The state of Illinois and the state of Washington have now been added to the list, along with 8 other states, to ban what they consider to be assault weapons. This includes AR-15 style rifles. And in Washington state it is all semi-automatic rifles. This is completely unconstitutional, as we all know. There are various organizations in the state of Illinois who took this up the circuit courts.
One of the courts made a ruling saying that the ban was unconstitutional and another one held the ban. Then it went to the Supreme Court and was under review by Amy Comey Barret. But she denied to hear the case with no rebuttal and held to align with the lower court’s ruling. This is now the third time that Amy Comey Barret, a Trump appointee, has done something that has shocked us.
The last incident was dealing with the University of Indiana who was being sued by the students who did not want to get vaccinated and were claiming religious exemption. And they claimed this under the guise of the 14th amendment. Amy Comey Barret came back and said that the 14th amendment does not allocate religious exemption and that it is the 1st amendment that would do this. But that under the 14th amendment they have the right to protect other American citizens, therefore the vaccination is necessary. And this comes from a 1903 and a 1923 Supreme Court legal precedent.
She was also in the decision after the 2020 election to not allow the Supreme Court to hear the Texas case against election interference. The faith is our judicial system is incredibly low. We are seeing just how corrupt some of these departments are. We are seeing how corrupt and infiltrated our federal government is.
(Reuters)—The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to block a Democratic-backed ban on assault-style rifles and large capacity magazines enacted in Illinois after a deadly mass shooting in Chicago's Highland Park suburb in 2022, handing a setback to gun rights advocates.
The court denied a request by the National Association for Gun Rights and a firearms retailer for an injunction blocking enforcement of the state law and a similar ban enacted by another Chicago suburb, Naperville, while a legal challenge to the measures proceeds. No justice publicly dissented from the decision.
Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker in January signed into law the Protect Illinois Communities Act that banned the sale and distribution of many kinds of high-powered semiautomatic "assault weapons," including AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, as well as magazines that take more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns.
Pritzker welcomed the Supreme Court's action.
"The gun lobby has insisted on every legal maneuver to block this law, refusing to acknowledge that lives will be saved by this important piece of legislation. Despite these challenges, I remain confident that the assault weapons ban will be upheld and will create a safer Illinois for our residents," Pritzker said.
The law exempts existing owners, giving them a deadline of Jan. 1, 2024, to register their assault weapons with state police.
The gun rights association, as well as a Naperville-based firearms store, Law Weapons & Supply, and its owner Robert Bevis, challenged the city's ordinance restricting the sale of certain assault rifles and the state's broader ban as a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, which protects the right to "keep and bear" arms.
The case is one of several contesting the state's ban in both federal and state courts.
-The Washington Free Beacon
Supreme Court Allows Illinois Assault Weapons Ban To Stand
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit is currently considering the case. The request for an injunction went to Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Illinois passed the Protect Illinois Communities Act on Jan. 10, banning the sale, purchase, manufacture, delivery and importation of "assault weapons" and large capacity magazines, with exceptions for law enforcement, military members and certain other professionals with firearm training. The legislation specifically names the AR-15 and AK-47 rifles and requires lawful owners of semi-automatic rifles to register their ownership with state police.
The 7th Circuit has yet to issue a final ruling on the Illinois law, but its decision is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Judge Stephen Patrick McGlynn, a Trump appointee in Illinois' Southern District, had initially granted the injunction earlier in May. Appellate Judge Frank Easterbrook then reversed McGlynn's ruling, a decision that has now been supported by both the 7th Circuit and the Supreme Court.
McGlynn's ruling had argued that Illinois' law infringed on the right to self-defense and, in some cases, "completely obliterated that right by criminalizing the purchase and the sale of more than 190 'arms.'"
-Anders Hagstrom, Fox News
Supreme Court allows Illinois 'assault weapons' ban to take effect
I really do not have much faith in these people, but this is a start. We have been calling for it and now we are seeing it. My only question is, why isn’t she bringing up everyone within the executive department, including Antony Blinken? I think the reason they are leaving Blinken in place is because he is the one who is running the government right now. And they know that with him there, Kamala will have no real power.
