ReportWire

Tag: national-affairs

  • Trump Takes Aim at State AI Laws in Draft Executive Order

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    US President Donald Trump is considering signing an executive order that would seek to challenge state efforts to regulate artificial intelligence through lawsuits and the withholding federal funding, WIRED has learned.

    A draft of the order viewed by WIRED directs US Attorney General Pam Bondi to create an “AI Litigation Task Force,” whose purpose is to sue states in court for passing AI regulations that allegedly violate federal laws governing things like free speech and interstate commerce.

    Trump could sign the order, which is currently titled “Eliminating State Law Obstruction of National AI Policy,” as early as this week, according to four sources familiar with the matter. A White House spokesperson told WIRED that “discussion about potential executive orders is speculation.”

    The order says that the AI Litigation Task Force will work with several White House technology advisors, including the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto David Sacks, to determine which states are violating federal laws detailed in the order. It points to state regulations that “require AI models to alter their truthful outputs” or compel AI developers to “report information in a manner that would violate the First Amendment or any other provision of the Constitution,” according to the draft.

    The order specifically cites recently enacted AI safety laws in California and Colorado that require AI developers to publish transparency reports about how they train models, among other provisions. Big Tech trade groups, including Chamber of Progress—which is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Google, and OpenAI—have vigorously lobbied against these efforts, which they describe as a “patchwork” approach to AI regulation that hampers innovation. These groups are lobbying instead for a light touch set of federal laws to guide AI progress.

    “If the President wants to win the AI race, the American people need to know that AI is safe and trustworthy,” says Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This draft only undermines that trust.”

    The order comes as Silicon Valley has been upping the pressure on proponents of state AI regulations. For example, a super PAC funded by Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, and Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale recently announced a campaign against New York Assembly member Alex Bores, the author of a state AI safety bill.

    House Republicans have also renewed their effort to pass a blanket moratorium on states introducing laws regulating AI after an earlier version of the measure failed.

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    Maxwell Zeff, Makena Kelly

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  • The ‘Surge’ of Troops May Not Come to San Francisco, but the City Is Ready Anyway

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    After months of deployments by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the National Guard across American cities, federal agents have been preparing to descend into San Francisco.

    Local resistance groups have been coordinating with activists in other cities across the country that have been besieged by federal law enforcement. Thousands of volunteers, coordinating through Signal group chats, Zoom calls, and social media posts, planned protests and spread the word that federal troops are on their way to San Francisco. Even though they aren’t—yet.

    On Thursday morning, SF mayor Daniel Lurie posted on Instagram and X to announce that he had spoken with President Donald Trump and convinced him to call off the federal agents that had planned to go to San Francisco this Saturday. Trump confirmed that on Truth Social shortly thereafter, writing, “Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”

    Activists and San Francisco residents are not exactly convinced, and so the organizing continues.

    Early this week, a contingent of around 100 federal law enforcement agents converged on Coast Guard Island, a small base in Alameda, just across the Bay from San Francisco that federal officials say is being used as a staging area for upcoming immigration raids. Only one road leads to and from the island, and once word spread about the deployment, agents were quickly boxed in. Around 200 protesters showed up Thursday morning to try to disrupt their movements, resulting in clashes.

    On Wednesday night, a group called Bay Resistance held an educational webinar that drew a massive turnout; due to the limitations of the group’s Zoom subscription, it had to cap the call at 5,000 attendees. Hundreds more viewed a recording afterwards.

    “The Bay is not going to sit quietly,” Emily Lee, a Bay Resistance organizer, said on the mobilization call. “We are definitely going to be standing up together against this administration.”

    Throughout the call, organizers spoke in English with Spanish translations, sharing plans for upcoming actions across the Bay. They talked about lessons learned from their direct communications with organizers in Los Angeles who mobilized against the ICE raids and federal troop deployments there, and the importance of taking the tack of Portland’s protesters, who relied on humor and inflatable animals to counter ICE actions and protest Trump’s claims of the city being a “war ravaged” hellhole.

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    Boone Ashworth

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  • The Long History of Frogs as Protest Symbols

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    Think of it like “Where’s Waldo?” for the anti-Trump movement: Last Saturday, as some 7 million people filled American cities for the latest “No Kings” protest, many of them showed up wearing inflatable frog costumes.

    The amphibians were easy to spot in the sea of signs, and their inspiration seemed clear: They’d seen images of the protesters outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon, holding “Frogs Together Strong” signs and followed suit. The meme had spread.

    Since the weekend, TikTok, Instagram, Bluesky, and other social media platforms have been filled with images and videos of inflatable frogs in the streets. TikTok shop now offers “Portland Frog Protest Stickers” emblazoned with the word “Resist.” At a time when people post through everything, it’s expected that acts of protest or political theater will go viral. Even President Donald Trump responded to Saturday’s events by sharing an AI-generated video of himself dumping excrement on American protesters from a jet. But there’s something different about what’s happening with the frogs. There are layers of meaning and functionality, from Pepe to pepper spray and beyond.

