Feed aggregator

Hark claims that its browser use agent is faster and cheaper than competition.

President Trump continues to insist that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was vandalized, even after D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro admitted in court that it was not. 

Speaking to reporters outside of Air Force One in Los Angeles Tuesday night, Trump defended the contractor who handled the pool’s renovation, despite Pirro’s office dropping charges against all of the people accused of vandalizing the pool, including former Olympian David Hearn.  

“I just think he’s totally wrong. They did a beautiful job. There were a couple of little things, but that was not a big deal. And everybody saw the vandalism, all you have to do is look at the tape, if you look at the tape. Plus, we have a witness, or two witnesses that saw the vandalism. So certainly where there was vandalism, there was actually, in my opinion, there was major vandalism, and I told [Pirro] I was not happy,” Trump said. He was noncommittal when asked if Pirro would be staying at her job. 

Trump: "Everybody saw the vandalism. All you have to do is look at the tape." (There is no tape. Trump is nuts.) pic.twitter.com/iAOI7gBG5Q

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2026

Trump’s claim of there being video proof doesn’t appear to be true, as it was never mentioned in charging documents. It’s not clear which witness or witnesses he is referring to either, as the Department of Justice’s main witness actually undermined the vandalism case against Hearn. The contractor assigned to clean up the pool, the ironically named Greenwater Services, put hydrogen peroxide into the pool to kill algae, causing Trump’s personally chosen “American flag blue” paint to begin peeling. 

Trump’s comments come after he, Pirro, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who was in charge of the pool’s renovation, reportedly got into a screaming match in the White House over the vandalism cases. Despite Pirro taking in a box of evidence to prove the vandalism cases were weak, Trump still believes his own version of the story. Then again, Trump never liked admitting when he’s wrong. 

GOP Representative Max Miller was accused of holding a gun to his ex-wife’s head, scalding her with boiling water, and breaking his two-year-old daughter’s collarbone. He also shared pictures of his daughter’s genitals. House Speaker Mike Johnson is still supporting him.

“I haven’t spoken to Max about this in the last few days. Of course, I will,” Johnson told Politico’s Dasha Burns in an interview. “There’s all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time, it’s not my business to get engaged in it.”

The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into the abuse claims against Miller, as well as allegations of drug use. The claims were made by his ex-wife Emily Moreno, daughter of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno.

“I think Max is taking them seriously. I think our colleagues are,” Johnson continued. “But, again, we have to allow this process to play out. It’s just begun.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson broke days of silence on the domestic abuse allegations against Rep. Max Miller in an interview with The Conversation.

He told our @DashaBurns the claims are "serious" but insisted the House Ethics Committee process should run its course. pic.twitter.com/utuScRopJV

— POLITICO (@politico) August 5, 2026

It does not look like Miller is taking it seriously. He posted a 20-minute video on Sunday denying all of his ex-wife’s allegations, arguing that her being civil to him after the period of alleged abuse delegitimized them. His own lawyer admitted to accidentally uploading nude pictures of his daughter via Dropbox. Miller claimed that they were part of a Child Protective Services investigation. That same Dropbox contained recordings of Miller saying throwing hot water on Emily was a “playful incident.”

Miller has remained indignant, making multiple media appearances—all of which make his situation look worse. He claimed on CNN Tuesday night that Johnson and the rest of the party were “standing behind” him.

“My constituents know who I am, and they also know who my ex-father-in-law is, and they also know who my ex-wife is.... People aren’t running from me,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone else—they’re standing behind me. No one has told me to get off the ballot.”

But even that’s up for debate. While Johnson offered tepid support, Senator Moreno said Miller needed “serious psychological help,” and called on him to step down from Congress and abandon his current reelection campaign. And Trump, who was also initially supportive, called Miller personally to tell him that things weren’t “looking good.”

Even still, Johnson chose to trust the ethics committee process rather than call on Miller to end his train-wreck of a political career.

“It’s, in his own words, a nasty divorce proceeding, and it’s gotten ugly and it’s gotten public,” Johnson said. “But he’s saying the same things privately to members that he is publicly, that he denies all this.... There’s a process. The House Ethics Committee does that. We always withhold judgment on this, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats.”

Miller has five days to drop out if Republicans have any hope of replacing him on the ballot.