Click here to see all of the articles of impeachment that Greene has introduced:
The Bilderberg Meeting is this week in Lisbon
We have not heard of this secretive group for quite some time. Mostly because they have been overshadowed by the World Economic Forum. The Bilderberg Group has recently met again, this time in Lisbon. Notice how they did not mention European leadership. They did not discuss how Europe is financially and economically in the dumps right now. That they have a major energy crisis, border and immigration control problems, and riots happening in the streets.
With US leadership they are talking about how to sustain power within the United States. How to take America down while still maintaining their power. So, what is the Bilderberg Group planning? I think they are planning on taking out Putin as fast as possible and getting rid of Russia. They want Ukraine completely absolved from this war. They want China to come out as the market leader in the economy and as military leader of the world.
They want the United States to sink down and to produce dedollarisation. They want the second amendment right of the American citizens taken away and for the guns to be confiscated. And once they have that, what you will see is the whole world fall to a one world government.
This is critical in the sense of the timing. Because the deal is going to be the middle of next week, and we know that the Democrats are going to say no to the deal. Which puts us into June where we will then be running out of money. We are likely going to see a shutdown of the government.
Thirty-three state officials have written to the scandal-plagued big bank JPMorgan Chase demanding that it cease alleged politically and religiously discriminatory “de-banking” of customers.
Fourteen state financial officers wrote a letter to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on March 23, calling on the bank to take swift action to “prevent internal political and anti-religious bias” to help remedy its pattern of “de-banking” conservatives.
“We urge Chase to immediately take steps to…address internal drivers of political or anti-religious bias that could undermine its fiduciary obligations and impair the freedom of its customers to access financial services without fear of discrimination,” wrote the officers.
The officers cited several examples of apparent “political bias,” including Chase subsidiary WePay’s denial in 2021 of ticket payment processing for a Republican event hosted by Defense of Liberty, citing a policy prohibiting payment processing connected to “hate” or “racial intolerance.”
They also pointed to the bank’s closing of the National Committee for Religious Freedom’s (NCRF) account “without explanation,” before informing NCRF that Chase would only consider reinstating them if they provided a list of their donor lists and supported political candidates.
-Emily Mangiaracina, LifeSiteNews
Republican state leaders demand JPMorgan Chase cease ‘politically motivated de-banking’
There was a large number of people who were involved with January 6th whose information was given over to the FBI by JP Morgan Chase, including the information for everyone who bought firearms in the DC area within several days of this incident.
After February's ridiculous pumpfest, US existing home sales have continued to trend lower with March down down and now April dropping 3.4% MoM (worse than the 3.2% drop expected)...
Existing home sales are down 14 of the 15 months, leaving them down just over 23% YoY.
“Home sales are bouncing back and forth but remain above recent cyclical lows,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement.
“The combination of job gains, limited inventory and fluctuating mortgage rates over the last several months have created an environment of push-pull housing demand.”
The median selling price of a previously owned home fell 1.7% from a year ago, the biggest drop since 2012, to $388,800. However, prices rose in the Northeast and Midwest.
“Even in markets with lower prices, primarily the expensive West region, multiple-offer situations have returned in the spring buying season,” Yun said.
-Tyler Durden, Zerohedge
US Existing Home Sales Decline Re-Accelerates As Rates Rebound
So, they only compared this to last year’s numbers. But as I have said, there is a bigger crisis going on out there. And this is because of the high interest rates. People did not realize that the mortgages they were getting involved with would later default. The problem is that the big banks and financial institutions let go of all their foreclosure mortgages and their lawyers during covid. And now they have to rehire and build those teams back up. But it is not working out very well for them because there is a massive crisis within the banking industry.
Democrat Rep. Cori Bush introduced a resolution demanding what is estimated to be $14 trillion in federal reparations.
Reps. Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman and Barbara Lee unveiled the resolution on Wednesday.
