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Different generations of tennis fans may disagree on its name – to traditionalists it will always be Henman Hill, millennials probably plump for Murray Mound and gen Z may know it as Raducanu Rise or even, regrettably, Jack’s Stack – but all ages can agree that bringing a little shelter to Wimbledon’s most famous viewing area can only be a good thing.Wimbledon’s Hill – which since 1997 has allowed tennis fans with a grounds pass to watch the action on No 1 Court live atop its grassy knoll – is getting a makeover, the All England Lawn and Tennis Club (AELTC) has announced.A multimillion-pound development, due to be finished in time for the 2027 championships, will boost the Hill’s capacity by 20% and improve accessibility for wheelchair users. Plans include a new pergola – and there is little Wimbledon likes more than a pergola – which will provide a space for more hanging plants to provide shade and protection from British summer rain.The pergola, which will replace the structure at the top of the Hill, will wrap around the area’s 150-year-old oak tree while the AELTC hopes to make the area more environmentally sustainable by replacing tarmac paths with permeable resin. New accessible pathways to cross the slope aim to make the Hill easier to navigate for wheelchair users.View image in fullscreen“The redevelopment of our world-famous Hill, in time for the championships 2027, will allow even more tennis fans to enjoy its unique atmosphere and vantage point,” said Deborah Jevans, the AELTC chair.“I am particularly pleased that these plans will increase the accessibility of the Hill for our guests using wheelchairs or who have additional accessibility requirements. It is an exciting opportunity as we look towards 2027 and the 150th anniversary of the first championships.”A consultation for local residents to learn more about the plans and give feedback is planned on 10 April before a planning application is submitted to Merton council.The AELTC will hope it is a smoother process than it experienced with its plan to vastly expand its grand slam venue, which aims to add 39 courts and an 8,000-seat show court, and to restore a lake designed by Capability Brown.In January a campaign group, Save Wimbledon Park, started legal action to stop the expansion of the club, calling for a judicial review of plans to convert a swathe of the former Wimbledon Park golf course.The protest group says the development of the 29-hectare (72-acre) site – which was given planning permission in September by the mayor of London’s office – is “inappropriate”.Work on the new-look Hill will start after the 2026 championships, and is expected to be unveiled – presumably with Pimm’s to toast the occasion – for the 150th anniversary of the tournament in 2027.Ruth Hopkins, general manager and head of access at the charity Level Playing Field, said: “I am delighted that Level Playing Field has played an important role in working with the AELTC to enhance their world-famous hill to be an inclusive and accessible space for everyone attending Wimbledon.“These plans will deliver significant improvements for all guests but particularly for those with accessibility requirements.”

Meta faces a $2.4bn (£1.8bn) lawsuit accusing the Facebook owner of inflaming violence in Ethiopia after the Kenyan high court said a legal case against the US tech group could go ahead.The case brought by two Ethiopian nationals calls on Facebook to alter its algorithm to stop promoting hateful material and incitement to violence, as well as hiring more content moderators in Africa. It is also seeking a $2.4bn “restitution fund” for victims of hate and violence incited on Facebook.One of the claimants is the son of Prof Meareg Amare Abrha, who was murdered at his home in Ethiopia after his address and threatening posts were published on Facebook in 2021 during a civil war in the country. Another claimant is Fisseha Tekle, a former researcher at Amnesty International who published reports on violence committed during the conflict in Tigray in northern Ethiopia and received death threats on Facebook.Meta has argued that courts in Kenya, where Facebook’s Ethiopia moderators were based at the time, did not have jurisdiction over the case. The Kenyan high court in Nairobi ruled on Thursday that the case fell within the jurisdiction of the country’s courts.Abrham Meareg, the son of Meareg, said: “I am grateful for the court’s decision today. It is disgraceful that Meta would argue that they should not be subject to the rule of law in Kenya. African lives matter.”Tekle said he cannot return home to Ethiopia because of Meta’s failure to make Facebook safe. “Meta cannot undo the damage it has done, but it can radically change how it moderates dangerous content across all its platforms to make sure no one else has to go through what I have,” he said. “I look forward to this matter now being heard by the court in full.”The case, supported by non-profit organisations including Foxglove and Amnesty International, also demands a formal apology from Meta for the murder of Meareg. The Katiba Institute, a Kenya-based NGO focusing on the Kenyan constitution, is the third claimant in the case.In 2022 an analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Observer found that Facebook was letting users post content inciting violence through hate and misinformation, despite being aware that it was fuelling tensions in Tigray.Meta rejected the claims at the time, saying it had “invested in safety and security measures” to tackle hate and inflammatory language along with “aggressive steps to stop the spread of misinformation” in Ethiopia.In January the company said it was removing factcheckers and “dramatically” reducing the amount of censorship on the platform, although it would continue to tackle illegal and high severity violations.Meta said it did not comment on ongoing legal matters.

