China Defends Widely Criticized ‘Ethnic Unity’ Law – The New York Times
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AI has already fallen into the wrong hands and they’re using it to make bombs– www.digitaltrends.com
AI has already fallen into the wrong hands and they’re using it to make bombs– www.digitaltrends.com
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Artificial intelligence has quickly become the go-to tool for everything from writing emails and summarizing meetings to helping students study or developers debug code. But the same technology that saves people time can also be misused, and a new report suggests that terrorist organizations are finding ways to do exactly that.
According to a research paper shared with The New York Times ahead of its publication, researchers found evidence that members of Boko Haram have been using popular AI chatbots to support both day-to-day activities and combat-related tasks. Interviews with 27 former members conducted in Nigeria over the past two years suggest that tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Meta AI, and DeepSeek were used to gather technical information, troubleshoot weapons, and even assist with planning attacks.
Donald Trump’s unsigned housing bill just banned the U.S. digital dollar – thestreet.com
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The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law at midnight, and President Donald Trump’s signature was never on it.
Buried inside the bipartisan housing-affordability bill, and having nothing to do with housing, is a provision barring the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, a government-run digital dollar.
The ban runs until December 31, 2030, and it stops the Fed from issuing a digital dollar either directly to the public or indirectly through banks and other intermediaries. Any future attempt would require Congress to authorize it first.
An unexpected drop in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of 0.4% is leading some economists to revise their expectations of a flat economic outlook for this quarter. The price drop is the biggest since April 2020, just before Biden took office.
A new rule change from the EPA effectively ends California’s stranglehold on the car parts industry. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced “Americans should not be forced to solely rely on California to certify aftermarket products. Starting today, Americans can trust that products certified by SEMA meet federal requirements and can be used to repair vehicles.
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What about Harvard’s huge financial endowment? Why do they need to lay anyone off?
The Harvard Crimson reports:
Harvard FAS To Begin Layoff Notifications Next Week
Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences will begin notifying some staff of layoffs next week, according to a person familiar with the matter — part of a broader process that could also include direct placements into new positions or opportunities to move into different roles.
The notifications mark the beginning of a long-anticipated staff overhaul that has been in the works since last spring. It is unclear how many employees will be affected, though the FAS could lay off up to one quarter of its staff.
Days before the expected notifications, FAS announced Thursday that it had appointed three senior administrators who will help carry out the school’s new administrative model.
FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm did not deny the expected timeline in a statement, writing that the school “will continue to communicate transparently about the workforce planning process,” including by proactively alerting staff and providing detailed information about any job action.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio is will meet with delegations from scores of countries this week for a summit focused on the neglected threat posed by “the resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism.”
ABC News reports that a note shared with foreign governments describes the concept of the meeting as addressing a threat that “has remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus, underestimated and under-resourced, despite the danger it poses.”
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told Newsmax that the Trump administration is taking seriously the gaps that have persisted for decades in counterterrorism strategy.
The United States is taking the resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism incredibly seriously. Under President Trump’s leadership, we are addressing gaps in our counterterrorism strategy that have been largely ignored by previous administrations. pic.twitter.com/fm0AXscLTT
— Tommy Pigott (@statedeptspox) July 13, 2026
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The Trump administration on Monday announced sweeping new banking rules aimed at cracking down on lending to illegal immigrants, requiring lenders to consider that borrowers without legal work authorization may pose “elevated credit risk,” a move that supporters say could improve housing affordability for Americans.
The rules require banks and credit unions to account for the possibility that an illegal immigrant borrower could lose his job, be unable to find lawful work, or be removed from the country before repaying a mortgage, auto loan, credit-card balance, or other debt.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the National Credit Union Administration issued the joint guidance under President Donald Trump’s May executive order, “Restoring Integrity to America’s Financial System.”
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released new details about the fatal shooting of an illegal alien during an enforcement operation in Maine.