Bush said black people ‘continue to live under slavery’ because of the black-white wealth gap.
Rep. Bowman said, “Trauma lives in the black body.”
“Research has shown this from generation to generation trauma lives in the body and lives in the blood vessels and lives in the DNA and the cells and the mind,” Bowman said, according to the Daily Mail.
The Daily Mail reported:
A number of House Democrats led by Rep. Cori Bush introduced a resolution Thursday to reignite a push for federal reparations that would amount to over half the U.S. GDP.
The resolution states that the U.S. has a ‘legal and moral’ obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of black people and calls for $14 trillion to be paid – ‘at least the amount of the black white wealth gap,’ Bush told DailyMail.com during a press conference.
-Cristina Laila, Gateway Pundit
Watch the clip here:
I do not think that these people truly understand history. At the founding of this country, we were under the Articles of Confederation before the Constitution was drafted. And during that time there were several black congressmen who were serving. And yes, people were enslaved. But there were also Irish and Chinese who were enslaved along with the Africans. And all three of those races had been held under slavery since the 1600s when the Portuguese and the Dutch came through with their slave trade.
One thing that is interesting is that Native Americans have been receive reparations for quite some time. There is an Indigenous American Trust Fund that is funded by taking the land that is being used as reservations and equating that to a certain amount of money each year. So, the people on the reservations can go and register with an account to then collect a payment. But the majority of people do not claim that money, and this trust fund that the federal government set up under the Department of Interior has actually been utilized as a method of laundering money from the government to black budget projects.
An internal document from the tech giant said that while it develops its own AI technology, employee usage of outside AI chatbots will be restricted.
Big Tech giant Apple has restricted company usage of the widely popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT over fears its sensitive data could be compromised.
A report by The Wall Street Journal revealed that an internal document to Apple employees had banned the usage of Microsoft-backed ChatGPT and similar AI tools while the company was developing its own AI technology.
According to the document, the iPhone developer is concerned about workers using the programs and exposing confidential company information.
It also mentioned a restriction on GitHub’s AI tool Copilot, a Microsoft-owned application that automates writing software code.
Cointelegraph reached out to Apple for further comment.
This internal ban comes after the ChatGPT app debuted for iOS in the Apple app store on May 18.
-Savannah Fortis, Coin Telegraph
Apple bans ChatGPT use for employees over fears of data leaks
Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has introduced a resolution to expel her colleague Rep. Adam Schiff from Congress under Article I of the Constitution, for his role in the now debunked Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
Rep. Luna believes the California Democrat should be punished under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution, which stipulates that the House of Representatives may “punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.”
“Knowingly using your position on House Intel [the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] to push a lie that ripped apart our country, cost taxpayers millions of dollars, and authorized spying on a US President and then proceeding to double down on the lie within days of the Durham report coming out makes you unfit for office,” the Florida Republican said of Schiff’s conduct on her Twitter account.
A statement posted on her official Congressional account was no less robust, declaring: “Schiff lied to the American people. He used his position on House Intel to push a lie that cost American taxpayers millions of dollars.” “He is a dishonor to the House of Representatives,” she added.
-Jack Montgomery, The National Pulse
McCarthy made a public statement recently calling out Schiff, saying that this is treason to the country. Schiff responds with a Tweet about Republican Congress members pushing to expel him and then shortly after puts out another Tweet with a linked website, begging people for donations.
Adam Schiff asking for donations
Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay up to $75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by an Jeffrey Epstein victim who claimed that the bank had benefited from human trafficking by retaining Epstein as a client, the Financial Times reports.
The lawsuit is one of three ongoing cases involving lenders to Epstein - the two others being a combined case against JPMorgan Chase, which is being sued by a different alleged victim and the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned property.
The Deutsche Bank lawsuit was filed as a proposed class action in November, based on a New York law which temporarily allowed abuse claims to be brought beyond the statute of limitations.
Jane Doe, the accuser, claimed the German bank "chose profit over following the law," and knowingly engaged in business that would "earn millions of dollars from facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking."