So much for the idea that “liberation day” would free financial markets from their fear of the unknown. Publication of precise tariff rates, went a cheerful line of advance thinking, would at least allow investors to assess the probable trade effects on the basis of hard information. True optimists clung to the idea that Donald Trump would not wish to risk a truly severe market reaction.That narrative was blown apart when the president reached for his pub-style display of wares. This really was a case of going back to the tariffs rates of the 1920s or 1930s. Not even the penguins of Heard Island and the McDonald Islands were spared.The S&P 500 index fell 4% in early trading and is down more than 10% from its high six weeks ago. The dollar fell sharply even though traditional logic says tariffs ought to be currency-positive if $600bn (£457.5bn) of extra revenue is on cards. On this occasion, the market simply adjusted to the higher likelihood of a US recession from higher prices and slower growth.Instead of clarity, there are just more questions. The first is a common one with Trump announcements: how much is designed to be permanent and how much is theatre to provoke a negotiation?On that score, analysts noted the simplistic – or plain perverse – formula behind the administration’s tariff arithmetic. It seems to have taken a country’s trade deficit in goods with US, divided it by its exports to the US and called the resulting number a trade barrier that deserves a “reciprocal” US tariff. The underlying logic, it would appear, is that every country should always have a perfect trade balance with the US – never mind the impossibility of achieving that outcome, and never mind that the tariffs don’t affect trade in services.“We worry this risks lowering the policy credibility of the administration on a forward-looking basis,” said George Saravelos of Deutsche Bank. “The market may question the extent to which a sufficiently structured planning process for major economic decisions is taking place. After all, this is the biggest trade policy shift from the US in a century.”At a push, one could argue that such an unserious methodology is intended to encourage negotiations. The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, tried to hint along those lines: “As long as you don’t retaliate, this is the high end of the number.”Yet the opposite conclusion is also valid: it is hard to negotiate with a US partner that, seemingly, isn’t interested in nuances, won’t distinguish between tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade and is simply obsessed with a country’s overall trade balance in goods.That leads to the second question of retaliation, especially from the EU and China. The latter took a February tariff skirmish on the chin but surely can’t afford to ignore a 34% reciprocal tariff that takes its total to 54%.Option A for China is probably a currency devaluation to restore competitiveness (but risking even higher tariffs from the US). Option B would be retaliatory tariffs. Option C would be the longer haul of trying to stir domestic demand. A combination of all three might be the outcome, but all promise further disruption.For the EU, all eyes are on how hard it goes with counter-tariffs to a blanket 20%. The bluntness of Trump’s move almost guarantees a response if only to demonstrate strength before an eventual negotiation. A quick resolution is not the way to bet.The third question is the biggest: what will Trump do when, as virtually every economist predicts, the tariffs backfire? Snap estimates among economists suggested they would take as much as 2 percentage points off US growth this year and add 3 percentage points to inflation. How much pain is Trump prepared to take in pursuit of his signature policy?The view from bond specialist Pimco is that we should be wary. “He is certainly not entirely impervious to a market decline, nor is he unaffected by public sentiment, significant congressional pushback or concerns about a recession,” says Libby Cantrill, its head of US public policy.“So, there is likely a limit to how much pain he and his administration are willing to endure in order to rebalance the economy, but when that is or what that looks like remains to be seen. For now, we should assume that his pain tolerance is pretty high and that tariffs stick around for a while.”That seems a reasonable assumption. Within the internal logic of his trade policy, Trump needs to serve up a tax cut for US workers to parade the “winnings” from his approach; only then could he dial down the tariffs. We are a very long way from that point – if it ever arrives. The political test will come if recession arrives first.

