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Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch responded to President Trump’s most recent attack, framing the White House’s hostile 162-page July 4 report as a gross misrepresentation of what the storied cultural institution actually does.“While there will always be room for improvement, this report is not a fair characterization of the work and totality of the National Museum of American History,” Bunch said in an internal letter obtained by ABC News. “At the Smithsonian, our work is driven by scholarship, accuracy, and an uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s story.… As public servants and the keepers of this institution, we are charged with helping a nation find understanding, hope, and clarity and as part of that duty, we are dedicated to excellence, reflection, and growth.”The White House’s Domestic Policy Council essentially called the Smithsonian an extremist, anti-white, anti-American organization, writing that the museum “has become subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”“As it stands today, it would benefit most Americans, especially parents bringing their children for a tour, if the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum had a label at every entrance that reads: ‘Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country,’” the report concluded.Bunch, who is the Smithsonian’s first Black chief and whose time leading the institution may very well be limited, encouraged his staff to continue to use their work to “find understanding, hope, and clarity.”How much can you really love America if you’re not willing to see all sides of its history, from its most triumphant moments to its most abhorrent ones? Everything contained in the Smithsonian museums—from the National African American History and Culture Museum to the American Art Museum—is there because it had an outsize impact on American culture. It seems that the right just can’t handle hearing anything negative about this country at all, regardless of how truthful it is.

Cursor and SpaceXAI announced that they collaboratively released a new model, Grok 4.5, designed to work within Cursor.

Autonomous aviation tech companies don’t want to be associated with the term “drone,” which has become more linked to death and security risks lately.

President Donald Trump tried to take credit for Walmart’s summer sale, but it seems he didn’t have anything to do with lowering prices. White House senior deputy press secretary Kush Desai crashed out Thursday when faced with a report that Trump didn’t deserve any credit for Walmart’s recent price reduction on beef, which has seen an average national price increase of 13 percent in the last year. “The President and Walmart’s announcement was that the sale is extending all summer long,” he wrote on X. “This is a big win for Americans. The media’s obsessive need to try to undermine any good news when it affects President Trump is pathological.”Trump announced Monday that he’d directed the country’s largest grocer to initiate massive price cuts—but the company’s standard seasonal sale was already underway. “I have just been informed that one of the biggest, best, and smartest Retailers in America, Walmart, will be lowering prices, by a lot, at my Administration’s request to celebrate our great Country’s 250th birthday,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Walmart will, in particular, be dropping the price for a pound of ground beef by almost 15%, among many other products.”But a spokesperson for Walmart told The Bulwark Thursday that the retailer had begun one of its price “rollback” events last week—before Trump declared he’d won a discount for millions of Americans. In a press release Monday, Walmart announced that it would lower prices for barbecue essentials like ground beef, potato chips, and soda. Nowhere in the press release did the company mention the Trump administration, or the country’s 250th anniversary. Trump’s Department of Agriculture has begun a pressure campaign on grocers to lower beef prices, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. But when the USDA called up Walmart, the retailer said it already had plans to reduce prices for the summer, including for beef, two people familiar with the matter told the Journal. Walmart ran a Walmart Deals campaign between June 22 and June 28. It appears that the company already had plans to extend the sale after that date without any urging from Trump at all.

Carlos Martinez, Orinoco Tribune. Marking milestones in the histories of China and the United States. This week offers a chance to examine two very different visions of the international order. This week features two anniversaries that, taken together, tell much of the story of our age. On July 1, the Communist Party of China marked 105 […]