IDF claims it killed two top Iranian officials in overnight airstrikes
Source: Washington Examiner · Bias: Center Right
Summary
Israel Defense Forces claimed it killed two Iranian officials in airstrikes it launched overnight. Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Gholamreza Soleimani, a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and a commander of the Basij paramilitary force, were reportedly killed in separate IDF airstrikes. Their deaths mark the latest members of […]
IDF claims it killed two top Iranian officials in overnight airstrikes
Center Right
Israel Defense Forces claimed it killed two Iranian officials in airstrikes it launched overnight. Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Gholamreza Soleimani, a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and a commander of the Basij paramilitary force, were reportedly killed in separate IDF airstrikes. Their deaths mark the latest members of […]
Acting DNI Bill Pulte has fired more "Deep State" intel officials, according to MS NOW.
The post Happy Freedom 250! Acting DNI Bill Pulte Fires More “Deep State” Intel Officials appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Donald Trump's controversial new intelligence chief is clearing house, and career officers warn the man swinging the axe doesn't know what he's cutting.Bill Pulte, Trump's loyal acting director of national intelligence, began notifying dozens of intelligence officials of their terminations Thursday, part of a downsizing Trump ordered when he installed Pulte at the office two weeks ago, MS NOW reported Friday. An intelligence official, who spoke anonymously citing fear of reprisal, told the outlet that leadership is targeting workers it believes are "deep state" and accused them of failing to hand up a complete picture of available intelligence.But former officials aren't buying his rationale. Several told MS NOW they had never heard of intelligence officers withholding information from their superiors. "The premise is absurd," one said. Another questioned how Pulte, who ran the federal housing agency and has no intelligence background, could reach such a conclusion within days of arriving.“I have a real question of how he would know this. This isn’t a guy who is familiar with intelligence,” a former official told the outlet. “How is he going to get to the bottom of this and rely on any information with a matter of fidelity? It would be like me taking over a hospital and firing dozens of surgeons in a matter of days.”The cuts follow Pulte's earlier removal of six political appointees who served under his predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard. His arrival has drawn alarm across party lines: he took the post without ever holding a security clearance, and he can stay in the acting role past November's midterms under federal vacancy rules. Critics note his office doesn't collect intelligence of its own, relying instead on the CIA, the NSA and more than a dozen other agencies to supply it.Democrats and some Republicans fear the purge is less about efficiency than about clearing out analysts who might resist Trump's election claims. The ODNI says it is providing "elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe."
European NATO allies have mostly replaced the assets that the US has cut from its rescue plans in case of a war in Europe, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe Sir John Stringer said in an interview.
The fight that scrubbed the world's most powerful AI models from the internet featured personality clashes, industry confusion, and international backlash.Why it matters: Anthropic's models are back online, but the impact of its 20-day showdown with the Trump administration will be long lasting.Behind the scenes: It began when Amazon, Anthropic's partner and investor, sounded an alarm that was later disputed by cybersecurity experts.It warned about a "jailbreaking" issue it found with the AI lab's latest models, Mythos and Fable — meaning a technical flaw that could have caused a failure of their guardrails.Amazon flagged its concerns to the administration, triggering sweeping export controls. A U.S. official said the government conducted its own tests once it became apparent that the issue needed to be addressed.Cybersecurity experts, however, later wrote in an open letter to the administration that other leading AI models have the same issue Amazon warned about with Anthropic.On June 12, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, at the direction of President Trump, called Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Lutnick made clear to Amodei the issue needed to be resolved fast and alerted the CEO that the company would be receiving a letter imposing sweeping export controls, the U.S. official said.Amodei called Lutnick back that night after receiving the letter, realizing it effectively meant the models would have to be taken offline — to which Lutnick responded that was indeed the goal.That decision led to a three-week, multi-agency crash course in AI safety.Anthropic deployed engineers to Washington D.C. According to a U.S. official, the company wanted to prove everything was already resolved and further changes were being fine tuned.But the federal Center for AI Standards and Innovation and the National Security Agency said those changes weren't good enough, prompting further fixes, according to the U.S. official.Gradually, various agency heads approved of the changes, and on July 1 the models were released, the official said.Out of all of the administration officials Amazon's Andy Jassy could have called, it was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who first heard about the jailbreaking issue