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A federal appeals court on Saturday refused to let the Trump administration enforce key parts of President Donald Trump's executive order tightening mail-in voting rules in 23 Democratic-led states, a setback that could send the administration to the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of this year's midterm elections . In a 2-1 decision, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Department of Justice 's (DOJ) request to pause a June ruling blocking several provisions of Trump's March executive order while the administration appeals. The DOJ previously told the court it could seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court if it did not prevail. The administration argued the lawsuit was premature because federal agencies had not finalized the policies needed to implement the executive order. But the appeals court found the plaintiff states were already facing looming election deadlines and had begun preparing for potential changes. OBAMA-APPOINTED JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP'S ELE...

Reuters : China's market regulator says it had fined and confiscated ~$770M from Trip.com for abusing its dominant position in the domestic online hotel-booking market   —  China's market regulator said on Saturday it had fined and confiscated a total of 5.2 billion yuan ($770 million) from Trip.com Group …

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was dealt a major legal blow Friday after a federal judge gutted key state laws providing in-state tuition, financial aid and scholarships to illegal immigrants, marking another win for the Trump administration's nationwide immigration agenda. U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, a Trump appointee serving in the Southern District of Illinois , sided with the Justice Department , ruling that Illinois' in-state tuition policies, the RISE Act and the Illinois DREAM Act are "unconstitutional and invalid" as applied to illegal immigrants. The ruling permanently prevents Illinois from enforcing the laws, although McGlynn delayed the order from taking effect for 14 days to allow the state to ask an appeals court to intervene. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SUES COLORADO OVER IN-STATE TUITION AND FINANCIAL AID FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft celebrated the ruling. "Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer...

Ima Jackson-Obot / Financial Times : Several universities including Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Waterloo have restricted or disabled their use of AI detectors over accuracy concerns   —  Some institutions are overhauling assessment and trying to move away from the emphasis on surveillance

Chris Metinko / Axios : Paper, which allows designers to connect directly with production code and the AI agents that create it, raised a $34M Series A led by Accel and ICONIQ   —  Paper, a design platform for teams using AI, locked up a $34 million Series A led by Accel and ICONIQ, CEO Stephen Haney tells Axios Pro exclusively.

A newly-uncovered Biden White House memo from the administration's final days revealed plans that could have expanded Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to more than 3 million noncitizens while acknowledging that previous court challenges had blocked many of President Donald Trump's efforts to end the protections. TPS is meant for foreign populations experiencing crises like political unrest or natural disasters, and while Trump has tried to end the "temporary" provisions for Haitians, Nepalese, Salvadorans and Sudanese people, lawsuits from pro-migrant advocates have halted most attempts. "Stakeholders argue that granting TPS will potentially protect many vulnerable people from President-elect Trump's planned mass deportations ... They argue that these protections are likely to hold in court, and they are prepared to litigate efforts to terminate or slow down the implementation of TPS for specified nations by the Trump Administration," read a section of ...

Timothy Pratt / The Guardian : The DOJ is prosecuting a Cop City protester for allegedly providing CBP with a “duress” passcode that wiped the contents of his GrapheneOS phone   —  Concern over US effort to prosecute Sam Tunick, accused by authorities of wiping his phone using GrapheneOS

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch : Runway launches Runway Media Router, which it says is the first built specifically for generative media, as it expands from AI video to AI infrastructure   —  Runway no longer wants to be just another AI model company.  It wants to become the infrastructure layer for generative media.

New York City socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani was widely mocked by conservatives on social media Tuesday after announcing that one of his campaign platforms, arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, isn’t a tool he has at his disposal. In a video post on X that was viewed over 36 million times, Mamdani called Netanyahu a "war criminal" while conceding that New York City could not enforce the International Criminal Court's warrant for the Israeli leader’s arrest on its own despite the mayor saying he had looked at exploring avenues to do so. Mamdani has often said on the campaign trail and as mayor that he wanted to arrest Netanyahu over what the mayor calls a "genocide" in Gaza. While Mamdani’s post was well received by many on the political left, conservatives on social media quickly mocked the mayor over the situation while taking issue with his determination to enforce the ICC warrant, which the United States government does not recognize. MAMDAN...

