During an episode of the Politics War Room, Carville said that the June 27 runoff for a Senate seat in his home state of Louisiana “is a potential huge earthquake” for Trump.

The runoff is part of the race to replace Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who lost in May after Trump endorsed an opposing GOP candidate. Cassidy drew Trump’s ire after voting to convict him at his second impeachment trial.

The Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) is running against Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming. Carville argued that a Fleming victory would be a huge blow to Trump’s command of the GOP.

“If Fleming were to win, which most people I talked to think is a possibility, that’s an earthquake,” Carville said. “That’s an earthquake. That’s in Louisiana. That’s a hardcore red state, as you can imagine. That’s Trump going all out for one candidate and getting beaten in his own base.”

Carville described Fleming as “a real, real right-winger for a long time,” and predicted that Fleming would attract “all the people that voted for Clay Higgins (R-LA),” referring to the hardline MAGA congressman.

“All of them, the most intense Clay Higgins people are all going to be for John Fleming, I can tell you,” Carville predicted. “Just watch the race Saturday, and if Fleming wins that, I don’t know how else you could interpret that but that Trump’s just losing his grip on his base.”

The post James Carville warns ‘earthquake’ in red state runoff could determine Trump’s fate appeared first on Raw Story.

‘American Football [LP2]’ by American Football

American Football’s second self-titled album, known as LP2, came out 16 years after they disbanded in 2000. That seems to be a somewhat familiar pattern for the formative Midwest emo band. They gained cult status following their 1999 debut LP1, with the Urbana, Illinois-based house on the cover becoming a pilgrimage site for fans. Considering the reverence fans have for American Football, it can be surprising to learn that they were originally a college side project.

But with the years came increased appreciation for the album, and in 2014, American Football reunited for several live shows. The album was released in October 2016, with the cover art featuring a view of the front door from inside the American Football House. While American Football originally didn’t have any lofty plans to make it in the music industry, their early-era emo sound and fast-and-loose approach have earned them lasting fans.

‘Run the Jewels 3’ by Run the Jewels

Rap duo Run the Jewels released their third album, Run the Jewels 3, in December 2016. Killer Mike and El-P’s aesthetic styling stayed pretty consistent throughout their discography, keeping the familiar symbolism but tweaking the design elements with each album. If it’s done with just enough variety, that type of album naming convention and cover design can be so satisfying.

And Run the Jewels did it very well. Specifically, because Run the Jewels 3 was a follow-up to Run the Jewels 2 from 2014, the imagery went through the same transformation. According to the duo, it symbolized growth from the previous album. “The bandages are off, the chain is gone, and the hands have been transformed into gold,” they said. “You are the jewel.”

‘Puberty 2’ by Mitski

Mitski’s Puberty 2 just hit its 10-year milestone on June 17, 2026, and Mitski released a deluxe anniversary edition to celebrate. In 2014, the album Bury Me At Makeout Creek was a breakout success. But Mitski later revealed that the newfound attention had her feeling out of touch with her music. For Puberty 2, she looked back on her previous three albums to find what made them tick.

The result was a quickly beloved album that saw Mitski changing up her approach to live performances. Specifically, she had different versions of these songs for playing live, instead of recording them with that intention. Puberty 2 was Mitski stretching her wings a bit, seeing where experimentation and art-pop styling would work together. Essentially, Puberty 2 was an album of contrasting influences. But it worked because they were enmeshed with Mitski’s deeply thoughtful songwriting and evocative vocals.

The post 3 Albums With Numbers in Their Titles That Are Turning 10 This Year appeared first on VICE.

The government’s statement early Thursday did not identify those arrested. But local media outlets, including the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao, quoted unidentified sources saying one was Hunter Bookstore’s owner Leticia Wong.

Wong, a pro-democracy former district councilor, has remained outspoken after many leading activists were jailed under a crackdown following massive anti-government protests in 2019. If confirmed, her arrest would be widely seen as the latest step to stifle dissent in the Asian financial hub.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the identities of those arrested. Police did not immediately respond to emailed questions. Wong could not be reached by phone.

Wednesday’s arrests occurred a week before the 29th anniversary of the former British colony’s return to Chinese rule. Critics say Beijing’s promise to allow the city to maintain its Western-style civil liberties after the 1997 handover is increasingly threadbare.

According to Thursday’s statement, the two arrested are in charge of a shop in Sham Shui Po district, where Wong’s bookstore is located. They were detained on suspicion of sedition under the 2024 national security law and of dealing with assets known or believed to represent proceeds of indictable offense under a separate law.

Last year, a pro-Beijing newspaper’s report accused an independent book fair held at Wong’s bookstore of having connotations of “soft resistance.” It highlighted the bookstore’s plan to sell a biography of jailed pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai.

Police investigations showed that the pair are suspected of displaying seditious items and selling publications with seditious content inside the shop, including materials inciting hatred against the city’s government, the judiciary and law enforcement agencies, the government said. They are also suspected of having received remittances funded by foreign political organizations, it added.

The statement did not specify which publications or organizations were involved.

Wong previously said she felt pressure.

In an interview with AP last year, she said her records show government authorities took measures against her shop 92 times between July 2022 and June 2025, including inspecting her shop, conspicuously patrolling outside or sending letters warning her of violations. An anonymous letter sent to an organization that had planned an event at her shop prompted them to cancel the booking, she added.

In March, police arrested the owner and staff of another bookstore, reportedly on suspicion of selling seditious publications, including the biography of Lai. The booksellers were later released on bail.

The Hong Kong government insists the two security laws are crucial for the city’s stability, saying freedom of speech is firmly protected in the city.

The post Hong Kong police arrest booksellers on suspicion of selling seditious publications appeared first on Los Angeles Times.

Utah, where multiple fires were already burning on Wednesday and filling skies with smoke, was at the center of an area where forecasters were most concerned about the potential for large wildfires to expand. But the threat is widespread, extending into Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, with fire watches and red flag warnings in place to alert people that fires could spark more easily than usual and spread more quickly once they start.

• Wednesday and Thursday: Scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening could bring rain, which can reduce the risk of fire — but also lightning strikes and bursts of wind, which can increase it.

• Friday and Saturday: Dry, breezy weather will arrive, which could spread fires more easily.

While wildfires can occur at any time in the West, June is the start of a more active season that runs through October. This week, meteorologists have watched closely as the end of the school year and the arrival of summer have sent more people outdoors to take part in the types of activities that can lead to wildfires — such as gathering around campfires.

The West is vast, and the wildfire risk varies broadly across the region from day to day. This week, forecasters’ fiercest concern was focused over Utah and nearby states.

The overall risk in California was relatively low, where the vegetation hasn’t fully dried out, though the threat there was expected to rise on Friday and into Saturday. The fire risk was also elevated over Oregon and Washington on Wednesday and Thursday, though the threat will drop by Friday and through the weekend with rain on the way.

Thunderstorms bring rain, but also lightning.

Summer is also monsoon season across the Southwest, when the seasonal weather pattern pushes moisture across the region. These storms can wet the landscape, and even cause flooding in some areas. But they also bring abundant lightning — even in areas that get no rain, a phenomenon called dry lightning.

In Utah, an area that includes Salt Lake City and Provo was at the highest risk for dry thunderstorms on Wednesday, according to the Storm Prediction Center. On Thursday, the storms are expected to be wetter and focused across the Colorado Plateau into southwestern Wyoming and far eastern Idaho.

When lightning occurs under a blanket of moist air, the strikes can start what are known as holdover fires, which may not start out as very active. When conditions turn drier, as they are expected to become on Friday and Saturday, the fires that were quietly smoldering in the ground can burst into life.

“A holdover fire may start but not fully emerge until a few days later,” said Lexy Elizalde-Garcia, the lead fire forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center.

Multiple wildfires were already burning across that area on Wednesday, particularly in Utah. The Iron fire, 80 miles south of Salt Lake City near the small city of Eureka, has burned more than 31,000 acres since it began on Friday. To the south, the Cottonwood fire had ballooned to 59,000 acres by Wednesday afternoon and set off evacuations across Beaver and Piute counties.

Like every other state in the West, Utah recorded historically low amounts of snow last winter, resulting in drier conditions this spring and summer that have left the landscape parched and highly flammable.

“The conditions we’re seeing right now, we usually we don’t see until mid-July to August,” said Karl Hunt, a spokesman for the Utah department that oversees forestry and wildfires.

The fires have pumped out a lot of smoke, and the view of the mountains from Salt Lake City on Wednesday was shrouded by a blanket of acrid air. The smoke, which reached as far as Colorado, has reduced air quality across the region, but it could also keep thunderstorms from spreading as much as they might without it.

Friday was expected to bring the start of a dry, breezy pattern that will spread across the region and continue into Saturday as a cold front passes. Any fires that start could spread quickly with these high winds. Humidity levels were also predicted to drop, and the air will feel very dry.

“All that moisture from Wednesday and Thursday will move east into the Central Plains, and then we get that hair dryer effect where it will be hot, dry and windy,” Ms. Elizalde-Garcia said.

The post Western Wildfire Risk This Week Is the Highest It’s Been So Far This Year appeared first on New York Times.

Sotheby’s said the amount raised by the Lewis lots alone — £296.3 million — was also the highest total ever achieved for a London sale of artworks from a single owner. It had been estimated to sell for £190 million.

In a packed room, most of the lots sold for far above their pre-auction valuations; only one lot failed to sell. Early in the sale, bidders gasped when a René Magritte gouache work on paper sold for £16 million, four times the upper estimate, which was the price of an oil painting by the artist.

Experts said the success of the double-header evening auction event could help restore the city’s Brexit-battered reputation as a global hub for selling the world’s most expensive art.

“This was a perfect example of what London can do,” said the international dealer Thaddaeus Ropac. “This was the best sale we’ve had here in years. It showed that if you offer great quality material people will go the extra mile.”

The top price at the sale, “Masterpieces From the Lewis Collection,” went to Amedeo Modigliani’s 1917 “Seated Nude With Necklace,” which sold for £48.2 million. It was one of 25 masterworks by famed modern and contemporary artists offered for sale by Lewis, the Bahamas-based currency trader whose family owns Tottenham Hotspur, one of England’s most valuable soccer franchises. (Lewis also made headlines in 2024 when a New York judge fined him $5 million for insider trading, although President Trump pardoned him last year.)

