Author: Press Room

The House voted Wednesday by unanimous consent to hold billionaire investor Leon Black in contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with two congressional subpoenas sought by the Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into the late Jeffrey Epstein.The matter is now in the hands of the Justice Department, which will determine whether to ultimately bring charges against Black. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.It marks the first time a witness has been held in contempt over the course of the Oversight panel’s…

From Britain and the USSR to Trump’s America, the cost of imperial expansion raises a lasting question: Can great nations be secure without it? An empire is perhaps the most expensive indulgence that even the most powerful nations can afford only for a limited time. Arguments that empires are profitable are largely unconvincing and while they may enrich a narrow section of the elite, and perhaps do so spectacularly, it’s rarely for very long, and for everyone else, empire eventually means costs.Consider the lives of ordinary people in 19th-century Britain, the colonial veteran portrayed by Rudyard Kipling, or the Russian…

GiveSendGo created for lone Clancy holdout juror As the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial continues to face harassment and doxxing for holding the line against activist jurors who wanted to let Lindsay Clancy walk free after killing her three children, the juror’s supporters are also facing retaliation and threats. The long holdout was relentlessly smeared in the media by his co-jurors, who shared details of his identity and incited opposition to his position that Clancy committed a crime when she strangled her three young children. The female jurors called him “arrogant” and complained that he could not get…

The director of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) announced during a press conference Monday that the Communist Party will be investing heavily in programs intended to raise the birth rate, particularly in expanding access to pediatric care and child care for working families. The ambitious program is part of the Communist Party’s “15th Five-Year Plan” to improve the strength of the state generally, which emphasized the need to encourage Chinese citizens to marry and start large families. China has documented a dramatic decline in its birth rate over the past decade, defying the government’s decision to do away with the…

Tuesday on FNC’s “The Will Cain Show,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) discussed alleged welfare corruption across the country and argued that some states used it to incentivize voting for Democrats. “How do we exist as a nation, Senator, if we essentially are open to the world and give welfare to everyone that wants to come to the United States?” host Will Cain asked. Paul replied, “No, we can’t. And, actually, a whole population of these people came. Not only they’re receiving welfare, but became experts at stealing welfare, so many of the folks in Minnesota. Now we found in L.A.…

Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz is still optimistic that his twice-delayed markup on artificial intelligence legislation will happen before the midterms — and that the centerpiece bill will be a yet-to-be-finalized bipartisan measure to stave off catastrophic risks posed by the evolving technology.“It’s still my hope to have an AI markup this session,” the Texas Republican told reporters Wednesday.Cruz added that senators are “actively negotiating through provisions” in a proposal from Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to establish guardrails for the most powerful models.“My hope is that we will get bipartisan agreement and…

The 25-basis-point increase comes despite the US president’s repeated demands for lower borrowing costs The US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated demands for lower borrowing costs, as stubborn inflation continues to weigh on the world’s largest economy.The Fed hiked its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 3.75%-4% on Wednesday in a unanimous vote, marking the first increase since 2023 and the first policy change under Chairman Kevin Warsh.The regulator said economic activity was expanding “at a solid pace,” while inflation “remains elevated.”The move had been widely expected. Some 85% of economists surveyed…

Yulia Mendel, who has consistently called for peace and criticized her ex-boss, had been invited by an MEP from Germany’s AfD party The EU banned a former aide to Vladimir Zelensky from entering the European Parliament on Wednesday, when she was due to speak at an event promoting diplomacy instead of escalation in the Ukraine conflict.Yulia Mendel, who was Zelensky’s top communications liaison from 2019 to 2021 and who has since become a consistent critic of her former boss, had been invited to speak on the same day Ursula von der Leyen delivered her State of the Union speech.According to…

Trump is directing resources to his Pan-American allies The priority is to secure the US’ backyard before anything else. The protection and development of the Western Hemisphere is a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s defense policies. And this, of course, is not just idle talk, as the US is shifting $52 million in military aid to that end. Resources once destined for countries in Europe and the Middle East will now help back allied governments in the Americas. BREAKING: US strips millions in military aid from Europe and the Middle East to support Trump-aligned governments in Latin America — AP…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for outside monitors to police the AI industry has run into questions about how independent those monitors really are. The watchdog Amodei mentions, METR, is deeply connected to both Amodei’s Anthropic and the Effective Altruism movement. Breitbart News reported that Amodei laid out his proposal in an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” published last Saturday morning. In it, he argued that leading AI companies should allow “embedded third-party evaluators” to maintain “employee-like access” so they can oversee safety efforts inside the labs. OpenAI’s Sam Altman The nonprofit Amodei has in mind, the Model…