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Anti-Israel agitators outside the White House threw objects at a National Park Service ranger, shouting "piggy, piggy!" at him, and defaced statues on Saturday in Washington, D.C. Holding signs that accused President Biden of being on "the wrong side of history," protesters converged on the White House after security measures at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were tightened in anticipation of the demonstration.  Protesters waved Palestinian flags, chanted "Free Palestine!" and held innumerable signs, urging Biden to stop his support for Israel.  Although the protest started out peacefully, hostile demonstrators soon began targeting park rangers, shouting "F-you, fascist!" and "piggy, piggy, oink, oink!"  Demonstrators began making a human chain around the White House, which they referred to as "the people's red line," a reference to Biden saying Israel has not crossed his "red line" in the war.  ADDITIONAL BARRI...

NOTUS : X remains a popular destination for people highly engaged in politics, with DC insiders reluctantly buying blue checks and candidates paying for cheap ads   —  While former President Donald Trump was actively being convicted by a jury of his peers in New York City last week …

A Yale Law professor suggests there is another strategy former President Donald Trump's legal team could pursue to limit the impact of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case on the 2024 presidential election, after a New York jury found the former president guilty of 34 felony counts of falsified business records. In a newly-created podcast, titled Straight Down the Middle , Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld took a look at what legal options Trump's defense team have been left with following the jury's verdict, as well as the appeal process that is slated to soon take place. The most obvious path for Trump's legal team to take in an effort to challenge the conviction is that of an appeal through the New York Appeals Court system in hopes of ending up at the Supreme Court – a process that Rubenfeld argued will take years to complete and could result in "irreparable harm." "Of course that would take years, and that's a problem here. Why ...

Republicans are making an early effort for the open Senate seat in Michigan, which is now in play as Democrats brace to lose their incumbency advantage with the departure of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) announced a seven-figure expenditure on a new field program in the battleground state on Friday, emphasizing its effort to flip the long-time Democratic seat.  The Republican Senate campaign arm will prop up GOP frontrunner former Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan, months ahead of the state's official primary, where he still faces challengers in wealthy businessman Sandy Pensler and former Rep. Justin Amash.  SCHUMER JUSTIFIES CONGRESSIONAL INVITE TO NETANYAHU AMID LIBERAL OUTRAGE Rogers, who is endorsed by former President Trump, is expected to come out the victor in the Aug. 6 primary.   The early spend includes ground-level infrastructure meant to increase Republican voter turnout and reach individuals who haven't y...

Bloomberg : Sources: Bakkt, Intercontinental Exchange's digital-asset marketplace launched in 2018, explores a sale, after issuing a going concern warning earlier in 2024   —  - Range of options includes a breakup, people familiar say  — Crypto firm issued a going concern warning earlier this year

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has acknowledged previously unreported trips overseas that were paid for by his friend, conservative businessman Harlan Crow.  One of the 2019 trips was to Bali, where the justice was accompanied by his wife, Virginia. Another trip paid for by the Crows was to Sonoma County, California. Thomas on Friday released his amended 2023 financial disclosure forms — required of all federal judges — to include those earlier trips. The travel was not disclosed in the 2019 report. "During the preparation and filing of this report, filer sought and received guidance from his accountant and ethics counsel," the filing states. OVER 100 FORMER CLERKS OF JUSTICE THOMAS SIGN OPEN LETTER DEFENDING HIS INTEGRITY, INDEPENDENCE "Consistent with the review of prior filings that the filer began last year, report for calendar year 2019 is hereby amended to include the following entries under the reimbursement section, which was inadvertently omitted a...