🤯 Rep. Max Miller's interview with Jake Tapper is an utter trainwreck 🤯

Miller went on CNN to try to push back against credible accusations that he abused his ex-wife and child, but he only made things worse for himself. He threatened his ex-wife's father (Sen. Bernie Moreno)… pic.twitter.com/BGOIcKIdKx

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 4, 2026

No congressional candidate in Democratic history ever had as much outside money dumped on them in one primary as Abdul El-Sayed. But El-Sayed has now survived the onslaught in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. Barely. The Bernie Sanders-endorsed champion of Medicare for All defeated Rep. Haley Stevens by about a one-point margin on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

The dynamics of the election in Michigan were not new. Like in other recent primaries spanning from Manhattan to California’s Central Valley, a populist outsider ran against an establishment Democrat backed by millions of dollars of super PAC money—much of it from AIPAC allies that aim to keep critics of Israel out of Congress. What sets El-Sayed’s victory apart are the stakes and the scale of the effort to defeat him.  

Democrats need to keep the Michigan seat that Sen. Gary Peters is retiring from if they hope to take back the Senate. To do that, they now have to defeat former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in a swing state that has gone for Donald Trump twice, and where Rogers barely lost to Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024. It is far from certain that El-Sayed will prevail in November—just as there were no guarantees that Stevens would have won.

After a polarizing primary, El-Sayed has just three months to consolidate Democratic support and make his case to independent voters. El-Sayed began that work in an election-night speech before the race was called. “However much we might disagree with our Democratic opponent, there is so much more that unites us than divides us,” he told supporters. “Tomorrow, we begin to mend fences.” In a Wednesday speech after the race was called, El-Sayed said he had a “great conversation” with Stevens, and called his former opponent “one of the most committed public servants that you’ll ever meet.”

El-Sayed’s margin of victory was much smaller than expected heading into Tuesday: Polls tracked by the New York Times showed El-Sayed leading by double digits in eight surveys in a row. Instead, the results closely resembled Michighan’s 2016 presidential primary, when Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton by 1.4 points. As of Wednesday morning, El-Sayed is leading Stevens by an even smaller margin.

Stevens, who was endorsed by Peters and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, was the favorite of much of the Democratic establishment including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But the results on Tuesday were yet another reminder this primary season that much of the Democratic base wants to go in a different direction than party leadership.

The general election will provide a rare chance to help answer a question that is often litigated online but rarely tested offline: Can progressive populists win a swing state like Michigan? A loss by El-Sayed, on the other hand, would likely lead to many warnings from moderate Democrats about what kind of candidate the party should nominate for president in 2028. Republicans have not won a US Senate election in Michigan in more than three decades; the seat El-Sayed is running for has been held by Democrats since 1979—five years before the 41-year-old candidate was born.

El-Sayed’s victory was not the only win for the left wing of the Democratic party in Michigan on Tuesday. In Michigan’s 7th congressional district, which is centered around Lansing, Will Lawrence pulled off a shocking win. The 7th district is a tossup seat held by Republican Rep. Tom Barrett that Democrats hope to flip in November. To do that, Democratic primary voters had two traditionally safe picks: Bridget Brink, who resigned as the US Ambassador to Ukraine soon after Trump returned to office, and Matt Maasdam, a former Navy SEAL who carried the so-called nuclear football for Barack Obama.

Brink and Maaasdam ended up roughly tied with each getting about 28 percent of votes on Tuesday. That may have allowed Lawrence, a millennial founder of the Sunrise Movement who capitalized on local opposition to AI data centers, to prevail with only about 43 percent of the vote. Many Democratic strategists like David Axelrod believe the seat will now be harder to flip in November.

In the Detroit area, Rep. Shri Thanedar narrowly lost his primary to state Rep. Donavan McKinney, who was endorsed by Sanders, El-Sayed, and the Democratic Socialists of America. Thanedar was a notably weak incumbent who has irritated fellow Democrats in Congress. As a largely self-funding Indian American multimillionaire, he was also an unusual fit in a district where more than 40 percent of residents are Black and more than 40 percent of children live in poverty.

The race between El-Sayed and Stevens was one of the most closely watched primaries this year, but it did not attract record spending because super PACs wanted Democrats to control the Senate. About half of the roughly $60 million spent by outside groups came from the AIPAC-backed United Democracy Project, which has worked to elect pro-Israel members of both parties. The Michigan race was UDP’s top priority; the group spent twice as much as it ever had in a single race. (Overall, super PACS favored Stevens by a more than 10-to-1 margin.)

