President Trump prepares to travel to Mount Rushmore to deliver remarks for the United States’ 250th birthday. NBC News correspondents Gabe Gutierrez and Julie Tsirkin join Meet the Press NOW to discuss what to expect from the President’s upcoming addresses and July Fourth celebrations.
In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas that Tennessee’s two-year residency requirement for alcohol retailers was unconstitutional. This marked the first time since the 2005 Granholm v. Heald decision that the Supreme Court directly addressed the relationship between the 21st Amendment and the dormant Commerce […]
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.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro held a press conference Thursday to announce that a grand jury indicted former Olympian David Hearn on a felony charge for allegedly ripping […]
Even as President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement gut civics in public schools by dismantling the Department of Education and pushing pro-MAGA interpretations of history and “God-centered education,” a new study suggests that Generation Z can ill afford this educational erosion, as they are shockingly ignorant of basic facts about American history.“Nearly two-thirds (61 percent) of Americans under 30 are unaware of what America’s 250th is commemorating this year, while just 39 percent know we are celebrating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence,” reported Cato Institute’s Jonah Messinger and Emily Ekins on Thursday. The right-leaning think tank conducted a survey, the Cato Institute Fourth of July Survey, with the help of the polling firm Morning Consult.Messenger and Ekins added that “a majority (52 percent) of Gen Z Americans also don’t know what country from which the American colonies declared their independence, while 48 percent correctly answered that it was Great Britain.”Additionally, “More importantly, two-thirds (67 percent) of Gen Z do not know why the American colonies declared independence from Great Britain, while 33 percent correctly answered that it was to protest high taxes and a lack of representation in government.”There was a bright spot in the numbers, in that 66 percent of Generation Z knew America’s first president was George Washington. That number, however, is 11 points less than the number of Americans overall who know their nation’s first president.“Six in ten Americans (64 percent) under 30 likewise don’t know what the main purpose of the US Constitution is,” Messenger and Ekins wrote. “Instead, 14 percent thought the main purpose of the Constitution was to declare independence from Great Britain (which is what the Declaration of Independence did), 17 percent thought the main purpose was to create a presidency, Congress, and Supreme Court, 8 percent thought it was to list all federal laws, and 4 percent thought it was to create two major political parties. Another 21 percent admitted they didn’t know. Only 36 percent knew that the main purpose of the Constitution is to establish and limit the powers of government.”In a separate Thursday post about the poll, Ekins identified similarly ominous findings about the American public overall.“A new national survey from the Cato Institute, conducted in collaboration with Morning Consult of 2,253 Americans ahead of July 4th and America’s 250th anniversary, finds nearly half (46 percent) of Americans don’t know what America’s 250th anniversary commemorates,” Ekins wrote. “A little more than half (53 percent) correctly answered that it was the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.”The survey discovered that “while most Americans have at least an instinctive sense that the US Constitution protects their rights, a majority (58 percent) don’t actually know how it accomplishes this. Less than half (41 percent) correctly said that the Constitution’s purpose is to establish and limit the powers of government. The remaining said the purpose of the Constitution was to declare independence from Great Britain (17 percent), create the presidency, Congress, and Supreme Court (12 percent), list all federal laws (7 percent), or create two major political parties (4 percent), while 18 percent conceded they don’t know what the purpose of the Constitution is.”The survey also found majorities of Americans support ideas about how to change America’s Constitution that one or the other party staunchly oppose. These include conservative views such as requiring photo ID to vote (66 percent), requiring a balanced budget (69 percent), making English the nation's official language (64 percent), banning flag burning (60 percent) and banning transgender women from women’s sports (59 percent). It also includes liberal views such as guaranteeing health care (73 percent), providing free college (60 percent), limiting money in political campaigns (69 percent), guaranteeing a right to abortion (58 percent), banning hate speech (58 percent) and increasing taxes on the wealthy (58 percent).
Elected officials in California are carrying on with business as usual, even after their constituents voted overwhelmingly to send them packing.An election was held on April 28 in the California city of Avenal in Kings County, where the mayor, Alvaro Preciado, and three city council members — Leticia Gamez, David Reynosa, and Pablo Hernandez — were recalled with at least 76% of voters backing the ouster in each case. The Kings County Registrar of Voters certified the recall election.'I’ve never seen a city so deflated.'The driving force behind this electoral housecleaning — which the council members unsuccessfully attempted to stop with a lawsuit in April — was principally voter concerns about transparency and the council's previous decision to cease contracting with the county fire department.Preciado, Gamez, and Hernandez voted on June 11 to reject the will of the electorate and remain in office. They even approved a new city budget despite recall advocates producing a restraining order, reported the SF Chronicle.Those officials clinging to power, including Reynosa, maintain that the recall election was conducted unlawfully by Kings County and without the council's authorization.Preciado told the SF Chronicle last month that he was staying in office until a judge decides on the recall's legality.California Democrat Attorney General Robert Bonta cleared the way for legal action against the recalled officials on June 11.RELATED: Gov. Pritzker says he's one of the good billionaires, not the ones vilified by socialists In his opinion, Bonta noted that "if the Relators are correct on the merits, then the Defendants are not lawfully occupying office. It would not be in the public interest to permit elected officials to disregard election results."Days after Bonta granted the recall campaigners' application for leave to sue in quo warranto, residents served Preciado and the other recalled officials a lawsuit and an earful at an Avenal city council meeting.Dalila Barajas, a resident of Avenal who is one of the recall proponents, told KGPE-TV, "It just seems that the more meetings they have, the more money that they're spending illegally, the more our citizens are getting frustrated and the more we're asking for them to step down."While Bonta cleared lawsuits against the recall officials, King County District 2 Supervisor Richard Valle criticized the state attorney general for his apparent disinterest in the scandal, telling KMPH-TV on Wednesday, "I believe that if these were MAGA republicans who were refusing to leave office, someone in California would have done something about that.""We were hoping he would take some action," added Valle."I’ve never seen a city so deflated in my time of being around in public service. The people feel like nobody’s coming to help," added the King County supervisor. "Why is it being allowed to take place here in the state of California, in the county of Kings, in the city of Avenal? It’s embarrassing."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