David Gilbert / Wired : Google Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot won't return results on any elections globally or historical US elections, and refuse to confirm that Biden won in 2020   —  With just six months to go before the US presidential election, Gemini and Copilot chatbots are incapable of saying that Joe Biden won in 2020 …

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has withdrawn the state from a 2021 pact that had mandated adherence to California's stringent emissions standards – including a ban on internal combustion vehicles by 2035. Youngkin and legislative Republicans previously failed to repeal the law, which linked Virginia with California's Air Resources Board (CARB) standards, and Wednesday's move similarly did not go over well with some state Democrats as of the following morning. In an interview Thursday, Youngkin bluntly said, "They're wrong," when asked about Democratic pushback that he and Attorney General Jason Miyares were overstepping their bounds. "In fact, the law is very clear and the [Miyares]' opinion is clear and straightforward. The California Regulatory Framework ACC-1 sunsets on December 31st, 2024." YOUNGKIN: EDUCATION IS THE BEDROCK OF THE AMERICAN DREAM "The new California framework, ACC-2, we are choosing not to enter into and ...

Will Knight / Wired : OpenAI releases a research paper by its recently disbanded “superalignment” team on a method for reverse engineering the workings of AI models   —  Days after former employees said the company was being too reckless with its technology, OpenAI released a research paper on a method …

Progressive "Squad" Democrats are furious that their leaders have agreed to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress. "Absolutely," Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., told Fox News Digital on Wednesday when asked if she was disappointed that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., agreed to sign onto the invitation. "We should not be creating a platform and welcoming an accused war criminal," Pressley said. Netanyahu accepted the bipartisan invitation late last week, declaring in a statement that he was "very moved to have the privilege of representing Israel before both Houses of Congress and to present the truth about our just war against those who seek to destroy us to the representatives of the American people and the entire world." There's no set date yet. NETANYAHU SAYS BIDEN PRESENTED 'INCOMPLETE' VERSION OF GAZA CEASEFIRE It's spurred pu...

Sage D. Young / Unchained : Coinbase launches its smart wallet, which uses passkeys instead of seed phrases and works without app or extension installs, in a move to simplify onboarding   —  The launch of Coinbase's smart wallets, which don't require seed phrases or the downloading of a browser extension or an application …

Republicans slammed a bill being considered by the Senate Wednesday afternoon, claiming their Democratic counterparts are "fearmongering" over access to contraception in order "to score cheap political points." "There is no threat to access to contraception, which is legal in every state and required by law to be offered at no cost by health insurers," more than 20 Republican senators said in a joint statement.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., informed senators on Sunday that they should expect to vote on a bill designed to protect the right to contraception during the week, and later announced that the bill was slated for Wednesday.  DEMS IN HOT SEAT FOR ALLEGED ETHICS VIOLATIONS OVER ALITO RECUSAL DEMANDS "This is not a show vote. This is a show us who you are vote," Schumer claimed at a press conference Wednesday ahead of the vote, in response to Republican criticisms of the leader for scheduling votes on messaging bills ra...

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch : Wix unveils an AI-powered app builder that creates iOS and Android apps from descriptions provided by users in a chat, coming to its $99/month Branded App plan   —  Wix, the platform known chiefly for its web design tools, is launching a generative AI feature that'll let customers create …

Kelly Phillips Erb / Forbes : Washington DC's AG says Michael Saylor and his company MicroStrategy will pay $40M to settle a tax suit, calling it “the largest income tax recovery” ever in DC   —  Michael Saylor and his company, MicroStrategy, will pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit alleging violations of the city's False Claims Act and tax laws.

FIRST ON FOX : A group of Republican lawmakers is warning the Biden administration about a rise in Chinese nationals coming across the southern border , claiming it proves their "worst fears" about what they see as a weakening of enforcement under the administration. The 20 lawmakers, led by Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., highlights "the dramatic rise in encounters at our nation’s borders with individuals on the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS) and the unprecedented, otherwise unexplained rise in Chinese nationals – largely adult males – crossing illegally." "These developments prove our worst fears: the weakening of our borders and willful lack of enforcement of immigration laws has encouraged America’s adversaries to exploit this national security vulnerability," they say. CHINESE, JORDANIAN, TURKISH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS CAUGHT IN LARGE NUMBERS AT SOUTHERN BORDER Over 3,500 Chinese nationals were encountered crossing the southern border illegally in May, s...