The total amount put into the race by pro-Israel groups may be even higher: A recently formed dark money group called the Center for Democratic Priorities spent a reported $6.5 million backing Stevens, whose views on Israel are captured by her claim that the country “comes to me in my dreams.” As I reported last week, little is known about the Center for Democratic Priorities beyond the fact that its low-profile director apparently served in a similar role for an AIPAC-backed super PAC in Michigan in 2024.

El-Sayed, a doctor and public health expert who served as the health director for Wayne County, is an unapologetic critic of Israel who has accused the nation of committing genocide in Gaza. If elected, he could quickly become Israel’s most vocal opponent in the Senate—as well as one of its most charismatic members. He would also be the first Muslim senator in US history and one of the youngest members of the chamber. (El-Sayed is younger than all but two sitting senators.)

El-Sayed’s victory—along with those of House candidates like Daniel Biss earlier this year in Illinois—is a clear sign to people running for Congress across the country that pro-Israel spending can be successfully resisted. As El-Sayed told my colleague Najib Aminy before the primary, “ If I prove that you can win statewide, taking on AIPAC and winning, that is catastrophic  because of what it says about the future of the party. It is existential to oppose it. I think this race is going to change a lot of minds, and it’s going to scramble a lot of expectations.”

On the campaign trail, El-Sayed was highly effective at depicting AIPAC and the corporations spending against him as villains trying to buy the Senate race. He returned to that theme repeatedly in ads, speeches, and his campaign’s call and response slogan: “Money out of politics. Money in your pocket. Medicare for All.” The tens of millions of dollars in television ads super PACs spent against him presumably cost him the support of some voters, but it also gave him one of his most powerful talking points. 

In Illinois this March, AIPAC-backed groups spent about $7 million trying to defeat Biss, the mayor of Evanston. (Biss, who is Jewish, is the descendant of Holocaust survivors and has noted that some of his relatives live in Israel.) Like El-Sayed, Biss capitalized on the spending by AIPAC, which has supported many election deniers and Trump supporters. He won narrowly, while Kat Abughazaleh—who is further left than Biss—who came in second. (Abughazaleh is a former Mother Jones contributor.) AIPAC’s pick, Laura Fine, came in third with only 20 percent of the vote. After he won, Biss wrote an op-ed for The Nation under the headline: “I Was AIPAC’s Number 1 Target—and I Beat Them. Here’s How to Do It.”

Still, AIPAC has not yet suffered a total defeat in Michigan. Two-thirds of the money UDP spent in the primary went to attacking El-Sayed—who it misleadingly accused in one ad of “sexist attacks” against women—rather than promoting Stevens. That spending, along with whatever UDP and its allies may put in for the general election, could make it easier for Rogers to defeat El-Sayed in November. If that happens, AIPAC will almost certainly try to take some of the credit.

But for now El-Sayed can claim victory. In his Wednesday speech, El-Sayed pointed out that he and his supporters had taken on a “machine” and record-breaking outside spending. “You’re not supposed to be able to beat that,” he said. “What we showed is that the power of our many is greater than the power of their money.”

In July, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was the featured speaker on a call convened by the White House Faith Office. At the time, the conversation was billed as off the record. On Tuesday morning, however, Politico reported that it had appeared on the YouTube channel of Intercessors for America, a Christian-right group that bills itself as “not just a policy and prayer organization, but also a revolutionary community of prayer and action for our nation.” That Blanche made this appearance while fighting to be made the attorney general of the United States, at a moment when confirmation hearings in the Senate were still underway, may seem unwise—but it is absolutely in keeping with the Trump-era political strategy of “Always be making content.”

And it’s not a stretch to imagine that there was a strategic reason for the leak and for Blanche’s participation in the call. Perhaps Intercessors for America posted the recording so that Blanche’s comments on abortion might persuade some senators to confirm him. Perhaps Blanche’s people want these “off-the-record” comments in front of a wider audience. Certainly Blanche has been repeatedly questioned about abortion by senators on the committee, who feel the administration has failed to realize the post-Roe dreams of the Christian right. On the White House Faith Office call, Blanche promised that a “permanent” victory on abortion was coming. Whoever the audience was meant to be, one thing was clear: The nominee was offering to use his power at the top of the Justice Department to extend abortion bans to every state.