Ice revealed that an officer opened fire after the suspect allegedly attempted to flee in a vehicle, creating what agents believed was a threat to public safety.
The shooting occurred early Monday morning in Biddeford during an operation targeting an individual with a final order of removal.
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A major immigration-enforcement change has just landed.
ICE agents have reportedly been told to immediately stop conducting most vehicle stops across the country.
The exception is narrow: operations targeting the most egregious criminal aliens may continue.
The reported instruction was described this way:
BREAKING: Per multiple federal sources to @FoxNews, ICE has been instructed to immediately cease most vehicle stops during immigration enforcement operations nationwide, except for operations targeting the most egregious criminal aliens.
This comes after two people were killed by ICE in shootings in TX and ME in the last week in incidents that began as vehicle stops. DHS alleges one of those incidents was a ramming attempt.
I’m told this will be temporary until ICE officers receive new training on vehicle stops. The policy change will have significant impacts as many of ICE’s arrests begin as vehicle stops when they find and follow a target.
First scooped by @JennieSTaer
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 14, 2026
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An issue at the heart of endless complaints twice per year could soon be resolved.
Lawmakers are considering a new, bipartisan piece of legislation that would make standard time permanent in almost all cases nationwide, thus eliminating spring and autumn clock changes.
As The Hill reported:
The House could vote on its version of the Sunshine Protection Act this week in a move that could end the twice-a-year changing of the clocks. The U.S. has long had a back-and-forth relationship with daylight saving time, with each attempt at making it permanent being rolled back a short time later.
But a bill introduced in the House last week could take a largely different approach. The bipartisan “Sunshine for Our Kids Act of 2026” was introduced by Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Penn.) and Pat Harrigan (R-NC). It calls for permanent standard time — the time we observe from November through March — in the U.S., with some exceptions.
While health experts agree that standard time is better for our health, most efforts in Congress and throughout the U.S. have focused on making daylight saving time permanent. Nearly 20 states have passed legislation to observe daylight saving time year-round, should Congress approve it. Only Hawaii and parts of Arizona observe standard time year-round.
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As RedState reported on Monday, Democrat candidates for public office are putting lies out there that are so egregious that even Democrat-compliant mainstream media are calling them out.
For example, Abdul El-Sayed, who is the leading candidate in the Michigan Senate primary race, is finding that out the hard way, with CNN of all places publishing a report detailing how he indeed has repeatedly called for defunding the police despite what he’s said during the course of his Senate campaign, which we wrote about here. When they interviewed him about it, El-Sayed played word games and complained they were “fixated” on the word “defund” rather than the supposed larger message.
El-Sayed was also miffed when another media friendly, former MSDNC host, Mehdi Hasan, repeatedly questioned him on why he called himself a physician when he wasn’t one. Again, the agitated candidate played word games, stating that “At the end of the day, it’s not about whether or not I’m a physician or a doctor.”
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Heather MacDonald, writing in City Journal, tells the story of novelist Scott Johnson having dinner at a restaurant in a mall outside of Richmond, Va., last March, when “hundreds of masked teens in black hoodies rushed past, only abruptly to change direction after receiving phone alerts about a brawl elsewhere in the mall.” Johnson and his wife took shelter in a clothing store until the mall closed after rumors of shots being fired.
Johnson and his wife were terrified. They were victims of the growing urban sport of recreational rioting, or “Teen Takeovers.” These are social media-driven swarms of urban youths who show up without warning and literally lose their minds, committing vandalism, getting into fights, and shooting at each other.
Authorities in California were forced to shut down businesses from Newport Pier to Pacific Coast Highway due to non-residents wreaking havoc on July 4th.
Hundreds of people reportedly swarmed police officers and threw debris at them before fighting each other.
Newport Beach… pic.twitter.com/fWjZZpzgaU
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 5, 2026
🚨OH. MY. GOSH!!!
I received this video of a “teen takeover” that occurred in Chicago.
They are literally BURNING CARS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET and BLOCKING TRAFFIC.
