“TikTok is here — we are here,” Khartoon Weiss, the company’s vice president of global business solutions, told a packed warehouse of advertisers on Tuesday in Manhattan.

“We are absolutely confident in our platform and confident in the future of this platform,” she declared.

That statement was the closest TikTok advertising executives got to addressing the app’s uncertain fate in the United States in the company’s annual spring pitch to marketers. Under a federal law and executive order, the app is set to be banned in the country next month if the Chinese owner of the company, ByteDance, does not sell it.

Hundreds of representatives from companies like L’Oreal and Unilever and various ad agencies scrambled to find seats for an event hosted by the comedian Hasan Minhaj that heavily emphasized TikTok’s role as a cultural juggernaut.

TikTok was more than a video platform, Mr. Minhaj told the crowd. TikTok was “the cultural moments you talk about at work, the jokes you talk about in your group chat, the language you use in your everyday life,” he said.

The tone of the event marked a departure from TikTok’s presentation a year ago, when the company was smarting from the federal law that promised to ban the app in the United States because of national security concerns related to the company’s Chinese ownership. Last year’s pitch started with one of TikTok’s top executives telling roughly 300 attendees that the company would fight the law in court and prevail and was “not backing down.”

TikTok did not actually win in court — the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law in January — but the company has earned an unusual reprieve from President Trump. He has essentially put a pause on the law, which was set to go into effect in January, most recently giving the company until June to find new owners. On Sunday, he suggested he would extend the reprieve again if ByteDance needed more time.

The presentation on Tuesday was a reminder that beyond the battles in Washington, TikTok faces the same pressures as any other major social media company — winning ad dollars and promising major brands safe spaces for their messages to run. TikTok has a foothold among marketers hawking everything from clothing to beauty hacks despite competition from Meta’s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube. TikTok says it has 170 million users in the United States.

At the event, the company promoted new tools that would let marketers run their messages alongside viral trends, and it pitched advertisers on the additional exposure they could get from running ads on TikTok during the Super Bowl. Ms. Weiss also told marketers that the company was eager to develop ways for advertisers to capitalize on search queries, as people increasingly use TikTok as an alternative to popular search engines like Google.

Krishna Subramanian, chief executive and co-founder of the influencer marketing firm Captiv8, attended the advertiser presentation and said that the audience had benefited from the reassurance about TikTok’s future.

“Hearing that TikTok is here to stay from TikTok leadership becomes really powerful, as we think about our strategies for 2025,” he said. “Seeing their investments within generative A.I., within product, within cultural moments — it’s where brands need to be.”

The event also highlighted some of the turnover that has taken place at TikTok in its past year of turmoil. Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s former president of global business solutions, who kicked off the event in 2024, recently resigned from his role, following the departures of other prominent executives in ad sales.

Mr. Minhaj’s appearance at TikTok’s presentation marks the start of a star-studded season of pitches from television networks and other tech companies to advertisers. YouTube’s annual advertiser pitch this month will feature a performance from Lady Gaga.

“Ten years ago, I was just a struggling comedian performing at dive bars, doing the occasional keynote for Vine,” Mr. Minhaj said. “I would have loved to have TikTok when I was starting out as a comic — we have seen comedians build entire careers off of it.”

As Israel faces a doctor shortage, Jonathan Gray, the president of the investment firm Blackstone, and his wife, Mindy, are donating $125 million to Tel Aviv University’s health science and medical school.

The donation, through the Grays’ foundation, is the largest ever to Tel Aviv University, and is expected to allow the medical school enrollment to increase by a quarter. The funds will support, among other things, a new 600-bed dormitory, scholarships and new teaching facilities.

Israel’s limited capacity for medical training has contributed to a persistent shortage of doctors. As of 2020, the number of doctors per capita was about 10 percent below the average of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“When Israeli students go to study medicine abroad, some of them stay — and for us, it’s a loss” Professor Ariel Porat, the university’s president, said. “This is the brain drain that people talk about in many other fields, but it’s especially acute with doctors.”

And Israel’s doctors are getting older, exacerbating the problem. Nearly half of the country’s doctors are older than 50, and about 25 percent are at least 67 years old.

In response to the shortage, Israeli officials have announced a number of initiatives to recruit more doctors, including interest-free loans for Israeli medical students studying abroad if they agree to return to Israel after graduation.