Donald Trump is on a mission to ‘make America wealthy again’. Speaking outside the White House, he said for too long the country had been ‘looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike’. Now that would come to an end, he said, as he slapped eye-watering tariffs on countries around the world.The Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, Richard Partington, explains why Trump has taken such action and how it could affect the global economy. ‘It could come at huge costs to consumers,’ he says, as markets around the world react with confusion. With prices in the US also likely to rise, will voters soon rue what the president has called ‘liberation day’?

JD Vance said on Thursday that Elon Musk would remain a “friend and an adviser” to the vice-president and Donald Trump after he leaves his current role with the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).In recent days, several news outlets, including Politico, reported that Trump had told members of his cabinet that the tech billionaire, who holds the position of “special government employee”, would soon be stepping back from his role in the administration, and would take on a supporting role and return to the private sector.As a special government employee, Musk’s current service is capped at 130 days, which, if counted from the day of the inauguration, is set to expire sometime in late May.But on Wednesday, Musk dismissed the report as “fake news” and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, criticized the Politico story, calling it “garbage”, and adding that Musk “will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at Doge is complete”.And then, on Thursday morning, in an interview with Fox News, Vance stated: “Doge has got a lot of work to do, and yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president.“Elon came in and we said: ‘We need you to make government more efficient, we need you to shrink the incredible fat bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people but also costs way too much money,” Vance added. “We said, ‘That’s going to take about six months’ – and that’s what Elon signed up for, but of course, he’s going to continue to be an adviser and by the way, the work of Doge is not even close to done, the work of Elon is not even close to done.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite Musk’s 130-day cap, Doge is expected to continue until 2026, as a result of Trump’s executive order.The reports regarding Musk’s future involvement with the Trump administration come as earlier this week, a liberal judge in Wisconsin, Susan Crawford, defeated a Musk-backed conservative judge in the race for a seat on the state’s supreme court, framed by Democrats as a referendum on the popularity of Musk and Trump.Musk invested millions in the race, in what what became the most expensive judicial contest in US history, and also spent time campaigning in the state.In her acceptance speech, Crawford said: “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin, and we won!”

A UK division of the Indian conglomerate Tata “deliberately orchestrated” a redundancy programme in a way that unfairly targeted older, non-Indian nationals, an employment tribunal has heard.Three claimants allege the Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which is valued at almost £110bn on the BSE stock exchange in Mumbai, discriminated against them on grounds of age and nationality during a restructuring that began in mid-2023.The case mirrors a similar claim brought in the US, where at least 22 workers have alleged that TCS sacked them at short notice and replaced many of them with workers from India on H1-B visas, used for hiring staff with specialist skills.TCS denies both claims. It is part of the Tata group of companies, which includes Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover.Steve Beer, the lead claimant in London, told the employment tribunal that he had been made redundant in an “unfair and discriminatory manner” by TCS, an IT outsourcing business whose clients included Virgin Atlantic, the Danish shipping company Maersk and the insurer Aviva.Beer, a former partner hired by TCS in February 2019, claims that the company “targeted for redundancy an age mature, predominantly non-Indian national group of employees” who worked in the consulting services and integration (CS&I) division.He said TCS “deliberately orchestrated” its redundancy process to ensure these employees were singled out for redundancy, while younger, Indian nationals were spared.He said this was achieved via a “tickbox” consultancy process whose outcome had already been decided.In his claim, Beer said TCS had deployed a “bait-and-switch” practice to attract potential clients around the world, incorporating “local” staff into its sales proposals, before substituting them with Indian staff once the contract was secured.This was done, he claimed, because non-Indian staff, including many who worked in CS&I, were perceived internally as “more costly and less culturally ‘malleable and compliant’”.This, he said, meant that keeping those staff on the contracts could lower TCS’s profit margins and affect performance metrics that influenced bonuses.He said TCS sometimes understated its likely costs in order to win contracts, which made it even more likely that more “seasoned” but more expensive CS&I staff would be replaced on the contracts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis, he said, meant that those staff were no longer working on projects that could be billed to clients, a crucial determinant of who was targeted for redundancy.In his evidence, Beer referred to an email sent in August 2023 by a human resources director, which he claimed said employees who were not working on “billable” projects were at risk.In a response submitted to the court, TCS denied all of Beer’s claims.Two other claimants, who also alleged discrimination on grounds of age and nationality, have yet to give evidence.