Judge Jed Rakoff stated in his order denying in part Deutsche's attempt to dismiss the case, said Epstein "solicited Deutsche Bank’s advice about how to structure his withdrawals so as to evade notice . . . and he was shielded by Deutsche Bank’s failure to file suspicious activity reports."
Rakoff added that it was "plausible" that the bank had directly benefited from human trafficking in his order to allow the case to proceed to trial.
According to the Times, dozens of victims may ultimately share the damages award, which will be distributed by an administrator that will assess individual claims. Each accuser could receive as much as $5 million according to the plaintiff's lawyer.
-Tyler Durden, Zerohedge
Deutsche Bank Settles Epstein Lawsuit For Up To $75 Million
We also found out that these people were sent home to verify. And pay no mind to the fact that they were verifying these signatures in .9 to 3 seconds. All they were doing was loading the page and pushing them through. And they did the exact same thing in 2020.
Maricopa County Elections Director Reynaldo Valenzuela testified at Republican Kari Lake’s election challenge trial Wednesday that mail-in ballot reviews were done at election officials’ homes in 2020 with no observers present.
Valenzuela also confirmed officials still have the ability to do so now.
Lake is contesting Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ win last November by approximately 17,000 votes, or 0.7 percent of the more than 2.5 million ballots cast statewide.
In March, the Arizona Supreme Court remanded the issue of whether the mail-in ballot legally mandated signature verification process was followed in Maricopa County during the election back to the trial court.
Lake attorney Byran Blehm questioned Valenzuela regarding the places where mail-in ballot verification took place in November and whether independent observers were present.
Valenzuela said there were three locations where mail-in verification took place: Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, known as MCTEC in downtown Phoenix; the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, also in Phoenix; and Maricopa County’s Southeast Regional Center in Mesa.
-Randy DeSoto, The Western Journal
Maricopa County Election Director Accidentally Drops 2020 Bombshell During Kari Lake Trial
A GOP-led House committee investigating allegations of potentially improper foreign business transactions has issued a subpoena for the records of a cellphone used by President Joe Biden and reportedly paid for by his son, Hunter Biden.
In an interview on Tuesday, Peter Schweizer, who is known for his focus on political corruption, stated that the records in question were discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer. The phone in question was reportedly utilized between 2009 and 2017, a period when the current president served as vice president.
“We obtained that phone number, and we’ve shared it with individuals and the Oversight Committee in Congress is going to subpoena those phone records. And what’s important here is that’s not a government phone, this is not Joe Biden’s private phone that he’s paying for himself. It’s actually [Hunter] Biden’s business that paid for it,” Schweizer told WABC’s Cats & Cosby show.
“I think it’s going to yield a lot of interesting information as to who Joe Biden was talking to on this phone that was being paid for by his son,” Schweizer, author of several books on political corruption including, “Secret Empires: How Our Politicians Hide Corruption and Enrich Their Friends and Households,” told the hosts.
In 2018, the author revealed that Hunter Biden took in millions of dollars in foreign income without paying taxes, which is what triggered subsequent IRS and grand jury investigations.
-Jon Dougherty, Conservative Brief
Joe Biden Records for Cellphone Paid by Hunter Subpoenaed by House Committee
On Thursday, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government allowed FBI whistleblowers to provide testimony on the politicization of the bureau and how it retaliates against employees who speak out.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) led a press conference where they aired videos of whistleblower testimonies exposing disturbing corruption at the FBI.
“The FBI has been victimized by political capture, and that politicization has manifested in the targeting of Americans who never deserve to have this government weaponized against them,” Gaetz said before playing the testimonies. “Whistleblowers saw those bad acts, they stepped forward, and they were retaliated against and crushed as a consequence. And our work today will build on the work of special counsel Durham…”
The first whistleblower footage aired by the subcommittee came from former United States Marine, local police officer and FBI special agent Garrett O’Boyle, who claimed he was “wrongfully suspended by the FBI” and that the bureau rendered his family homeless in retaliation for speaking out.