“A lot was down to Joe Lewis,” Ropac said. “He’s a Londoner and he wanted his works to be sold in London.”

The Lewis lots were followed by an auction of 40 modern and contemporary pieces from other owners, including an ethereal 1907 Claude Monet painting of the surface of his lily-pond in Giverny, France. It sold for £40.8 million, leading a session that raised £97.1 million.

Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union has hurt the country’s trade and investment in recent years, including its art market. Before Brexit, Sotheby’s and Christie’s would each host three weeks of modern and contemporary art sales in London every year. Now, Christie’s has opted out of the summer slot.

Christine Bourron, the chief executive of the art market analytics firm Pi-eX, said its data showed that British auction sales had declined to $1.6 billion last year from $3.4 billion in 2015, a drop of 47 percent. (Equivalent sales in the United States declined 25 percent, to $5.1 billion in 2025 from $6.5 billion in 2015.)

“The Brexit referendum marked the beginning of a sustained decline in the U.K.’s share of the global public auction market,” she said.

But Wednesday’s $520.7 million total from a single night of sales far exceeded Sotheby’s record for its evening modern and contemporary sales in London, a combined $310 million in February 2015 — the height of the pre-Brexit art market. That suggests a return to form for London as an international auction center, albeit at only one of the two main auction houses.

For Lewis, the evening’s proceeds added to the £35.8 million that four works made him at Sotheby’s in March. He was also the seller of David Hockney’s iconic “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures),” which went for $90.3 million in New York in 2018, setting an auction record for an artwork by a living artist.

Lewis had bought “Seated Nude With Necklace” — one of Modigliani’s rare and coveted paintings of a naked subject — in 1995 for $12.4 million. (In 2015, the artist’s “Nu Couché” sold at Christie’s for $170.5 million to the Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian.) It was one of the few Lewis works that attracted subdued competition on Wednesday, selling to a single telephone bid. “It was a bit boring,” said the collector Alex Lachmann, alluding to how Modigliani’s most expensive nudes have tended to be more overtly voluptuous.

The Lewis entries also included another very different seated female nude: Lucian Freud’s “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet,” a monumental portrait of a social services supervisor, which sold for £29.3 million. It depicts the same model as Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping,” which sold at auction in 2008 for $33.6 million. That buyer was later revealed to be the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

Other Lewis highlights included Gustav Klimt’s 1902 full-length “Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsovanyi)” that the collector bought in 2015 for £24.8 million, also at Sotheby’s in London. Eleven years later, this tender portrayal of the young wife of a Hungarian industrialist sold for £36.2 million.

A 1922 bronze cast of Edgar Degas’s famous wax sculpture “Little Dancer of Fourteen Years,” first exhibited at the sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881, had similarly broad appeal. One of 29 casts of the sculpture, it sold for £25.1 million.

The sale of such top-level artworks is part of the wider trend known as the Great Wealth Transfer, in which affluent older people are finding effective ways to pass down their wealth to younger relatives. In the United States, as much as $84 trillion is expected to pass down to heirs through 2045.

“There were some very full retail prices at the Lewis sale,” said Anthony Brown, managing director of the Connaught Brown gallery in London. “I don’t think New York could have got better prices for a lot of those things.”

The post A Record Sotheby’s Auction Thrills London After a Brexit Hangover appeared first on New York Times.

MS NOW congressional correspondent Mychael Schnell described the scene.

“Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) confronted President Trump over the Iran memorandum of understanding, a source familiar with the lunch conversation tells me @MSNOWNews,” Schnell wrote in a post on X.

Trump interrupted Cassidy as he characterized the war as a “blunder,” and the two continued exchanging arguments while other senators attempted to intervene.

Trump also criticized Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) for missing the previous day’s war powers vote, though McCormick was attending a Trump rally and the resolution passed regardless.

According to Semafor’s Burgess Everett, an attendee used vulgar language to describe the meeting as “a total cluster.”

The confrontation occurred hours after Trump vowed to block a bipartisan affordable housing bill that Congress had passed the night before.

Watch the video below.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The post Trump and Republican confront each other during GOP luncheon appeared first on Raw Story.

“We basically have passed the point of doing real fundamental LLM research,” Castricato said. “Now it’s just applications.”

The researcher quit his doctoral studies at Brown University and started a new company, called Overworld. Its ambition is in its name: AI that can understand and navigate a world, not just words.

There’s still plenty of money to be made from AI chatbots — investors are counting on it as they commit trillions of dollars to leading developers like Anthropic and OpenAI. But a growing number of AI entrepreneurs are dedicating themselves to what they see as the next frontier: “world models” that teach AI systems, and sometimes robots, how to react in a physical environment.

They include some of the field’s most prominent scientists, such as “Godmother of AI” Fei-Fei Li, who describes the concept of a world model as “one of the most important and most overloaded terms in AI today.”

Scientists are applying AI in new dimensions with ‘world models’

At the heart of world model research is the idea that AI can’t be truly intelligent if it can only read a book. It also needs to read the room.

“Where language models learn the statistical structure of text, world models learn the statistical structure of space and time: how light falls on a surface, how a garden looks from an angle no camera has captured, how objects respond to force and follow the laws of physics,” wrote Li, founder of the San Francisco startup World Labs, in an essay published this month.

Another proponent is AI pioneer Yann LeCun, who quit his job as Meta’s chief AI scientist last year to start Paris-based Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs.

“World model is quickly becoming a buzzword,” LeCun said on a recent “Unsupervised Learning” podcast. He said he views it as something that enables an AI agent “to predict the consequences of its own actions.”

There are multiple ways of defining world models, often based on the technologies someone hopes to build with it — be it robots or a more interactive video game.

Robots can’t learn much from AI models trained on books

Training on all of humanity’s books, news articles and visual media, as AI language models have done, has led to AI assistants that are changing the nature of office-based work and some creative fields. But some proponents see limitations in generative AI models that work by repeatedly predicting the next word or pixel to produce new dialogue, images or lines of code.

Chatbots can’t pick up a coffee mug, notes Martial Hebert, dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.

“There’s all the geometry of the world, the dynamic of how I move my hand, the physical interaction of the contact with the cup,” Hebert said. “This is much more complex than just predicting the next word in a sentence.”

For scientists like Hebert, who has spent more than four decades researching robotics, the most useful application for world models is as a faster and cheaper path to “physical AI” — another tech industry buzzword.

“Some people may have different definitions, but physical and embodied AI are kind of the evolution of what we used to call robotics,” Hebert said in an interview. Some of the AI advances that have made chatbots so useful can also be applied to building AI with a broad enough awareness of its environment to work like a robot’s brain, he said.

“In your body and spinal cord you have a very general model of how to balance, how to walk around, and you can adapt to your knee hurting in the morning, so you now walk a little differently,” he said. “You don’t need to think about that. You have a general model somewhere in your nervous system and brain that allows your body to adapt very quickly.”

Simulated worlds are drawing interest from investors

Smarter robots aren’t the only end game for world models. Castricato started Overworld last year and the tiny Rhode Island-based startup is now building video game worlds where a scene, say, of a spooky forest, can adapt as a virtual character moves through it and interacts with the objects in it.

“There’s no other world model where you can just walk through doors or where you can interact with a detailed environment like this,” he said in an interview. “We optimize for interaction above anything else.”

While the near-term applications aren’t as readily apparent as AI coding tools, world model makers are attracting interest from venture capitalists like Steve Jang, co-founder and managing partner at Kindred Ventures.

The firm is investing in Overworld and other world model-focused companies, including Causal Labs, which is building AI models for weather prediction, and Extropic, which is building specialized computer chips suited to world models.

“I think that the future is many different types of models with many different philosophies and architectures,” Jang said. “I don’t think that it’ll be one large, dense model to rule them all.”

In her recent essay, Li sought to create a “taxonomy of world models” to help sort out the confusion about the competing visions.

“A video model that produces gorgeous but physically impossible flames, a language model improvising a playable game, and a physics engine that faithfully simulates combustion all go by the same name,” she wrote.

She divided world models into three categories. The most commercially viable today are “renderers” that prioritize the visual fidelity of the virtual worlds they create but can’t be trusted to teach robots much.

Then, there are “simulators” that create virtual training grounds that faithfully represent the physical structure of a world; and “planners” that try to predict what an AI agent or robot should do in an unstructured world.

“A robot that can plan is a robot that can work, and the entire industry is racing to be the one that gets there first,” she wrote.

The post ‘Godmother of AI’ and tech entrepreneurs draw investors by pivoting from chatbots to ‘world models’ saying AI has to read the room, not just books appeared first on Fortune.

It proved Mandani’s own victory last year “was not the end of a political movement,” Gotham’s new kingmaker declared at his victory party in Brooklyn late Tuesday. “It was the beginning.”

Two of the winning candidates, activist Darializa Avila Chevalier and state Assembly member Claire Valdez, were formally endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. The third, Brad Lander, also received significant support from the movement that helped fuel Mamdani’s rise.

All three of the districts won by Mamdani-backed candidates are virtually guaranteed to be in the Democratic column come November. The one that Valdez won, which includes gentrifying Brooklyn and Queens, tilts so far to the left that it is known as the “Commie Corridor.”

These victories showed how competing forces are pressing on Democrats as they seek a path back to power. As was the case with a frustrated GOP rank-and-file who turned to Donald Trump in 2016, many of their voters are rejecting an establishment they believe has failed to fight the other side and deliver on issues they care most about. But the far-left candidates who are gaining ground and visibility could undermine their efforts to win in the more centrist areas where the 2026 election will be decided.

Already, Republicans are reveling in the New York results. “You could call it the Bolshevik Revolution of 2026, but the Mamdani takeover of the Democrat Party is official now,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) said.

Yet to be determined, however, is how far Tuesday’s shockwaves will extend beyond the Hudson River. Should Democrats regain a narrow majority in the House, as is widely expected, the growing number of far-left members could create headaches for their leaders, not unlike the internal tensions that have made governing there so difficult for the Republicans.