    For one, there’s the issue of surveillance. Americans have become increasingly aware that when they’re protesting, they’re being watched by authorities. Dressing as a cartoon frog, or any other creature, makes it harder for someone to identify your face. As more people adopt the poofy green costume, each wearer becomes even more anonymous.

    Then there’s the absurdity factor. Costumed protesters offset the image of the black-clad demonstrators often demonized by Trump. In late September, as Trump was seeking to deploy Oregon National Guard troops to Portland in response to protests at the city’s ICE facility, he said “it’s anarchy out there.” (A judge later blocked the deployment.) In 2020, Trump sent federal law enforcement officers to Portland to counter Black Lives Matter protests, and the images coming out of the city looked like chaos, even if, as WIRED wrote at the time, “what’s happening in the streets isn’t what you’re seeing in the tweets.” Earlier this month, the original frog guy, Seth Todd, told The New York Times that the frog costume was meant to “contrast the narrative that we are violent extremists.”

    It’s also less likely that someone watching will say “maybe the frog deserved it if they get pepper-sprayed, says Brooks Brown, “co-initiator” of Operation Inflation, which has been giving out free inflatable costumes to demonstrators in the city. “You can’t do that with a frog or unicorn or a wiener dog or SpongeBob,” Brown adds. “It breaks people’s ability to justify the victim and it shows the violence itself purely.”

    Brown is quick to credit Todd for the costume idea. As people began to join Todd in other costumes, Brown, a YouTuber, says he partnered with another streamer to start Operation Inflation as a way to raise money to provide outfits to others. He won’t say how much money they’ve raised but did say they’ve provided some 300 costumes, 200 of them at last weekend’s No Kings protest. It’s become harder for Brown to source the costumes, and prices are going up.

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    Angela Watercutter

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  • The Trump Administration Is Coming for Nonprofits. They’re Getting Ready

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    Some organizations, says Stahl, are considering what it would mean to dissolve themselves and start up again as a limited liability company. In some ways, this would make moving money easier, especially for organizations that do international work. But it would also significantly reduce transparency around donations and how money is being spent. Moving an organization’s headquarters—and its bank accounts—to another country could theoretically protect its finances, but there’s no guarantee that it would be able to get money back into the US to continue work on the ground there. (Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, a Canadian law firm hosted a webinar for nonprofits considering relocating their headquarters to the country.)

    Reich says that several organizations are already talking about what ways an attack by the administration could be challenged legally. “Nonprofits will probably win in court and that will be in a year or two,” he says. But by that point the administration will have had ample time to spread narratives like the one shared by Ngo—as well as, perhaps, to tie up their resources in defending themselves in court. “The point is destroying [nonprofits’] reputations,” says Reich, “and having the power to dictate how and where money gets spent.”

    In the meantime, the uncertainty in the field means that foundations and funders are now looking to move money out more quickly—both to support organizations that may be feeling the pain of other donors pulling back and to ensure that the sector is ready for a more difficult operating environment than ever.

    “We’re moving money to meet grantee needs and needs in communities,” says John Palfrey, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is a member of Unite in Advance. Palfrey noted other government funding cuts, including to the US Agency for International Development and other federal grants, have meant that organizations like the MacArthur Foundation are already racing to disburse money to their grantees to help plug the gaps.

    “We are telling the organizations we work with to be adamant with funders, that if they don’t fund us now there may not be a sector left,” says Ashleigh Subramanian-Montgomery, acting director of the Charity and Security Network, which works with nonprofits that operate in challenging conditions.

    Subramanian-Montgomery says her organization has advised the nonprofits it works with that they shouldn’t comply in advance, but that some organizations are already “removing stuff from their website that could make them at higher risk.” She says she’s worried, however, that even the threats of defunding could cause people to “really start self-censoring, then changing programming completely,” she says. “Then there wouldn’t even be a civil society to push back on government policy.”

    But what that civil society could look like is up in the air. “The Trump administration is going to set the sector on fire,” says Reich. “It’s going to need to be rebuilt.”

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    Vittoria Elliott

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  • $3,800 Flights and Aborted Takeoffs: How Trump’s H-1B Announcement Panicked Tech Workers

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    After a six-week work trip Xiayun, an employee at a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley, had landed at her hometown in China for vacation when she saw the news about H-1B visas. On Friday afternoon, US president Donald Trump signed a proclamation saying that any H-1B visa holder’s entry into the US will be “restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000.” The news left Xiayun and hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers scrambling to figure out how they’d be impacted and whether, if they were abroad, they should return before Sunday, when the new rule was set to take effect.

    Xiayun, who asked to use her online alias and not mention her employer’s name in the story to avoid being identified, claims she started receiving communications from her manager asking her to consider returning as soon as possible to avoid being charged the fee. Before she even met her family at the airport, she says she already decided to fly back to the US as soon as possible. She only stayed in Urumqi for two hours before hopping on the next flight back to California.