O’Boyle said the FBI “wants to get rid of people who simply just don’t toe the line that they want,” adding, “They don’t want critical thinkers. They don’t want people who raise valid questions to their chain of command.”
The former FBI employee also warned his colleagues not to speak out unless they wanted the full force of the agency to “crush” them and their “family.”
-Kelen McBreen, Info Wars
Whistleblowers Sound Alarm On Being Targeted By FBI & Weaponized Agency’s Role In Jan 6th
They also go on in one of these testimonies to say that these are not real whistleblowers and are not recognized as whistleblowers. And the same Congress woman, Representative Garcia, was contesting that if they were whistleblowers then Jim Jordan should have to release all of their records to every member of the House Committee.
Now there is going to be a call to unseal those confidential informants and undercover agents. And the reason is because, with the video evidence being released, and knowing the profiles of the people who broke the windows, busted the doors down, and moved the gates, if they can identify them as federal agents, that completely changes the context of everything. And this is why they will not let Donald Trump come back into the Whitehouse.
The US Department of Defense has discovered an accounting error that could result in more weapons, ammunition and equipment being available for Ukraine than was previously expected, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The agency cited a Senate aide and a Pentagon official – both anonymous – who said that the US military had “overestimated the value” of some of its hardware that was sent to Kiev by “around $3 billion,” implying that less money has been spent on arming Ukraine than was previously calculated.
The Pentagon used the current replacement costs for equipment taken from its stocks, rather than factoring in the original purchase price and depreciation, according to the agency’s source. The DOD is reportedly taking steps to notify Congress of the “accounting adjustment.”
Senator Roger Wicker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters that the Pentagon made a “major mistake” that could underestimate future needs of NATO allies.
“Our priority should be a Ukrainian victory over [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. Unilaterally altering military aid calculations is an attempt at deception and undermines this goal,” said the senator from Mississippi.
However, the accounting confusion may translate into even more supplies to the Kiev government, according to the agency. As of Monday, the US was reportedly down to only $6 billion in Ukraine aid, from the $48 billion approved by Congress in December. Securing more funding is difficult at the moment, due to the standoff over the national debt ceiling.
-RT World News
Pentagon made $3 billion ‘error’ in Ukraine aid – Reuters
Understand that when they send these things to Ukraine, they add them on as exports of the United States. And the money in which they value these things goes onto the GDP. Meaning that the GDP was inflated for the purpose of gaining those numbers and now they have realized that it was a mistake.
In a recent article titled: Why Putin Will Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine, Russia Matters claims that Moscow will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
The reason for this claim is that Russia has exhausted other options. “Recent developments” suggest that the Russian military commanders have exhausted their ability to effectively respond to a Ukrainian escalation in fighting. An influx of 300,000 new soldiers over the winter has done little to improve the fighting of Russian units, and the reported appearance of 1950s Russian tanks near the battlefield confirms that Russian materiel is running out.
President Vladimir Putin’s bombing campaigns have not broken Ukraine. It is becoming clear, in my view, that the only way he can meet escalation with escalation is by introducing nuclear weapons.
Additionally, The Daily Mail reported that Putin will probably turn to nuclear weapons after Kyiv “humiliated the despot” by downing his supposedly “unstoppable” hypersonic missiles, a retired United States Army Brigadier General said today. This week Ukraine announced that it had shot down six of Russia’s hypersonic “Kinzhal” missiles just days after the U.S. military confirmed Kyiv had downed another of Putin’s hypersonic missiles using America’s Patriot defense system.
-Mac Slavo, SHTFplan
Media Says Russia WILL Use Nuclear Weapons In Ukraine
Russia has been utilizing their high-tech equipment for precision strikes. But in the field combat, what they have done is brought out much of their early Soviet era equipment such as tanks and jeeps, among other things. By the Russians using this old equipment, which was likely already deteriorating, they are showing that they would rather hold back on using their new equipment.