Looking further, the after-effects could reshape the presidential race two years from now, when voters will again choose how much of a fighter or a healer they want. In a statement to The Washington Post, Mamdani said “a Democratic Party that can win in 2028 and beyond” was one of the explicit goals of his decision to aggressively back his own slate of candidates, despite the fact that it alienated many of the Democratic power brokers with which he had previously been allied.

But what happened in deep-blue New York City is not necessarily an electoral bellwether nationally. The road to a 2026 Democratic victory lies not in liberal enclaves but in battlegrounds across the map. Of the 71 House districts that have been deemed competitive by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, two-thirds were won by Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

“Democratic primaries in a handful of the most progressive districts in the country do not define Democrats in Congress, or Democrats across the country,” said former New York congressman Steve Israel, who previously ran the Democrats’ campaign effort. “I’m more interested in what’s going on in Brooklyn, Iowa, [which is in] a state that is going to be competitive.”

A more telling indicator of the strength of the progressive movement outside of traditional liberal strongholds may come in August in Michigan, where Trump has won twice and where a Democratic primary battle is underway for an open U.S. Senate seat.

The left, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), has put its weight behind former Detroit health official Abdul El-Sayed, who leads in many polls against two opponents, Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

El-Sayed has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide,” supports a government-funded health care system known as Medicare-for-All, and favors abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Should he win the nomination to fill a seat that Democrats currently hold in the Senate, there is no small amount of fear within the party that he could sink their already narrow prospects for regaining control of the chamber.

Matt Bennett, a leader of the centrist organization Third Way, recalled that in past cycles, Republicans weaponized activist slogans such as “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” against Democratic candidates in swing districts who did not share those views. He noted that Chevalier, who defeated Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s New York primary, has in the past embraced more extreme positions, including abolishing the police, borders and prisons.

“This is like super-crazy land we are in now,” Bennett said, making it imperative that more moderate Democrats clearly distance themselves from some of what their party’s candidates have espoused.

At the same time, Israel added, Democrats must also respond to the forces that have made so many voters, especially young people, reject the establishment. He argued that their concerns are less divisive than the ideological battle suggests. They are looking for a chance to become homeowners, for less expensive necessities that include child care and health care, and for more economic security, he said.

“We need to develop economic policies that resonate with a younger generation that believes the American dream has been stolen away from them,” he said. “They believe that the system is rigged — and it is.”

The post Socialist election wins spawn wider identity questions for Democrats appeared first on Washington Post.

Keilar was talking to Rep. John Rose (R-TN), one of the co-sponsors of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, when the conversation got fiery over tensions within the GOP and Trump’s refusal to sign the bill into law.

“He scrapped the signing of the bill as it was almost underway, because he wants this elections bill passed,” Keilar said. “Why should this be held hostage to that?”

Rose said he agreed with Trump that the Save America Act needs to be passed, despite its inability to get enough votes in the Senate.

“I don’t know that I would say it’s being held hostage, but I think the president is making that the Save America Act, which I very much support and you know the House has passed it now three times,” Rose said. “I suspect we’ll pass it again here. It needs to move on the Senate side.”

He tried to argue that Americans of both parties “overwhelmingly agree” that “we should safeguard our elections.”

But Keilar paused the Republican — and pushed back on his comments.

“Let me stop you there,” Keilar said. “Republicans are not on board in the Senate on this. There’s a division even in your party, on the Senate side of this.”

The anchor was born in Australia with dual citizenship and described why the Save Act could be complicated for other Americans with a similar background.

“Americans agree with voter ID. This is significantly more than a voter ID bill,” Keilar added. “This is a bill that, when you register to vote, complicates mail registration, complicates online registration because it requires a birth certificate or a U.S. passport or a naturalization certificate, which is really difficult, I will tell you, as an American not born in America. That’s something that would complicate things for people like me. This also relies on that voter roll database that has had these false negatives when it comes to finding people, as it urges states to verify voter eligibility using the federal verification.”

The post CNN’s Brianna Keilar levels Republican’s defense of Trump election scheme with fact-check appeared first on Raw Story.

“He was mad as a murder hornet,” Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said of the president’s mood during a closed-door lunch on Wednesday with G.O.P. senators.

According to people who attended, Mr. Trump arrived on Capitol Hill with a long list of grievances against members of his own party.

He lamented Republicans’ failure to push through a bill to impose new restrictions on voting that he has called key to the G.O.P.’s chances of winning the midterm elections, vented about years-old legal disputes, complained about the G.O.P.’s refusal to blow up the Senate filibuster and pressed the senators on stalled judicial nominations.

But what appeared to enrage him the most were the four Republicans who had crossed party lines a day earlier to back a war powers resolution directing him to halt military operations against Iran or seek congressional authorization to continue. Their support allowed the measure to be adopted, delivering a rare bipartisan rebuke of his handling of the war.

“Why would anybody vote for the War Powers Act?” Mr. Trump demanded to know.

For a few moments, senators sat silently, taken aback by the president’s gruff question. Then Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who lost his primary last month to a Trump-backed opponent, spoke up with a spirited critique of the president’s handling of the war and his lack of consultation with Congress about it.

“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on,’” Mr. Cassidy recounted afterward. “It was supposed to last four weeks; it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved. And I want to know what’s going on.”

Mr. Cassidy, one of the four Republicans who voted for the war powers resolution, said he grew increasingly frustrated during the exchange as he noted that senators had yet to receive a comprehensive briefing on the conflict, which Mr. Trump has carried out without congressional authorization.

The president did not appreciate being questioned, and the exchange quickly became heated, according to Mr. Cassidy and other attendees, devolving into a shouting match.

“You lost the election,” Mr. Trump shouted at Mr. Cassidy, whom he called a “loser.” The two traded testy remarks.

“If someone tries to bully me,” Mr. Cassidy said afterward, “I ain’t gonna put up with that.”

“I make no apologies for standing up to the president,” he added. “I’m sticking up for the American people, even if I’m speaking to the president.”

Mr. Trump’s frustration reflected more than a single vote. There had been weeks of tension between him and Senate Republicans on matters of politics and policy. And just before the meeting on Wednesday, the president had abruptly scrapped a signing ceremony for a major bipartisan housing bill, scuttling what G.O.P. leaders had hoped would be a triumphant moment to highlight their efforts to address high costs ahead of the midterm elections.

And while party leaders remain firmly aligned with Mr. Trump on most issues, the war in Iran has exposed fissures and prompted some G.O.P. senators, who initially deferred to the president almost unquestioningly, to begin seeking more of a role for Congress.

During the lunch, Mr. Trump said he was particularly angry with Senator Dave McCormick, Republican of Pennsylvania, for missing Tuesday’s vote, given that the resolution was adopted by a narrow margin. (Mr. McCormick was traveling with the president at the time, and his presence to vote “no” would not have been enough to defeat the measure.)

Mr. Trump also lashed out at Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who was part of the bloc of Republicans that supported the resolution, calling her a “horrible person,” according to senators in attendance.

Mr. Kennedy said the president’s anger was understandable, given the timing of the bill’s passage.

“He was very upset about the war powers vote,” Mr. Kennedy said. “He was in the middle of pretty heavy-duty negotiations and he had to stop and explain to the Iranian negotiators why it was a meaningless vote. And that clearly upset him. And I don’t blame him, frankly.”

“The president is very, very candid,” Mr. Kennedy added. “He told us exactly how he felt, and I appreciate it.”

“He’s right to be mad, in my opinion,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Emerging from the meeting, Mr. Trump put a cheerful face on the bitter gathering, calling it “a really great meeting.”

“We’re very proud of the party,” he said. “We like our leader. We like everybody, really, in the room.

“I don’t like a few people,” Mr. Trump added, “but that’s OK.”

The post In Heated Lunch, Trump Clashes With G.O.P. Senators Over Iran appeared first on New York Times.

Former WIRED contributor Andrew Watman reviewed it for us in 2024, giving it a solid 7/10 and confirming that it is every bit the statement piece it’s designed to be. Having just seen it myself for the first time yesterday, I agree.

I’m not sure if I can overstate how good the Rocco looks in person. The metal, color-matched tray on top and fluted glass front is meant to refract light to keep UV rays from damaging your kombucha or cava. The metal body somehow looks both retro and totally contemporary at the same time and would fit in with just about any decor.

The Rocco’s marquee feature, other than its coming in eight colors—including black, white, two blues, orange, yellow, green (shown), and a new beige—is its smart app. It allows you to see the fridge contents as scanned by the fridge itself, and control the lights and temperature from afar. When Watman tested it, he was impressed by the library of drinks the fridge recognized, from an obscure OoMee algae-infused beverage to canned Yaté yerba mate.

Alas, the Rocco is not on Amazon for Prime Day, but you can grab it—and its 10-year warranty—on Rocco’s website right now on a rare seasonal sale. Only the Blue, White, and Icy Blue colors are $400 off, but all other colors are $300 off, now through July 5.

As a bonus, if you buy during the sale, you’ll get 12 cans of Tropical Mango Trip to put in your fridge, which appears to be some kind of magnesium-based functional beverage. (No doubt recognizable by the Rocco’s scanner.)

Save Up to $400 on Rocco

While you’re here, be sure to check out the rest of our Prime Day coverage, including the Absolute Best deals, and hot takes and sales on our all-day Live Blog running each day of the event.

The post Up to $400 Off: The Smart Fridge That Haunts My Algorithm appeared first on Wired.

A sociology Ph.D. student and doctrinaire leftist who has never held elected office, she was running against Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He’d built an uptown political machine known as the “squadriano” in New York’s 13th District, which includes Washington Heights, Harlem and parts of the Bronx. Many of the area’s neighborhoods are reliably progressive but not known for their radicalism. After all, in the last presidential election, Donald Trump improved his margin in the Bronx by double digits, one of the largest swings in the country, in part because of voter angst about crime and migration.