Will ANYONE be arrested for this?!!!!
This looks like a 3rd world country, not America… pic.twitter.com/am4Gbm4QR0
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) May 8, 2026
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While the concept of federally protecting certain parks and monuments has enjoyed wide bipartisan support, there’s plenty of disagreement about just how much of the nation’s fertile land should be off limits.
President Donald Trump weighed in on that debate recently with his announcement that two massive monuments in Utah will be whittled down to about 10% of their respective sizes.
According to Fox News:
The order applies to the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, shrinking their total coverage by roughly 90% from 3 million acres to 300,000. The areas were established as federal monuments by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2016, respectively.
“They took the land from the people quite honestly,” Trump said during the Monday signing ceremony. “We’re giving it back.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox also attended the signing and praised the move, saying the original size of the monuments was far too expansive.
.@POTUS: “We’re doing something very dramatic and very important for the people of Utah.” @GovCox: “This is a big day for Utah. @POTUS did something very similar several years ago during his first term… we believe that under the Antiquities Act, it’s very clear that these… pic.twitter.com/RCQe1WMKBi
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 13, 2026
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Keir Starmer has become the first UK prime minister to be presented with the Légion d’honneur by a French president, in recognition of his work with France on the security of Europe.
Emmanuel Macron awarded the historic honour to Starmer for his leadership in setting up the coalition of the willing – a group of countries chaired by France and the UK that have pledged to support Ukraine – at a critical moment for Europe in early 2025.
The only other British prime minister to receive a similar award – at a higher level, the Grand-Croix of the Légion d’honneur – was Winston Churchill in 1958 in recognition of his leadership and close ties to France during the second world war.
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A convicted Cuban plane hijacker who terrorized a flight crew and forced a plane to divert to Florida in 2003 is back on the streets after a Bill Clinton-appointed federal judge ordered his release from ICE custody last week.
Miakel Guerra Morales, who served roughly 20 years in federal prison for aircraft piracy, had been detained by immigration authorities since December. He was awaiting deportation.
That is, until U.S. District Judge John E. Steele ruled on July 8th that he could no longer be held, despite the ongoing removal process.
A report from the magistrate judge in 2009 highlights some aspects of the brutality involved in the hijacking. The hijackers— Morales and a handful of co-defendants—wielded the plane’s emergency axes and several knives in an attempt to control the pilot and crew. Knives were, on multiple occasions, pressed against the throats of some individuals.
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Medicaid is federally funded and state-run, but the program’s beneficiaries often have the least say in who provides their care and what that care costs.
That’s a built-in flaw. States have every incentive to maximize federal matching funds while federal taxpayers bear much of the cost. The result pits state bureaucrats against Washington’s need to control Medicaid spending — and against taxpayers’ interest in stopping providers, insurers, and contractors from cashing in on weak oversight.
New York’s home-care scandal is not merely a contracting failure. It is a warning about Medicaid’s overall design.
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Ukraine will produce French-made cruise missiles, precision guided bombs, and air defense interceptor missiles through a license granted by Paris to Kyiv, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday.
Macron made the announcement during Monday’s “Coalition of the Willing” meeting in Paris that saw Macron, President Volodymyr Zelensky, and several other European heads of state reiterate their support of Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of its territory and reaffirm their calls for a ceasefire and direct negotiations between both sides.
At the meeting, Macron revealed that France has issued a license to Ukraine for the manufacturing of the missiles — marking the first time France has granted such a provision to Ukraine. The license contemplates the production of AASM precision-guided air-to-ground bombs, Aster air-defense interceptor missiles and SCALP, long-range air-launched cruise missiles.
The deal, Macron detailed, stems from a letter of intent signed between Paris and Kyiv in November 2025 that outlined Ukraine’s acquisition of 100 aircraft over the next ten years.
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An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson released more details about the lethal shooting of a Colombian man in Maine during an immigration operation.
