When a violent crime is committed, it tends to feel not just unwarranted but random. When a murder, sex crime, or burglary happens, we often ask, "How did this happen?" Even worse is when a violent crime is committed by someone with a violent criminal past. We then demand to know, "How did this happen... again?"
The public is right to be concerned about AI. But Carney and his ministers have framed our reluctance as ignorance.
Report card from the Knicks’ historic 107-106 comeback win over the Spurs in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night at the Garden:
The Trump administration is launching a "massive leak hunt" to find out who spilled details on a panicked conversation inside the White House.A new book by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan has the Trump White House scrambling to find out who leaked details about the Trump administration's "freakout" over the release of the Epstein files, according to reporting by CNN. The New York Times published an excerpt of the book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," on Wednesday.The book's excerpt describes a meeting that Trump didn't attend or know about in the Situation Room. Included in the meeting were his senior aides, Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, last year to plan how to contain the fallout. Others present included then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel, according to reporting by The Daily Beast. According to an excerpt of Haberman and Swan's book, Vance "appeared panicked" about how the Epstein files would divide the president's base.CNN cited a person who "detected" the search for the leaker to confirm that the White House is now hunting them down.
Vance Boelter, the suspected assassin who killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.According to The New York Times, "The Justice Department’s letter to the judge described 'a proposed plea agreement' and asked for a hearing in which Mr. Boelter could change his not guilty plea." While the letter did not give details on the nature of the agreement, the letter "said that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty."Boelter was also accused of shooting state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, who survived the attack.The assassination of Hortman sparked political fears around the country, including worries that more such killings could happen in an elevated climate of anger.
President Donald Trump set a dubious presidential record during his latest medical checkup, according to reporting by the Washington Post.Although the White House hasn't said why, Trump was assessed by 22 medical specialists during his latest checkup, according to the Post. That's a new record for presidents, outpacing President George W. Bush by 10 specialists."It is an extraordinary number," Jonathan Reiner, the longtime cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney, told the Post. "What specialties do they represent? Why so many?"The Post looked at Trump's medical records released by the White House. The 22 medical specialists that Trump saw nearly doubled the number who assessed him during his first term, according to the Post. Trump saw 11 specialists during a 2019 checkup. Last year, he saw 14 specialists in a single checkup, the Post reported based on past medical reports from the White House.According to the Post, the specialists that Trump saw included physicians affiliated with Harvard, Duke University, and other well-known institutions, including generalist physicians.White House officials explained the record number of specialists at his latest checkup by saying it was commensurate with the need for a "complete and preventive evaluation," the Post reported, adding that the president's physician said Trump is in "excellent health.""The involvement of multiple specialists reflects a comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluation consistent with best practices for executive-level medical care," The White House told the Post in a statement. "We have nothing to hide."
Doctors are demanding that the American Medical Association step up and take a true offensive posture against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.According to Politico, "members of the group’s House of Delegates are sending a clear message to their leaders: Call out Kennedy, even if it costs us in the pocketbook," and spoke up intensely at the AMA annual meeting.Since Trump took office, the AMA has offered some criticism of Kennedy as he dismantles vaccine approval bodies and fails to act in the face of deadly disease outbreaks around the world — but the group has balanced this with praise of his stated mission to encourage Americans to live healthier lifestyles, as laid out in the controversial Make America Healthy Again movement.However, said the report, this is likely to change due to "the election of Sandra Fryhofer, an internist from Atlanta and uncompromising Kennedy critic, as AMA president-elect. She beat Michael Suk, who as AMA board chair in 2024 and 2025 prioritized doctors’ Medicare fees and promised continued pragmatism in dealing with Kennedy."Fryhofer has pledged to take a more aggressive posture, vowing to hold the administration accountable for “measles running rampant, public health destroyed, a trillion dollars ripped from Medicaid, inadequate physician payment, [and] stupid immigration rules.”Speaking to Politico in interviews, "AMA doctors described an advocacy organization at its wit’s end with Kennedy ... Long a Republican-leaning constituency, doctors began shifting left during the battles over managed care three decades ago." For several holdouts, the report continued, "President Donald Trump’s alliance with Kennedy, a longtime skeptic of vaccine safety and critic of the medical establishment, was the last straw."This also comes as Kennedy and his allies have come under increasing criticism for obstructing new potentially lifesaving research under the guise of requiring stricter safety standards in clinical trials.