    “I had looked forward to the opportunity of traveling with my parents for a long time, but the reality is, I can’t leave behind my husband, my cat, my house, my friends, and my job in the US,” she tells WIRED.

    H-1B is one of the most common work visas, issued to skilled workers seeking temporary residence in the US as long as three years, with the possibility of renewal providing continuing employment. In 2019, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) estimated that there were over 580,000 immigrants holding H-1B visas in the country. Silicon Valley companies are the program’s biggest users, according to data collected by USCIS on the employers who had the most H-1B visas approved every year. In Fiscal Year 2025, the top companies sponsoring for new H-1B visas included Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google.

    By Friday evening, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon had sent urgent communications to foreign employees, according to emails reviewed by WIRED, advising them to return to the states before the Sunday deadline set in the proclamation.

    Conflicting messages poured out of the White House, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and other government social media accounts. “Things are changing every hour, every 30 minutes,” says Steven Brown, an immigration attorney at Reddy Neumann Brown PC. Lutnick claimed the $100,000 fee would be charged annually, others said it’s a one-time charge; the original proclamation did not exempt current visa holders, but the follow-up announcements did. The contradictions and new developments left legal immigrant workers, their families, and employers unsure what to believe over the past weekend.

    WIRED talked to six H-1B visa holders who made last-minute decisions to return to the US from vacation or work trips before the new policy took hold. All of them requested to be identified with only their first or last names in this story, fearing that speaking out against the administration will cause retribution. While explanations posted by the administration on Saturday afternoon clarified that most H-1B visa holders who were outside of the country at the time did not actually need to rush back, by then they claim they had already lost thousands of dollars in changing their travel plans and spent two days in emotional stress.

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    Zeyi Yang

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  • Brendan Carr Isn’t Going to Stop Until Someone Makes Him

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    To Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on free speech, Carr’s threats against ABC appear to be “a pretty clear-cut case of jawboning.” Jawboning refers to a type of informal coercion where government officials try to pressure private entities into suppressing or changing speech without using any actual formal legal action. Since jawboning is typically done in letters and private meetings, it rarely leaves a paper trail, making it notoriously difficult to challenge in court.

    This Kimmel suspension is a little different, Lakier says. During the podcast appearance, Carr explicitly named his target, threatened regulatory action, and within a matter of hours the companies complied.

    “The Supreme Court has made clear that that’s unconstitutional in all circumstances,” says Lakier. “You’re just not allowed to do that. There’s no balancing. There’s no justification. Absolutely no, no way may the government do that.”

    Even if Carr’s threats amount to unconstitutional jawboning, though, stopping him could still prove difficult. If ABC sued, it would need to prove coercion—and however a suit went, filing one could risk additional regulatory retaliation down the line. If Kimmel were to sue, there’s no promise that he would get anything out of the suit even if he won, says Lakier, making it less likely for him to pursue legal action in the first place.

    “There’s not much there for him except to establish that his rights were violated. But there is a lot of benefit for everyone else,” says Lakier. “This has received so much attention that it would be good if there could be, from now on, some mechanism for more oversight from the courts over what Carr is doing.”

    Organizations like the the Freedom of the Press Foundation have sought novel means of limiting Carr’s power. In July, the FPF submitted a formal disciplinary complaint to the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel arguing that Carr violated its ethical rules, misrepresenting the law by suggesting the FCC has the ability to regulate editorial viewpoints. Without formal rulings, companies affected by Carr’s threats would be some of the only organizations with grounding to sue. At the same time, they have proven to be some of the least likely groups to pursue legal action over the last eight months.

    In a statement on Thursday, House Democratic leadership wrote that Carr had “disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC” and called on him to resign. They said they plan to “make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power,” but did not outline any tangible ways to rein in Carr’s power.

    “People need to get creative,” says Stern. “The old playbook is not built for this moment and the law only exists on paper when you’ve got someone like Brendan Carr in charge of enforcing it.”

    This vacuum has left Carr free to push as far as he likes, and it has spooked experts over how far this precedent will travel. Established in the 1930s, the FCC was designed to operate as a neutral referee, but years of media consolidation have dramatically limited the number of companies controlling programming over broadcast, cable, and now streaming networks. Spectrum is a limited resource the FCC controls, giving the agency more direct control over the broadcast companies that rely on it than it has over cable or streaming services. This concentration makes them infinitely easier to pressure, benefitting the Trump administration, Carr, but also whoever might come next.

    “If political tides turn, I don’t have confidence that the Democrats won’t also use them in an unconstitutional and improper matter,” says Stern. The Trump administration is “really setting up this world where every election cycle, assuming we still have elections in this country, the content of broadcast news might drastically shift depending on which political party controls the censorship office.”

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    Makena Kelly

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  • US Tech Giants Race to Spend Billions in UK AI Push

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    Microsoft and Nvidia have unveiled plans to invest up to $45 billion dollars into the UK economy, in a move that will bolster the building of more data centers as well as research and development into artificial intelligence.

