Express skepticism

GOP senators express skepticism over compensation fund for Trump allies

By Manu Raju, Alison Main and Casey Riddle

Several GOP senators expressed uneasiness with the possibility that January 6 rioters could get money from the nearly $1.8 billion fund the Justice Department announced to compensate those who felt they had been targeted by previous administrations.

“I was here on January 6th. This was not a peaceful protest, it was a riot. It was a bad, bad day for our country,” Sen. Mike Rounds told CNN Tuesday. “Look, if you’re going to put together a fund, then let’s make sure that there’s a judicial oversight to it.”

Rounds said he had “no sympathy” for those who stormed the Capitol, and noted while the Trump administration can do what they want, “in Congress, we still control the purse strings.”

Top GOP appropriator Sen. Susan Collins said she has more questions about the fund after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told her Tuesday that there were “no limitations” on claims made to DOJ.

“I don’t know what the criteria are going to be at this point, but certainly it raises a lot of important questions that need to be answered. It is highly irregular, and this is not something that should be put in place without a lot more scrutiny,” she told CNN.

Asked if she personally thought January 6 rioters should be eligible, Collins responded, “I do not, if they have been convicted. I do not. If they engaged in violence against police officers, I do not.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Blanche’s testimony “has actually raised more questions for me than answered them,” in terms of “where this 1.8 billion comes from, the commission, how it’s determined, the eligibility, so a lot that we need to know.”

Asked by CNN if she’s comfortable with January 6 rioters receiving money, she firmly said, “no.”

Like the path through the mine field...

Vance says Iran's negotiating position is still unclear

By Kevin Liptak

Vice President JD Vance said he continues to see fractures within Iran’s leadership and that Tehran’s negotiating position is unclear as the Trump administration works toward a deal to end the war.

“The Iranians aren’t themselves quite clear in what direction they want to go to, they also are just a fractured country,” Vance told reporters at the White House.

“You have the leadership of the country, there’s the supreme leader, and there are a lot of officials below the supreme leader that [have] some influence in negotiation. It’s not sometimes totally clear what the negotiating position of the team is,” he continued.

Vance said it wasn’t clear whether the divisions were the product of bad communication or bad faith, but that the result was a muddled process.

“I will say with confidence it’s sometimes hard to figure out exactly what it is that the Iranians want to accomplish out of the negotiation,” he said.

Defendants who assaulted police

Vance won't rule out compensating Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police

By Kit Maher

Vice President JD Vance declined to rule out compensating those who attacked police officers on January 6, 2021, using a new $1.776 billion settlement fund — though he said it was not the administration’s goal to pay people for assaulting officers.

He said there’d be a process to ensure that only those who were “really mistreated” are compensated.

“We’re not trying to give money to anybody who attacked a police officer. We’re trying to give money — not give money — we’re trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them, they were mistreated by the legal system,” Vance said.

“We do have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we’re going to completely ignore some of the claims that they’re going to make.”

Pressed by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about previous comments that anyone who assaulted a police officer on January 6 should go to prison, Vance emphasized that claims would be evaluated on a “case-by-case basis.”

“I don’t rule things out categorically when I know nothing about a person’s individual circumstances,” he said.

“We’re not making commitments to give anybody money, we’re just making commitments to look at things case-by-case,” he added.

President Donald Trump gave sweeping pardons to those charged in connection with January 6, including those who assaulted police.

Vance on Tuesday denied that money would go to the Trump family, using people like election denier Tina Peters as an example of who would be eligible.

“The people that would get the money are people, some of whom have been prosecuted completely disproportionate to any crime they’ve ever committed,” he said.

Proprietary information gained from public service

Vance downplays Trump's thousands of stock trades while in office

By Adam Cancryn

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday sidestepped scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s extensive stock trading activity while in office, arguing that he was not personally buying and selling the stocks.

“He has independent wealth advisers who manage his money,” Vance said during a press briefing. “He’s not making these stock trades himself.”

The vice president bristled at the question about Trump’s most recent financial disclosure, which showed thousands of stock trades, including investments in companies that Trump had publicly praised or that had business before the administration.

But pressed on whether that activity was appropriate, Vance downplayed the issue and instead contended that Trump supported restrictions on public officials’ ability to trade stocks.

“All of us believe that nobody should be taking proprietary information gained from public service and buying and selling stocks,” he said. “I think the way to lead by example is banning that process, banning that approach, and making it illegal, which is exactly what the president has proposed doing.”

The utter stupidity shows through.......