It is deeply disconcerting that we have a White House Faith Office at all, let alone one that is so openly advancing a Christian-right agenda. The group that published the Faith Office call is not particularly high profile, despite being more than 50 years old and having filed a wild brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The groups’ founders, the brief states, called Roe “a sign—a warning—to the People, that the nation had opened itself up to the judgment of a Holy and Righteous God.” Although Blanche’s comments about abortion have already been reported, it’s worth examining the call in some detail to give some context to his remarks and to get a sense of how this so-called faith office, led by Christian nationalists, speaks about its mission to a sympathetic audience. These are the people Blanche appears to answer to, at least now, in a moment when he needs the support.

Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, kicked off the substance of the call. A prominent “Christian Nationalist power broker,” as Americans United for Separation of Church and States have described her, she heads the White House Faith Office. (She also offered a prayer on January 6, 2021, before the president’s speech.) After promoting the faith office’s social media influencer program and taking a victory lap on behalf of the president’s attacks on trans kids, she mourned for “the America we grew up in” and thanked those on the call for helping to restore that country. She praised Blanche, referring to him as the attorney general (at the time of the call, he remained merely acting attorney general), and celebrating him for his work on “religious liberty,” which she called “historic.”

After about 20 minutes of prayers and preamble, Blanche joined. Calling himself “a preacher’s kid,” he offered a detailed narrative of “how bad the Department of Justice acted over the past several years” and how Trump and Blanche have since saved and purified the department. Those achievements included Blanche’s work heading a Trump task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias,” a favored and mostly invented cause on the Christian right. He drew participants’ attention to the arrests of “dozens of radical left rioters who attacked the house of worship in Minnesota”—a protest, at which journalists were also arrested, against a church leader who was working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At the heart of this litany of Justice Department wins, however, was its work to control gender and sexuality. Blanche accused the DOJ, prior to Trump, of having “literally worked hand in hand with pro-abortion groups to target pro-lifers”—something that did not happen. He promised that a new team of Title IX investigators would “protect students, especially female athletes, from any sort of radical gender ideology in school programs or activities”—using the threat of Justice Department investigations to dictate school curricula. Then he seemed to beg for callers’ patience with the DOJ on the issue of abortion. “Some of that is taking longer than we want,” Blanche said, “but rest assured that we’re working hand in hand with HHS and the FDA and the White House and President Trump’s team to get permanent solutions so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state.”

For a future attorney general, this was a strange and circular reading of Dobbs, the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Dobbs did not dictate abortion laws; as its many supporters love to remind us, it empowered states to adopt whatever bans they like. It is already “permanent in every single state.” Perhaps, for Blanche, Dobbs is now shorthand for an abortion ban. Even if legally imprecise, that would at least be honest. He went on: “That means that if states have said we are going to protect the unborn, and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception, we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that, and they can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs and things like that.” By this, Blanche meant threatening those who help abortion medication reach people in ban states. “We don’t have complete victory yet,” Blanche said, “but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent.” (When Politico asked the Department of Justice about this “victory” that would be “permanent in every state,” it affirmed that Blanche’s comments were “with respect to mail order abortion drugs.”)

What Blanche is really saying is that he wants states with abortion bans to be able to extend those bans to states without them. It’s as if states that did not ban abortion after the Dobbs decision are somehow noncompliant, and need to be brought to heel. Unfortunately, Blanche has—or believes he has—a blunt instrument with which he can attempt to do so. The Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-obscenity law, was considered unenforceable for decades, but it contains language outlawing the circulation of “obscene” items. The law defines “obscenity” to include information about and any items that could be used for abortion. Lately, Christian nationalist legal groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom have been pushing a very questionable legal theory that any federal prosecutor could simply begin enforcing the Comstock Act tomorrow. They have not done so. But these groups hope that if Blanche heads the Justice Department, the abortion prosecutions will follow.