Mr. Porat said the Grays’ donation is likely to have an impact on the broader Israeli health care system. Tel Aviv University is Israel’s largest university, and includes schools of medicine, dentistry, public health as well as 18 affiliated hospitals.

Besides bolstering the overall number of students, the donation is also expected help the university double the number of Arab Israeli students in medical school, in part by offering scholarships and discounted housing in the school’s new dormitories, Mr. Porat said. About a quarter of Israel’s doctors are Arab Israeli.

The university’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences will be renamed the Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. It was previously known as the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, after the billionaire Sackler family, owners of the opioid maker Purdue Pharma. The family, who have been sued for spurring the opioid epidemic, agreed to remove their name in 2023. The university said at the time it would enable the school to raise more money by offering naming opportunities.

Mr. Gray and his wife, both American Jews, are active philanthropists. Their foundation focuses on supporting low-income youth from New York and cancer research. Both say they feel a longstanding connection to Israel. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel “awakened a need to express that connection in a far more concrete way,” Mr. Gray said in a statement.

Shortly following the attack, the Gray Foundation gave $1 million to a program that pays for eighth graders in public and charter schools in New York to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan.

As Mr. Gray and his wife looked for a larger-scale donation, they first met with Mr. Porat in New York last year. The Grays later traveled to Israel and met with university leadership, the medical faculty and students.

“We can think of no better way to accelerate healing,” they said in a statement, “than by supporting an institution that touches the lives of so many.”

Top officials from the Trump administration will meet with their Chinese counterparts in Switzerland this week, the first formal meeting about trade between the United States and China since President Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports to triple-digit levels last month.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, and Jamieson Greer, the United States trade representative, plan to meet with Chinese officials during a trip to Geneva, where they will discuss trade and economic matters, according to separate announcements from the office of the trade representative and the Treasury Department.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that He Lifeng, the vice premier for economic policy, would visit Switzerland from May 9 to 12 and hold talks with Mr. Bessent.

The meeting could help to defuse an economically damaging trade standoff that has persisted between the world’s largest economies for a month. In early April, Mr. Trump escalated tariffs on Chinese exports to a minimum of 145 percent, to punish Beijing for retaliating against his earlier levies.

While both sides appear to be interested in reducing those tariffs, neither has wanted to make the first move. It remains unclear how quickly the United States and China might strike any kind of agreement, or what its contents could be.

The Trump administration has criticized China for its role in bringing fentanyl and ingredients to make the drug to the United States, as well as a bevy of unfair trade practices. Mr. Trump and his advisers have also censured China for failing to stick to the terms of a trade deal the president negotiated in his first term. China, in return, has called Mr. Trump’s tariffs “illegal and unreasonable.”

Businesses have complained that high tariffs on both sides of the Pacific have brought trade to a halt and threaten to put many American companies out of business. In the first quarter of this year, the U.S. share of imported goods from China fell to its lowest level in more than two decades, as trade ties between the countries became increasingly strained.

Speaking from the White House on Tuesday, during a visit by the Canadian prime minister, Mr. Trump said the Chinese were eager for a meeting. “They want to meet, and they’re doing no business right now,” he said.

Asked about the talks in Switzerland, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said that U.S. officials had “continuously leaked information about adjusting tariff measures and actively conveyed information to China through various channels, hoping to talk with China on tariffs and other issues.”

“China has carefully evaluated the U.S. information,” the spokesperson said. “On the basis of fully considering global expectations, China’s interests and the calls of the U.S. industry and consumers, China has decided to agree to engage with the U.S.”

“If the United States wants to resolve the issue through negotiations,” the spokesperson added, “it must face up to the serious negative impact of unilateral tariff measures on itself and the world, face up to international economic and trade rules, fairness and justice, and rational voices from all walks of life, show sincerity in talks, correct its wrong practices, meet China halfway and resolve the concerns of both sides through equal consultation.”

Mr. Bessent and Mr. Greer are also expected to meet with the Swiss president, Karin Keller-Sutter, to discuss a potential trade deal.

The share of U.S. imports from China in the first quarter of the year fell to its lowest point in over 20 years, as the high tariffs President Trump has put on Chinese goods clamped down on trade.

U.S. imports from China reached $102.7 billion in the first three months of the year, data released by the Commerce Department showed Tuesday. That puts the share of imported goods from China at just 11 percent in the first quarter, down sharply from over 22 percent seven years ago.