Last week, in an interview with the New York Editorial Board, a group of veteran journalists who question local political and civic leaders, Avila Chevalier said she opposed all deportations, even those of violent criminals. A prison abolitionist, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer repeated questions about whether murderers should be incarcerated. Both she and Espaillat are Dominican, and on the morning of the election, she walked off a popular Spanish-language radio show after she was asked about old tweets, including some that seemed to disdain Dominican nationalism. (In other since-deleted tweets, Avila Chevalier cursed at Kamala Harris, called Joe Biden a “rapist,” and derided his support for Ukraine as “bullying Russia.”) Her name was notably absent from a get-out-the-vote message that Bernie Sanders posted for other progressives on Tuesday.

But in the end, Avila Chevalier won, carried to a narrow victory by the left-wing tsunami that created landslides for the other congressional candidates Mamdani endorsed, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez. She will almost certainly become the most left-wing member of Congress, and Republicans are sure to try to make her the face of the Democratic Party.

Many Democratic primary voters, however, are in no mood for defensiveness. As they see it, they’ve been failed by a cautious, compromising establishment, and they’re going to overthrow it. The Democratic version of the Tea Party is here, with dramatic implications for the midterms and possibly the next presidential election. As Mamdani said at a rally at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater last week, people are asking when the race for 2028 begins. “It starts now,” he said.

New York’s primary demonstrated the astonishing political power of the mayor and of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that he, Avila Chevalier and Valdez are all members of. It suggests that Democratic voters have been radicalized by the horrors of Donald Trump’s second presidency and infuriated by their leaders’ failure to contain him. And it’s a sign that after the savagery of the war on Gaza, support for Israel has become toxic among large parts of the party’s base. Avila Chevalier was an organizer of the anti-Israel protest encampments at Columbia, whereas the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured money into a super PAC supporting Espaillat.

The city, of course, is not particularly representative of the rest of the country. New York’s electorate is more progressive, and Mamdani, who has brought a joyful, dynamic energy to the city’s governance, has a unique clout. The same night that his slate dominated in New York, AIPAC’s preferred candidate, Adrian Boafo, won a congressional primary in Maryland.

Still, progressive outsider candidates are surging in many parts of America. There’s now a democratic socialist mayor in Seattle, and a democratic socialist just won the primary to become mayor of Washington In Maine, Graham Platner — who, like Avila Chevalier, had a vituperative social media history — easily defeated the state’s governor, Janet Mills, for the Senate nomination. Voters in Maine’s rural Second District, which Trump won by nine points, chose a progressive, Matt Dunlap, to run for the House seat of an outgoing moderate Democrat, Jared Golden, defeating Joe Baldacci, the candidate endorsed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This leftist momentum is a bullish sign for progressives in other Democratic primaries, like Abdul El-Sayed, running for Senate in Michigan, and Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, running for governor in Wisconsin. Both are either ahead or competitive in recent polls.

That means the 2026 midterms could end up being a giant national experiment that tests the populist left’s theory of victory. For years, it has argued that Democrats have failed because, in thrall to corporate interests, they let themselves become the party of the status quo. Unable or unwilling to galvanize voters with an economically progressive alternative to the right, they’ve offered only timid, business-friendly incrementalism. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the organization that recruited Avila Chevalier to run for Congress, told me that too often, the Democratic Party “tries to stymie big and bold ideas” in favor of technocratic pragmatism. “I think what voters have really made clear, particularly this past year, is that they are desperate for bold, visionary leadership,” he said.

This spring, I met Hong, a member of the Wisconsin Assembly from Madison, when she was visiting New York. She argued that winning the general election would require motivating voters who feel “disenfranchised or angry at the Democratic Party” with an anti-establishment, working-class campaign. Electability, said Hong, is subjective. “We have to take a step back and look at the current political moment and where voters are at and what they care about,” she said. “Who is the candidate that actually responds with a solution that they believe? Who is the candidate that presents a vision that they will see themselves in?”

Hong is right that many voters can’t be mapped onto a neat left-right spectrum. They judge candidates on a whole range of axes — whether they seem like normal people or career politicians, insiders or outsiders, populists or elitists. That’s why there are voters who went from Sanders to Trump, or Trump to Mamdani.

Still, as someone who desperately wants to see Republicans beaten, I’ll admit I’m anxious watching Democrats stake so much on a strategy of left-wing audacity. After all, progressive overreach has backfired in the past.

The D.S.A., remember, also surged during Trump’s first presidency. In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a D.S.A. member recruited by Justice Democrats, stunned the political world with her upset victory over the longtime Democratic congressman Joseph Crowley, and was joined in the House by a fellow D.S.A. member, Rashida Tlaib, and the like-minded progressive Ilhan Omar. Other D.S.A. members won local offices nationwide.

Mainstream Democrats rushed to ally themselves with the left’s insurgent energy. Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker signed onto Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill. When the Black Lives Matter protests exploded in the summer of 2020, Harris sent out a fund-raising appeal to bail out people who were arrested protesting in Minnesota. Though Joe Biden beat out Sanders for the presidential nomination, once elected, he worked closely with progressives, adopting ambitious climate policies, expanding the safety net and welcoming migrants. Before the war in Gaza made him a villain to many on the left, he was hailed as the most progressive president in a generation.

Then came collapse. During the Biden administration, the D.S.A. hemorrhaged members amid sectarian infighting, especially over Palestine. In 2021, some factions tried to expel the recently elected representative Jamaal Bowman for being insufficiently anti-Israel, and the national D.S.A. unendorsed Ocasio-Cortez.

At the same time, centrists swung against a left that had indulged its purist tendencies. Bowman would go on to lose a primary fight to a more moderate challenger, as would Representative Cori Bush, the former Black Lives Matter activist who’d been endorsed by the D.S.A. In the 2024 election, the vast majority of American counties shifted right.

Andrabi attributes Democratic failure to Harris’s uninspiring centrism, and there were certainly people who declined to vote for her out of disgust with Biden’s unstinting support for Israel. But as Blueprint Research has found, swing voters who backed Trump overwhelmingly saw Harris as soft on crime and the border, and “too focused on identity politics.” She was weighed down in part by positions she took amid the frothy left-wing ascendence of 2020.

Maybe this time will be different. The electorate is furious, and now it’s the right that represents a hated status quo. Much of the Democratic establishment has proved itself feckless; a candidate as flawed as Avila Chevalier could win only against a complacent political machine that’s lost touch with the people it’s supposed to represent. Calls to abolish ICE were once seen as fringe, but since Trump has turned the agency into something akin to a personal militia, in most recent surveys, a plurality of voters want to scrap it.

All that gives the left a renewed opportunity to wield power. The question is what lessons leftists have learned from the past dismal decade. As both candidate and mayor, Mamdani has usually embodied a practical, optimistic sort of left politics — a sewer socialism — laser focused on New Yorkers’ material concerns. Avila Chevalier represents something different, an academic leftism rigid in its refusal to accept trade-offs or make concessions to ordinary people’s moral intuitions. One approach is a recipe for building, the other for backlash. The danger is that a movement flush with success may think it doesn’t have to choose.

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The post The Left Is Ascendant in New York. Swing States Could Be Next. appeared first on New York Times.

• Nominations are now open for Business Insider’s 2026 Rising Stars of Real Estate list.
• Nominees should be under 35, US-based, and making tangible contributions to the real estate world.
• Submit your nominations through the form below by July 24, 2026.

Business Insider is now taking nominations for this year’s Rising Stars of Real Estate.

Now is the time to tell us about fresh trailblazers aged 35 or younger making waves in commercial or residential real estate.

We’re looking for candidates with potential and notable contributions in their fields already. The nominations are open to real-estate professionals and individuals from other industries who work closely with real estate.

Business Insider reporters and editors will review each nomination and select candidates based on their impact on today’s real estate industry and their broader influence.

Please submit your suggestions below through the form by Friday, July 24, 2026.

Check out last year’s list for inspiration.

Criteria and methodology

We ask that nominees be 35 or under as of July 24, 2026, be based in the US, and stand out from their peers.

We are seeking the best and the brightest working in real estate, including, but not limited to academics, agents, architects, brokers, builders, designers, developers, founders, investors, nonprofit staffers, policymakers, property managers, and urban planners.

Final decisions will be made by Business Insider’s editorial team.

Have questions? Please email Alcynna Lloyd at alloyd@businessinsider.com or Jordan Pandy at jpandy@businessinsider.com.

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The post Nominations for Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Real Estate 2026 list are now open until July 24 appeared first on Business Insider.

On this matter, the act of Congress that created the position he now occupies seems unambiguous: “The Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence shall act for, and exercise the powers of” the DNI when that position is vacant, as it is now. Not “may” serve. Shall. The current principal deputy is Aaron Lukas, a career intelligence officer who is not only available to serve but has extensive national-security experience, which is another thing that the law requires. Pulte, an outspoken Trump loyalist who is also the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has none.  

We’ll come to Lukas in a moment. But it’s worth dwelling on this legal point because Pulte is expected to enact significant changes to the office that he is temporarily running, and it’s not clear he has the authority to do so. Career intelligence officers, as well as some of the most senior political appointees at the ODNI, expect they may lose their jobs this week or next, current and former officials told us. A handful have already been dismissed, including William Ruger, one of the most senior officials, who was previously the president of a libertarian think tank. One U.S. official said that ODNI officials are drawing up their list of budget priorities, expecting that Pulte will use them to help him decide who stays and who can go. A few dozen people have received notices to return to their home agencies, this official added.

Career government employees, who enjoy civil-service protections, might have a pathway to challenge their dismissal. “You can’t be lawfully fired by someone who has no authority to fire you, and since Mr. Pulte was illegally appointed, he does not have that power,” Zachary West, a former Justice Department official and now counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan research and advocacy group, told us. Not that President Trump has ever been deterred from axing federal workers under dubious circumstances. He views the intelligence community as a nest of “deep state” actors who have conspired to undermine him for a decade, and has said that he wants Pulte to fire people. “I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” he told The Wall Street Journal this month.

Some officials have speculated that Pulte might also make structural changes, including moving the National Counterterrorism Center under the jurisdiction of another agency, perhaps the Department of Homeland Security. That could disrupt national-security operations and at a minimum would cause bureaucratic headaches as the organizational chart is redrawn. Putting aside the relative merits of such a move, which some security experts support, even a Senate-confirmed director might not have the authority to enact such a sweeping agenda absent some action by Congress. For his part, Pulte posted on X that he spent yesterday meeting with National Counterterrorism Center staff, whom he called “true professionals and American patriots,” adding that, “It is a privilege to work beside them.” Perhaps that’s a sign of a reprieve.