Authored by Jonathan Turley,
Shortly before the release of the Durham report, I wrote about the concern that we have a de facto state media in the United States. The column explored the pattern of false claims replicated across media platforms in the last four years. Then the Report was released, and the media seemed intent to prove the point. However, even in this determined group, the Washington Post (which won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Russian collusion) set a new level of denial with a column by Philip Bump.
Bump has long been controversial for his role in pushing some of the false claims discussed in prior columns. Some of those are worth noting briefly because they share common elements to his most recent column.
For example, Bump was one of those who made the false claims that Attorney General Bill Barr cleared Lafayette Park for a photo op for Trump. He also claimed that Barr lied in his denial of the use of tear gas by federal agents. Bump wrote the Washington Post column titled “Attorney General Bill Barr’s Dishonest Defense of Clearing of Lafayette Square.” Not only did the Post refer to the “debunked claim” that no tear gas was used by the federal government, but goes on to state:
“It is the job of the media to tell the truth. The truth is that Barr’s arguments about the events of last Monday collapse under scrutiny and that his flat assertion that there was no link between clearing the square and Trump’s photo op should be treated with the same skepticism that his claims about the use of tear gas earns.”
It turns out that both assertions were true. Bump and others were pushing a conspiracy theory and exhibited little interested in confirming the facts. (I testified in Congress not long after the clearing of the area and stated that the conspiracy theory was already contradicted by the available evidence).
-Tyler Durden, Zerohedge
Desperate Washington Post Makes Last-Ditch Pitch For Russian Collusion
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has threatened “repressive measures” to bring gun owners to heel amidst a so-called amnesty which has already seen around 13,500 weapons turned over to the state.
Vucic, who vowed to see through an “almost complete disarming” of the Serbian public after consecutive mass shootings killed 17 people at a school and a trio of villages on May 3rd and May 4th, warned of a crackdown once the amnesty ends in early June.
“After June 8th, the state will respond with repressive measures and punishments will be very strict,” the Serbian Progressive Party leader said.
“What does anyone need an automatic weapon for? Or all these guns?”
Gun ownership rates are high in Serbia – at least by European standards – given the Balkan country’s long history of partisan activity and ethnic and religious conflict. Many weapons are held “illegally,” since the country’s constitution enshrines no rights to bear arms like the United States.
Around half of the guns and grenades turned in so far were held illegally, according to ITV News, quoting President Vucic.
-Jack Montgomery, The National Pulse
Interestingly enough, the Serbians had a civil war that began back in the 90s. And I think it is a possibility that we could see another civil war break out in Serbia very soon.
Sixty thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate, used as a fertilizer but also in explosives, are missing from a rail shipment that was due to arrive in California from Wyoming.
Bay Area public radio station KQED reported Tuesday:
A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment.
The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC. The report also appeared last week in an NRC database of California incidents managed by the state office of Emergency Services last Wednesday.
…
Dyno Nobel says it believes the material — transported in pellet form in a covered hopper car similar to those used to ship coal — fell from the car on the way to a rail siding called Saltdale, about 30 miles from the town of Mojave in eastern Kern County.
Ammonium nitrate was the explosive in the massive bomb used in the Oklahoma City terror attack of 1995. It was also the substance that caused a deadly explosion in a warehouse in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, in 2020.
-Joel B. Pollak, Breitbart News
60,000 Lbs. Explosive Ammonium Nitrate Missing from Train in California
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WAS once something the average person described in the abstract. They had no tactile relationship with it that they were aware of, even if their devices were often utilizing it. That’s all changed over the past year as people have started to engage with AI programs like OpenAI’s DALL-E and ChatGPT, and the technology is rapidly advancing.
As AI is democratized, democracy itself is falling under new pressures. There will likely be many exciting ways it will be deployed, but it may also start to distort reality and could become a major threat to the 2024 presidential election if AI-generated audio, images, and videos of candidates proliferate. The line between what’s real and what’s fake could start to blur significantly more than it already has in an age of rampant disinformation.