    The investment comes as US President Donald Trump travels to Britain, where he is expected to announce a US-UK tech deal alongside UK prime minister Keir Starmer.

    As part of the agreement, Microsoft has committed to invest $30 billion in AI infrastructure over the next four years. The company claims this is the largest financial commitment it has ever made in the UK and will make up more than two thirds of the total investment announced into the UK this week, timed to Trump’s visit.

    “We are focused on British pounds, not empty tech promises,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, told journalists in a virtual briefing ahead of the announcement today. “We will be good for every cent of this investment.” Half of the money will go to capital expansion— “all new money, all new investments,” Smith claimed—whereas the other half will go to efforts like a partnership with the data center business Nscale, to finance and use its facilities.

    Nvidia, for its part, has pledged to spend up to $15 billion on AI-related R&D efforts in the UK. The chipmaker will not invest directly into building out the infrastructure, instead acting through its partners CoreWeave and Nscale.

    This announcement comes alongside a new joint venture from Nvidia, Nscale, and OpenAI today, which plans to “strengthen the UK’s sovereign compute capabilities” through an AI infrastructure partnership called Stargate UK. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang traveled with Trump to the UK during his state visit this week.

    “Stargate UK ensures OpenAI’s world-leading AI models can run on local computing power in the UK, for the UK,” said OpenAI in a statement. OpenAI will provide up to 8,000 GPUs in the first quarter of 2026 with the potential to scale to 31,000 GPUs over time. As part of the agreement, OpenAI says Nscale is set to significantly expand its capacity across a number of sites in the UK, including Cobalt Park in Newcastle, which will be part of a newly designated AI Growth Zone in the North East.

    “This historic commitment from Nscale shows how the UK can build the future of AI, together with our partners from the US,” Nscale CEO Josh Payne said in a statement. “It’s only by building world-class AI infrastructure that we will stay competitive in the global race.”

    When asked to characterize Microsoft’s relationship with Nscale, Smith said simply, “we write the check, and they spend the money.”

    Smith was quick to claim that the company did not get a request from the Trump administration to make an investment announcement. “We have had many conversations with the UK government, including with folks at Number 10, as you would expect, and those have been going on for months,” he said.

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    Natasha Bernal

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  • A Vigil for Charlie Kirk

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    Scenes From Charlie Kirk's Spontaneous Memorial in Utah

    Young people dominated the hospital crowd, which makes sense, since Kirk’s major accomplishment was to promote his brand of rightwing politics to a cohort that has historically been uninterested in it. Kirk was many things: charismatic, politically canny, polemical, ruthless. His organization, Turning Point USA—with its mission to “win America’s culture war”—was arguably the right’s most successful new political group. A talented demagogue, he attacked trans people, LGBTQ people, Black people, Muslims, and women, and his arguments were often misleading, ahistorical, or rankly hypocritical. But because his public appearances so often took the shape of a seemingly fair debate—two citizens squaring off at microphones—they could feel honest and democratic to his fans.

    Joshua Williams 18 and Bryce Harding 19.

    Joshua Williams, 18 and Bryce Harding, 19.

    “I really have to thank my Instagram algorithm for introducing me to him,” said Elder Joseph Trunnel, an 18-year-old donning the starched white-shirt and tie typical of the Latter-Day Saints. “Part of me wanted to be like him, because of how much of a genius he was.” Trunnel added that Kirk inspired him to go to trade school instead of college. “I got my barber license, and it’s been working out really good,” he told me. “It’s really made a difference in my life.” His friend and fellow LDS Elder Bryce Harding, 19, agreed: “He spoke the truth, he never tried to cause contention.”

    Ethan Mendenhall 20 and Emma Hasson 19 wave to cars near the hospital.

    Ethan Mendenhall, 20, and Emma Hasson, 19, wave to cars near the hospital.

    Scenes From Charlie Kirk's Spontaneous Memorial in Utah

    That, of course, is untrue. Kirk’s career was built on contention. He went toe-to-toe with college students in public debates, and also against older opponents, like California Governor Gavin Newsom and the sharp liberal commentator Sam Seder. On his podcast, he called for “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor,” and endorsed the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. His social media clips helped Kirk dominate the political sphere, and positioned him as a crusader for far-right values—particularly among a rising conservative youth movement.

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    Jasper Craven, Sinna Nasseri

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  • Right-Wing Activists Are Targeting People for Allegedly Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Death

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    Far-right influencers and violent extremists are posting identifying details about people they view as celebrating or glorifying the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The campaign has been swift and widespread and has already led to at least one person losing their job and others receiving death threats.

    The people posting the identifying information include Chaya Raichik, who runs the hugely influential, hate-filled LibsofTikTok account on X, Trump-whisperer Laura Loomer, and former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio.

