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Renewables were the world’s largest source of total energy supply growth last year for the first time outside a recession, according to a new report.

President Trump is once again building something at the White House without any warning.Trump is building a new helipad on the White House’s South Lawn, The Washington Post reports, with construction crews already working on the project Monday. The helipad is being built on the lawn’s south portico, near where the presidential helicopter, Marine One, is traditionally kept. A large fence is now blocking off the construction.The project has not been officially announced. It is meant to solve the problem of new Sikorsky helicopters built by Lockheed Martin burning the White House lawn due to their exhaust vents. The defense company is reportedly donating $5 million to help pay for the helipad.Other administrations have refrained from building a permanent helipad on the White House grounds due to concerns of historical preservation, as well as ruining the classical image of presidents boarding Marine One on the grass near the White House.In his second term, Trump has shown that he has no regard for history or tradition where the White House is concerned, unceremoniously demolishing its East Wing to build a massive ballroom, paving over the Rose Garden and replacing it with a stone patio, and holding a UFC fight on the South Lawn.Trump can at least argue that this project is operationally necessary. But he’s already done so much damage to the White House in order to push his own gaudy design aesthetic, and because he’s kept his helipad plans under the radar, nobody knows what it’s going to look like.Trump has repeatedly shown in his second term that if he wants something built a certain way, he won’t listen to any criticism or preserve any history, no matter how tacky his designs. Just look at the hideous mock-ups of his “triumphal arch.”

On Monday night, the House passed a weaker version of the Senate’s Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, aimed at regulating the tech industry and protecting children online. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on whom you ask. House leaders have taken four years to reach a compromise on their own version of KOSA, which the Senate passed in 2022. The House version, called the Kids Internet and Digital Safety, or KIDS, Act, passed by 267–117 on Monday night.Representative Frank Pallone Jr., the Democratic co-sponsor of the KIDS Act, lauded it as an example of bipartisan cooperation last week. “This agreement proves Congress can come together to deliver real online protections for our nation’s young people,” he said in a statement.But Senate Democrats have suggested that they won’t advance the House version. “We’re not going to go with some weak standard,” said Senator Maria Cantwell on Friday. “We are going to go with a law that can be enforced and accountability, and we’re not going with a study, we’re going on with something that holds them accountable.”Senator Richard Blumenthal, a co-sponsor of KOSA, even suggested that passing the weaker House version could give tech lobbyists ammunition to “exploit the kind of misunderstandings that can occur” between the two chambers and kill provisions they don’t like. “We need to stop this bill in the House and we need to prevent the White House from forming an alliance with Big Tech,” Blumenthal said. Cantwell, Blumenthal, and their allies say the KIDS Act doesn’t include the strongest parts of KOSA, like the “duty of care” provision, which makes tech companies legally responsible for the well-being of children on their platforms, or the stipulation that KOSA doesn’t preempt states, allowing them to pass stricter measures in the future. The KIDS Act, on the other hand, includes federal preemption language that opponents say could harm states’ ability to enforce tech regulations themselves. In late May, 44 state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress opposing the KIDS Act on the grounds that it would preempt their legislative and legal efforts.“This bill has no real duty of care. In other words, it has no standard to hold accountable the Big Tech companies that can drive addictive, toxic content through their algorithms and other technologies at children,” Blumenthal said in a press conference on Friday. On Friday, nearly 100 digital- and kids-safety groups sent a letter to House leadership and the sponsors of the KIDS Act urging them to reject the bill on the grounds that it doesn’t go far enough to protect children from Big Tech. In addition to the “duty of care” issue, the authors noted that the KIDS Act drops the requirement that tech platforms offer a chronological feed rather than an algorithmic, engagement-maximizing one. The authors are also concerned that the KIDS Act defines social media platforms too narrowly, leaving out apps and websites like Roblox, which has exposed some children to sexual and financial exploitation.But others think both acts are a bad idea—that the provisions in KOSA and KIDS, instead of protecting kids, could harm their ability to engage in free speech and access resources for mental health, addiction, and other social issues. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and GLAAD say that measures meant to protect kids could push tech platforms to set age limits and push younger children off of their websites, harming LGBTQ+ kids or others who are looking for community and resources online.“Maybe by different routes, [the bills] accomplish the same objective,” said Aaron Mackey, the deputy legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They’ve pushed online services to have legal obligations to police their content and exclude kids from vital places and space.”Tech companies have pushed against both the House and Senate versions, but have spoken more favorably about the House bill. Zach Lilly, the director of government affairs for NetChoice, a tech industry group, said that the House bill “is a real effort to improve upon the disastrous censorship regime being championed in the Senate.”After Monday’s House vote, it remains to be seen which bill will ultimately come out on top and head to the president’s desk—and whether the tech lobby will be able to exploit the rift between House and Senate.

The Trump administration has awarded Clark Construction a $500 million no-bid contract to build the president’s ballroom—even as he has promised multiple times that it would be privately funded and built at no cost to taxpayers, according to The Washington Post. Records show that the president was personally involved in the contract negotiations.Competitive bidding is generally required for all federal contracts. However, the Trump administration filed this contract through the Executive Residence, which is exempt from competitive contract rules.The White House justified the move by stating that under federal law, the president can spend however much on the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting” of the White House grounds. The Trump administration tried to cite the same law as authority to build the ballroom, but a federal judge rejected it in March. The administration’s no-bid contract, however, has yet to become a legal matter.White House Office of Administration Director Joshua Fisher noted on the contract that it skipped the typical bidding process because “the disclosure of the executive agency’s needs would compromise the national security.”Trump has repeatedly said that private donors would foot the whole bill for the ballroom construction, but now it’s clearer than ever that’s not true. “They said: ‘Sir, we’ll do it for nothing. This is the greatest honor,” Trump claimed earlier this year.

Rescue efforts in Venezuela continue as thousands of people remain missing — trapped under the rubble of flattened homes and buildings nearly a week after two back-to-back earthquakes devastated the capital, Caracas, and the nearby city of La Guaira. Rescue teams are desperately searching for survivors, with Venezuelan health officials saying Monday that over 1,700 people are confirmed dead. The toll is expected to rise dramatically as the window for finding survivors closes. In the face of the wreckage, “we’re seeing also a lot of solidarity from the Venezuelan people” who are sharing space and resources with those displaced by the quakes, says Beatriz Ochoa, Latin America head of advocacy for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Looking ahead, “We will need to transition to more medium- and longer-term solutions, so that people can have affordable housing and a more dignified place to sleep and to be able to rebuild their lives,” says Ochoa, calling for more international support.

The World Cup is bringing visitors and AI-driven surveillance systems, but only one of those is certain to leave when the games are done.