This is why the legal strategy Blanche is describing is so dangerous. It goes far beyond Dobbs. Whether he turns to the Comstock Act or not, Blanche is looking for a lawful way to extend abortion bans. His comments, according to the Justice Department, mean he seeks to impede the manufacture, purchase, or distribution of abortion medications. This would hurt people in every state. It would function as a ban on medication abortion even in states where abortion remains legal. But he may not stop there. Blanche also made clear that he knows the ultimate goal of this kind of audience is to end abortion. “I really thank you for you guys taking a knee at night and in the morning and sending prayers to keep us safe and doing God’s work,” the acting attorney general said. “And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Concerned about cost, Microsoft is reportedly warning employees against wasteful AI use. In an email seen by 404 Media, Microsoft Executive Vice President Jay Parikh warned that individual divisions would be given targets and could face restrictions. "Tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for. I want all of us focused on maximizing outcomes that move the needle for our customers and our business," the email states. The Register asked Microsoft what it made of the report, and a spokesperson told us the company had "nothing to add." Microsoft is hardly short of cash and has continued to pour money into its AI investments, but its apparent efforts to curb wasteful AI spending bring it into line with other companies attempting to rethink how employees use AI. Tokenmaxxing is the practice of using as many AI tokens as possible, and treating the volume as proof of productivity. A token is the basic unit used to process and bill for the input and output of AI models. If a company is measuring employees' use of AI, burning through as many tokens as possible will make the figures look rosier. However, companies need to consider the cost of those tokens alongside other factors, such as productivity. As The Register observed in April: "Tokenmaxxing isn't an AI strategy." Microsoft does not appear to be seeking an overall reduction in token use – it wants to be an AI-first company, after all. It simply wants more bang for its buck. "As we accelerate our use of GitHub Copilot to deliver on our goals, we all need to be aware of how we consume tokens," the email reportedly said. GitHub moved to usage-based billing in June. Although Microsoft's code-hosting tentacle measures consumption in AI Credits rather than raw tokens, the change makes the cost of engineers burning through them harder to ignore. Not that this sends a particularly great message to customers. As one anonymous Microsoft staffer told 404 Media: "This really feels like the ultimate admission that we, as hosts of AI infra, can't afford our own AI products. And if that's even partially the case, how could the companies we sell it to manage?" That's a little simplistic. Microsoft can afford its AI products; the email suggests it wants engineers to use them with greater regard for cost and results. Which is, perhaps, the message customers should take away. AI tools and services carry a cost that needs to be measured, rather than treating "how many tokens did you consume?" as a measure of AI adoption. ®

This marks the official launch of Zoox's commercial operations.

On our new Real World AI stage, we’ll be focusing on the intersection between the digital and physical, and all the ways we’ll continue to see a blending of the two.

While many organizations have AI projects underway at various stages of maturity, most are experiencing challenges scaling AI across their IT landscape. That is because many AI strategists have yet to work out how to build, operate, and extract value from their AI infrastructure. Without a formal, top-level plan for AI, key capabilities and requirements get lost, and the full value of AI is never realized. What is needed is a pre-integrated, full-stack environment that simplifies the deployment, scaling and governance of enterprise AI. This is where the "AI factory" concept is gaining ground. An AI factory is a specialized computing environment designed to manage the entire AI lifecycle, from data ingestion and training through to fine-tuning and high-volume AI inference. Its primary "product" is intelligence, measured in token throughput, which in turn drives innovation, decision-making, IT automation and future AI applications. HPE AI Factory with NVIDIA is a pre-integrated infrastructure solution with HPE services provided from development to deployment to ongoing support for AI initiatives. It combines NVIDIA's accelerated computing and software with HPE's secure infrastructure, software, control plane, and services, to scale as the organization’s needs grow. The question that follows is how the AI factory model maps onto the main challenges enterprises face when they try to run AI at-scale. In this Hot Seat interview, James Hayes puts that question to Thierry Pienaar, HPE fellow and Chief Technology Officer for HPC & AI worldwide at HPE, and Kaushik Shirhatti, VP, AI factory at NVIDIA. He asks them how the AI factory model is reshaping enterprises thinking about AI and how it is accelerating customer projects. Pienaar and Shirhatti explain that AI no longer sits in a deployment vacuum, and that today's enterprise-wide rollouts carry risks older architectures were never built to absorb. Secure operations that scale across segments become a core requirement, particularly as deployments take in a widening range of personas, workgroups and, increasingly, agentic inputs. Security that load-balances intelligently, so that demand does not overwhelm the system, matters just as much. Sovereign AI is another priority: the balance between innovation and control now shapes how customers meet their growing sovereign AI mandates, which have become central to AI governance. You will learn: How AI factories can enable workload-specific architectures. How agentic AI is being used within the AI factory context. How HPE AI Factory with NVIDIA meets the range of challenges customers face, and how it stands apart in its market segment. New joint innovations the HPE and NVIDIA partnership is bringing to customers. Learn more about how sovereign AI beats compliance challenges and feeds local innovation with HPE and NVIDIA here. Sponsored by HPE.

