness and equitable opportunity. When a wealthy taxpayer uses aggressive tax avoidance to squeeze through loopholes of legal rules and avoid paying taxes, that hurts everyone in society. A moral economy against tax avoidance would empower individuals in society to condemn the practice, thereby discouraging all but the most aggressive avoiders from circumventing their obligations to contribute to the public good. I have also co-authored an article on an organization-centered approach to whistleblowing law. Most scholars study whistleblowing law from a legal perspective and how it applies to the organization. This article focuses on how organizations can engage in self-regulation in order to better manage whistleblowing risks. Whistleblowers may be perceived as just another cost of doing business, but whistleblowing laws can be a source of competitive advantage. Applying the five pathways of legal strategy researched earlier, this article shows how companies can leverage employees who are potential whistleblowers into valuable allies that create value for the organization. Q: In addition to business law, you also have an interest in business ethics. What are the essential principles that companies must know in order to be ethical? A: There are four principles of values-driven management that every organization should fully embrace. These four principles serve as four legs of a platform of responsible business practice. The first principle is business ethics, the internal values of the firm. Business ethics focuses on the individual decision-making in the organization that shapes how the organization functions on a day-to-day basis. Strong ethical principles can be the basis of a culture of integrity. By a culture of integrity, I mean ethical values that are so strong that employees comply with those values because they believe in them and not because they have to be asked to do so. The absence of ethical principles leaves companies morally adrift and prone to mistakes that can hurt the company’s reputation or trigger legal liability. The second principle is corporate social responsibility, which focuses on a company’s obligation to its stakeholders. These include shareholders, employees, neighbors, community, society, regulators, suppliers, creditors, the environment, and others. The third principle is sustainability. Sustainability focuses on management of collective resources over time. What responsibility do organizations have not just today, but also next year, 20 years, and 50 years from now? How do we sustain an environment that will be preserved for our grandchildren and our great grandchildren? The fourth principle is business and human rights. This focuses on inalienable rights that all persons have regardless of wealth or nationality. All people have a right to life, a right to education, a right to a fair wage, and a right to be able to raise a family in a safe environment, free from war and conflict. These rights are so strong they override the economic interests of corporations. Human rights are the vanguard of these values-driven principles. Finally, my colleagues and I have developed a new program at UConn, a Master’s in Social Responsibility & Impact in Business. The program trains students not only in business principles, but also in how companies can be a source of good for society. They can also be agents for cultural change, promoting sustainability and human rights, and advancing goals of business ethics. We’re training both change makers and change accelerators in organizations. We can show them not only that acting responsibly is good for society, but also that it’s good for business in the long term. An ethical company is a profitable company. A sustainable company is a profitable company. That’s something that we are showing our students now. Q: How do you think SSRN fits into the broader research and scholarship landscape? A: I joined SSRN over 20 years ago, and it has been my go-to mechanism to distribute scholarship to the wider academic community. Virtually every manuscript that I’ve drafted goes on SSRN before it gets submitted to publication. I find it to be a key vector for disseminating my research before it eventually gets published. SSRN is a living embodiment of tomorrow’s research today. Instead of waiting potentially years to be formally published, through SSRN my working paper is shared with a wide audience in a short time. I’m just a few quick clicks away from sharing my work with interested colleagues who will be able to easily find it. I don’t have to wait until publication. When you’re on SSRN, you’re in an ecosystem where people are looking for current knowledge, and if they find your work, they’re going to cite it before it gets to publication. SSRN also brings research to me. The eJournals are one of the primary ways that I learn about research that’s not within my immediate network. SSRN is also excellent for accessing international scholarship. There are scholars in other countries that I may never hear about except for on SSRN. SSRN is a gateway to world scholarship. You can see more work by Robert Bird on his SSRN Author page here