UK ministers are redoubling their efforts to agree a trade deal with Donald Trump after he announced sweeping 10% tariffs on British exports to the US.Downing Street has said talks were at an “advanced stage” and officials have indicated that the broad outlines of a deal have been agreed.It is not the first time that the prospect of a UK free trade agreement with the US has been talked up. Brexiters have long touted such a deal as a prize of the UK leaving the EU, and it was a key ambition of Theresa May’s during Trump’s first term.Kim Darroch, who was ambassador at the time, said this week he was “quite cynical” about the prospects for a deal and that regardless of who was in power in Washington, the US “try and strike a very tough deal on trade”.There several potential stumbling blocks to an agreement. The government is focused on pursuing a relatively narrow deal focused on advanced technologies to avoid some of the pitfalls.Chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beefReynolds revealed on Thursday that Trump’s administration had raised objections to the UK’s food safety standards during the talks.Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said that while it was not true – as Trump has claimed – that the UK imposed a 10% tariff on US goods, “they have an argument on the US side that there are other barriers to trade”.“For example, we have a food standards regime which we’re very committed to in the UK which they have some objections to,” he said, emphasising that Labour was standing by its manifesto commitment not to water down these standards.The prospect of American chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-treated beef being sold in the UK has long been controversial. Agriculture could be the one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the talks given Trump’s voter base in rural US states. As a concession, the UK has drawn up proposals to lower tariffs on some agricultural produce.Digital taxesAnother issue targeted by Trump has been the UK’s digital services tax, a 2% levy introduced in 2020 on the revenues of tech companies including Amazon, Google and Apple. It raises around £800m a year.The president signed an order in February to investigate potential tariff retaliation against specific countries that had imposed digital taxes, including the UK.The Guardian revealed this week that as part of its negotiations towards a deal, the government has drawn up proposals to reduce the amount paid by US tech titans and broaden the tax to apply to a wider range of companies – without reducing its total take. This is thought to be among the most significant concessions the UK has offered the US.But any decision to slash taxes will be controversial at a time of public spending pressures – critics will say the government is pursuing the wrong priorities.Online safety lawsThere are growing concerns that the UK’s new digital safety laws – or their implementation – could be jeopardised in a deal as Trump champions the interest of US big tech.Under provisions in the Online Safety Act, which came into force in March, social media companies face significant fines if they fail to tackle illegal content on their platforms. Companies that breach could have to pay £18m or 10% of worldwide revenue, which would run to billions for Google or Facebook’s parent companies.The trade department did not deny reports on Thursday that as part of its negotiations, it had committed to reviewing the enforcement of the UK’s online safety laws. Online safety experts have expressed alarm and warned that the suggeste proposals are a “sellout of children’s safety”. This issue has the potential to become the most contentious in any eventual trade deal.VATTrump is waging a crusade against VAT, a tax on goods and services used in more than 170 countries around the world. It is one of the biggest sources of revenue for European governments, including the UK.His argument is that the 20% VAT charged on goods sold in the UK and Europe is effectively a tariff on exports because the US does not have an equivalent universal sales tax.There is no indication that the UK is considering any change to VAT as a result of US demands. Reynolds acknowledged important “differences of opinion” with Trump over the tax. “We would say that it applies, and it does apply, to domestically produced goods as much as goods that come into the UK, and that is not trade-distorting,” he told MPs on Thursday.