“We’ve seen pretty dramatic shifts in the landscape when it comes to generative tools—particularly in the last year,” says Henry Ajder, an independent AI expert. “I think the scale of content we’re now seeing being produced is directly related to that dramatic opening up of accessibility.”
It’s not a question of whether AI-generated content is going to start playing a role in politics, because it’s already happening. AI-generated images and videos featuring president Joe Biden and Donald Trump have started spreading around the internet. Republicans recently used AI to generate an attack ad against Biden. The question is, what will happen when anyone can open their laptop and, with minimal effort, quickly create a convincing deepfake of a politician?
-Thor Benson, Wired
Brace Yourself for the 2024 Deepfake Election
Northrop Grumman has once again incorporated what seems to be its notional Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) crewed platform concept into its latest advertisements. This follows another ad from 2021 that teased the same design, although that ad didn’t offer a wide-angle view of it.
The main video itself, which is only 15 seconds long, plays on the company’s past ‘hangar’ setting. In it, we see three Northrop Grumman employees discussing women’s contribution to military aviation history at the company’s “Advanced Aeronautics Hangar.” Referencing the all-female crew of Grand Forks Air Force Base – which in 2014 recorded the longest, full-scaled pilotless flight by a military aircraft without aerial refueling (34.3 hours) – the trio goes on to ponder the possible contributions they each could make to aviation history in future at the company.
In the video, an E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft can be seen to the right, the latest E-2 variant currently in use with the Navy which is set to continue flying as a “digital quarterback” well into the 2040s. Behind the E-2D, we see the nose of what appears to be an EA-18G Growler.
What we can only assume is a notional NGAD-like crewed tactical jet concept can be seen to the left in the video. Unlike Northrop’s 2021 ad, which shows the nose of what appears to be the same concept in greater detail, the new ad provides a better view of the airframe as a whole. As we stated in our previous piece, the aircraft certainly seems to fit the NGAD bill – being quite large with an assumed premium on range payload, and low observability (stealth) with no vertical tails. Top-mounted low-observable air intakes can also be seen. The design also features a very long chine line around the airframe as well as a B-2-like 'beak' nose and a single pilot cockpit.
-Oliver Parken & Tyler Rogoway, The War Zone
New Views Of Northrop Grumman’s Totally Notional Long-Range Stealth Fighter
Charges will be filed against Supreme Court Head Vsevolod Kniaziev and one other individual who were detained for receiving bribes, the heads of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) said during a press conference on May 16.
Kniaziev was detained by authorities on May 15.
The judges of the Supreme Court are preparing to consider a vote of no confidence against Kniaziev in a meeting, Ukrainska Pravda reported on May 16, citing Dmytro Luspenchyk, the secretary of the Supreme Court's plenary sessions.
"The Supreme Court emphasizes that a full, objective investigation of all circumstances will contribute to establishing the truth as soon as possible and restoring justice. There must be an inevitable punishment for any corruption. Judges and employees of the Supreme Court voluntarily and fully cooperate with the investigation," Luspenchyk said.
It was a "dark day in the history of the court," Luspenchyk added.
Ukrainian news outlet ZN.UA, citing its source at the NABU, reported on May 15 that Kniaziev had allegedly received money for supporting a court ruling in favor of Ukrainian oligarch Kostiantyn Zhevago.
Zhevago's press service has since denied the accusation.
-The Kyiv Independent, Yahoo News
NABU: Supreme Court head arrested but not charged yet
A plenary meeting of Ukraine's Supreme Court has voted to dismiss the court's head, Vsevolod Kniaziev, who was earlier detained for allegedly receiving a $3 million bribe.
According to the court's press service, 140 out of 142 judges voted in favor of the decision.
Kniaziev didn't lose his judicial privilege since the Supreme Council of Justice is the only body that can strip him of that status.
The new Chairman of the Supreme Court would be elected at a later date. Dmytro Luspenyk, the secretary of the Supreme Court's plenary sessions, was named acting head of the court due to having the longest tenure in office.