While the share of imports from China tends to fluctuate with seasonal swings in purchasing, Mr. Trump’s decision in early April to ratchet up U.S. tariffs on China has clearly begun to cascade through supply chains. Because it takes many weeks for products to move from Chinese factories onto cargo ships across the ocean and into American stores, U.S. consumers are, in many cases, just beginning to see the effect of higher prices from the tariffs. But as the summer goes on, those effects are likely to compound.

Both the United States and China have expressed openness to talking about some kind of trade deal that would lower the tariffs, though it remains unclear how quickly any deal could be made.

While some companies appear to have slowed or halted their imports because of current tariffs, others are still rushing to import more products ahead of new tariffs taking effect.

Data released Tuesday morning showed that the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services rose sharply in March, increasing to $140.5 billion compared with $123.2 billion in February, and continuing a sharp upward trend seen since the November election.

Omair Sharif, the founder and president of the research firm Inflation Insights, said the surge in imports of consumer goods in March was almost entirely driven by the ingredients pharmaceutical companies need to make drugs. Mr. Trump has said that he planned to impose tariffs on prescriptions and other medicines in the next few weeks.

“That reflected drugmakers rushing to get ahead of any sectoral tariffs on pharmaceutical goods from the administration,” Mr. Sharif wrote in a note to clients. “In other words, there was far less of everything else, like toys, furniture, appliances, kitchenware, apparel, etc., imported in March than suspected.”

Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said that imports may remain high from countries that have had their tariffs paused for 90 days, but for China, an additional tariff that the president had put in effect in March “began to bite.”

The average U.S. tariff rate on China rose to over 100 percent in April, he said, which will push China’s share of total imports sharply lower.

Lydia DePillis contributed reporting.

As Israel faces a doctor shortage, Jonathan Gray, the president of the investment firm Blackstone, and his wife, Mindy, are donating $125 million to Tel Aviv University’s health science and medical school.

The donation, through the Grays’ foundation, is the largest ever to Tel Aviv University, and is expected to allow the medical school enrollment to increase by a quarter. The funds will support, among other things, a new 600-bed dormitory, scholarships and new teaching facilities.

Israel’s limited capacity for medical training has contributed to a persistent shortage of doctors. As of 2020, the number of doctors per capita was about 10 percent below the average of countries in the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development.

“When Israeli students go to study medicine abroad, some of them stay — and for us, it’s a loss” Professor Ariel Porat, the university’s president, said. “This is the brain drain that people talk about in many other fields, but it’s especially acute with doctors.”

And Israel’s doctors are getting older, exacerbating the problem. Nearly half of the country’s doctors are older than 50, and about 25 percent are at least 67 years old.

In response to the shortage, Israeli officials have announced a number of initiatives to recruit more doctors, including interest-free loans for Israeli medical students studying abroad if they agree to return to Israel after graduation.

Mr. Porat said the Grays’ donation is likely to have an impact on the broader Israeli health care system. Tel Aviv University is Israel’s largest university, and includes schools of medicine, dentistry, public health as well as 18 affiliated hospitals.

Besides bolstering the overall number of students, the donation is also expected help the university double the number of Arab Israeli students in medical school, in part by offering scholarships and discounted housing in the school’s new dormitories, Mr. Porat said. About a quarter of Israel’s doctors are Arab Israeli.

The university’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences will be renamed the Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. It was previously known as the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, after the billionaire Sackler family, owners of the opioid maker Purdue Pharma. The family, who have been sued for spurring the opioid epidemic, agreed to remove their name in 2023. The university said at the time it would enable the school to raise more money by offering naming opportunities.

Mr. Gray and his wife, both American Jews, are active philanthropists. Their foundation focuses on supporting low-income youth from New York and cancer research. Both say they feel a longstanding connection to Israel. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel “awakened a need to express that connection in a far more concrete way,” Mr. Gray said in a statement.

Shortly following the attack, the Gray Foundation gave $1 million to a program that pays for eighth graders in public and charter schools in New York to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan.

As Mr. Gray and his wife looked for a larger-scale donation, they first met with Mr. Porat in New York last year. The Grays later traveled to Israel and met with university leadership, the medical faculty and students.

“We can think of no better way to accelerate healing,” they said in a statement, “than by supporting an institution that touches the lives of so many.”