Oil and gas barons who donated millions of dollars to the Trump campaign are on the cusp of cashing in on the administration’s support for energy-guzzling data centers – and a slew of unprecedented environmental rollbacks.Energy Transfer, the oil and gas transport company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, has received requests to power 70 new data centers – a 75% rise since Trump took office, according to a new investigation by the advocacy nonprofit Oil Change International (OCI) and the Guardian.The fossil-fuel gold rush threatens to unleash massive amounts of pollution and greenhouse gases while undermining the renewable energy industry.“Given Energy Transfer’s extensive natural gas infrastructure, we continue to believe that we are in the best position to capitalize on the anticipated rise in natural gas demand,” the company told investors in February.The positive shareholder forecast came as Energy Transfer’s legal team were in a North Dakota court suing Greenpeace, claiming the environmental group had orchestrated the Standing Rock Indigenous-led protests – in what has been widely condemned as an attack on free speech by advocates and experts.Energy Transfer, among the largest pipeline companies in the US, was the 13th-biggest corporate funder of Trump’s Make America Great Again Super Pac last year, according to OpenSecrets, donating $5m, while executive chair Kelcy Warren has been a major Republican donor since 2016.View image in fullscreenThe firm is part of the powerful fracked-gas industry set to use its influence on Trump and the Republican party to make billions in profits from cryptocurrency mining, AI and other data centers – which look likely to proliferate rapidly amid a slew of new incentives and regulatory rollbacks.Data centers may have expanded regardless of last year’s election winner, but Trump’s victory means a much bigger and faster expansion – and a prioritization of fossil fuel over cleaner types of energy.“The words that have replaced ‘energy transition’ are ‘AI’ and ‘data centers’,” Mike Sommers, from the powerful lobby group the American Petroleum Institute (API), recently said. “We’re transitioning from the energy transition to the energy reality … we’re going to need a lot more oil and gas.”Energy Transfer’s first AI deal was announced the day before its investor meeting in February – a long-term agreement with CloudBurst to provide up to 450,000 cubic feet per day of fossil gas to their flagship AI-focused data center development in San Marcos, Texas. Burning this gas for electricity will generate 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per day – the equivalent of 2.4 average US coal plants, according to the EPA greenhouse calculator, or 2.1m cars driven for one year.“This project represents our first commercial arrangement to supply natural gas directly to a data center site, and it will not be the last,” the company told investors, who reacted favourably to the deal, with Energy Transfer’s share price rising 2.1% after it was announced.“In aggregate, we have now received requests for potential connections to approximately 62 power plants that we do not currently serve in 13 states … In addition, we have now received requests from over 70 prospective data centers in 12 states,” investors were told by executives, outlining how the company is benefiting from the Trump data center and AI boom.Energy Transfer slide shown to investorsView image in fullscreenEarlier this month, a jury with known ties to the fossil-fuel industry found in favor of Energy Transfer and ordered Greenpeace to pay the $65bn oil and gas company $660m in damages – an unprecedented figure that could bankrupt Greenpeace US and chill environmental activism. Greenpeace has said it will appeal.Energy Transfer is not the only fossil-fuel firm ready to benefit from the expected boom in AI and cryptocurrencies. The Guardian/OCI investigation illustrates how the US fracked-gas industry in particular looks set to use its influence on Trump and the GOP to expand operations and make billions in profits from powering data centers – while dumping huge amounts of additional planet-warming gases and other toxins into the atmosphere.The expected gas bonanza comes amid growing climate breakdown, including a slew of deadly and costly disasters in the US in recent months, such as the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene in southern Appalachia. More than 150 “unprecedented” climate disasters struck around the world in 2024 – the hottest-ever year on record.The crypto industry was last year’s biggest corporate campaign donor for the White House and Congress – and the candidates it backed won big, including Trump. But even before the latest push, US authorities believed that crypto mining was responsible for up to 2.3% of the nation’s total electricity demand – roughly equivalent to the state of West Virginia.According to investment bank Goldman Sachs, the data-center-and-AI boom means that US power demand is “likely to experience growth not seen in a generation”. And this demand for energy, largely fuelled by fracked gas, is set to soar under Trump, who embraced cryptocurrencies during the campaign, posting on his Truth Social platform last summer that Bitcoin