Google billionaire booed over AI comments at graduation speech

By Timothy Karoff

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed repeatedly during a commencement speech at the University of Arizona after he brought up artificial intelligence. In his speech, Schmidt, who was Google’s CEO from 2001 through 2011 before serving as its executive chairman for four years, told graduates that they will “help shape artificial intelligence.” He pivoted to the subject of AI after a discussion of developments in computer technology. At the mention of AI, the jeers began.

“I know what many of you are feeling about that,” Schmidt said, responding to the crowd. “I can hear you.”

Despite the negative reaction, Schmidt pressed onward.

“If you don’t care about science, that’s OK, because AI is going to touch everything else as well,” Schmidt said at one point in his speech, prompting another loud wave of boos. “Whatever path you choose, AI will become part of how the work is done.”

“You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own,” he said at another moment. “When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on.”

The boos were prominent enough that at one point, the executive had to pause to finish a statement. “If you’d let me make this point, please,” he said, interrupting himself. 

Schmidt, whose net worth is $43 billion according to Forbes, drew controversy before he took to the podium. Prior to Schmidt’s speech, some University of Arizona students launched a petition calling for the university to choose a different speaker. A former girlfriend and business partner of Schmidt’s has accused him of sexual assault in a lawsuit. Schmidt has denied the allegations, and the lawsuit entered private arbitration in March.

Mitch Zak, a University of Arizona spokesperson, told NBC that Schmidt was invited to speak because of his “extraordinary” contributions to technology:

“He helped lead Google’s rise into one of the world’s most influential technology companies and continues to advance research and discovery through major philanthropic and scientific initiatives, including partnerships that support important work at the University of Arizona.”

Just one week earlier, another commencement speaker was booed over AI-related comments. Gloria Caulfield, an executive at Tavistock Group, caught heat from an audience of University of Central Florida graduates.

“Let’s face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” she said, prompting boos.

Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, own real estate in Santa Barbara. In 2025, the couple helped save Tri-County Produce from closing with an angel investment.

It is sad to see a child lash out at an imaginary thing.....

Musk deletes rant about 'activist Oakland judge' after OpenAI ruling

By Matthew Brown

After a resounding loss Monday in his $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, Elon Musk took to his own social media network, X, to air out his grievances with the judge presiding over the case.

On Monday, a jury unanimously ruled that Musk had missed his chance to sue, deciding that the statute of limitations had passed by the time the world’s richest man accused OpenAI executives of illegally turning the nonprofit into a for-profit company. In a since-deleted X post, Musk blasted Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers, calling her an “activist” judge.

“This illustrates why the ruling by the terrible activist Oakland judge, who simply used the jury as a fig leaf, creates such a terrible precedent,” Musk wrote. “She just handed out a free license to loot charities if you can keep the looting quiet for a few years!”

Musk vowed to appeal the ruling in a separate post that remains on the social media network.

Gonzalez Rogers is a veteran federal judge in the Northern District of California who has presided over major tech industry trials, including the major 2020 antitrust case between Epic Games and Apple. She was appointed by President Barack Obama.

Musk’s ire for the judge is no secret. Throughout the trial, Gonzales Rogers frequently had to scold Musk for his behavior in and out of the courtroom. During his testimony, Gonzales Rogers instructed Musk to stop talking about artificial intelligence leading to human extinction, a rule she had made prior to the start of the trial. She also ordered him to stop talking about the case on X, which he continued to do anyway.

In a testy exchange with OpenAI’s lawyer, Musk attempted to propose a metaphor to dissect the team’s yes-or-no questions, but Gonzalez Rogers quickly cut him off.

“The classic answer to a yes-or-no question is not so simple. For example, if you ask the question, ‘Will you stop beating your wife?’” Musk asked.

“We’re not going there,” Gonzales Rogers said.

At one point, Rogers even reminded Musk that he was not a lawyer, getting laughs from the courthouse audience. Musk claimed that OpenAI’s lawyers were asking leading questions and “conflating timelines,” prompting Gonzales Rogers to again step in.

“That’s not how it works, Mr. Musk. Let’s remind everyone in the courtroom that you’re not a lawyer,” Gonzalez Rogers said.

“Well, technically, I did take Law 101,” Musk said.

“You’re not a lawyer,” Gonzalez Rogers retorted.

Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman and AI researchers in 2015 as a nonprofit but left the organization just a few years later. Since then, OpenAI has shifted to a for-profit model and is expected to go public later this year in a highly anticipated initial public offering. Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging the company abandoned its initial mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity.

Altman and OpenAI have maintained that Musk was aware of plans to shift to a for-profit model early on and that he sued only after he launched his own AI company as a competitor. A federal jury deliberated for only two hours before handing down a big legal win for OpenAI, deciding that Musk filed suit too late. The jury did not evaluate Musk’s claims.