As of today, it appeared that Pulte may not cut as many people as earlier expected. But very senior officials may still be removed. Even political appointees who are on board with the president’s national-security and foreign policy said they may be on the chopping block, people familiar with the matter told us.

Pulte is picking up where his predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, left off when she announced her resignation last month. She pledged to reduce staff by more than 40 percent, and reportedly came close to that target, getting rid of about 500 people in six months. She had called the ODNI “inefficient” and “rife with abuse.” The former claim was less controversial. Since its creation more than two decades ago, the ODNI has never become the central coordinator of the U.S. intelligence community that lawmakers and national-security officials had hoped. The intention was good: avoid a repeat of the breakdowns in intelligence-sharing that led to the 9/11 attacks. But in practice, it was often a cumbersome layer of additional bureaucracy with marginal influence.  

How Pulte has the legal authority to do any of this housecleaning, the administration hasn’t said. The ODNI didn’t respond to my request for comment about the law regarding succession or Plute’s plans. He almost certainly doesn’t have enough support among Senate Republicans to be confirmed as the permanent director. Key lawmakers have already said he’s unqualified and too partisan (even by this administration’s standards) to serve in a role that’s supposed to be apolitical. And even within the administration, Pulte has plenty of enemies. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged at a recent Senate hearing that, during a dispute with Pulte, Bessent threatened to “kick his ass.”

But Republicans do support more downsizing. “President Trump is right: the ODNI has grown far beyond its original mandate,” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on X. “Time to return these officers back to their home agencies to focus on actual intelligence work.” Cotton was persuaded to support Gabbard’s nomination in large part because she pledged to slash the workforce.  

Trump has made clear what else he expects from Pulte. “He’s a very smart guy, and he may find out some things about the rigged elections,” Trump told reporters earlier this month. “I think he’d like to do it. I’d like to, I think he wants to do it very much, got a lot of energy.”

[Read: The election deniers are winning]

Gabbard was already far down that road. Her office worked with noted election deniers to conduct a review of voting machines used in Puerto Rico, looking for evidence of foreign interference that might give Trump a reason to assert national authority over elections, according to people who assisted in those efforts. But the review found no evidence that the machines were manipulated. Gabbard also showed up at the FBI raid on election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, the sort of remarkable encroachment by the intelligence community into domestic law enforcement that reforms enacted after Watergate were intended to stop.

Trump may also be counting on Pulte to selectively release classified documents that fan conspiracy theories or harass Trump’s political opponents. Gabbard made a practice of this, and so did Pulte in his capacity as a housing official. Using his access to financial documents, he made criminal referrals to the Justice Department alleging mortgage fraud by Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Representative Eric Swalwell. No charges have been filed, and experts who have reviewed the cases found evidence of paperwork errors, not criminal activity.

In his first term, Trump routinely skirted vacancy rules to fill empty positions with acting officials who would do his bidding. Back then, the Justice Department argued that the president was allowed, under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, to appoint his choice to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, even though the law said who that person “shall” be. But there’s good reason to think the same sort of argument cannot overcome the clear language of the DNI statute.

There is an arguably qualified permanent director waiting in the wings. Trump has said he will nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who would be easily confirmed in the Senate. But Trump has paralyzed that process by tying the nomination to the extension of a key surveillance law as well as his demand that Congress pass the SAVE America Act, which would require people to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections. That bill is going nowhere, even in the Republican-controlled Congress. So Pulte presumably will be acting DNI for at least as long as it takes the White House and the Hill to resolve a standoff that was entirely of Trump’s making.

[Read: A serious Senate debate about an unserious bill]

All of this chaos seems especially needless given that the administration already has a credible official to put in the acting role—Lukas, the current principal deputy. Current and former officials who know him described Lukas to us as a hard worker who has been managing much of the day-to-day activities of the ODNI already. One official said Lukas was leading restructuring efforts that were under way with Gabbard. His reputation is that of a dutiful deputy, carrying out the administration’s agenda. But what Trump seems to want is a partisan, and that’s not a role to which career intelligence officers are usually suited. One person also described Lukas as an introvert, so perhaps he’s not cut out for the social-media ranting about the “deep state” that the director job requires these days.

The idea that ODNI needs to be reformed, slimmed down, and realigned with its original goals has support in both parties. No one is pushing to expand the office and give it more authority. Some on the Hill now want to do away with it altogether, which is something Trump has told aides and advisers he might do, according to officials we’ve talked to about his plans. Pulte may not be out to gut the office. But if he continues to eliminate senior leadership, the ODNI might just wither from neglect.

The post Bill Pulte, the Unlawful Intelligence Director?   appeared first on The Atlantic.

Judge Casper rejected Trump’s argument that the lawsuit filed by Democratic state attorneys general was premature, according to reports by the AP. She also affirmed, the Constitution grants states and Congress authority to regulate elections and ruled Trump’s requirements violated the separation of powers.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.

Trump’s order would have required voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering, prevented mail ballots postmarked by Election Day from being counted if they arrived late, and withheld federal funding from non-compliant states.

The ruling represents another judicial defeat for Trump’s agenda.

“He [Trump] has since signed another executive order on elections, seeking to create a national voter list and limit mail balloting. That directive also faces multiple legal challenges,” the report notes.

Watch the video below.

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The post Court rules against Trump’s executive order on voting rights appeared first on Raw Story.

On the back of this box office coup, it’s a bit funny that A24 would recently announce a $75 million research partnership with DeepMind, Google’s in-house artificial intelligence lab. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, the tech giant is teaming up with A24 to create new filmmaking “tools,” as part of A24’s technology startup, A24 Labs, overseen by cofounder Scott Belsky.

“This is a research partnership,” Sophia Shin, who handles communications at A24, tells WIRED in an email. “We’re working side-by-side with DeepMind’s researchers to learn, iterate, and build having an active hand in shaping new tools and workflows.”

It’s the latest in a line of uneasy, controversial marriages between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Late last year, Disney took a $1 billion stake in OpenAI’s video generation model, Sora, licensing access to characters like Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and C-3PO. A few months later, Sora itself was kaput. AI’s threat to cinema, and the creative arts more generally, can feel completely existential: automating (and killing) entry-level jobs, threatening writers’ rooms, and squatting in multiplexes to showcase AI-generated work that runs the gamut from the boring to the abominable. Some studios have sued AI companies for copyright infringement.

There are also growing concerns that AI’s capture of the film business has a chilling effect, as in the recent case of studios distancing themselves from Luca Guadagnino’s biopic of OpenAI founder Sam Altman, Artificial.

The announcement of the A24 AI partnership was especially puzzling, and contentious, precisely because of A24’s place in contemporary film culture.

A24’s legion of diehards do not seem to be taking the news of the A24’s latest collab especially well. Earlier this week, A24 released the trailer for Jesse Eisenberg’s new musical drama The Debut. On X, comments under the trailer were littered with criticism lobbed at A24, from fans posting tombstones and declaring the death of the company, to promises of illegally pirating the movie (to eat into A24’s profits), to snarky remarks like: “Pretty ironic that The Debut is the film that comes out in the mids [sic] of a24 ending itself with ai.” (Your definition of “irony” may vary.)

“Our relationship with our audience is something we don’t take for granted,” A24’s Shin stresses. “This partnership exists because we want to dictate what tools get built for artists, and so they have a voice in shaping them rather than having tools handed to them. We’d rather have a seat at the table than on the sidelines.”

Google DeepMind did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cool Factor

A24 is a huge tastemaker in the film space. “In the same way Disney sells nostalgia, A24 has sold the feeling of being very hip, and cutting-edge, for as long as they’ve been around,” says film critic Esther Rosenfield.

Before Backrooms, A24 spearheaded canonical American indie films like The Witch, Moonlight, Midsommar, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the recent Marty Supreme. The studio has launched, and supported, the work and careers of serious filmmakers like Sophia Coppola, Denis Villeneuve, Ari Aster, Jane Schoenbrun, Celine Song, and the brothers Safdie. It has netted dozens of Academy Award nominations since its 2012 founding. The distinctive A24 logo before a film trailer is, in a moviegoing culture otherwise dominated by tedious franchise IP blockbusters, often enough to build hype for a new release.

It is also the rare American entertainment company to have its own loyal groupies, who flex their own cinephilic bona fides with A24 caps, tote bags, and collectable, limited edition tie-dye t-shirts. You don’t really hear about “Paramount fans” of “Touchstone Pictures-heads.” But A24 has, as they say, shooters.

“They have a very powerful and successful marketing department,” says Andrew DeWaard, a media studies professor at UC San Diego and author of 2024 book Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture. “They’ve branded their company as edgy, forward-thinking, and appealing to young people. They’ve created a fandom for their company.”

But for a scholar like DeWaard, the DeepMind deal is not some major, sacrilegious break in A24’s business practices. In Derivative Media, he notes that A24’s cofounder, Daniel Katz, previously led film financing at Guggenheim Partners, the global firm heavily invested in environmentally ruinous resource extraction. In 2024, the company received a significant cash injection from Thrive Capital, which has also invested heavily in OpenAI. A24 Labs head Scott Belsky, who’s at the center of the DeepMind deal, was among the recently leaked names linked to Silicon Valley financier Peter Thiel’s invite-only club, Dialog.

Taste Test

The company’s seat-at-the-table rationale has a familiar ring. The AI takeover of cinema is routinely pitched—by stakeholders in AI firms, incidentally—as fated. It’s not a matter of if, but when. To rail against it, the argument goes, would be as futile as a man on Wednesday railing against Thursday. “They want to make AI feel inevitable,” DeWaard says of AI firms like Google. “They want to make AI feel like it’s everywhere. They want it to feel normal. Culture is part of that.”

Rosenfield regards the deal as a form of positive PR, at least on the part of Google. “They’re saying, ‘We want to launder our reputation through you,’” she says. “We want to make it look like serious artists are going to be making things with these tools. Because serious artists, by and large, aren’t.” (Asked if the Google deal was a form of reputation laundering, A24 offered no comment.)