Jeanine Pirro’s grand case against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s Reflecting Pool cover-up was a showdown worthy of reality TV.

Pirro, the daytime cable judge turned U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, rolled into the White House Monday toting boxes of evidence supporting her argument that the pool had not been vandalized. Donald Trump, the Apprentice host turned president, was already fuming.

Days prior, Pirro withdrew charges against three-time Olympic canoeist David Hearn, the highest-profile figure accused of vandalizing Trump’s patch job at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Via court filing, Pirro admitted that her fast-track July indictment against Hearn was actually a dud predicated on baseless accusations pushed by Interior Department officials.

The filing also suggested that Burgum had failed to competently oversee the renovation by Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based firm that Trump chose because they had previously worked on his golf club’s swimming pools. When the pool lining began to crack and peel in large, irregular chunks, Burgum convinced Trump that the damage had been caused by vandals.

And Trump remained unconvinced by Pirro’s analysis. Speaking with reporters behind the Resolute Desk Monday morning, the president accused his family friend and decades-long ally of “folding like an umbrella” and “choking” on the charges, which for weeks provided backbone to his repetitive (and increasingly nonsensical) claims that vandals gashed the memorial pool’s lining.

Pirro arrived at the Oval Office that night in a cherry-red blazer, ready to tear Burgum’s excuses to shreds. Burgum was already there, alongside Trump’s chief of staff “Ice Maiden” Susie Wiles and White House counsel David Warrington, reported The New York Times.

The back-and-forth lasted about an hour, during which Pirro repeatedly raised her voice and directly confronted the interior secretary for misleading the president. She claimed that Burgum’s explanation of the recent damage at the Reflecting Pool was little more than a self-serving cover story to save his own skin.

Burgum was more reserved but did his best to defend himself against Pirro’s accusations, according to sources that spoke with the Times.

Pirro emerged from the meeting with her job intact, but it’s not clear if that will stay true. When asked directly by reporters on Tuesday if he would keep Pirro in her current position, Trump said he hadn’t yet “made a determination.”

Tinder is expanding its in-person events feature from an initial Los Angeles test to 26 cities worldwide by the end of September.

Climate nonprofits can again access their federal funding more than a year after the Trump EPA ordered Citibank to freeze their accounts.

⚡ Quick Take

• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a delicious feast of campy forbidden pleasure that will stay with you long after the credits roll.

Jane Schoenbrun has long established herself as a unique and powerful voice in queer independent cinema. In both her debut feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, as well as her breakthrough hit, I Saw the TV Glow, Schoenbrun has shown a mastery for capturing the queer experience on film in a beautiful and mesmerizing way like no other. However, Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma may be her most impactful and brilliant work yet, and should cement her as one of the most interesting and important filmmakers working in the industry today. 

On the surface, Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma is an ode to the ‘80s slasher films or yore. Following a young filmmaker, played by Hacks star Hannah Einbinder, as she is tasked with reviving a long dead and controversial horror franchise, the titular, Camp Miasma. This leads her to seek out the original film’s reclusive final girl, played by Gillian Anderson, and the two quickly find themselves entangled in something much deeper than simply resurrecting “zombie IP”. 

In the same way that Gillian Anderson prepares an elegant feast of KFC for Einbinder’s director in the movie, Schoenbrun delivers the audience a bountiful meal of pleasure and excess on an arthouse silver platter. It is a perfect metaphor for the slasher sub-genre of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and Schoenbrun’s exploration of forbidden desire and the complex relationship between queer identity and sex. After all, as Anderson’s character so plainly puts it, these films are about two things– flesh and fluids. 

The layers of the film go so much deeper, however. Exploring not only themes of queer love, but also meta commentary on the film industry and its current cycle of IP regurgitation and creative bankruptcy. Undoubtedly a reflection of Schoenbrun’s own experiences navigating their career leading up to this film. The director herself admitted that the road to getting Camp Miasma made was a long and challenging one, even despite her proven success.

