Gov. Wes Moore (D-Md.) joins Meet the Press NOW to preview his upcoming address on America’s 250th birthday as President Trump prepares to deliver his own remarks.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf has warned of an Iranian response if the U.S. and Israel breach the interim peace deal, as Tehran prepares to bury its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We strongly demand full implementation of the agreements, and if the U.S. and the Zionist regime fail to fulfill their commitments, Iran…
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.
Ceremony for Ali Khamenei intended to be epic display of national power. Plus, the expected wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce pays dividend to good causesGood morning. Final preparations are under way for Ali Khamenei’s six-day funeral. The farewell to the former supreme leader is expected to draw millions in Iran. Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli attack on the country in February, and the funeral is intended to be an epic display of personal mourning, national power, resilience and social cohesion.Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Reza Aref, who is the lead funeral organiser, described the ceremony, which begins on Saturday in Tehran and will end with Khamenei’s burial on Thursday in Mashhad, as “the most important event of this century” and the most attended event since the 1979 revolution. The scale of the funeral has been conceived to relay political and religious messages of resistance to the rest of the world. At the request of Iraqi politicians, Khamenei’s body will also be carried through the Iraqi Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf.Will Ali Khamenei’s successor take part? Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, is not expected to make an appearance at his father’s funeral. He was severely injured in the same US-Israeli strike that killed his father and also killed Mojtaba’s wife and his 14-month-old daughter. The extent of Mojtaba’s injuries is unknown and he has so far issued only written statements, including one that distanced himself from the ceasefire negotiations but sanctioned their continuance. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, threatened to kill him this week, saying he was marked for death.Why is Trump so unhappy with Nato? Aside from the failure of countries such as the UK and France to join in with the US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump has long complained that Europe does not spend enough on defence. Under pressure from the US, Nato leaders agreed at a gathering last year to boost defence-related spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. Continue reading...
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!
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."
