First lady Melania Trump gave Congress a private deadline to pass her signature foster care bill, and she is pursuing it largely outside the usual White House channels, according to a new report in Politico. At a bipartisan roundtable with the House Ways and Means Committee in April, the first lady publicly called foster care legislation a "moral imperative." Then, behind closed doors, she set a target, Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) told the outlet: "I want this on Donald's desk by the August recess." The Fostering the Future Act, which expands housing, education and workforce help for young people aging out of foster care, passed the House unanimously.The Senate has not moved it out of committee, and lawmakers are set to leave Washington around Aug. 10. At a White House picnic the day the House passed the bill, both Trumps urged the Senate to hurry. "Hopefully, it will quickly pass in the Senate," the president said. He has not publicly pressed senators since.The deadline reflects a first lady who increasingly operates on her own track. Her office, not the State Department, has led her effort to reunite children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war, negotiating directly with Moscow and Kyiv, the White House said. She has also shown a willingness to diverge from the administration's message. She broke with the White House on Epstein, calling for survivors to testify as the president's team tried to move past the scandal, and last week put her own spin on a Supreme Court ruling her husband celebrated, voicing support for the LGBTQIA+ community.A recent book recounted how she resisted Trump's overhaul of the White House grounds and lost.
LeBron James’ agent, Rich Paul, went on his “Game Over” podcast with Max Kellerman and broke down which teams are in contention for the 42-year-old superstar. It’s highly unusual for an agent to publicly discuss his client’s active free agency, especially for someone as high profile as James. But we got a glimpse into James’...
Foreigners across the globe have flooded the United States for the World Cup — and according to videos they’ve been posting to social media, what many of them are finding is freedom, opportunity, abundance, and a culture that still allows people to be different.One man posted a video of himself walking around a neighborhood with driveways for planes, commenting on how that would never be allowed in the U.K.Another man posted a video of himself excited about free soda refills, while a woman posted a video of herself wearing a Buc-ee's hat, excitedly talking about the mindset of Americans: “We don’t care; do whatever you want.”“If you want to dress a certain way, go for it. If you want to start a project, go for it. If you want to pass a car on the right, you can do it. And it’s something that personally is helping me to heal, because when you’re used to shrinking yourself, and you arrive in the U.S., and you discover this space to just be yourself and do whatever you want,” the woman said.“It’s so refreshing,” she added.“Share these things. I’m telling you: All we need is to believe that we are worth saving. That’s the first step. Listen to what people from all around the world are coming here and experiencing and saying about you,” Glenn says.“You could be overseas and say they just hate people. They are bigots or whatever. They just hate foreigners or they don’t want, you know, brown people or whatever the lie is. It’s not true,” he continues.Glenn points out that as long as you treat America with respect, you’re welcome here.“That is America. Again, I don’t need you to look like me. I don’t need you to dress like me. I don’t need you to listen to the same kind of music. I don’t need any of that. I just want you to respect the basic idea that all men are created equal,” he says.“Endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And governments are instituted among men to protect those rights. And that’s what makes us different,” he continues.“It’s not our wealth,” he says. “It’s a total mindset that you can be different because we can all come together on one idea: that we are all meant to be different and the government is to enforce the freedoms that we have.”Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
At least two Dallas police officers and members of the Egypt national soccer team’s staff were involved in a physical altercation and shouting match, according to videos.
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.