Details were sparse about the lethal incident in the city of Biddeford early Monday, but in an email statement to Blaze News, ICE confirmed the man was an illegal alien.
‘Were officers threatened? Were the threats rising to the level that justified deadly force? That’s what this investigation is all about.’
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A new Wall Street Journal analysis found that Ketanji Brown Jackson is the most partisan justice on the Supreme Court, voting against the Trump administration 98 percent of the time in 100 major cases. In those same cases, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas aligned with the administration 89 and 88 percent of the time, respectively.
The Wall Street Journal suggested in its article that Alito’s record was the real story behind this data: “In a term dominated by Trump-related disputes, [Alito] voted to uphold every significant Trump initiative that came before the court, and he wrote frequent, full-throated endorsements of some of Trump’s most brazen efforts to expand presidential power.”
Alito is certainly a consistent conservative justice, but Jackson sides against the Trump administration in almost every major case, according to the WSJ’s analysis. The real story this data tells is about Jackson’s radicalism, which sometimes even causes her to split with her left-wing counterparts on the court.
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Iran attacked two tankers belonging to the United Arab Emirates on Monday as conflict reignited across the Middle East.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it attacked two “non-compliant” ships, according to The Hill.
The IRGC added that the “offending supertankers” were disabled in the Strait of Hormuz, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The IRGC claimed the ships ignored warnings and turned off their navigation systems as they sought to pass through the strait.
The statement said the U.S. was “inciting vessels to use an illegal route,” and that cooperation with an “aggressor enemy” would lead to damage and a delay in Iran allowing the strait to reopen.
The UAE said it may respond to the attack.
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Washington — President Trump has been trying to force Iran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz for months, turning to everything from airstrikes and naval blockades to negotiations and threats to destroy a “whole civilization.”
But restoring oil tanker traffic in the vital Middle East shipping corridor to prewar flows likely will require a much bigger armada of U.S. warships if not tens of thousands of American troops on Iranian soil, experts say. Despite on-and-off fighting, Iran can still target vessels in the slim Persian Gulf waterway with drones and missiles that have been hidden in a country a third the size of the continental United States.
“Iran has been preparing for this type of asymmetric conflict for decades now,” said Jason H. Campbell, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former Pentagon official. “I think they’re starting to demonstrate why no other U.S. president since Reagan has elected to engage at this level of conflict with Iran, because they have that ability to completely disrupt the Strait of Hormuz.”
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In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
Michael Harrington called it the left wing of the possible. Beneath the slogan lay a practical reality. American socialists had no viable alternative to the Democratic Party. The two-party system, ballot access laws, fundraising networks, and the institutional gravity of a party that had absorbed much of the Left all pointed in the same direction. Work within the Democrats or remain on the margins.
Harrington chose the Democrats and built the Democratic Socialists of America around that choice. He believed American socialism would accomplish more by influencing one of the nation’s two major parties than by creating a third marginal party. He spent the rest of his life defending that strategy.
For decades, DSA leaders described their approach as political realignment. Following Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) presidential campaigns, many activists embraced what became known as the dirty break: using Democratic ballot lines to build socialist power while envisioning an eventual independent workers’ party. As the organization grew and its elected officials multiplied, however, the promised break receded further into the future.
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Four years earlier in Florida, Epstein had been sent to prison for two charges of soliciting prostitution – including one with a minor.
Andriesz suspected there was yet more to find in the Epstein files that could back up his claims – if only people knew where to look in the 3.5 million pages of documents.
“Everyone was searching ‘Lutnick’,” he says. He knew, though, that Cantor Fitzgerald executives preferred to use initials rather than full names in their emails.
Andriesz searched for “HWL” (Howard William Lutnick) and found emails sent to and from Epstein in 2018. Epstein had talked directly to Lutnick about a digital advertising company called Adfin, in which he and Lutnick’s firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, had both invested.
Andriesz spotted correspondence, external where Epstein had directly asked the HWL account: “what do you think the prospects for adfin are?”