Less than six years after President Donald Trump replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with his own United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), he's decided to renege on his own creation.
Sen. Thom Tillis says the SAVE America Act lacks the funding and time to be implemented before midterm elections, calling the push "theater."
House Democratic subcommittee report outlines web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemesDonald Trump staged a hostile takeover of the US’s 250th anniversary celebration to enrich political allies, harvest voter data and promote Christian nationalist ideology, according to a congressional investigation released on Thursday.The interim report, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF). Continue reading...
An Air Force major was arrested on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday after calling for President Trump and Vice President Vance’s impeachments. Peaceful demonstrations are permitted on Capitol grounds, but a protester must remain alongside a member of Congress to speak openly from the steps. Originally, Air Force Maj. Jason Watson was accompanied…
Democrats are expected to take back Congress in the midterm elections and Republicans are already plotting a preemptive strike ahead of that takeover to protect the White House.President Donald Trump's scandals are stacking up, from the files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, the push for a $1.8 billion slush fund, the bulldozing of the East Wing of the White House, the funding for the East Wing of the White House, the Kennedy Center debacle and a slew of other money-making schemes. Semafor reported Thursday that one way Republicans could hit back is by conducting their own parallel investigations. "Doing so would amount to an unusual assertion of power from the House minority, which historically has almost no ability to enforce any of its own investigative requests," reporter Nicholas Wu conceded. James Mandolfo, a law firm partner who handled the GOP's investigation of then-President Joe Biden's family said, “If the Democrats take the House in November, the Republican minority will be among the strongest in history because they likely will have the Trump administration backing them on core issues that they remain aligned on." Normally, the committees would have no power to enforce subpoenas or make demands to cooperate with a private GOP investigation. Mandolfo suggested Trump get his Justice Department involved and use the power of the federal government to go after anyone who refuses to do what he wants. "The Trump administration could take action against those companies/institutions that don’t comply with any requests from the minority," said Mandolfo. It's unclear what would happen if such individuals fought back in court.Semafor explained that such a plan doesn't solve a problem Republicans could continue to face: division within their own party. "There was friction between some Oversight Committee Republicans and the Justice Department earlier this Congress, after the GOP-controlled panel voted to subpoena then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation," the report said. The Democratic investigations will likely be conducted within each congressional committee, but there could also be special investigative committees, similar to the Jan. 6 committee.
OpenAI may give the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company, per the Financial Times. The proposal is in very preliminary conversations, according to a person familiar with the matter.Why it matters: If the overture is taken up by the Trump administration, that would mean the government would have a vested interest in weighing whether or not to limit the release of an OpenAI model. Catch up quick: OpenAI views the potential government stake as a way to give the general public a share of the upside of AI, and CEO Sam Altman has previously shared with Axios his interest in some sort of public wealth fund.The goal is to include other AI labs giving over a similar stake.This could look like including shares in Trump accounts or some other vehicle that would give American households exposure to investments in AI, for example. Anthropic supported similar policies in a recent paper, arguing for "universal pre-distributive capital accounts" with "priority given" to those with jobs exposed to AI disruption. Zoom out: The potential investment comes as the White House is still deciding when OpenAI can release its most powerful models widely, through a regulatory process that Altman has said isn't quite "optimal." Altman proposed on Wednesday a U.S.-led international forum to establish AI regulatory standards, which could be a way to allow the government to invest without having as heavy a hand in regulation.Between the lines: Investors tell Axios that the idea of giving a stake reads like a PR stunt aimed at making it seem as if the public could benefit from the AI boom just as the technology threatens their jobs.Yes, but: The government's 9.9% stake in Intel, taken last August, appears to have paid off.Its shares are up nearly 400% since then, although it has also come amid a broad rally for chip stocks. Friction point: The Intel stake was acquired under the CHIPS Act. A deal with the AI labs would likely require an act of Congress.It's also unclear what a government stake would accomplish, other than giving the AI labs a closer relationship to what is currently one of their biggest hurdles: the government. An investor in Anthropic and OpenAI tells Axios that the proposal reads more like a "political move" to gain favor with the administration than something that would actually create a shared benefit for the American public. What they're saying: A government stake would be a "troubling milestone" that hurts competition between the labs, " David Sherman, AI and financial inclusion strategist at io.net, a decentralized cloud network, said via email.It "gives one AI company a government stamp of approval whilst millions of developers, researchers and businesses are locked out by skyrocketing token prices and endless GPU queues," he added, referencing the challenge in accessing AI at current costs or chips at current supply levels.It comes amid broader concern about whether the government is already curbing the competitive edge of U.S. AI labs compared with China by putting guardrails around model release timelines.And if the goal is to share the financial benefits of AI, there are other ways to do that. Some have suggested that AI companies share a percent of pre-tax income or that the government impose a tax on all tokens. Kevin Bankston, an AI governance advisor, wrote "JUST. TAX. THEM." on X.Bill Gates proposed an automated robot tax in 2017 that could slow down automation, suggesting they should be taxed the same way human employees pay income tax. The bottom line: "The labs develop the technology, but citizens and their elected representatives must make the rules," Altman wrote in the Financial Times earlier this week.