mining would “help us be ENERGY DOMINANT!!!”View image in fullscreenTrump is now betting big on AI, too, signing several executive orders since taking office to slash regulation. This includes one on his first day to roll back safety-testing rules for AI used by the government, followed by another order three days later revoking existing policies “that act as barriers to American AI innovation”. Trump also announced private-sector investment of up to $500bn to fund infrastructure for artificial intelligence, aiming to outpace rivals.In recent weeks, Meta, Google, OpenAI and other tech companies have lobbied the Trump administration for more AI tax breaks and incentives, to block state laws and for access to federal data to develop the technology – as well as for easier access to energy sources for their computing demands.Tech companies “are really emboldened by the Trump administration, and even issues like safety and responsible AI have disappeared completely from their concerns”, Laura Caroli, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-profit thinktank, told the New York Times.Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at Corporate Accountability, said: “This investigation is a harrowing illustration of just how out of touch with reality this government is with the facts of climate science – and highlights the treacherous relationship between big tech and fossil fuels.“Not only are fossil-fuel corporations literally fueling the ramp-up of AI data centers, but big tech works with fossil-fuel corporations to use AI to discover and extract oil that should never see the light of day.”The gas industry – like the tech and crypto industries – is now set to reap the benefits of the data-center expansion.EQT Corporation, a leading fracked-gas producer and pipeline company and another major Trump donor, recently told investors that data centers are becoming the “cornerstone of natural gas bull case” – in other words, the cornerstone of fossil gas expansion and shareholder profits.In February, EQT, which is worth $32bn, told investors that the company was ideally placed to take advantage of a forecasted 10-18bn-cubic-feet increase in gas demand from AI, crypto, EVs and other data centers by 2030. This is a huge amount of extra fossil gas, which even at EQT’s lower forecast would generate as much carbon dioxide as 52 coal plants or 46.5m passenger cars over a year, according to the EPA calculator.Said EQT: “We’ll see those opportunities across the country – but we’ll also see those largely in our backyard as well, especially given the proximity to the data center demand that’s taking place.”Slide shown to EQT investorsView image in fullscreenThe Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP), a joint venture in which the gas giant is the controlling shareholder and operator, provides “unique access” to the US south-east region, which is home to “burgeoning data center demand”, investors were also told.The MVP, which stretches 300 miles (482km) from north-western West Virginia to southern Virginia and was pushed through by the Biden administration in 2023 despite court orders and environmental regulators blocking construction, looks set to boost the data-center boom – and EQT profits. “MVP capacity and long-term sales to the region’s largest utilities mean EQT’s natural gas can underpin power generation to support data-center build-out,” investors were told.A couple of days after the investor call, CEO Toby Rice told CNBC’s influential investor-focused Mad Money TV show, “we firmly believe that natural gas is going to take the lion’s share of power demand to meet this growing AI demand need”.View image in fullscreen“We need to unleash American energy,” added Rice, who has been lobbying politicians in Washington about the need to expand American fracked gas. “Build, baby, build. Thank goodness this administration will let this happen. It could not have happened at a more critical time in the face of this AI boom that is taking place.”There are already almost 5,400 data centers in the US, 70% more than the next 10 largest markets combined, including China. They not only guzzle electricity, but also water. One large data center can consume as much as 5 million gallons of water per day, the equivalent to a town of up to 50,000 people.EQT made a $250,000 donation to the Republican Senate Leadership Fund just days after Biden announced he would pause liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits in January 2024. The Super Pac’s one stated goal is to build a Republican majority that will “defend America from Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats’ destructive far-left agenda”.EQT boss Rice personally donated more than $100,000 to Republican Pacs and candidates in the last election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.Rice was also among a crew of 20 oil and gas executives at the infamous meeting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last April, in which he asked for donations of $1bn, which included fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil and Chevron and the influential lobby group the API.But the meeting also included smaller but increasingly powerful fracking companies drilling and/or exporting gas, which have