Why won’t Trump release the 90% of the Jeffrey Epstein files that haven’t been released? Only award winning journalist Michael Wolff knows for sure, and he joins Legal AF’s Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz for an exclusive interview.
The Guardian reports: Silvana Marques was one of thousands of Brazilians who flocked to São Paulo’s most famous art museum one afternoon last week. But the 51-year-old teacher wasn’t there to marvel over fog-filled London landscapes at Masp’s new Monet retrospective. She had come to join a protest heaping scorn on Donald Trump. Beneath the museum’s brutalist hulk, Marques spotted a cardboard effigy of the US president and took a picture with her phone before the Trump dummy was set…
The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration on Monday took another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people. Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect in their backyards from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. At the…
Zoë Schlanger writes: In the days since the Texas flash-flood disaster, the Department of Homeland Security has had a stock response to questions about delays in the federal government’s response, or about a recent rule requiring DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to personally approve FEMA expenditures over $100,000, including rescue teams. The response goes, over and over, like this: “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for…
Gizmodo reports: Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge. Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at…
Wired reports: For decades, allies of the United States lived comfortably amid the sprawl of American hegemony. They constructed their financial institutions, communications systems, and national defense on top of infrastructure provided by the US. And right about now, they’re probably wishing they hadn’t. Back in 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe a cycle that has played out again and again in the online economy. Entrepreneurs start off making high-minded promises to get new users to try…
The Washington Post reports: One of the leading Republicans on Capitol Hill broke with the Trump administration’s decision not to release the files of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as the controversy deepened over the handling of an issue that has caused unprecedented division among the GOP base. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson that he supported the release of the Epstein files, days after President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said the matter was effectively closed….
Will Sommer writes: Trump World fell into chaos just before the weekend, as the shock from the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein memo continued to reverberate. Donald Trump’s initial response—a long Saturday-afternoon post that urged everyone to just get over it—earned the president a rare hostile “ratio” on Truth Social, his own social media platform. Even right-wing media figures who would normally fall in line behind the president took issue with his long, meandering, often self-contradictory statement, apparently unwilling to alienate…
Politico reports: The Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy saga is blowing up in the White House’s face — and social-media experts say that Elon Musk’s remake of X helped light the fuse. Conspiracy theories about Epstein, and the Trump administration’s supposed complicity in silencing them, are starting to split MAGA’s unruly factions and turn part of the movement against the president. (For those not following closely: The Department of Justice and FBI issued a joint report last week claiming that Epstein did…
Poynter reports: In 2021, Venezuelan journalist Luz Mely Reyes moved to the United States because she didn’t want to be silenced. As an outspoken advocate for the freedom of expression, Reyes no longer felt safe in Venezuela, where reporters have been threatened, arrested and beaten. Now in the U.S., however, she finds that she must often silence herself. “In my country (Venezuela), I never self-censored. Here, I have to avoid some topics because I feel that it’s dangerous for my…
Middle East Eye reports: The British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court was warned in May that if arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant were not withdrawn, he and the ICC would be “destroyed”. The warning was delivered to Karim Khan by Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court who told Khan he had spoken to Netanyahu’s legal advisor and, according to a note of the meeting lodged…
Alex Reisner writes: Should tech companies have free access to copyrighted books and articles for training their AI models? Two judges recently nudged us toward an answer. More than 40 lawsuits have been filed against AI companies since 2022. The specifics vary, but they generally seek to hold these companies accountable for stealing millions of copyrighted works to develop their technology. (The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit, against the AI firm Cohere.) Late last month, there were rulings…
Canary Media reports: As the Trump administration doubles down on fossil fuels, the rest of the world is investing more and more in clean energy. This year, $2.2 trillion will be invested in clean energy, efficiency, and electrification globally, according to the International Energy Agency — double the $1.1 trillion that will flow toward fossil fuels. It’s a remarkable change from a decade ago. Back in 2015, fossil fuels still attracted more money than clean energy. In 2016, perhaps galvanized…
Democracy Docket reports: The Supreme Court let the Trump administration go forward with mass layoffs at the Department of Education. SCOTUS lifted a lower court order preventing the department from implementing a “reduction in force,” a large-scale federal layoff mechanism, to eliminate around 50% of the department’s workforce. The court offered no explanation for its decision. The decision gets Trump closer to his goal of shuttering the Education Department, which has long been a popular target for Republicans and conservative…