Kniaziev was detained by authorities on May 15, with charges against him to be filed later, according to the heads of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO).
Ukrainian news outlet ZN.UA, citing its source at the NABU, reported on May 15 that Kniaziev had allegedly received money for supporting a court ruling in favor of Ukrainian oligarch Kostiantyn Zhevago who denied the accusation.
-The Kyiv Independent, Yahoo News
Supreme Court votes to dismiss chief alleged of taking a $3 million bribe
This goes back into the story of the Minister of Interior who was killed in a helicopter crash because of what he knew. We then found out that many low-level government officials were laundering US tax payer dollars. Then a few months later we found out that 12 members of the high-level government in Ukraine were laundering over $400 million of US taxpayer dollars. And now this guy took $3 million of that.
New York City will begin tracking the carbon footprint of household food consumption and putting caps on how much red meat can be served in public institutions as part of a sweeping initiative to achieve a 33% reduction in carbon emissions from food by 2030.
Mayor Eric Adams and representatives from the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy and Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice announced the new programs last month at a Brooklyn culinary center run by NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s public healthcare system, just before Earth Day.
At the event, the Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice shared a new chart to be included in the city’s annual greenhouse gas inventory that publicly tracks the carbon footprint created by household food consumption, the Gothamist reported.
The city already produced emissions data from energy use, transportation and waste as part of the annual inventory. But the addition of household food consumption data is part of a partnership that London and New York launched with American Express, C40 Cities and EcoData lab, Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala from the NYC Department of Environmental Protection announced at the event.
Aggarwala — who founded Google smart city subsidiary Sidewalk Labs — celebrated the expanded data collection as forging “a new standard for what cities have to do” and a new way to shape policy.
He said the inventory also will measure greenhouse gas pollution from the production and consumption of other consumer goods like apparel, whether or not those items are made in New York City. It also tracks emissions tied to services like air travel and healthcare.
But Adams’ presentation at the event focused on food consumption, particularly meat and dairy.
“Food is the third-biggest source of cities’ emissions right after buildings and transportation,” Adams said. “But all food is not created equal. The vast majority of food that is contributing to our emission crises lies in meat and dairy products.”
-Brenda Baletti, Ph.D, The Defender
New York to Track Residents’ Food Purchases and Place ‘Caps on Meat’ Served by Public Institutions
Once you have 15-minute cities and once you have social credit scores and digital currencies in place, then this will become much easier to push out to people.
Texas is set to become the largest US state yet to outlaw transgender treatments on minors after its Republican-controlled legislature on Wednesday passed a bill banning such procedures.
Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican whose administration has already taken actions targeting trans youth and their parents, is expected to sign the ban into law.
Abbott is following tightly on the heels of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican, who earlier Wednesday signed a bill passed by the Republican-led legislature in early May that bans transgender care for minors.
Texas and Florida are the second and third most populous US states.
DeSantis, who is expected to announce an official presidential campaign imminently, also signed into law a ban on transgender people using bathrooms and locker rooms in public facilities that do not correlate with their biological sex.
The Texas bill, known as SB14, passed the state House on Wednesday and was quickly affirmed in the Senate.
It bans medical professionals from prescribing hormone blockers or performing gender transitioning surgeries to anyone under 18 years old.
The legislation does include an exception for minors already receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy, but requires that they “shall wean off the prescription drug over a period of time and in a manner that is safe and medically appropriate.”
-AFP, Insider Paper
Texas passes bill banning transgender treatments on minors
Vitamin D: Everything You Need to Know
What they are talking about is how one doctor was demanding that all of the covid patients be brought to his floor. And the conversation between the nurse and the pharmacist is about how the death rate on that floor was much higher than all the other floors and they were unnecessarily intubating them, giving them morphine and all types of things that they did not need. And the nurses believed that they were killing those patients by giving them all those treatments and medications. This also goes back to Operation Nightingale, where we found out that there were fake nurses and fake doctors working at these hospitals.