Today’s Big Story

All That Glitters

Trump’s gold card offers the “American dream” to anyone able to write a seven-figure check to the government

It was one of those ideas that sounded like Trump’s typical hyperbole. He planned on introducing a program designed to provide rich foreigners with a streamlined path to U.S. residency. He called it the “Trump Gold Card” … but it would never happen, right? Wrong. The card is here, it’s gold and has both Trump’s face and signature on it like much of the merch he sells.

Under the new pay-to-play immigration framework, individuals will be allowed to obtain lawful entry into the United States, assuming they can pay (and pass) the $15,000 vetting process and have an extra $1 million to fork over. Businesses will also be allowed to participate, costing them $2 million per person.

For $5 million, foreigners can apply for a “Trump platinum card”. The processing fee is the same, but those applying must make a $5 million payment. There’s an extra benefit, however. Foreigners with the platinum card can reside in the U.S. for up to 9 months without paying taxes on their non-U.S. income. Quartz says it’s unclear how the tax exemption will be implemented without Congress, which traditionally holds the power to levy taxes. The legislative branch usually has jurisdiction over creating new visa categories as well.

Even typically supportive Fox News is bringing up uncomfortable questions. Among the concerns swirling around the president's new Gold Card program is it could be taken advantage of by cartel bosses and Russian oligarchs. Plenty of Democrats had harsh words, too. “President Trump can’t help trying to act like a king. From new ballrooms and gilded Oval Office decor to over-the-top foreign trips filled with pomp and circumstance to a lavish Qatari plane, his grift knows no limit,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said in September ahead of the official launch.

What’s more, not using this legal pathway or the congressional route means a court can later decide that the program is illegal, which could mean applicants never get their $15,000 back—or even their $1 million contribution. Trump’s favorite late night host, Jimmy Kimmel, called the card the “Get Into America Express Card” on his show last night, adding “For a million bucks you get legal visitor status, a pathway to citizenship and a presidential pardon for one major crime of your choosing.”

Competing Health Care Plans Fail in the Senate

The result virtually guarantees insurance subsidies used by more than 20 million Americans will lapse

The Senate on Thursday failed to advance two competing health care proposals aimed at addressing a spike in costs that are expected for tens of millions of Americans who receive enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits. Both plans—one put forward by Democrats and the other championed by Republicans—failed to get the 60 votes needed. The outcome was widely expected, but this is bad news.

Lawmakers are back to square one and some 24 million Americans are now vulnerable to significantly higher insurance premiums beginning on January 1 when the federal subsidy expires. Barring any late breakthroughs, Congress will begin an end-of-year holiday recess sometime next week and not return until January 5th. And by then, new premiums will be locked in for those who had relied on the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidy.

Republicans argue that the ACA is a failed program that has done nothing to slow mounting healthcare expenditures. But some Republicans have expressed openness to talks, concerned about higher costs for their constituents and worried their party will be blamed in next year’s midterm elections if the GOP-led Congress doesn’t act to save the subsidies. For his part, President Donald Trump has largely remained hands off. He has been sharply critical of the ACA subsidies, and while he has not endorsed a specific proposal, he has voiced support for sending money directly to Americans to pay for care.

Google Is Building a New Experimental Browser

It builds AI widgets based on your tabs

Did you hear that Google’s Chrome team just built a new browser? It takes a prompt, opens a bunch of related tabs for you, and then builds you a custom app for whatever you’re trying to do. Ask it for travel tips and it’ll build you a planner app; ask it for study help and it’ll build you a flashcard system. It’s Googling meets vibe coding.

After the app is built, you can also continue to refine it using natural language commands. The concept is called GenTabs, and the browser is called Disco (evidently, both for fun reasons and because it’s short for “discovery”). Google launched both as experiments in Google Labs Thursday to see if they might have a place in the future of the web. Engadget says Google already has a waitlist for people who want to try it out—although for now it's only on macOS.

Like others in the AI market, Google has been experimenting with bringing AI deeper into the web-browsing experience. Instead of building its own stand-alone AI browser, like Perplexity’s Comet or ChatGPT Atlas, Google integrated its AI assistant Gemini into the Chrome browser, where it can optionally be used to ask questions about the web page you’re on. With GenTabs, the focus is not only on what you’re currently viewing, but also on your overall browsing, spanning multiple tabs—be it research, learning, or something else.

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