Krystal Hu / Reuters : Source: Canadian AI startup Cohere has raised $450M from Nvidia, Salesforce, Cisco, and others and is looking to raise more in the same round at a $5B valuation   —  Canadian AI startup Cohere has raised $450 million in funding from returning investors such as Nvidia (NVDA.O) and Salesforce Ventures …

Emilia David / The Verge : Amazon details Project PI, which is active in several warehouses and uses computer vision to detect if products are damaged or don't meet buyers' criteria   —  Amazon's Project PI, or “Private Investigator,” setup combines generative AI and computer vision to “see” damage on products or determine …

President Biden issued permits to several Texas cities on Monday allowing them to "expand and continue to maintain" their border crossings. Biden's order impacts the Texas cities of Laredo, Eagle Pass and Brownsville. The border crossings include the bridges that span the Rio Grande, allowing vehicular and pedestrian traffic to cross to and from the U.S. and Mexico. The permits are a preview of Biden's plans for the border as he is expected to issue a series of executive orders on the issue this week. Details of what will be announced remain unclear. Some outlets reported that it could involve a mechanism to prevent additional migrant entries into the U.S. once there is a rolling seven-day average of more than 4,000 apprehensions a day. MAYORKAS SAYS SOME MIGRANTS ‘TRY TO GAME’ ASYLUM SYSTEM, AS BORDER REMAINS TOP POLITICAL ISSUE That plan would likely be similar to the one proposed in a sweeping bipartisan Senate bill that was unveiled earlier this year. The bi...

As the White House finalizes plans for a U.S.-Mexico clampdown that would shut off asylum requests and automatically deny entrance to migrants once a threshold is met, the Biden administration has continued to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to remain in the U.S. with what amounts to amnesty, according to a report. A report released last month by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonpartisan data gathering organization that tracks immigration cases and backlogs shows that since 2022, over 350,000 asylum cases filed by migrants were closed by the U.S. government on the basis that those who filed did not have a criminal record or were not deemed a threat to the U.S. Once cases are terminated without a decision on the merits of their asylum claim, the migrants are removed from the legal system, and they are not required to check in with authorities. It also means the migrants can legally go anywhere they want inside the U.S. without hav...

Voters in at least three rural South Dakota counties are set to decide Tuesday whether to return to counting ballots by hand, the latest communities around the country to consider ditching machine tabulators based on unfounded conspiracy theories stemming from the 2020 presidential election. The three counties, each with fewer than 6,000 residents, would be among the first in the U.S. to require old-school hand counts, which long ago were replaced by ballot tabulators in most of the country. A number of other states and local governments have considered banning machine counting since the 2020 election, but most of those efforts have sputtered over concerns of cost, the time it takes to count by hand and the difficulty of hiring more staff to do it. 'ELECTION INTERFERENCE' CLAIMS MUDDY BATTLEGROUND STATE POLITICS AMID COMPETITIVE RACES Experts say counting the votes by hand is less accurate that machine tabulation. Supporters of the South Dakota effort aren't deterred ...

Suzanne Smalley / The Record : Q&A with FTC's Privacy and Identity Protection executive Ben Wiseman on proposed commercial surveillance rules, connected car industry's data practices, more   —  I can more broadly speak about the increased rulemaking over the past several years and I think it reflects two things.

A duo of New York City Council members is reaching across the aisle to introduce a bill to end the sanctuary policies enacted under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. Council members Robert Holden, a Democrat, and Joe Borelli, a Republican, plan to introduce legislation Thursday that would roll back the de Blasio-era policies and make it easier for the city’s law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, according to a report from the New York Post. "Sanctuary city laws put all New Yorkers, both immigrants and longtime residents, in danger by preventing the NYPD and DOC from working with ICE," Holden told the New York Post. "We do not need to import criminals, and only 23 years since 9/11, we have forgotten the deadly consequences of poor interagency communication. We must repeal these laws immediately." NYC MAYOR RIPPED BY IMMIGRATION ACTIVISTS OVER ‘RACIST’ CLAIM THAT MIGRANTS MAKE ‘EXCELLENT SWIMMERS’ The bill, which is likely to face signific...