Though he has since deleted his post criticizing Rogers, Musk reposted a note from “Tesla Owners Silicon Valley” that also called her an “activist judge.” Marc Toberoff, an attorney for Musk, doubled down on the plans to appeal, likening the Monday verdict to historical events in the American Revolution such as the Siege of Charleston and the Battle of Bunker Hill. He told a reporter that each was a “terrible loss for Americans, but who won the war?”

“This war is not over. I would say this is just the first step,” Toberoff said.

Louisiana redistricting case

Justice Jackson slams Supreme Court’s handling of rush appeal in Louisiana redistricting case

By John Fritze

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a blistering critique Monday of the Supreme Court’s handling of a recent high-profile redistricting case, asserting that the court needed to be “really, really careful” in the churn of an election year to avoid appearing political and suggesting it had failed to do so in that case.

“Courts are apolitical, not supposed to be issuing rulings that are in the political realm,” Jackson said at an event in Washington hosted by the American Law Institute. “We have to be scrupulous about sticking to the principles and the rules that we apply in every case and not look as though we’re doing something different in this kind of context.”

Jackson’s remarks followed a series of questions from US District Judge Richard Gergel about the Supreme Court’s decision on May 4 to clear the way for Louisiana to redraw its congressional maps in light of a blockbuster decision days earlier that severely weakened the Voting Rights Act. After winning the larger case, Louisiana — eager to act on the decision ahead of this year’s midterms — urged the Supreme Court to bypass its usual month-long waiting period before finalizing its decision.

In a one-paragraph order, the court agreed to Louisiana’s request. It did so with little explanation and without disclosing how the court voted. Jackson, a member of the court’s liberal wing, was the only justice to note her dissent.

Jackson’s remarks Monday largely tracked with her written dissent. The court’s junior justice stopped short of saying she felt the decision itself was motivated by politics. Instead, she focused on her concern about the perception of the court taking sides in a political dispute.

“I think we have to be very constrained,” she said. “My view was it would be a more neutral way to handle the matter to just stick with the rule that we always apply in situations like this.”

The court’s decision in late April gutting the Voting Rights Act has set off a flurry of redistricting in southern states that has benefited Republicans and that is expected to also reduce the number of Black lawmakers in Congress. Though the decision was long expected, it nevertheless came in the middle of a push by President Donald Trump to eek as much advantage as possible out of redrawn maps in an effort to keep the GOP in control of the House next year.

Jackson, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden in 2022, has been especially critical of the court’s approach to emergency cases during the Trump administration. That was manifested in a remarkable back-and-forth in the same case with Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court’s conservative wing, who criticized many of Jackson’s points at the time as “insulting,” “trivial” and “baseless.”

“What principle has the court violated?” Alito wrote in his opinion in the Louisiana emergency case. “The principle that we should never take any action that might unjustifiably be criticized as partisan?”

Alito was joined by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

Jackson, who spent most of her talk Monday focused on her background and the memoir she published two years ago, also knocked the court more broadly for its handling of cases on the emergency docket. Those remarks largely echoed a lecture she gave at Yale earlier this year.

She said the court was undermining its ordinary process of hearing regular, merits cases by “setting up this other lane of adjudication” on the emergency docket.

“It’s not doing, I think, the court, the lower courts, or our country a service with that kind of procedure,” she said.

The situation is getting worse.

30-year US Treasury yield hits highest level in 19 years

By John Towfighi

A bond rout is deepening as inflation fears take hold of the Treasury market, threatening to raise borrowing costs across the US economy.

The 30-year US Treasury yield just hit 5.2%, its highest level since 2007, rising on worries about persistent price hikes because of the Iran war. Unsustainable government finances and interest rate hike fears have also sent investors pouring out of Treasury bonds. Yields rise when bond prices fall.

The war with Iran has ignited a global energy shock, with oil and gas prices at their highest levels in four years while the critical Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. That has started to seep out into other parts of the economy, including food prices and airfares.

The benchmark 10-year yield, which influences mortgage rates, surged to 4.67%, its highest level in over a year.

The United States isn’t alone – investors have been selling off bonds around the world as angst about government spending and persistent deficits continues to linger. The 30-year UK gilt yield hit its highest level since 1998. Japan’s 30-year bond yield hit its highest level on record.

The surge in borrowing costs is exacerbating concerns about global market volatility. Higher yields can pose a headwind for stocks as higher interest rates shift calculations for stocks’ value and higher bond yields can also pull investors away from stocks.

“The forces driving the sell-off – fiscal deterioration, defense spending, sticky inflation, central bank paralysis – are not resolving in the next week. They are getting worse,” Ajay Rajadhyaksha, global chairman of research at Barclays, said in a note.