found in the company report, according to a separate source familiar.Bessent was early to sound the alarm on Mythos, work with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to re-engage the embattled company, and help get a cybersecurity executive order across the finish line.While technical discussions to address the jailbreaking issue took place in D.C., it was Bessent who stood next to President Trump during the G7 where allies called for global cooperation on safety standards.At the center of the showdown was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who also flanked Trump at the G7 meeting while his department's teams led technical discussions.National cyber director Sean Cairncross, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Treasury Department chief information officer Sam Corcos, and the NSA also all participated in technical discussions, according to various sources.Washington mobilized faster to hold scores of meetings and pulled in far more agencies than one would expect for a single technical issue, one source said.The tension spiraled amid personality clashes and poor communication.Anthropic eventually understood that in order to be successful they needed to be on the same side as the government, the U.S. official said.As discussions turned more technical, Anthropic policy chief Sarah Heck and Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown got more involved. Brown also had multiple conversations with Lutnick and Cairncross the weekend of June 12.There was never a moment where Dario stepped offstage and someone else replaced him, one source said, adding that Brown's technical expertise allowed him to sit in a room with government specialists and go line‑by‑line through how models behave under stress.Between the lines: It remains uncertain when and how Anthropic's models will be released to ally countries around the world — which proponents say is key to beating China — or how other labs from OpenAI to Google will release their latest models.OpenAI, whose latest model GPT-5.6 is on hold, did not have visibility into discussions between Anthropic and the White House and is engaged in daily technical discussions on the release of its own model, a source said.The bottom line: There's a lot of work left to be done on a framework for approving future models with a clear inclusive process that has transparency standards and timelines, sources familiar said.
A crowd of people gathered at the Great American State Fair on Thursday stopped to gaze up at the sky as several fighter jets streaked over the National Mall. Blake Boggs crouched down to his young son’s stroller and pointed up. “You don’t get to see the Thunderbirds anywhere,” he told The Hill. Despite the…
An ex-GOP operative flagged how Trump is killing what he once touted as his "best" deal at the expense of his supporters.During an episode of The Bulwark Podcast, Tim Miller described Trump's plans concerning the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Trump negotiated and boasted about during his first term."The Trump administration decided not to renew the USMCA," Miller noted. "Which is pretty interesting because Donald Trump said that was the best agreement we've ever made, the best trade deal of all time."While "it's strange that they would not renew the best trade deal of all time," Miller explained, "They're now going to do yearly reviews where Trump shakes down the leaders of Mexico and Canada...not great."According to Miller, Trump will ditch the USMCA in favor of an arrangement where the U.S. conducts annual reviews of trade with Mexico and Canada. He predicted that the new arrangement would likely hurt American farmers, who supported Trump."The farmers, it's one hit after another for the farmers, who, it seems like, every Trump policy is like it's almost like an elaborate plot to see how much he can p— off the farmers and still run up the numbers in rural America," Miller said.Miller's guest on the show, New Yorker writer Susan Glasser, agreed."As far as the farmers go, Donald Trump loves to provide evidence that his ride or die supporters will be there no matter how much he humiliates them," Glasser said. "No matter how much he backs away from policies that would support him, no matter how much he fails to deliver the things that he said he would deliver. That to Trump, that's the ultimate sort of political own, and he loves that move."
An author who has written four books about President Donald Trump claimed on Thursday that first lady Melania Trump has concocted a "preposterous" new way to try and silence him. Michael Wolff, co-host of the "Inside Trump's Head" podcast with Joanna Coles of The Daily Beast, said during a new episode that Melania Trump's legal team has moved to sanction the lawyers representing Wolff for bringing a frivolous lawsuit against her. A federal judge threw out Wolff's anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Melania Trump in May, which he filed after she threatened to bring a $1 billion lawsuit against Wolff for his claims about the Trump family's ties to disgraced financier and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. “Essentially, they are moving to sanction my lawyers for doing nothing more than bringing the lawsuit against Melania Trump,” Wolff said on the podcast. “So this is preposterous on its face.”Wolff also claimed that he found out about the move from Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer close to the Trumps, whom Donald Trump has described as someone who will "say anything" to make him happy. He claimed that hearing about the move from Epshteyn revealed that the strategy behind the lawsuit “was being coordinated at the highest levels of Trump law.”