    A central hub of this activity is a website called Charlie’s Murderers, which was registered in the early evening on the day Kirk was shot and is revealing certain personal information, such as social media usernames and email addresses, of individuals the operators believe were celebrating the horrific murder.

    One of the first names listed on the sites was Rachel Gilmore, an independent journalist at Bubble Pop Media who wrote on X that she was “terrified to think of how far-right fans of Kirk, aching for more violence, could very well turn this into an even more radicalizing moment. Will they now believe their fears have been proven right and feel they have a right to ‘retaliate,’ regardless of who actually was behind the initial shooting?”

    As WIRED reported, this is exactly how much of the far right—along with Republican lawmakers including President Donald Trump—did respond to the news, even though no suspect had been arrested and no motive had been revealed.

    For Gilmore, the impact of her inclusion on the website was instant and terrifying.

    “This website has me genuinely afraid for my safety,” Gilmore tells WIRED. “I feel awful for anyone whose name is on it. It’s clear that the purpose of the website is to do exactly what the post that landed me on there warned Kirk’s supporters might do: retaliate.”

    Gilmore has received multiple death and rape threats since the site went live on Wednesday evening. (WIRED reviewed screenshots of emails and direct messages Gilmore has received to verify the threats.) She has not reported the threats to the police yet, she says.

    “I’ve gotten emails and DMs promising to find out where I live,” Gilmore says. “I have folks claiming my information is all over 4chan telling me in the same breath that they hope I get ‘raped and killed’ and telling me to ‘have fun walking the streets of’ my city, which they name.”

    At the time of publication, two dozen people were listed on the site, with many entries including full names, employment details, location, and social media accounts. The site’s operators, who are anonymous, claim to have received “thousands” of submissions. “All of them will be reviewed and uploaded shortly,” a note on the website reads. “This is a permanent archive and will soon contain a search feature.”

    “Most likely, we’d be happy to answer your questions,” the people controlling the website told WIRED in an email. Subsequent emails, though, went unanswered.

    The website asks people to submit a potential target’s full name, location, and employer information, as well as screenshots of incriminating social media posts, via email. An About section on the website, added on Thursday morning, says: “This is not a doxxing website. This website is a lawful data aggregator of publicly-available information. It has been created for the purposes of public education.”

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    David Gilbert

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  • ‘War Is Here’: The Far-Right Responds to Charlie Kirk Shooting With Calls for Violence

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    “You could be next,” influencer and unofficial Trump adviser Laura Loomer posted on X. “The Left are terrorists.”

    Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who popularized the demonization of critical race theory, suggested in a post on X that the “radical left” was responsible for the shooting, and urged the US government “to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”

    Republican representative Derrick Van Orden from Wisconsin also blamed the shooting on “leftwing political violence” and warned on X that “Whoever does not condemn this is part of the problem. The gloves are off.”

    On the floor of the House, after Democrats and Republicans observed a “moment of prayer,” led by House speaker Mike Johnson, for Charlie Kirk and his family, representative Lauren Boebert called for a spoken prayer. Some Democrats said no, and referenced the school shooting in Colorado that also occurred Wednesday. Shouting broke out, and Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna yelled across the aisle, “Y’all caused this.” One Democrat, according to The New York Times, responded, “Pass some gun laws!”

    On X, Luna continued to blame the left: “EVERY DAMN ONE OF YOU WHO CALLED US FASCISTS DID THIS. You were too busy doping up kids, cutting off their genitals, inciting racial violence by supporting orgs that exploit minorities, protecting criminals, and stirring hate. YOU ARE THE HATE you claim to fight. Your words caused this. Your hate caused this.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also posted about Kirk’s death, calling on people to “rise up and end this.”

    Blake Masters, a twice-failed US congressional candidate once backed by Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel and endorsed by Trump, called for RICO investigations into non-governmental organizations as a result of the shooting.

    “Left-wing violence is out of control, and it’s not random,” Masters posted on X. “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments it, or it will destroy us.”

    Masters was quoting a post from right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, who blamed the shooting on the left. “Congressional hearings now,” Cernovich posted on X. “Every billionaire funding far left wing extremism. Soros, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman. Massive RICO investigations now.”

    Chaya Raichik, who operates the anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok, simply wrote: “THIS IS WAR.”

    On fringe platforms like Trump’s own Truth Social and The Donald, the rabidly pro-Trump message board that was responsible for some of the planning of the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, numerous users echoed Jones’ comments about war.

    “War is coming,” one user of The Donald wrote on a thread dedicated to Kirk’s shooting. “War is here,” another responded.

    Another user of The Donald wrote in the same thread: “Civil War is coming … this will give the left the blowback they’ve been begging white people for so they can play the victim and justify white genocide.”

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    David Gilbert

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  • A Crypto Micronation Is Making Friends at the White House

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    When I visited the Free Republic of Liberland in April 2023, on its eighth anniversary, there was little to indicate that the tiny proto-nation—which had no permanent residents, barely any buildings, and a tendency to flood—was on track to fulfill its goal of becoming “the freest country on the planet.” But these days, Liberland has friends in high places.