It’s been 80 days since the war with Iran began. The stock market tumbled before reclaiming record highs. In the bond market, there hasn’t been the same recovery, and the situation is getting worse.

NGC 2170

Is this a painting or a photograph? In this celestial abstract art composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines just above the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a red emission region, many dark absorption nebulae, and a backdrop of colorful stars. Like the common household items that abstract painters often choose for their subjects, the clouds of gas, dust, and hot stars featured here are also commonly found in a setting like this one -- a massive, star-forming molecular cloud in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). The giant molecular cloud Mon R2, is impressively close, estimated to be only 2,400 light-years or so away. At that distance, this canvas would be over 60 light-years across.

Under Full-Blown Occupation

Memphis Is “Under Full-Blown Occupation” by ICE. Here’s Why You May Not Know That.

Community members face retaliation for trying to spread the word out, a lawsuit alleges.

Samantha Michaels

There’s a massive immigration operation in Memphis right now, but you may not have heard about it. It certainly hasn’t gotten as much attention as past surges in Chicago or Minneapolis—even though it’s been going on since September.

Hunter Demster, who runs a soup kitchen in the city, has been trying to get the word out. He often drives around with his phone, looking for officers to film as they arrest immigrants. There are more than 2,700 officers stationed in the city as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force; some are from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); others are from other law enforcement agencies and the National Guard. None particularly want to be photographed.

Which means that Demster is facing blowback for trying to document them. So are other community members doing the same thing. Officers have taunted them, shined bright lights at them, and followed them in their cars. One community member was assaulted and jailed for trying to film. Now, they’re suing, with help from the ACLU, which argues that agents are engaged in a pattern of intimidation and retaliation that hampers their First Amendment rights to record the police.

The lawsuit was filed last week against leaders of the task force, and it’s a harrowing read—dozens of pages of examples. Demster, for one, recalls an officer driving quickly as he stood in a parking lot and then swerving toward him, missing him by inches. Another plaintiff was “bumper-rushed” by police while driving—they came up behind him so quickly that it appeared a collision was imminent, before hitting the brakes at the last second.

“It’s retaliation,” Demster told me of the various incidents. “And for what? Holding a phone.”

Plaintiff Jessica Choder was tackled by a task force officer when she tried to film a traffic stop; she was held down and an officer threatened to tase her before taking her to jail. (The charge against her, “resisting official detention,” was later dropped.) Demster says agents sometimes sit in their vehicles outside his house. “It’s terrifying to have to be on guard 100 percent of the time,” he says.

The case in Memphis also challenges Tennessee’s Halo Law, which criminalizes anyone who gets within 25 feet of an officer after they’ve been warned to step away. Task force agents are invoking the law against observers who are not interfering, and sometimes forcing them back even farther than required so they can no longer see or hear. “It unconstitutionally burdens people’s ability to engage in gathering information and recording what task force agents are doing,” ACLU attorney Scarlet Kim told me.

A Department of Justice (DOJ) spokesperson said in a statement that the agency “will not tolerate any action that puts our law enforcement officers at risk.”

“We strongly disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and remain committed to fair, impartial, and professional law enforcement practices to keep Memphians and the American people safe,” it noted.

Over the past year, the DHS has been sued in multiple cities for allegedly harming protesters and community observers during surges; a case in the Chicago area was dropped by the plaintiffs after Operation Midway Blitz ended, but others in Los Angeles and Minneapolis are ongoing.

It’s hard to overstate how big the Memphis Safe Task Force presence felt early on. It began in September, and when I visited the city in November, I was shocked by the number of law enforcement vehicles I saw. I talked with immigrant families who were afraid to leave their homes for work or to bring their kids to school. Even US citizens carried their passports around. Many described the city as a war zone, as I reported at the time.

The surge has not gotten much national attention in part because Tennessee’s Republican governor supports it—he has said it will continue indefinitely. And the Trump administration has framed it not as an immigration crackdown, which would get a lot of press coverage, but as a crime crackdown. (Task force officers from other agencies are arresting people primarily for traffic violations and crimes, but they call DHS officers when they encounter immigrants.)

Demster also believes Memphis has yet to grab the nation’s attention because people like him who want to get the word out are facing retaliation. It’s all part of the task force’s plan “to operate in the shadows,” he says.

Choder, the woman assaulted while trying to observe, no longer goes out to film as much as she used to, and when she does, she stays in her car unless there are other observers on the scene. “My family still has a lot of fear and worry

anytime I leave the house alone,” she told me.

Demster continues to press record whenever he gets a chance. “We are under full-blown occupation and immigrants are going missing,” he says. “No one should fear their government for holding a phone.”