Among its other concerns, AI definitely suffers from a deficit of taste. Generative AI images are regularly—and accurately—described with the sticky epithet “slop.” Because generative AI clients and large language models are not human, they cannot judge, or discern good and bad, ugly or beautiful, cool or boring.

And of late, it’s precisely this more subtle, sophisticated, definitionally human element that technologists seem desperate to replicate, whether it be by hosting AI-“curated” art exhibitions in San Francisco galleries, or by simply partnering with creative companies whose brand is synonymous with taste. Call it taste-leeching. Elsewhere, a new AI startup, literally called Taste Labs, recently secured $18.5 million in funding for its goal to “eliminate slop” and invest in AI clients with their own tastemaking sensibilities. Good luck with that.

A24’s Shin insists upon the point that this research partnership is not some sort of franchising, or IP play. DeepMind users won’t be able to pay to generate their own little movies featuring copyrighted A24 characters like Howie Rainer from Uncut Gems, The Green Knight, Charles Swan III, or the little lamb from Lamb.

“Truth is we don’t necessarily love any of the current AI outputs on screen in Hollywood,” she says. “I don’t even know if ultimately we’d create tech on that front. This partnership is about learning and helping pain points in workflows behind the scenes more than anything else.”

The post A24 Knows You’re Mad About the Google AI Collab appeared first on Wired.

Under the agreement, filed in federal court in West Virginia, Chemours will pay a civil penalty of $22.5 million for alleged violations and spend $90 million over 15 years to mitigate PFAS discharges in three states: West Virginia, North Carolina and New Jersey.

Chemours, a spin-off of chemical maker DuPont, also agreed to install PFAS pollution controls for and surface water discharges and air emissions at a West Virginia facility at an estimated cost of $60 million, supply clean drinking water to communities near its West Virginia and New Jersey sites at an estimated cost of $280 million; and implement controls to reduce releases of PFAS and other toxic chemicals from its facility in North Carolina, based on a pending independent assessment.

Combined, the penalties and relief programs are estimated to cost at least $450 million, the Justice Department said.

The settlement allows Chemours to continue manufacturing PFAS for commercial and military applications while preventing future contamination and protecting communities from existing pollution, said Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Justice Department says settlement protects public health

“The Trump administration recognizes the important role of Chemours for it commercial and military obligations,” Gustafson said in an interview. “The settlement protects public health while preserving that important balance.”

The settlement against a major PFAS manufacturer “delivers on the Trump administration’s promise to make polluters pay and stop PFAS contamination at the source,” said Jeffrey Hall, assistant EPA administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance.

The agreement will greatly reduce PFAS contamination of water, land and air and even begin to mitigate past harm, Hall said. “This settlement brings Chemours into compliance with the law and holds it fully accountable,” he said.

In a statement Wednesday, Chemours said it has already begun planning and implementing operational improvements at its facilities and will take steps to mitigate future emissions and enhance existing programs.

“This settlement provides Chemours with greater clarity on future compliance requirements and actions to support long-term responsible manufacturing,” spokeswoman Jess Loizeaux said.

The settlement comes as the Trump administration is expected to propose softening Biden-era limits on “forever chemicals” in drinking water, while delaying but keeping tough standards for two common types of the substance.

The proposal will start the formal process of rolling back parts of the first-ever limits on PFAS in drinking water finalized during former President Joe Biden’s administration. Officials at the time found they increased the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers and babies being born with low birth weight.

The agency is committed to addressing Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water while following the law and ensuring that regulatory compliance is achievable for drinking water systems, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said.

Chemours discharged PFAS into rivers in three states

The settlement determined that facilities Chemours operates in the three states have discharged PFAS into the Ohio River, Cape Fear River and Delaware River, respectively, in violation of permits required by the Clean Water Act and state laws. Chemours also violated legal requirements under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act at all three facilities.

As a result of the alleged violations, people living near the facilities were exposed to illegal PFAS, officials said. PFAS are widely used and found around the world, with scientific studies showing that exposure to some PFAS in the environment may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals.

The violations continued for over a decade, the Justice Department said. The facilities were previously owned for many decades by DuPont. The settlement announced Wednesday does not resolve DuPont’s liability for past PFAS violations, officials said.

A federal judge last year ordered Chemours to stop discharging unlawful levels of cancer-causing chemicals into the Ohio River from the company’s Washington Works plant in West Virginia. The pollutants endanger the environment, aquatic life and human health, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin wrote in the August 2025 order.

The West Virginia Rivers Coalition had asked Goodwin to require the company to immediately comply with its permit limits after violating them for more than five years.

DuPont, Chemours and another company, Corteva, agreed to pay New Jersey up to $2 billion last year to settle environmental claims stemming from PFAS. The federal settlement does not affect the state case.

North Carolina AG blasts settlement

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson called the settlement “an insult to the people of eastern North Carolina.”

His state is “ground zero for GenX contamination, but this deal does practically nothing to clean up our water,” said Jackson, a Democrat. GenX is a trade name for a synthetic chemical developed by Chemours as an alternative to PFAS but which has raised significant health and environmental concerns in its own right.

“Chemours made this mess, and Chemours should clean it up,” Jackson said in a statement.

The federal consent decree calls for 14 specific treatment systems to reduce PFAS in wastewater, stormwater and groundwater from the West Virginia plant. Chemours will test drinking water near the West Virginia and New Jersey sites and provide treated or alternative clean water.

The post US says chemical maker Chemours will pay $450M in penalties and relief programs to three states to settle ‘forever chemicals’ case appeared first on Fortune.

The draft bill introduced Tuesday by Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, omits a Democratic proposal to delay a provision of the 2025 Republican budget law that will require states to pay a share of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the first time in the program’s history, while also increasing states’ share of administrative costs. State leaders have warned of massive budgetary impacts that could result in even deeper cuts to food aid—and potentially force states to withdraw from the SNAP program entirely

Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), said it was “unconscionable” for Republicans to do nothing in the face of large-scale loss of food aid—including among children—and a looming budgetary disaster for states across the country.

“The harm unfolding across the country is already far greater than many anticipated, with more than 4 million people losing SNAP through March,” Cox said in a statement Tuesday. “Even more people will lose the vital food assistance they need to afford groceries unless Congress immediately delays HR 1’s unprecedented shift of significant new SNAP costs to states.”

Without congressional action, the SNAP cost-shifting provision of the Republican budget law will take effect on October 1, 2027. Survey data released this month shows that nearly 30% of US state governments believe they could be forced to narrow SNAP eligibility to cope with the new costs, which are expected to average $218 million per state. Eleven percent of states “identified withdrawing from SNAP as a potential risk,” according to the poll conducted by the American Public Human Services Association.

It really seems like it should be a bigger deal that 11% of states who responded to this survey identified *withdrawing from SNAP entirely* as a potential risk of the massive cost shift that’s about to hit state budgets thanks to H.R. 1. https://t.co/RbsY9LNdLv pic.twitter.com/TKOQIIK0ci — Katie Bergh (@Katie_Bergh) June 23, 2026

Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said Tuesday that the Republican farm bill “ignores the needs of tens of millions of people, including families with children, older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans, who are finding it increasingly difficult to put food on the table.”

“By shifting program costs to states, expanding time limits, and putting a cap on future benefit adjustments, HR 1 has undermined SNAP, the stability of families, communities, and local economies, and weakened state budgets,” FitzSimons warned. “The SNAP benefit cost shift to states and increase in states’ administrative costs will force states to make impossible choices: reduce education funding, delay infrastructure investments, cut public health programs, constrain Medicaid spending, raise taxes, or reduce access to SNAP itself.”

Senate Republicans unveiled their farm legislation amid a growing hunger and affordability crisis that experts say is directly attributable to Trump-GOP policies, from blanket tariffs to the war on Iran to SNAP cuts that the new bill—like the House version—does nothing to reverse.

Survey data released Tuesday by the No Kid Hungry campaign found that 55% of low-income families with children have had to cut back on groceries recently to make ends meet. The poll also found that 90% of families surveyed reported that they “would have to cut back significantly on food” if they lost SNAP benefits.

“Rising prices are making it harder for families to afford basic necessities,” George Kelemen, senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign, said in a statement. “That’s why SNAP’s grocery benefit, which helps feed about 40 million Americans including nearly 16 million children, is a vital support for helping them put food on the table.”

“This SNAP crisis is too dangerous to ignore,” Kelemen added. “Reasonable steps must be included in this farm bill to delay the cost-sharing until states have the time they need to implement all the complex changes handed to them.”

The post GOP’s ‘unconscionable’ omission in new farm bill has hunger experts furious appeared first on Raw Story.

• Agility Robotics plans to go public via a SPAC at a $2.5 billion valuation.
• Agility has deployed Digit robots at Amazon, Toyota, and the logistics firm GXO.
• Agility has more than $300 million in multiyear orders for its next-generation humanoid.

Humanoid robot maker Agility Robotics said Wednesday that it plans to go public in a deal valuing the company at about $2.5 billion.

The deal would make Agility, which builds a robot called Digit, the first humanoid-focused company to go public in the US.

The startup, which spun out of Oregon State University in 2015, plans to merge with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) led by former Citigroup executive Michael Klein. It is expected to trade under the ticker AGLT.

“The timing is right, both for our company and for the market,” Jonathan Hurst, Agility’s cofounder and chief robot officer, told Business Insider. “We’re hitting now as a first mover, which is really important, and we want to be defining the humanoid industry.”

A SPAC is a publicly traded shell company with no operations or assets, other than a war chest of cash. It is created to eventually be acquired or merged with another company, allowing it to go public without a traditional initial public offering.

The structure boomed in 2021, when low interest rates fueled a wave of blank-check deals. While SPAC activity cooled in the following years, it is gaining renewed attention as the IPO market revives.

Hurst said the company chose the SPAC route specifically to bring in Klein, whose team has the financial expertise to complement Agility’s technical focus as it goes public. Klein is a prolific SPAC sponsor, and he has recently helped take companies such as Sam Altman-backed nuclear power company Oklo and electric vehicle maker Lucid public.