    Liberland was founded in 2015 by Vít Jedlička, a euro-skeptic politician from Czechia who had come to view European democracies as blighted by stringent regulation and overtaxation. In search of somewhere to start afresh, Jedlička came across a rare plot of land that seemed to belong to no country—a terra nullius, or no man’s land.

    A border disagreement between Serbia and Croatia—a carryover from the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s—has created pockets of land west of the Danube that neither nation claims. On the largest plot, Jedlička planted a flag.

    The Croatian government has since repeatedly blocked Liberland’s attempts to settle the territory, which it treats as disputed land. Jedlička, who serves as Liberland’s president, has been arrested by Croatian border police on multiple occasions. During my 2023 visit, I found myself participating in a slow-motion police chase while sailing down the Danube toward the territory; Croatian officers tailed our boat for almost its entire two-hour journey from Serbia, and patrolmen waited to intercept anybody who might try to make landfall.

    “It is a fictitious project of a handful of adventurers,” the Croatian government has previously said of Liberland.

    Two years later, the Liberland government thinks it may be nearing a breakthrough. With Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun as its new prime minister, Liberland is aiming to make strides in international diplomacy—particularly in the US—and finally settle the land it claims to own.

    “We are taken more seriously when we have a person like Justin Sun on board,” claims Jedlička. “People understand that we are capable to actually uplift the whole region.”

    The White House, the Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, and Justin Sun did not respond to requests for comment.

    Over the years, Liberland has been funded in large part by wealthy crypto donors, attracted by the prospect of a state built around the same libertarian principles on which crypto was founded. Liberland has itself released two crypto coins—one as a medium of exchange and the other for voting in elections—and developed its own national blockchain.

    Sun was first elected as prime minister of Liberland in October. Since then, he has been reelected on a further three occasions, in votes held quarterly.

    “Just as Vatican City represents a central spiritual authority for Catholics, Liberland will be the heart of the libertarian movement,” Sun wrote on X, after he was first elected. “Libertarians everywhere may have their own countries and nationalities, but Liberland will serve as their ideological homeland.”

    For Liberland, Sun could prove to be an immensely useful political ally.

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    Joel Khalili

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  • MAGA Jokes and Mega Outrage With Roy Wood Jr.

    MAGA Jokes and Mega Outrage With Roy Wood Jr.

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    Van and Rachel react to Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally (6:28) before comedian Roy Wood Jr. joins to dig into controversial jokes by Tony Hinchcliffe and the art of political comedy (19:42). Then, a breakdown of Lil Durk’s arrest on a murder-for-hire charge (49:43), and Shaq gives advice to Angel Reese on making the WNBA sexier (1:11:16). Plus, Dwyane Wade’s statue has a face that’s not his (1:23:22).

    Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay
    Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher

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    Van Lathan

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  • The Disinformation Warning Coming From the Edge of Europe

    The Disinformation Warning Coming From the Edge of Europe

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    A TikTok video of actor Brian Baumgartner, from the American version of The Office, calling for the overthrow of the president of a small European country was an early sign that this would be no ordinary election.

    Late last year, Baumgartner appeared among a lineup of American celebrities addressing Maia Sandu, the current, pro-European president of Moldova and proclaiming in bad Russian: “We, Hollywood stars, support the people of Moldova in their desire to overthrow you, Sandu.” These weren’t deepfakes. Instead the videos—which researchers suggested were part of a pro-Kremlin influence operation—were commissioned on Cameo, the app that lets anyone buy personalized greetings from celebrities. Neither Cameo nor Baumgartner’s representatives replied to WIRED’s request for comment.

    For years, Moldova—a country similar in size to the US state of Maryland, sandwiched between the EU and Ukraine—has complained of Russian meddling. But more recently, as this former Soviet state prepares for a pivotal presidential vote and referendum on whether to join the EU, the country has become a cautionary tale about how the world’s biggest social media platforms can be exploited to create and fund a complex disinformation operation that sows discord around some of a society’s most divisive subjects.

    Since war broke out in neighboring Ukraine two years ago, bots have been scouring the Moldovan internet, searching for authentic content to boost to wide audiences, such as videos of Ukrainian-refugees behaving badly. Then ordinary Moldovans complained their Facebook feeds were being inundated with political, often anti-government ads launched by pages with Vietnamese names. A year later, researchers estimated Meta had earned at least $200,000 from a pro-Kremlin ad campaign targeting Moldova alone. Russia’s foreign ministry did not reply to WIRED’s request to comment.

    “It’s unprecedented in terms of complexity,” says Ana Revenco, Moldova’s former interior minister, now in charge of the country’s new Center for Strategic Communication and Combating Disinformation. What’s happening in Moldova on Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and YouTube, she believes, carries a warning for the rest of the world. “This shows us our collective vulnerability,” she says. “Platforms are not only active here. If [Russia] can use them here, they can use them everywhere.”