revitalized the American fossil energy scene over the last two decades. It was organized by the fracking boss Harold Hamm, who for years has helped craft Republican energy policies. Hamm, who picked cotton barefoot as a child before making billions from fracking, runs Continental Resources, among the US’s largest fracked-gas companies.Also in attendance was longtime oil industry ally Doug Burgum, then governor of North Dakota, who was appointed secretary of the interior in Trump’s new administration. After the meeting, it was reported by the Washington Post that the oil and gas executives discussed how to try to meet Trump’s request for $1bn to help fund his election campaign. In return, Trump promised to roll back environmental regulations, auction off more oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, reverse pollution standards for new cars, and end drilling restrictions in the Alaskan Arctic, among other vows.The alleged “quid pro quo” event was later investigated by a group of high-ranking Democratic lawmakers including Sheldon Whitehouse, then the Senate finance committee chair, and Jamie Raskin from the congressional committee on oversight and accountability. “Such an obvious policies-for-money transaction reeks of cronyism and corruption,” they found.A second fossil-fuel fundraiser for Trump was organised the following month, in May 2024, by Warren of Energy Transfer, Vicki Hollub from Occidental Petroleum, and Hamm, who has been called Trump’s energy whisperer. The event, which took place at a luxurious hotel in Houston where guests had to hand over their phones, was sponsored by Trump’s Make America Great Again Pac.Hamm’s company, Continental Resources, donated $1m to the Maga Super Pac in April last year, the month after Hamm donated $614,000 to the Trump 47 Committee.Many of those present at Trump’s fundraising events last April and May already had long-term funding relationships with the Republicans. Continental Resources and Energy Transfer are in the top 20 funders of Maga, according to OpenSecrets.According to one analysis, big oil spent $445m throughout the last election cycle to influence Donald Trump and Congress – including pouring $96m into Trump’s re-election campaign and affiliated political action committees.Big oil winsDoug Burgum and Harold Hamm were back at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate Trump’s November election victory. Shortly after Trump declared an energy emergency on his first day back in the White House in January, Mike Sommers, head of the API, said: “American energy was on the ballot and American energy won.”The API spent just over $13m in campaign donations and lobbying during the 2024 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.Speaking at Davos just days after Trump’s inauguration, EQT’s Rice said: “Our lives are going to get easier. Donald Trump is a very welcome change.”The following month, during an Energy Transfer investor call, co-chief executive officer Thomas E Long, said: “My goodness, how wonderful is life after this election. When we have a president and an administration that love this country, that fully recognizes how blessed we are … and we have a businessman that built his career on trading, doing deals, negotiating, employing, creating numerous jobs throughout all the businesses that he’s been associated with.“What an incredible excitement we have around this administration and what it’s going to do to mitigate just overwhelming regulation on all these assets, to streamline regulations.”So far, dozens of environmental regulations have been slashed, either by executive order or EPA rollbacks, including the end to Biden’s 2024 pause on LNG exports and new rules for cleaner exhausts from tailpipes – industry requests shared by Hamm with the New York Times last May.This includes plans to roll back 31 key environmental rules – on everything from clean air to clean water and climate change – announced on a single day in March by Trump’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, who has been accused of endangering the lives of millions of Americans.Trump’s funders and backers are especially going to benefit from Trump’s policies to restrict regulations in the AI sector as part of an attempt to outpace China to become the global leader. The US is currently home to just more than half the mega data centers in the world. And with Goldman Sachs suggesting $1tn will be spent on AI data centers in the next few years, a lot is up for grabs.Artificial intelligence and the data centers used to feed the computing power will require huge amounts of energy, with the US government projecting that data-center demand will triple the domestic electricity demand within the next three years. A recent paper by Harvard Law School notes that utilities are now prioritising supplying data centers at the expense of American consumers, who face price rises.View image in fullscreenDays after the election, it was reported that oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron were jumping into the race to power AI data centers. Yet the fracking industry, including Energy Transfer and EQT, appear to consider themselves best placed to benefit from Trump’s pro-AI-and-data-center growth strategy.When Trump announced last November that Burgum would be the new secretary of the interior and chair of the newly formed National Energy Dominance Council, he said Burgum’s work would be key to winning “the battle for AI superiority, which is key to national security and our nation’s prosperity”.At his confirmation hearing, Burgum repeated the same message, claiming that without more fossil fuels, “we’re going to lose the AI arms race to China”.