David Jeans / Reuters : Sources: Cathedral, launched by ex-DOGE staffers to use AI to expand US military cyber capabilities, raised $160M led by a16z and Sequoia at a $1.4B valuation   —  A team of former DOGE employees have raised a major funding round for a startup that aims to use AI to expand U.S. military cyber capabilities …

U.S. counterintelligence capabilities have fallen far behind threats from China and Russia , according to former White House national security advisor H.R. McMaster, who accused Washington of being "extraordinarily negligent" during the decades after the Sept. 11 attacks. "The counterintelligence threat is, like, way behind," McMaster warned during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday examining how national security threats have changed in the 25 years since 9/11. Committee Chair Rick Crawford, R-Ark., had asked whether the government’s intense post-attack focus on counterterrorism had diverted attention from hostile nation-states and left the country’s counterintelligence posture inadequate. McMaster not only agreed, but issued a warning that Russia and China are taking advantage of America's guard being down as it focuses on terrorist threats more than global power nuclear rivals. WALTZ WARNS OF CHINESE, RUSSIAN-FUELED ‘NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT’ LOO...

Chris Best / The Substack Post : Substack partners with AI-detection tool Pangram, allowing users to scan text longer than 100 words for an estimate of how much was written with AI assistance   —  Building trust in the AI age  —  It's getting harder to tell what's real on the internet.  —  This is less true on Substack, and we aim to keep it that way.

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch : Natural, which aims to help companies let their AI agents make autonomous payments, raised a $30M Series A led by Forerunner, bringing its total raised to $40M   —  AI agents are starting to execute more sophisticated tasks, such as identifying vendors that can deliver freight, comparing prices …

For many would-be homeowners, the financial hurdle to buying a starter home has grown dramatically over the past seven years. The income needed to afford a typical starter home has jumped more than 80% since 2019, according to a new Realtor.com report . Americans now need an annual household income of about $78,000 to afford a typical starter home, up from roughly $43,000 in 2019—an increase that has far outpaced wage growth and left many first-time buyers struggling to break into the housing market. "First-time buyers aren't sitting on the sidelines because they don't want to own a home—it's because, for many of them, it's just not possible right now," Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com, told Fox News Digital. THINK YOUR STATE IS EXPENSIVE? NEW DATA REVEALS WHERE AMERICANS FACE THE HIGHEST COST-OF-LIVING The analysis paints a mixed picture for first-time buyers. While the supply of starter homes has slowly improved since bottoming out during the pa...

OpenAI : OpenAI paused internal access to an unreleased model that disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture after it repeatedly found ways to act outside its sandbox   —  What internal use of a long-running model taught us about safety.  —  Summary  — Long-running models can solve difficult …

Hugging Face : Hugging Face says an agentic AI system hacked its data pipeline, accessing several internal clusters and credentials; its own AI-based triage caught the breach   —  Earlier this week, we detected and responded to an intrusion into part of our production infrastructure.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , D-N.Y., was accused of putting on an accent during a Memphis rally last week, with critics on social media comparing her to former Vice President Kamala Harris. Ocasio-Cortez was speaking at a campaign rally in Memphis on Friday for progressive U.S. House candidate Justin Pearson, who currently serves as a Tennessee state representative. "We cannot afford to leave Tennessee behind," she said. "We cannot afford to leave Kentucky behind, Alabama behind, Mississippi behind, Georgia behind, South Carolina behind. There is no country where we are split apart." AOC TELLS NEW YORKERS TO ‘PULL UP’ TO ALABAMA DURING RALLY SPEECH BEHIND BULLETPROOF GLASS "About a month or two ago, we were in Montgomery, Alabama — Sister [Rep. Ayanna] Pressley and I were in Montgomery, Alabama, and one of the things that we said was that it is time for the North to roll up to the South," Ocasio-Cortez continued. Critics online singled out this part of...

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal : As many companies cut AI costs by using cheaper models, some, like Shopify, go all-in on frontier models, barring engineers from using anything else   —  Despite steep and rising price tags, some companies heavily favor the more powerful ‘frontier’ AI systems over cheaper alternatives