    Ahead of the vote on Sunday, accounts linked to Russia have reached new levels of aggression, Revenco says. “They activate accounts that have been created long ago and have been on standby,” she explains. “They are engaging bots, and they’re synchronizing posts across multiple platforms.”

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    Morgan Meaker

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  • Obama Talks to the Brothas, Plus Chris Spencer and Lynnette Grey Bull Join the Show

    Obama Talks to the Brothas, Plus Chris Spencer and Lynnette Grey Bull Join the Show

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    Van and Rachel discuss Liam Payne’s death and graphic photos posted by TMZ (5:25), react to Barack Obama addressing Black male voters’ lack of support for Kamala Harris (25:58), and discuss Harris’s contentious interview on Fox News (46:52). Later, actor, writer, and producer Chris Spencer joins to discuss the Vice TV series Black Comedy in America (54:26). Plus, Lynette Grey Bull, founder of Not Our Native Daughters, joins to talk about her mixed emotions concerning Indigenous Peoples’ Day (1:26:04).

    Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay
    Guests: Chris Spencer and Lynnette Grey Bull
    Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher

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    Van Lathan

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  • Instant Reactions to the Tim Walz–JD Vance Debate With Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin. Plus: Gabriel Sherman on Writing ‘The Apprentice.’

    Instant Reactions to the Tim Walz–JD Vance Debate With Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin. Plus: Gabriel Sherman on Writing ‘The Apprentice.’

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    Hello, media consumers! In a special bonus edition of The Press Box, Bryan has two guests. First, he speaks with Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin for instant reactions to the Tim Walz–JD Vance vice presidential debate. They discuss the following:

    • The biggest surprise of the debate (1:22)
    • Who looked more confident, Tim Walz or JD Vance (9:35)
    • The January 6 exchange (16:40)
    • Whether or not this will be the last debate (26:04)

    Then he speaks with screenwriter Gabriel Sherman about writing The Apprentice, a story about Donald Trump (30:44). He discusses the following about the film:

    • How he went about writing the story (31:10)
    • Trump’s relationship with Roy Cohn (32:36)
    • How Cohn’s rules of winning influenced Trump (37:04)
    • Deciding on Sebastian Stan to play Trump (47:02)

    Hosts: Bryan Curtis
    Guests: Benjy Sarlin and Gabriel Sherman
    Producer: Brian H. Waters

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts

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    Bryan Curtis

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  • Love, Hatred, and Boosie. Plus, Representative Maxwell Frost on the Future of Politics.

    Love, Hatred, and Boosie. Plus, Representative Maxwell Frost on the Future of Politics.

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    Van and Rachel remember the lives of Dikembe Mutombo and Kris Kristofferson (:15) and debate the appropriateness of a sexy TD Jakes R&B album (13:58), before discussing Boosie’s most recent comments on his daughter’s sexuality while on Yung Miami’s podcast (28:34) and Caresha’s involvement in the latest Diddy lawsuit (59:53). Then they dive into the latest and weirdest news out of the GOP (1:06:09) before Representative Maxwell Frost joins to talk about being the first Gen Z member of Congress (1:14:44). Plus, Chappell Roan’s position on the 2024 election has the internet abuzz (1:44:59).

    Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay
    Guest: Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost
    Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts

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    Van Lathan

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  • Janet’s Kamala Escapade and ‘Evolution of the Black Quarterback’ With Michael Vick

    Janet’s Kamala Escapade and ‘Evolution of the Black Quarterback’ With Michael Vick

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    Van and Rachel discuss Beyoncé’s exclusion from the CMAs (5:47) before reacting to the fallout from Janet Jackson’s questioning of Kamala Harris’s Blackness (25:28) and Chingy backing out of performing at a GOP event (36:19). Then NFL legend Michael Vick joins to talk about the new docuseries Evolution of the Black Quarterback (46:07) before discussing the way Jerry Jones talks about his players and what’s between their legs (1:16:28).

    Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay
    Guest: Michael Vick
    Producer: Donnie Beacham Jr.

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher

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    Van Lathan

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  • Watch Kamala Harris Take the WIRED Autocomplete Interview

    Watch Kamala Harris Take the WIRED Autocomplete Interview

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    In a wide-ranging WIRED Autocomplete Interview, Vice President Kamala Harris touched on everything from her debate with former president Donald Trump—which she found “quite enjoyable”—to her time as California’s attorney general to Taylor Swift’s endorsement. It’s a lively tour of Harris’ past and a preview of her plans for the future.

    Harris sat with WIRED earlier this week for the interview, which asks guests to respond to some of the most-searched terms about themselves. In this case, the prompts hit on her policies around reproductive rights, gun ownership, marriage equality, and more. But Harris also talks about more personal details, like her relationship with her stepchildren and her deep ties to her college sorority.