According to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson — who used to be among President Donald Trump’s closest allies — the U.S. is “not a democracy,” and he’s now working to “help build a third party” that will uphold the “America first” values he says Trump has betrayed. Carlson made these assertions via an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, which he gave following his announcement that he had left the Republican Party. While he says that he was a “consistent defender” of the party for 35 years, he now argues he can no longer support the way it has changed under Trump. Central to his criticism of both president and party was the war in the Middle East. While Carlson was instrumental to Trump’s success during the 2016 and 2024 campaigns, explains the New York Times, “he broke sharply with the president after the United States started the war with Iran in late February, declaring Mr. Trump was violating a core campaign promise to avoid foreign conflicts. By April, Mr. Carlson said he was ‘tormented’ by his past support for the president. He told the Columbia Journalism Review that he had not spoken to Mr. Trump since the start of the war.”“I’m not interested in talking to him,” said Carlson.While Carlson has in the past attempted to maintain a public perception of alliance with Trump, texts revealed in 2023 during a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems showed his true feelings. “I hate him passionately,” texted Carlson in 2020, just two days before Trump spurred on the January 6 insurrection. A few days later, he texted that the president was “a demonic force, a destroyer.” Trump regained Carlson’s loyalty — or at least his willingness to fake it — in time for the 2024 election, but then over the course of the following year, growing daylight could be seen between their policy positions. Then Trump launched conflict with Iran, which Carlson said betrayed the “America first” ethos as well as blatant promises to start “no new foreign wars.” Speaking with the Columbia Journalism Review, Carlson said that there was no longer any contrast between “war and finance.”“That’s not a democracy,” asserted Carlson. “That’s a one-party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be broken, and there’s going to be a third party, and I’m going to do everything I can to bring that about.” While some have suggested that he may be preparing for a presidential run himself, Carlson has rejected this idea, saying, “I’m not a politician, that’s for sure. I’m not a rival to Trump for power. I have no power. I’m someone who knows Trump, and I know him well, and I’ve known him for a long time.” Carlson isn’t the only prominent figure from the MAGA movement to lose faith in Trump. Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had her own dramatic falling out with the president, and on Wednesday announced plans to create a new political party specifically to oppose the MAGA agenda.
Conservative pundit Megyn Kelly took a shot at President Trump’s family for what she characterized as benefiting personally from his presidency. “I don’t feel great about our leaders. I’m not going to lie,” Kelly said on an episode of her podcast and YouTube show this week. “I’m like, I’m disappointed with some aspects of the…
President Donald Trump's own government is warning residents in the Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland area that the July 4 fireworks display will likely cause air quality to reach the worst safety ratings on the scale.Politico's E&E News reported on Thursday that, ahead of the "massive" fireworks display, the president's planned activities for Saturday are likely to cause “hazardous” conditions.The National Park Service included the detail in a draft analysis given to Politico, saying that the 35- to 40-minute program will deploy more than 850,000 fireworks shells. That's more than 100 times what is typically launched on Independence Day, which shoots off 17,000 to 20,000 shells, said Northern Virginia Magazine. The usual event is touted as among the largest in the country each year. This year, Trump wants to set a record for the most fireworks ever used. The current record is 810,904, held by Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ) in the Philippines. It was set on New Year's Eve in 2016, according to Guinness World Records.The “worst-case” scenario, the National Park Service estimated that the explosions that are set to go off in 10 different locations will "create more than 2,000 micrograms of fine particulate matter — PM2.5 — per cubic meter on the National Mall." It's the kind of air quality seen during the 2023 wildfires in Canada, which blew smoke into the Northeast US. Los Angeles air quality has long been the worst air quality in the U.S. and at no point in the past 20 years has it reached the level that Washington will on the 4th, the American Lung Association data shows. A similar comparison would be Loni, India, is the worst and most polluted in the world currently, the "Live Air Quality Map" shows. In their case, the micrograms of fine particulate matter reach approximately 46.6 µg/m³. On the evening of the 4th of July, the Washington metro area will be approximately 4,190 percent worse than the most polluted city in the world. "The Capital Weather Gang," the irreverent local weather outlet for the city and the immediate area of the National Mall, will be the worst of the worst as the wind blows the smoke to the east. It means that southeastern Washington will get the brunt of the blast. Dr Tracey Lynn Perez Koehlmoos commented that those wards of Washington have "the worst pediatric asthma population in the U.S." The second-worst or "very unhealthy" category level will cover the lower half of the entire district. The northern part of the district and all of the northeast Virginia suburbs and Maryland east of the district, will likely be exposed to particulate matter that could be bad for those with existing breathing problems like asthma. That part of Maryland that is farther north of D.C. will have "moderate" air quality. According to the Washington Post, neither the Interior Department nor the National Park Service responded to questions about the warnings.