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Scientists and AI firm employees urge the US to “deliberately pace” the development of the most advanced AI systems.

The White House formally announced a program to have veterans skip certain certifications to get commercial drivers’ licenses and become truck drivers. The program is called “Freedom Haulers” and promises to cover training costs and offer signing bonuses to veterans who sign up. In a post on X Thursday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy claimed that trucking jobs paid up to six figures, leading with “🚨ILLEGALS OUT, VETERANS IN🚨” and a flashy patriotic video. 🚨ILLEGALS OUT, VETERANS IN🚨Our new campaign, FREEDOM HAULERS, is reclaiming America's highways and putting Vets in the driver's seat✅ Make up to six-figures ✅ Flexible schedule✅ Medical benefits ✅ Training costs covered✅ Sign-on bonuses Get on the road in a few… pic.twitter.com/j5vBCE49PO— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) July 30, 2026Veterans who recently drove large military vehicles as part of their duties can skip the normally required skills test for a commercial driver’s license. Others who are still on active duty can attend a commercial driving school for their final six months of service. The GI Bill will also fully cover commercial driver’s license training, and will even pay for a housing allowance during this training in some cases. Trump spoke about the plan two weeks ago at a Pennsylvania rally, railing against “illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people—they can’t read signs, a lot of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things.”About 20 percent of all truck drivers in the U.S. are immigrants, according to the AP, but only 5 percent, or 200,000, have what are called non-domiciled licenses, which are issued by states to people who are legally authorized to work in the U.S. but do not have a permanent legal residence or domicile in that state.Roughly 200,000 immigrants had their commercial licenses revoked in March, preventing them from driving semi-trucks, buses, and tractor-trailers despite passing tests and meeting the legal requirements to drive. Immigrant groups believe that many truck drivers are being targeted because of their ethnic backgrounds, such as Sikhs, who often wear turbans as part of their faith and make up a large portion of the trucking industry. Meanwhile, operating a military vehicle is different from operating a commercial vehicle, and some veterans may breeze to a CDL job without having the necessary skills, posing a danger on the road.  

Amazon and Walmart are well equipped to detect deceptive claims about where products are made. Their own AI chatbots describe the choice not to act as a business decision. The post The Great ‘Made in the USA’ Fraudyssey appeared first on The American Prospect.

President Trump doesn’t want to put in writing that his slush fund is dead, and he’s prepared to sacrifice acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for it.After the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed its scheduled vote on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination for attorney general Thursday morning, due to Republican opposition, the president made it clear that he cares a whole lot more about his $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” than Blanche’s future.“Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.”The vote was postponed thanks to Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who have refused to vote “yes” on Blanche’s nomination over concerns about the status of Trump’s settlement with the IRS, which gave an IRS audit immunity deal to Trump and his family and created the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund for aggrieved Trump allies who feel that they’ve been attacked for supporting the president. Although Blanche testified publicly that the fund is not “moving forward,” staffers in the Justice Department and White House continued to promise Trump allies some form of payment after the fact.Cornyn has repeatedly requested written confirmation from the Justice Department that the fund is dead. Without a statement in writing—as well as limits on Trump’s IRS audit immunity deal—he and Tillis are sticking with “no.”But rather than kill the fund for good, Trump says he’ll wait them out. Blanche can be replaced. The slush fund, apparently, cannot.“I thought we were pretty close to landing the plane last night, but this morning there’s been some more complications,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday. “I think if this were just between me and Todd Blanche, we would have worked this out. But apparently he’s getting some pushback from higher ups at the White House. I don’t know who, but this doesn’t need to be this hard.”“We want to make sure that it remains dead, and that the president isn’t given any immunity from future audits that the ordinary taxpayer would not enjoy,” Cornyn clarified to CBS News.Although both Cornyn and Tillis are set to leave office in January, their outspoken pushback serves as further evidence of the growing cracks in Trump’s grip on congressional Republicans.“POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis,” Cornyn posted after Trump moved to sideline Blanche.

Yields on 30-year Treasury bonds touched 5.24% after Warsh made good on his promise to pare back guidance that, in his view, the market has come to overanalyze and overrely on.

Fresh off a divided Fed vote to hold rates, policymakers confront a deeper question: Which of conflicting inflation gauges should guide them?

Republicans apparently have no problem with President Trump protecting himself and his family from any tax investigations ever again. On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee voted down an amendment to a tax procedure bill that would have prevented the IRS from making any tax audit immunity deals with a sitting president, their family, or any connected entities. It also would have effectively killed Trump’s IRS audit immunity deal and required the Treasury Department to report any related agreements to Congress. Every Republican on the committee voted against the amendment, including Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, who will be leaving the Senate at the end of this year after being defeated in GOP primaries by Trump-backed challengers. Cornyn and Cassidy have vocally opposed Trump’s settlement deal with the IRS, which not only would give the president, his family, and his businesses protection from audits from the IRS, but also calls for the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund for anyone who claims to have been victimized by “political weaponization” from the federal government. Cornyn in particular has vowed to vote against Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general until he gets a written agreement that the slush fund is dead and the IRS audit immunity deal is narrowed in scope (so as not to apply to future filings).  But their opposition to the settlement seems to end at actually taking any legislative action against it. The amendment vote was forced by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member on the committee, and was supported by every Democrat on the committee. The amendment failed by a 14–13 vote.  “Our office has received more than 7000 messages from constituents expressing their opposition and anger,” Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell told Bloomberg Law. “We need to make clear to those law-abiding citizens that the well-connected are not above the law and they don’t get a free pass when it comes to compliance with our tax laws.”Other Republicans on the committee claimed that approving the amendment would have doomed the bipartisan bill altogether. It’s a package of changes to tax procedures, including collections, processes, and administration. Republican Senator Mike Crapo, the committee’s chair, said “this is not the place” to resolve the settlement. “If this bill were to become the vehicle where this issue is resolved, it would achieve basically making this bill a partisan bill,” and that “would turn this bill into a bill that has a much dimmer future for becoming law,” Crapo said. He and his fellow Republicans haven’t offered any other solutions to Trump’s unprecedented and outrageous IRS settlement, though. 

Laws targeting kids’ access to social media miss the target. We should be holding companies responsible, not children. The post Social Media Bans Are Gaining Popularity. They’re Also a Bad Idea appeared first on Truthdig.