    Most of all, Harris took the opportunity to highlight the differences between her perspective and Donald Trump’s. “His vision for our country is very grounded in the past,” she says, “and frankly an attempt to take us backward.” You can watch the full video above.

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    Angela Watercutter

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  • US Senate Warns Big Tech to Act Fast Against Election Meddling

    US Senate Warns Big Tech to Act Fast Against Election Meddling

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    Andy Carvin, the managing editor and research director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab, tells WIRED that his organization, which conducts a vast amount of research into disinformation and other online harms, has been tracking Doppelganger for more than two years. The scope of the operation should surprise few, he says, given the fake news sites follow an obvious template and that populating them with AI-generated text is simple.

    “Russian operations like Doppelganger are like throwing spaghetti at a wall,” he says. “They toss out as much as they can and see what sticks.”

    Meta, in a written statement on Tuesday, said it had banned RT’s parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, and “other related entities” globally across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for engaging in what it called “foreign interference activity.” (“Meta is discrediting itself,” the Kremlin replied Tuesday, claiming the ban has endangered the company’s “prospects” for “normalizing” relations with Russia.)

    Testifying on Wednesday, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, stressed the industry-wide nature of the problem facing voters online. “People trying to interfere with elections rarely target a single platform,” he said, adding that Meta is, nevertheless, “confident” in its ability to protect the integrity of “not only this year’s elections in the United States but elections everywhere.”

    Warner appeared less than fully convinced, noting the use of paid advertisements in recent malign influence campaigns. “I would have thought,” he said, “eight years later, we would be better at at least screening the advertisers.”

    He added that, seven months ago, over two dozen tech companies had signed the AI Elections Accord in Munich—an agreement to invest in research and the development of countermeasures against harmful AI. While some of the firms have been responsive, he said, others have ignored repeated inquiries by US lawmakers, many eager to hear how those investments played out.

    While talking up Google’s efforts to “identify problematic accounts, particularly around election ads,” Alphabet’s chief legal officer, Kent Walker, was halted mid-sentence. Citing conversations with the Treasury Department, Warner interrupted to say that he’d confirmed as recently as February that both Google and Meta have “repeatedly allowed Russian influence actors, including sanctioned entities, to use your ad tools.”

    The senator from Virginia stressed that Congress needed to know specifically “how much content” relevant bad actors had paid to promote to US audiences this year. “And we’re going to need that [information] extraordinarily fast,” he added, referring as well to details of how many Americans specifically had seen the content. Walker replied to say that Google had taken down “something like 11,000 efforts by Russian-associated entities to post content on YouTube and the like.”

    Warner additionally urged the officials against viewing Election Day as if it were an end zone. Of equal and great importance is the integrity of the news that reaches voters, he stressed, in the days and weeks that follow.

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    Dell Cameron

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  • Suspected Trump Gunman Was Once Charged With Possession of a Weapon of Mass Destruction

    Suspected Trump Gunman Was Once Charged With Possession of a Weapon of Mass Destruction

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    Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspected gunman involved in an apparent assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida on Sunday, was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction over 20 years ago.

    “I figured he was either dead or in prison by now,” Tracy Fulk, the charging officer in the case, tells WIRED. “I had no clue that he had moved on and was continuing his escapades.”

    According to court records from the Guilford District Court in North Carolina obtained by WIRED, Routh was arrested by the Greensboro Police Department on December 16, 2002.

    Local reporting from Greensboro News and Record in 2002 states that Routh was pulled over by police during a traffic stop. Routh then drove to the business United Roofing, where he proceeded to barricade himself for three hours, the police said at the time.

    Fulk says he was well known in the area, and that police would get alerts about him allegedly related to, as she remembers, weapons and explosives.

    “One night I recognized him in his vehicle,” she says. “I knew he didn’t have a driver’s license, so I stopped him right in front of his roofing shop, which was what used to be on Lee Street in Greensboro. He stopped, and as I approached his truck he pulled a sack away from the center of the seat, and I saw a gun. So of course I drew my gun and started saying, ‘Hey! Show me your hands, show me your hands.’ And he just basically pulled into his driveway and ran into his house. So we ended up having a [Special Response Team] callout and a big standoff for a couple of hours before they went in and we arrested him.”

    Routh was charged with possession of a fully automatic machine gun, referred to in court filings as a weapon of mass destruction. He was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon, as well as driving without a valid license and resisting, delaying, and obstructing law enforcement, according to Greensboro News and Record.

    While the disposition of the case isn’t entirely clear, Routh did plead guilty to carrying a concealed gun.

    Trump was not harmed on Sunday while playing golf. Law enforcement apprehended Routh after a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle sticking out of a perimeter fence on the course and engaged with the threat, firing at least four rounds in that direction. It’s unclear whether the gunman fired a shot. Law enforcement later found an AK-47 style rifle with a scope and a GoPro in the bushes.

    Law enforcement personnel investigate the area around Trump International Golf Club after an apparent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on September 15, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

    Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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    Leah Feiger, Tim Marchman

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