“In his first term, President Trump unleashed American energy while reducing carbon emissions to historic lows, proving that we can both restore American greatness and advance environmental stewardship. President Trump is committed to replacing unclean foreign energy with the liquid gold under our feet while ridding our environment of dangerous toxins,” said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson.EQT, Energy Transfer, Continental Resources and the API were contacted for comment but did not respond.“The most absurd part of this whole saga is that everyone who looks at it without a vested interest concludes that if we have to build data centers fast, it makes far, far more sense – economic and environmental – to use renewable energy,” said environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of the non-profits 350.org and Third Act.“But just as they shamelessly used the war in Ukraine, the gas industry is now using this moment to try and lock in their climate-killing business. And they’ve purchased enough friends in high places to make it a real possibility.”Andy Rowell is a UK-based investigative reporter and contributing editor to Oil Change International

Amazon reportedly has made a bid to buy TikTok, the popular video app that is in danger of being banned in the U.S. if it can’t reach a deal that would separate it from its Chinese owner. Under a U.S. law signed by then-President Biden last year, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is required to sell off TikTok’s U.S. operations in order to address security concerns raised by legislators. TikTok says it has invested billions of dollars to protect the data of its U.S. users. A ban would devastate the businesses and Americans who use the app, the company has said.Amazon’s bid was first reported by the New York Times. The Seattle tech giant declined to comment. TikTok and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. The original deadline for a deal was Jan. 19; President Trump extended it to April 5. It is possible Trump could extend it again. The discussions around TikTok will play a role in U.S.-China relations, as the Chinese government would need to approve a sale. The Trump administration recently increased tariffs on Chinese goods. “We view TikTok as one of the biggest and first chips on the poker table around U.S./China relations which have many complex facets to navigate over the coming years under the Trump administration,” Wedbush Securities tech analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a note to clients.TikTok could be quite valuable to potential buyers. It has roughly 170 million American users, who sign on to the app for entertainment and shopping. TikTok stars have gone on to launch careers as brand ambassadors and headline TV shows and movies. Ives said that any potential deal for TikTok would include Austin, Texas-based Oracle, TikTok’s cloud provider. Oracle already was involved in a framework of a deal during Trump’s first term in 2020 to acquire TikTok. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s billionaire co-founder, is known to have supported Trump. Ives said he does not think the deal would include selling TikTok’s algorithm, as it would be a nonstarter for the Chinese government. Other buyers interested in TikTok include an investment group led by Frank McCourt, a former Dodgers owner, whose bid includes “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary. San Francisco artificial intelligence company Perplexity said in March it wants to “rebuild the TikTok algorithm.” Amazon’s bid is not being taken seriously by the Trump administration or other people involved in the discussions, according to Bloomberg and the New York Times. If Amazon were to acquire TikTok, it could provide a significant boost to its online retail power. Almost half of U.S. TikTok users purchase items on the social platform, said Jasmine Enberg, Emarketer’s vice president of content, in a statement. “Amazon’s reported bid is proof of TikTok’s prowess in ecommerce and the changing nature of how consumers shop and buy,” Enberg said. “The acquisition could strengthen Amazon’s position, particularly among younger shoppers who start and end their shopping journeys on TikTok or other social platforms.”Tech giants have been making efforts to connect with Trump, including Amazon and its executive chairman, Jeff Bezos. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and streamed the event on Prime Video, an in-kind donation worth $1 million, according to the Associated Press. This month, Prime Video started streaming old seasons of Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice.” Amazon also has signed a deal to release a documentary on First Lady Melania Trump that will be shown in theaters and on the streaming platform this year. More to Read