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On Tuesday, Google’s DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis stepped forth as a generally unassailable messenger with an article calling for a self-regulatory body of AI experts.

Musk gave three voters million-dollar checks, encouraging them to vote in the 2025 state Supreme Court election.

Recent health code violations at Trump National Golf Club Washington D.C. were apparently “politically motivated,” according to the club.Membership at the luxury club starts with a $100,000 initiation fee, but its price tag evidently does not assure total cleanliness. Health inspectors that visited the site on June 30 found pest problems, a lack of adequate handwashing facilities, and a slew of food safety violations.Yet the golf club has not only denied the Health and Human Services report obtained by NOTUS, it also suggested that the reported problems were merely a political construct.“We operate our properties to the highest health and safety standards. These so-called ‘violations’ are fabricated, politically motivated, and completely without merit. We stand firmly behind the integrity of our operations and reject these baseless claims,” the golf course told NOTUS in a statement.A health inspector spotted “a large quantity of small flies in the storage room near the employee restrooms,” per the report. The inspector also wrote that the facility was using and storing pest control products unfit for use in a food establishment, though they observed that the club remedied the situation by removing the “pesticides from the food establishment.”At the club’s more casual eatery, the inspector noted that several food products were stored at temperatures warmer than permitted by the health code, including blue cheese, sausage links, sausage patties, and pasta. All of those foods were kept at temperatures within a range referred to by the USDA as the “danger zone,” as it permits the sudden growth of dangerous bacteria—such as salmonella, E. coli, and staph—that can cause food poisoning, or even death.“The person in charge voluntarily discarded the blue cheese and sausage,” the inspector wrote.Donald Trump’s D.C. club is far from the only property under his company umbrella that has experienced unsavory health code violations. Health officials found insects, rodents, and dirty surfaces at Trump National Golf Club Westchester, and the Trump International Hotel in Chicago has also found itself plagued by flies, NOTUS reported earlier this year.

Elon Musk may have broken the law when he got involved in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.The Wisconsin Elections Commission referred two complaints to the Brown County district attorney’s office last week, saying that Musk’s promise to hand out $1 million checks to voters could have been election bribery. The tech CEO and groups he backed spent at least $20 million in support of the Republican-backed candidate, Brad Schimel, in a bid to flip control of the court to conservatives. Schimel ended up losing the election to the Democratic-backed candidate, Susan Crawford.The commission voted 5-1 in a closed session to refer two confidential complaints from Milwaukee and Green Bay, and under state law, prosecutors have 40 days to notify the commission on whether they decide to prosecute. At issue is “a social media post that offered one million dollars to individuals who voted in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court Election in order to induce them to vote in that election,” the commission’s motion stated.“On Sunday night, I will give a talk in Wisconsin,” Musk posted on X at the time. “Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election. I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote. This is super important.”Musk deleted that post, and then posted again the same day attempting to clarify that “entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges. I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to two people to be spokesmen for the petition.”Musk gave out two $1 million checks at a Brown County rally on March 30, 2025, two days before the election. His America PAC gave out another $1 million check to a different Wisconsin voter who signed the petition against “activist judges.” Throughout the campaign, the PAC offered to send registered voters in the state $100 to either sign the petition or refer another person to sign it.Musk escaped any consequences for offering million-dollar giveaways to voters during the 2024 presidential election. Now, it seems he might face the music for getting involved in a smaller election, one that didn’t even pay off for him in the end.

The U.S. Treasury Department has unveiled a new $1 gold coin with President Trump’s face on it.“As America commemorates 250 years of independence, the US Mint will begin striking this new $1 gold coin to honor the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote Wednesday morning. “Featuring President Trump, it celebrates the strength of American values, and the promise of a nation dedicated to preserving freedom for all.”This move is technically illegal, as the Presidential $1 Coin Act proclaims that no coin shall “bear the image of a living former or current President,” until at least two years after their death.* The Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020 also holds that living people cannot appear on the back of a coin. The Trump administration is trying to skirt those laws by arguing that the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act allows the president to create memorial coins to celebrate America’s 250th.A Treasury Department spokesperson told Axios the coin is already being made and will be released this fall.The decision was quickly lambasted as yet another example of President Trump’s narcissism and desire to be commemorated.“Congratulations, we’ve entered the end stages. Eliminate the penny, plug the nickel, and make some commemorative gold coins nobody can afford,” former GOP Representative Thomas Massie wrote on X. “I feel sorry for the folks who will be sold worthless knockoffs of this by the usual grifters.”* This story has been updated to correct the law that limits presidents from appearing on $1 coins.

After Paramount Skydance secured its multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance Media, it gave Federal Communications Commission officials who approved the deal some very pricey gifts. ProPublica reports that the company gave away expensive tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala worth thousands of dollars. Commissioner Olivia Trusty, whose vote was needed to approve the merger, went to the black-tie event with a guest, thanks to tickets gifted by Paramount worth $12,000. FCC Chair Brendan Carr got even more expensive seats for himself and his wife: private skybox tickets with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other company executives worth $125,000 each. These weren’t the first gifts from Paramount to FCC commissioners. Ethics disclosures show that the company has gifted tickets to the gala to seven of the 10 commissioners over the last decade, a glaring conflict of interest for government employees responsible for regulating broadcasting companies like Paramount. Carr has accepted Kennedy Center tickets at least seven times since his appointment in 2017, totaling $63,000, according to his financial statements.  Ethics experts told ProPublica that gifts like these compromise the impartiality of the FCC, and that commissioners who accepted them shouldn’t take part in any decisions concerning Paramount’s merger. “There’s no way that any top federal regulator should ever, ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect,” Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017, told ProPublica. “The appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible. What’s at stake is nothing less than the public’s trust in government.”The FCC’s final seal of approval is one of the last barriers to Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros., which would put one company in charge of the networks CBS and CNN, the streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, and dozens of other media entities. Critics fear it could hand a powerful media conglomerate over to David and Larry Ellison, staunch supporters of President Trump who would likely force CNN to produce right-wing news coverage. Twelve Democratic-led states sued to stop the merger on Monday, and the Writers’ Guild, a union representing 18,000 media workers, also filed a lawsuit the next day against the deal in federal court, saying that it threatens the workers’ livelihoods. The British government signaled last month that it would investigate whether the new entity would hurt competition in the entertainment industry. Like many business deals in Trump’s second term, this one has a whiff of corruption. The FCC has been tainted, and Trump openly supports a deal that could stifle critical news coverage of him, while giving his supporters control of a large swath of the entertainment industry. His own FCC appears to be in Paramount’s pocket.