The Senate voted on Tuesday to confirm Frank Bisignano as commissioner of the Social Security Administration, which has been thrown into turmoil after a three-month stretch steered largely by Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency.

President Trump’s nominee was confirmed by a vote of 53 to 47, which had been expected and was split along party lines.

Mr. Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive, will take the helm at a critical juncture. A series of recent changes led by DOGE, from deep job cuts to exploiting sensitive databases, have rattled current and former employees, former commissioners of both parties, beneficiaries and their advocates. They have been alarmed by the fast and seemingly haphazard moves, as well as the departure from established protocols that protect beneficiaries’ privacy and ensure they continue to receive payments.

The question is whether Mr. Bisignano, 65, the former chief of the payments giant Fiserv, will steady the agency, which delivers retirement, disability and survivor payments to 73 million Americans every month.

Senator Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho who leads the Finance Committee, urged his colleagues last week to vote in favor of Mr. Bisignano, emphasizing his decades of experience leading large financial institutions, and noting his commitment to improving customer service at the agency.

But Democratic lawmakers remained unconvinced, and they continued to raise many of the same concerns they grilled Mr. Bisignano about during his three-hour Senate confirmation hearing in late March: Would he give in to calls by DOGE that could further hobble the program, or will he act independently in the best interest of the agency and its beneficiaries?

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, spoke against his confirmation on Monday, with concerns that Mr. Bisignano would simply “rubber-stamp” Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Musk’s agenda. “He’ll let them keep slashing services and threatening benefits,” she said from the Senate floor. “That will hurt people everywhere — from seniors who count on their monthly checks right now, to the parents of kids with a disability supported by Social Security, to every American paying into the program now for later down the line.”

Mr. Bisignano, who is viewed as a turnaround expert, has held positions at several of Wall Street’s marquee firms, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. He earned $100 million in 2017, more than 2,000 times the average employee’s salary at his firm at the time, First Data Corporation, which later merged with Fiserv.

Despite calling himself “fundamentally a DOGE person” in a February interview on CNBC, Mr. Bisignano appeared to distance himself from the recent changes occurring inside the Social Security Administration during his March nomination hearing.

That characterization was challenged at the hearing by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who produced a statement that he said was from a whistle-blower. Mr. Wyden, citing the letter, said that Mr. Bisignano had personally intervened to get key DOGE officials involved at the agency, including one who was approved in the middle of the night. Senate Republicans quickly dismissed those concerns, stating he addressed the allegations during the hearing and in writing.

“He has stated that he does not currently have a role at the S.S.A. and was not part of the decision-making process led by the acting commissioner, Lee Dudek, about S.S.A. operations, personnel or management,” Senator Crapo said in a statement.

For Mr. Dudek, the appointment caps a chaotic run, which began when Mr. Musk’s DOGE team arrived at the agency.

A former fraud adviser in middle management for the Social Security Administration, Mr. Dudek had an unlikely rise to the role of acting commissioner, overseeing an agency of roughly 57,0000 thousand employees. Mr. Dudek was given the position when Michelle King, the previous acting commissioner, left abruptly after refusing to give DOGE representatives access to sensitive private data about millions of Americans.

During Mr. Dudek’s short tenure, the Social Security Administration announced plans to cut 12 percent, or 7,000 employees, from its staff and issued stark new policies that were quickly rolled back — all while field offices experienced more technology interruptions and a rise in phone wait times.

In April, the agency began to use some of the agency’s closely guarded data systems as a tool for immigration enforcement, a move that is likely the Trump administration’s most controversial for the S.S.A., and steers it away from its mandate as a social insurance program.

Over the past two months, there were several other dizzying moves. At one point, in response to a judge’s order, Mr. Dudek threatened to shut down the system used for all of the Social Security Administration’s work — only to back down hours later. He also cut contracts to the state of Maine in retaliation for a spat its governor got into with Mr. Trump. That move was walked back as well.

Employees inside the agency have described the environment as chaotic, and morale, which was already strained because of heavy work loads spread among a thin staff, as low.

The American Federation of Government Employees General Committee, and its local unit representing Social Security workers, said in a statement that they “appreciate Mr. Bisignano’s vow to ‘run the agency in the right fashion,’ as long as that means a course correction from January.”

Alexandra Berzon contributed reporting.