Three prominent U.S. senators warned Paramount Global and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone that they might be breaking a federal anti-bribery law if they agree to settle President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS over a “60 Minutes” segment. In a letter addressed to Redstone that was posted publicly, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) cited reports that Paramount has been in settlement talks with Trump’s lawyers in the case. The Trump suit, which seeks at least $20 billion in damages, alleges CBS’s “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris and thereby violated a Texas consumer protection law. Paramount and CBS have argued that they did nothing wrong; in a motion to dismiss Trump’s suit Paramount called the legal action “an affront to the First Amendment” that is “without basis in law or fact.” CBS News has maintained that the “60 Minutes” broadcast and promotion of the Harris interview was “not doctored or deceitful.” Related Stories Now, the senators wrote in the letter dated May 19, “Paramount appears to be walking back its commitments to defend CBS’s First Amendment rights.” They said they were writing “to express serious concern regarding the possibility that media company Paramount Global (Paramount) may be engaging in improper conduct involving the Trump Administration in exchange for approval of its megamerger with Skydance Media” — and the senators suggested any monetary settlement in the case could be illegal. Popular on Variety “Under the federal bribery statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the senators wrote. “If Paramount officials make these concessions in a quid pro quo arrangement to influence President Trump or other Administration officials, they may be breaking the law.” A copy of the letter is at this link. Warren and Sanders were among nine senators who urged Redstone in a May 6 open letter to not settle the lawsuit, calling it “an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment.” A spokesperson for Paramount declined to comment but referred to the company’s previous statement saying: “This lawsuit is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process. We will abide by the legal process to defend our case.” A rep for Redstone declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. SEE ALSO: Shari Redstone’s Impossible Choice: She Can’t Save Both ‘60 Minutes’ and Paramount Global The $8 billion Paramount-Skydance deal is currently pending FCC approval. Earlier this month, Trump-appointed FCC chairman Brendan Carr said the approval of Paramount-Skydance is not connected to the president’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit. Last November, he said in a Fox News interview that a conservative group’s “news distortion” complaint against CBS over the “60 Minutes” Harris interview was “likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of [the Paramount-Skydance] transaction.” One issue Paramount and the FCC reportedly are in discussions about: securing a commitment from Paramount and Skydance to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as part of the Trump administration’s attack on DEI. In February, Paramount said it was changing some of its DEI programs to comply with the Trump administration’s directives. But Carr may be seeking a more ironclad guarantee. The FCC last week approved Verizon’s $20 billion deal to acquire Frontier Communications after Verizon pledged to eradicate DEI initiatives. On Monday, CBS News president Wendy McMahon announced her resignation, writing in a memo to staff “It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.” That came less than a month after “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens quit, also citing conflicts with Paramount execs. Warren, Sanders and Wyden drew a connection between the exits of McMahon and Owens and the Trump lawsuit: “Paramount’s scheme to curry favor with the Trump Administration has compromised journalistic independence and raises serious concerns of corruption and improper conduct,” they wrote. In the letter to Redstone, the senators requested answers to specific questions regarding the situation by June 2, including “Does Paramount believe the lawsuit filed by then-candidate Trump against CBS has merit?”, “Has Paramount evaluated the risk of shareholder derivative litigation from settling the lawsuit?”; and “Has 60 Minutes made changes to its content at the request of anyone at Paramount to facilitate approval of the merger?” The three senators also asked pointedly: “Does Paramount have any policies and procedures related to compliance with 18 U.S.C. 201 and any other laws governing public corruption? If so, please provide a copy of those policies and procedures.” In February, Redstone asked Paramount’s board to resolve the Trump lawsuit, including by exploring the possibility of mediation, Variety has reported. Redstone has recused herself from the board’s discussions about a settlement with Trump.  Trump, on his Truth Social social media account last month, said his lawsuit against CBS was “a true WINNER” and falsely claimed that Paramount, CBS and “60 Minutes” admitted to committing “this crime” of deceptively editing Harris’ answer. Trump alleged “60 Minutes” edited the interview to eliminate her “bad and incompetent” response to a question about whether Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “listening to the Biden-Harris administration.” Trump asserted the version of the “60 Minutes” interview that aired “cheated and defrauded the American People at levels never seen before in the Political Arena.” The senators’ letter to Redstone was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.