The deal is expected to generate more than $600 million in gross proceeds, including $420 million in cash from Churchill XI and more than $200 million through a common-stock private investment in public equity led by Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer that is an existing Agility investor. Other Agility backers include venture firm DCVC, Nvidia, Amazon, and SoftBank.

Hurst said going public will allow Agility to be more transparent as it scales and helps set benchmarks in a hyped-up industry.

Agility plans to expand its Digit robot

Agility said the money raised from going public will go toward fulfilling existing customer orders, expanding deployments, and scaling production of its next-generation humanoid, Digit v5.

Digit is a full-sized humanoid that can perform repetitive physical tasks, such as carrying heavy storage and sorting goods. Agility has already deployed its Digit robot across nine customer facilities, including those of Amazon, Toyota, and the logistics company GXO.

Agility is the first company to commercially deploy humanoids in the US. Tesla is developing Optimus, which it plans to begin producing this summer. Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics plans to deploy its Atlas humanoid in factories in 2028. Figure AI, most recently valued at $39 billion, piloted its humanoids at a BMW manufacturing plant in Germany and has a deal to deploy robots across the distribution and logistics network of Catalyst Brands, the parent company of JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers.

Agility said it has more than $300 million in multiyear orders for Digit v5. The robot’s battery is designed to charge quickly enough to operate for 20 of 24 hours, Hurst said.

Agility’s biggest focus, Hurst said, is safety. Any humanoid robot typically requires a physical barrier between itself and human workers, and Agility wants to create robots safe enough to operate without that.

“Digit v5 will be the first that can just walk into existing as-built environments without any additional infrastructure required, and do human workflows in human spaces,” Hurst said.

Agility is working with Nvidia on the safety system. This week, Nvidia announced Halos for Robotics, a safety system designed to help robots operate around people in industrial settings. Agility will be the first company to incorporate the software into its humanoids.

Agility’s SPAC deal comes as the humanoid robotics industry moves from flashy demos toward deployment. The market is dominated by Chinese companies such as Unitree, which is preparing to go public and targeting a valuation of up to $7 billion. Chinese robotics firms accounted for about 90% of humanoid robot shipments last year, according to Omdia.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post Humanoid robot startup Agility Robotics is going public at a $2.5 billion valuation via a SPAC appeared first on Business Insider.

Albania’s embattled socialist prime minister, Edi Rama — who is facing a protest movement over his rule, which received global attention mostly because it involves Trump family business dealings — is arguably the most aesthetically driven and image-conscious leader in the world.

Whether it is by wearing casual sneakers at NATO summits or turning conference panels into stages for viral stand-up comedy bits, the 61-year-old Rama knew how to draw media attention before influencers were a thing — and to draw power from being an effective, albeit bullying, communicator.

It therefore seems perfectly fitting that the biggest challenge to Rama’s 13-year rule has come from savvy and confident Gen Z protesters who, using memes hyperproduced by artificial intelligence as their aesthetic weapons, have effectively subverted the prime minister’s ample talents — by relegating him into “OK boomer” territory.

An artist and a painter by training, Rama rose to power in the early 2000s as mayor of Albania’s capital, Tirana, by nurturing the image of an eccentric “anti-politician,” yelling at lazy bureaucrats in front of media cameras and rehabilitating the city’s run-down communist facades with colorful drawings. He promoted a philosophy that art in public spaces can fuel community transformation.

As prime minister, Rama has devoted much of his attention to a transformation of not just formerly drab Tirana but also Albania’s Mediterranean coastline. Gleaming skyscrapers, luxury resorts and modernized and revitalized public spaces have turned one of Europe’s poorest countries into a tourist hot spot, while also attracting the attention of the world’s most prominent architects and artists.

Albania’s own youths have been less impressed by the painter-turned-politician. But their disdain was apparent more in emigration statistics than street protests. Until now. Much like how the Arab Spring was triggered by a viral video of a self-immolating Tunisian street vendor, a single incident brought young Albanians’ long-accumulating frustrations to a boil.

When local residents and environmentalists in the coastal village of Zvernec — the site of a planned new tourist resort linked to Jared Kushner, a Qatar-based fund and local oligarchs — protested the fencing of a public beach around a protected natural site, two private security officers dragged one of the local residents through the sand as local police looked on. The public outcry was immediate.

What began as an isolated protest in a distant village quickly moved to the capital, growing so fast that the mostly self-censoring mainstream media could no longer hold back coverage. It has been almost four weeks and the demonstrations now happen daily, with the flamingo — indigenous to Albania and endangered by the resort construction — as its unifying symbol. The protests are both angry — calling for the overthrow of the entire political and media establishment — and festive. Like with many other Gen Z uprisings, political solidarity has spread through humor and memes. A previously quiescent generation of Albanians are feeling a newfound sense of dignity and political agency.

Western media coverage has narrowly framed the demonstrations as being directed at the Kushner project — an easier hook for their readers at home. Authoritarian social media bot farms have also been deployed, framing the rebellion as somehow being against U.S. and Israeli colonialism.

But the true grievances are entirely related to domestic governance. Tens of thousands of Albanians of all ideological stripes — liberals, nationalists, environmentalists, Marxists, fashion influencers and even fringe conspiracy theorists — are rallying every evening because they feel disenfranchised and abandoned by a self-serving elite, including the formal opposition in parliament, the Democratic Party, that has been stripping public assets through opaque sweetheart deals with special interests for years. Kushner’s resort being green-lit was just the latest and most prominent example.

Rama has tried to make the case that luxury tourism projects like Kushner’s are the future of the economy. The demonstrators are having none of it. Albania is still a poor country, and a development model based heavily on construction and tourism has only enriched the well-connected, while pricing out regular voters from the simple pleasures of a summer getaway to the coast. Worse, the tourism sector is using low-paid migrant workers to keep costs down, even as Albanians themselves emigrate westward looking for work.

Widespread corruption in Rama’s government has also become too much for citizens to bear. Rama’s recent refusal to lift parliamentary immunity for his former deputy prime minister, who is facing an indictment, is creating a major roadblock in Albania’s progress in E.U. accession talks. It’s also seen as a broader threat to popular rule of law reforms, demanded by the European Union and the United States, which Rama had until recently embraced as his own.

The record of Gen Z protests worldwide has been decidedly mixed, and Albania has no elections until 2029. But these particular demonstrations have done one important thing: They have dented the charismatic prime minister’s reputation as someone who is always able to talk his way out of a situation. His attempts to mock protest participants as out-of-touch influencers and to co-opt their symbol by wryly wearing a flamingo T-shirt have, at best, fallen flat.

A rising generation is figuring out how to mobilize public discontent into electoral politics. And for the first time in his long career, Rama seems unable to have the last word. That may cost him yet.

The post For Albania’s Gen Z, Jared Kushner’s resort was the last straw appeared first on Washington Post.

“I’m a low-tech Aztec,” he writes via email when requesting a Zoom link to our Monday interview.

Culture Clash — which includes members Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Sigüenza — arrived on the scene as a guerrilla sketch theater group from the San Francisco Mission District in 1984. By that time, the Chicano movement had reached its peak, thanks to the United Farm Workers labor movement, as well as student activist organizations like Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), which advocated for Chicano unity, political empowerment and educational access.

Luis Valdez, founder of El Teatro Campesino — who began putting on social justice-oriented plays for the striking Delano farmworkers in 1965 — backed the slapstick satire troupe, considering the trio “the cutting edge of fresh, new Latino comic genius.”

Culture Clash stood out in a time when Chicanos became more vocal and visible — and its members challenged an entertainment industry that has historically lacked Latino representation. Between 1993 and 1996, Culture Clash hosted its own self-titled TV show on the syndicated Fox network. The show, which was filmed at the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, is widely considered the first Latino sketch comedy to air on American television.

Throughout the last four decades, Culture Clash has parodied nearly every prominent Latino figure in history, including Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, Ritchie Valens, Rita Moreno, Edward James Olmos and others. Its members have mocked hard-shell cholos and gangsters, often by placing them in funny scenarios. For instance, take this clip, in which the trio take on cholo characters and reimagine what it would be like to surf on the Southern California shore.

But they’ve also taken on more serious topics in their classic “Chavez Ravine” play, which looks into one of the darkest chapters in L.A. history: the forceful removal and displacement of families, mostly Mexican, in the 1950s under eminent domain. Recently Montoya attended a live reading adapted by Somos El Teatro, led by Xolo Maridueña, Mariana da Silva and Angel Villalobos at Elysian Park.

“It gives us so much life that people are finding the issues of swindlers, whether it’s gentrification, the taking over of settlements,” says Montoya. “The generational trauma of losing your home in L.A. has never gone away.”

But not every Culture Clash joke or skit has been safe from criticism. Montoya still remembers how a conservative pundit chastised the group for using light humor to discuss the 1992 riots, when LAPD officers were acquitted for using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King.

“By looking at it and treating it as dynamite, exploding it and then by bringing some levity and a whole lot of seriousness to the Rodney King matter allows us a moment, a fraction of time to look at the issues a little bit differently,” says Montoya. “That laugh allows us a moment to examine it differently.”

On June 27, Culture Clash will return to Grand Performances, a free summer concert series at California Plaza in downtown L.A., with comedic sketches colored by political and social satire. The show, titled “American Payasos! Culture Clash’s End Times Cabaret” will be co-presented with De Los.

While their 40-year-plus legacy might merit a show reminiscent of old goofball skits — like their early 1989 show “The Mission” that poked fun at the problematic Spanish Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra — this will not be an “oldies but goodies show,” as Montoya put it. “We are highly pissed off about a lot of stuff right now.”

“ We’re thinking a lot about the Mexican American patriarchy, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and it’s time to address some of these things,” says Montoya. “ We want to look at the service workers of Los Angeles, the people that sell cotton candy in MacArthur Park, the people that sell ice cream in Echo Park and the people working the World Cup.”

For the veteran comic, son of the late Chicano poet Jose Montoya, it is also impossible to ignore the immigration enforcement raids that have rattled Los Angeles communities in recent years.