President Donald Trump and his conservative Supreme Court, which recently gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, has in theory disempowered Black voters — but he may actually have stirred them to action.“Democrats may have been rightly apoplectic with the Supreme Court’s ruling gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—and the rush to carve up the electoral power of black voters in the South that followed,” wrote The Bulwark’s Lauren Egan on Wednesday. “But in the short term, they have begun to see political opportunity.”Egan observed that operatives in gubernatorial and congressional elections say Black voters seem to be galvanized by the decision, perceiving it as part of a systematic attempt to disenfranchise them and wanting to reclaim their political agency.“The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee provided me with a list of eighteen districts they’re eyeing in which black residents make up between 12 and 33 percent of the voting-age population,” Egan wrote. “Some districts on that list, like North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, are swing seats that Democrats are defending. But others—like Virginia’s 2nd district, Ohio’s 10th, Michigan’s 10th, and North Carolina’s 3rd—are critical pickup opportunities. The DCCC believes that historical turnout among black voters could be the difference in flipping those seats.”Former Rep. Elaine Luria, who is currently running to reclaim her old congressional seat in Virginia’s second district, told Egan that “People are very upset. This is a district where one in five or four voters are African American. . . . All of this was just a very emotionally charged combination of things, and we’ve certainly been hearing about it everywhere we go.”In addition to gutting the Voting Rights Act in their ruling for the case Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the ruling in cases like Allen v. Milligan. On the latter occasion, as Slate legal analysts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern argued last week, they further entrenched the precedent that states cannot try to fight racism when drawing up congressional districts."Although the supermajority described its handiwork as a straightforward application of April's decision in Louisiana v. Callais," Lithwick and Stern wrote, "Tuesday's decision dramatically expands the scope of that ruling. It is not a mere aftershock from Callais, but a separate earthquake of the same or perhaps even greater magnitude. Following years of twists and turns in the legal system, this case has become the vehicle by which the Court's conservative supermajority not only applies its own brand-new 'updates' to Section 2 of the storied Voting Rights Act of 1965, but also, sweeps what remains of constitutional protections against discriminatory voting practices out the back door."The legal analysts added, "It commits these crimes in an unsigned, blithely dismissive order that lacks any substantive reasoning, as it pretends to be honoring some jurisprudential lodestar it celebrates as 'our colorblind Constitution.'"
Trump is angry over the United States' dwindling stockpile of missiles as he looks to once again escalate the conflict with Iran, according to a new report.According to insiders who spoke to NBC News, "the president has expressed anger to aides and allies over thinning American stockpiles." Amid war in Iran, the U.S. military is burning through the Pentagon's supplies of missiles and interceptors, according to NBC News, citing defense officials. While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed concerns, military officials, lawmakers, and outside experts worry about how the U.S. will respond if another enemy attacks, NBC News noted.At the same time, Trump is mulling whether to restart major combat operations in Iran on top of the new strikes launched in retaliation for a downed Apache helicopter earlier this week.Leaders from about seven defense companies are preparing to meet with Trump at the White House later this week, and they expect a contentious discussion because of missile stockpiles, insiders told NBC News. One person familiar with the meeting told NBC News they expect it's "going to be ugly."Those defense industry leaders are expecting Trump to press them to quickly produce arms and restock the Pentagon's inventory, according to NBC News.A White House official denied that such a meeting is scheduled "at this time," according to NBC News. The Pentagon didn't respond to NBC News' request for comment.