Author: Press Room

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is officially throwing its support behind Sen. Darline Graham ahead of the primary runoff — and it wants other South Carolina Republicans to follow. On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, NRSC officials called the primary’s top finishers who didn’t make the runoff in South Carolina’s snap Senate primary — Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.), former Gov. Mark Sanford and businessman Mark Lynch — and urged them to endorse Sen. Darline Graham, according to two people with knowledge of the outreach, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. On Wednesday morning, NRSC Chair Tim Scott — South Carolina’s…

Francesca Hong and David Crowley are about tied at 40.1-40.1 — and when that result appeared on screen, the crowd here at Hong’s election night party lost it, cheering for more than a minute straight after she’d been trailing the Milwaukee County executive in returns all night. Despite a much weaker-than-expected showing for Hong, people here appear optimistic. The song currently playing is “Le Freak” by Chic, which repeats the lyrics “freak out” several times. Read the full article here

Image: Wikimedia Commons (A U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft assigned to the 127th Wing, Michigan National Guard, flies in formation behind a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the 128th Air Refueling Wing, Wisconsin National Guard, June 5, 2023.) The case of Colonel Leslie Zyzda-Martin, an Air National Guard officer removed from command at Wisconsin’s Volk Field Air National Guard Base in 2021, exemplifies the troubling ambiguities surrounding jurisdiction and accountability within military structures. The circumstances of her removal, which coincided with her disciplinary action against a subordinate for distributing explicit images, have raised questions about the motives behind her…

OpenAI has lost another senior leader who was responsible for examining the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems. This time, the company’s head of ethics has resigned after less than a year on the job. Tom’s Guide reports that Chloé Bakalar, OpenAI’s head of ethics and reportedly the company’s only dedicated ethicist, has left less than a year after joining. Her exit follows other recent departures among people responsible for safety and alignment work at the company behind ChatGPT. Johannes Heidecke, who led OpenAI’s Safety Systems team, announced his departure in July. Josh Achiam, who previously led the company’s Mission Alignment…

Earlier this week, Paramount CEO David Ellison threatened to move the studio out of state beginning on October 1 (about six weeks!) if California Attorney General Rob Bonta does not come to the table to settle his merger with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). On Tuesday, Xavier Becerra, the Democrat nominee to replace sitting Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), blinked and called for the attorney general to work out a settlement. Becerra likely knows Ellison is not bluffing, and that if Bonta continues to block the deal by refusing to talk, Ellison will move Paramount out of California. Then, if the merger…

Mexican actress Melissa Barrera is ripping Hollywood for supposedly blacklisting her over her support of the Palestinians and her refusal to condemn Hamas for its brutal murders of more than a thousand innocent Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. Speaking to the Latino USA podcast’s Maria Hinojosa, the Scream star insisted that she has become a target because of her support for the Islamic extremists in Palestine. Naturally she didn’t mention the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians that killed more than a thousand children, women, and elderly people. “There are a lot of people that got fired for basically saying Palestinians…

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the Democratic primary for retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s seat on Tuesday, delivering progressives another major victory in the party’s ideological war. Flanagan, who had the backing of Smith and left-wing heavyweights like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), defeated moderate Rep. Angie Craig in a bruising race that largely revolved around two lightning-rod local topics: the Trump administration’s deadly immigration crackdown and the state’s welfare fraud scandal. Flanagan excoriated her rival’s record on immigration enforcement throughout the campaign, calling Craig’s vote for the Laken Riley Act last year “disqualifying” and hammering her…

Washington was unhappy with Kiev launching drone attacks on vessels carrying oil to a terminal co-owned by US companies, the article says The US called Ukraine to heel for targeting oil tankers in the Black Sea after Kiev began launching drone attacks on vessels sailing to a partly US-owned Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal in Russia, the Financial Times reported.The CPC funnels Kazakh crude across southern Russia to a marine terminal near Novorossiysk, where tankers carry it onward to Europe and Asia. The route includes an unusual combination of Russian, Kazakh, and Western interests, with Chevron and ExxonMobil among the…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is preparing to equip its officers with specialized gloves capable of delivering an electric shock to help subdue violent or resisting suspects. According to a Department of Homeland Security notice reported by the Associated Press, ICE plans to spend up to $20 million purchasing thousands of the devices for deployment early next year. Known as the G.L.O.V.E. (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter) the technology is manufactured by Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies and has already been used by some police departments and correctional facilities. The equipment functions as an ordinary pair of patrol gloves until an officer…

President Donald Trump doubled down Tuesday on his assertion that the United States has “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz, warning Iran could either continue buckling under mounting economic pressure or risk getting “blown away” if it challenges American forces. “We have total control over the Hormuz Strait right now. They don’t have control. We have total control. We own it,” Trump told reporters Tuesday evening after returning from Ohio. “At some point, maybe they’ll do something, and then they get blown away, but we, right now, we’re in a very good position,” Trump said. The president’s remarks came…