“This is a very strange moment for satirists,” says Montoya. “We have a responsibility to use those tools to say what’s going on in our city and country and provide these moments where we can do a little bit closer examination because the people in power aren’t telling us what’s going on.”

In the last five years, Montoya has fiddled around with digital media, creating sporadic videos featuring old clips of the troupe, as well as videos of Latino media, to connect with technologically diverse audiences of all ages. (One example is a video calling on people to get out the vote, that features clips of Speedy Gonzales and honors political figures like Huerta.)

Although Montoya believes Culture Clash is nearing the end of its career, there’s a question lingering inside his mind: What does a graceful exit look like for a group like Culture Clash, which has never been fully integrated into mainstream Hollywood and still left such a profound legacy in the world of Latino entertainment?

The answer to that might still be unknown, but like any Culture Clash project, it will likely be wickedly satirical and punchy. Says Montoya: “We’re ready to go out with a huge, loud bang that can say something against the power structure.”

Culture Clash will take center stage on June 27 at Grand Performances, in partnership with De Los. Also performing is the retro cumbia-quebradita musician É Arenas (bassist of Chicano Batman), the cumbia-fusion, luchador-masked cumbia group La Nueva Ola de Cumbia, as well as DJ Dali.

The post Culture Clash knows the end is near. It wants to go out with a bang appeared first on Los Angeles Times.

The leftist trend goes beyond New York. In Seattle, the democratic socialist Katie Wilson is five months into her first term as mayor. Another democratic socialist, Janeese Lewis George, won the Democratic primary last week in Washington, D.C., and will likely be the city’s next mayor. In Los Angeles, the democratic socialist Nithya Raman has a good chance of unseating incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.

Overinterpreting election results the day after a contest is easy. Less than a year ago, the victories of Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in Virginia’s and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races were being framed as a rebuke to the Democrats’ left-wing. But the boring reality may be that different places have different politics; all of these candidates are suited to their particular contests. Virginia and New Jersey demanded more moderate challengers, whereas New York, especially New York City, has enough left-of-liberal voters—and organizers and volunteers—to sustain more left-wing candidates. What’s happening in Brooklyn doesn’t necessarily tell us what will happen in Texas. This isn’t blowing up the Democratic Party so much as realigning its leaders with the views of their current constituencies.

[Read: The liberal district that could oust a Trump-defying Democrat]

Rather than announcing that the Democratic Party is facing a binary choice, we should think of the democratic socialists, Harold Meyerson writes, as the “urban wing” of the Democratic Party. These candidates won in liberal areas where people are looking for alternatives to the Democrats because the costs of necessities such as housing, food, and child care have risen dramatically—places where the most trumpeted Republican solution is to demonize immigrants, and those they associate with immigrants.

The right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson declared the New York results the “consequences of importing third worlders who hate us and our heritage.” In case you’re wondering who the “us” is here, another right-wing podcaster, Matt Walsh, complained that “third world communists are the enemy. They’ve taken over our greatest American city” and that they “hate white people. They hate our heritage and traditions.” What’s notable is that Johnson and Walsh aren’t talking about illegal immigrants, or about immigrants. They’re complaining about nonwhite people being able to vote.

Democratic voters have been more than willing to support Republican moderates in the past, even in deep-blue states such as Maryland and Massachusetts, but bridging that distance has become harder since the party became Donald Trump’s cult of personality, and since right-wing media figures have been more hostile to the idea of multiracial democracy. It’s hard to win over people in “our greatest city,” or in other cities for that matter, if your fiercest advocates post and podcast constantly about hating the people who live there.

[Read: The Democrats don’t seem willing to follow their own advice]

The Trump administration’s class war against the college educated, and its deployment of federal agents to harass and racially profile people of color, including American citizens, has also created a demand for more strident opposition among these two traditionally Democratic constituencies. Not just opposition to Republicans, but opposition to their power base—the oligarchs who have embraced the administration in exchange for tax cuts and favorable regulations. Democratic socialists seem eager to take on Trump, but many of them can also articulate a clear political narrative of state capture by the ultra-wealthy. Americans who watched their health-care premiums skyrocket while the richest man in the world dictated White House policy and left poor children in Africa to starve before becoming history’s first trillionaire may be looking for something different.

The Democrats’ moderate wing is not going extinct any time soon, however. The modern Democratic Party, by virtue of its class and ethnic diversity, has always been ideologically heterodox. An approach that works for a Zohran Mamdani or a Janeese Lewis George will not necessarily work for a James Talarico in Texas or a Mary Peltola in Alaska. Many people outside of the democratic socialists’ cities and districts will focus on whether the candidates’ stances on Israel and Palestinian rights reflect a shift within the party (and they do) and the fact that they differ from more centrist Democrats (also correct). But whether they succeed as leaders and politicians will depend on much more local concerns—matters such as jobs, public safety, and affordability. Their fates will turn on their ability to deliver for their constituents. This is as true of the democratic socialists as it is of the centrists.

The post Democratic Socialists Aren’t Taking Over America appeared first on The Atlantic.

Jonathan Swan, who co-wrote the book Regime Change with fellow NYT reporter Maggie Haberman, explained during an appearance on MS NOW’s “Deadline: White House” that the Trump administration even kept secrets from senior officials.

“There is this phrase that they use, ‘We’re the most transparent administration ever.’ Trump says it all the time,” Swan said. “It’s a complete canard. When they actually want to keep secrets, they’re very good at it.”

Swan added that the administration kept secrets about “the Trump family, investment from the Emiratis in their crypto business, or whether it’s the memorandum of understanding to end the war [with] Iran.”

Even “very senior people in the U.S. government had no idea what was in the document,” Swan continued, referring to the memorandum of understanding at the heart of Trump’s Iran deal.

“I’m talking about very senior people at the Pentagon, State Department, intelligence community,” Swan said. “This is really a country being run by five, seven people, sitting around, and when you’re that concerned with secrecy, with limiting leaks, you’re not allowing certain people in the room who might have subject-matter expertise to offer.”

Swan and Haberman’s book has already revealed stories from inside the administration, like a “freakout” among President Donald Trump’s top staffover the Epstein files and First Lady Melania Trump’s objections to his White House overhaul. Swan said that the second administration is much different from the first in regard to its secrecy.

“It became really apparent to us through this reporting,” he said. “This group of people around Trump, much more than the first term, is very good at keeping secrets.”

The post Author reveals ‘complete canard’ Trump admin has been selling: ‘Good at keeping secrets’ appeared first on Raw Story.

Trump caught GOP lawmakers and some on his own staff by surprise when he announced on social media that he will withhold support until Congress passes the Save America Act. The overhaul of federal election laws has no path in the Senate without destroying the filibuster.

The upshot is that Trump upended a carefully negotiated compromise that, while modest, contains worthy reforms to encourage home construction.

For instance, it speeds up environmental reviews for certain housing projects, which could shave months off the time needed to start construction. It would eliminate federal regulations on manufactured homes, such as a requirement that they include a metal-frame chassis, which can add as much as $10,000 to the cost.

The deal would ease federal restrictions on how much banks can invest in affordable housing and community development projects. That could unlock new financing without risking more federal dollars.

Alas, the power of the national government to influence housing policy has always been limited, since the largest barriers to expanding supply — such as zoning restrictions and building codes — primarily reside at the state and local level. The bill acknowledges this by creating a competitive grant program to encourage local officials to streamline their permitting processes and increase housing density.

Unfortunately, the package would do little to contain federal subsidies that drive up prices. It also bans institutional investors from owning more than 350 single-family homes. The impetus for doing so flows from a false narrative that corporate ownership of properties has worsened the shortage of housing.

House negotiators managed to strip out a worse proposal from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), which would have discouraged such companies from investing in build-to-rent projects. Warren’s plan would have resulted in fewer units of new housing.

On net, the package would be a plus for the housing industry. Local officials across the country are already coalescing behind a movement to tear down barriers to development. This bill would build on that momentum.

The bill could still become law without Trump’s signature, and White House officials aren’t ruling out that the president might change his mind and sign it in the next 10 days. If he doesn’t, lawmakers might be tempted to call Trump’s bluff.

The bill passed the House 358 to 32 on Tuesday and the Senate 85 to 5 on Monday. Republicans are always nervous to break with the president, but overriding his veto could signal to voters that they’re taking affordability concerns seriously four months before the midterms.

The post Trump botches an easy win on housing appeared first on Washington Post.

In the new trailer for “Practical Magic 2,” released Wednesday, Sally’s (Sandra Bullock) daughter Kylie (Joey King) learns about her family’s legacy and curse after her paramour is involved in an accident.

“It’s true, we’re witches and the curse is real,” Sally tells a tearful Kylie, who along with her sister (Maisie Williams) grew up being told stories where everyone who fell in love died. But the siblings didn’t believe they were actually cursed.

“I will never trust you again,” Kylie responds.

Directed by Susanne Bier, the sequel of 1998’s “Practical Magic” will follow Sally and Gillian (Nicole Kidman) as they chase after Kylie who has set off to “fix the curse,” which will put her on a dark path. Along the way, the sisters encounter a mysterious “scholar of the craft” played by Lee Pace.

The trailer also offers a glimpse into Sally and Gillian’s present lives — with the latter teasing the former’s apparent lack of love life. It seems Sally is uninterested in tempting the fates since for generations those who have fallen in love with members of the Owens family have been cursed to die. Even after things take a turn with the tragic accident, it’s clear that their sisterly bond remains strong. While Sally seems worried about her daughters inheriting her powers, the clip also hints that there might be some happier times ahead.

Also returning for the sequel are Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing, who play Sally and Gilly’s aunts Jet and Franny Owens. In the original film, Jet and Fran are the witchy, eccentric aunts who took in their nieces after their parents died. The “Practical Magic 2” cast also includes Xolo Maridueña, who plays Kylie’s seemingly ill-fated love interest, and Solly McLeod.

Written by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel, “Practical Magic 2” is based on the 2021 novel “The Book of Magic,” the fourth and final installment of author Alice Hoffman’s “Practical Magic” series.

“Practical Magic 2” will hit theaters Sept. 11.

The post The Owens family curse strikes the next generation in the new ‘Practical Magic 2’ trailer appeared first on Los Angeles Times.