Mubi

Beyond the dazzling visual spectacle of Camp Miasma, the real power of the film is in the magnetic chemistry between the two leads, Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. That’s not to say there aren’t standout performances in the supporting ensemble– Einbinder’s agent played by Sarah Sherman, and the delightfully cast comprising the Camp Miasma movie within a movie are all wonderful. 

However, the movie is Einbinder and Anderson. Well, and of course, Little Death, played by Jack Haven. The complex and ever evolving dynamic of tension between the leads–and their looming symbol of repressed desire–is the heartbeat that gives the film life and meaning. Every look, every bated breath, every lingering touch reverberates throughout the narrative. 

That said, it’s clear Schoenbrun has a deep love of the genre with which they have chosen to immerse their film in as well. There are obvious aesthetic and narrative nods to classic camp slashers like the Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp films, but the slasher roots run much deeper.

One of the most beautiful scenes of the film involves Haven’s killer, Little Death, going on their bloody rampage through an extended sequence of the original Camp Miasma film. In it, we see the perspective of the montage slowly shift from Little Death’s POV (in traditional slasher style), as it slowly transforms into a surprisingly intimate and heartbreaking reversal on Little Death’s mask. Where, though a small opening at the center, we can see Haven’s eyes, drenched in blood and painting a picture worth a thousand words.

Mubi

The subtle nuance aside, the film plants its tongue firmly in cheek from the get go, and doesn’t shy away from its clear inspirations and parallels. These include numerous references to Sunset Boulevard, and a hilarious bit acknowledging the meta, fourth-wall bending similarities of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. You know, “Frightmaster” Wes Craven.

However, like I Saw the TV Glow and its heavy influence from ‘90s shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma merely uses these genre tropes in service of a more intimate and personal exploration of queer identity. And that is what makes Camp Miasma and Jane Schoenbrun as a filmmaker so special.

RELATED ARTICLE

The Best Final Scenes in Horror Movie History

While it may not land with all audiences, for those that it does resonate with, Camp Miasma is a delicious feast of campy forbidden pleasure that will stay with you long after the credits roll.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ⭐ (5 of 5)

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma will hit theaters on August 7.

The post TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA Is a Transformative Work of Queer Cinema appeared first on Nerdist.

First lady Melania Trump’s wildly expensive (and deeply boring) box office bomb is getting a sequel.

During an interview on Real America’s Voice Monday, Marc Beckman, senior adviser to the first lady, announced that Melania was getting her own docuseries with Amazon Prime.

The new project would follow up on Melania, the 2026 film that captured just 20 days of the first lady’s life—and still somehow managed to be the most expensive documentary ever made.

“We open the window, a little bit, into her private life, her marriage, her family. We open a little deeper into her career, as well as her philanthropy, but with the docuseries, it’s a little bit different,” Beckman said. “It’s shot different. It’s a different story. It’s a full new experience for the viewers.”

Sounds “different,” but definitely not different enough.

Amazon spent $40 million for the rights to make the film and an additional $35 million for an aggressive marketing blitz—a price tag that has been criticized as a blatant attempt to cozy up to the president.

It didn’t matter how much money Amazon poured into Melania; practically nobody went to see it. The project bombed spectacularly at the box office, and nearly a dozen people close to the Trump administration skipped out on the world premiere—even the first lady’s own son. The film was also the subject of serious labor issues behind the scenes, and a whopping two-thirds of the film’s staff requested not to be credited at the end.

Melania was produced by the first lady herself and directed by Brett Ratner, the disgraced filmmaker who has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse by six different women. Melania and Ratner both appear in the government’s files on alleged sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The docuseries would premiere “exclusively” on Amazon Prime “this fall,” according to Beckman.

Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan’s Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, defeating U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in a massive victory for the party’s progressive wing in a battleground state. The real test of El-Sayed’s and progressives’ strength will now come in a November matchup against Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman who ran unopposed for the GOP nomination. The seat is pivotal to…

Source

SpaceX beat revenue forecasts in its first results as a public company, but surging AI expenditure and another quarterly loss left investors unimpressed. In unrelated but appropriately-timed space news, a discarded SpaceX rocket body is believed to have struck the Moon this morning. SpaceX's figures show revenue rising sharply across its two main segments. For the quarter ended June 30, total revenue reached $7.8 billion, up from $4.7 billion in the previous quarter. Connectivity revenue increased from $3.3 billion to $4.3 billion, while AI revenue jumped from $818 million to $2.6 billion. Capital expenditure jumped from $10.1 billion in the first quarter to $18.4 billion in the second, with AI infrastructure accounting for $15.8 billion. Connectivity, which includes Starlink, remained SpaceX's only profitable operating segment, although losses from AI operations fell to $1.3 billion for the quarter ending June 30, down from $2.5 billion in the previous quarter. Musk was his usual bombastic self during an investor call on the results, stating: "It's not out of the question that at some point Starlink will deliver a majority of the world's internet, at least in countries where we're allowed to operate." It was left to SpaceX's Chief Operating Officer, Gwynne Shotwell, to qualify Musk's statement with the words: "We expect Starlink will represent a significant portion of internet traffic." Shotwell struck a more measured, if still ambitious, note on Starship and the company's lunar plans, saying: "We want to put boots on the ground – boots on the Moon – in 2028." For his part, Musk told investors that the next Starship flight would be the first to deploy Starlink satellites into orbit, and that there was a chance the company might catch a returning Starship upper stage. Flight 13's Starship made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean and was the first vehicle of the V3 design to remain intact through the maneuver. Musk said that the company would attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage this year. It has been a while since SpaceX last managed the crowd-pleasing feat of catching the booster, and both recent flights of its V3 Starship rocket have ended with booster problems and a faster-than-planned descent into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX is far from the only tech company spending vast sums on AI technology, but with Starlink being the only profitable part of the business and capital expenditure rising at the rate it is, investors appear rattled. SpaceX shares fell about 10 percent to $110.95 in pre-market trading, well below their $135 IPO price and less than half their $225.64 peak. ®

Anthropic is building a team for designing its own custom AI chips. The Claude-maker said it would co-design hardware and models to help its technology run faster and more efficiently.

President Trump’s handpicked congressional candidate lost his primary to someone who dropped out weeks ago.

Amir Hassan, a veteran and self-proclaimed “America First Patriot,” was touted by Trump as the preferred GOP choice to represent Michigan’s 8th district in the House of Representatives.

“Amir Hassan has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Representative from Michigan’s 8th Congressional District,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday. “Election Day is Tuesday, August 4th. GET OUT AND VOTE FOR AMIR—HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”

Voters didn’t agree, as Hassan lost handily to Thomas Smith by over 10,000 votes, securing just 33.2 percent to Smith’s 50.4 percent. Yet despite his name being on the ballot, Smith had dropped out of the race last month and ceased all campaigning, The Detroit News reported.

That makes this loss—and Trump’s endorsement—all the more embarrassing.

Hassan may have been doomed from the very start, as MAGA supporters widely criticized his endorsement on the basis of his being Muslim. Hassan identifies as a Christian, claims to have “zero tolerance for extremists who pervert Islam into something evil,” and has touted his belief that “Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East.” None of that seemed to matter Tuesday night.

Maybe Hassan was a uniquely weak candidate, or maybe Michigan GOP voters saw an Arabic name on their ballots and ran for the hills. Either way, this loss reflects more poorly on Trump than anyone, and suggests that he is not the kingmaker he claims to be.

Smith will go on to face Democratic Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet, who ran uncontested in her primary. It’s unclear if he will take on the race, as he previously endorsed Al Lemmo, who secured just 16.4 percent of the vote.

⚡ Quick Take

• Insidious: Out of the Further takes it up a notch with its final trailer and brings the Further into our world.

When it comes to places that we simply do not wish to go, the Further is near the top of our list. This vast and very scary dimension from the Insidious franchise is absolutely terrifying and very much so unsafe. It just might be scarier than going to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is its own horror story. Now, just imagine if the Further was able to exist in the real world. Well, you don’t have to imagine any more. Insidious: Out of the Further takes it up a notch with its final trailer and brings the Further into our world. We hate that for these characters. 

Amelia Eve is Gemma, a young mom who is raising her daughter in the house she grew up in. Gemma soon discovers she can travel into the Further, and that’s not good for anyone. But her story takes an interesting twist when she realizes that she can bring what lives in that dimension out of it. Now, all the scary a** demons and things there are ready to come and play in her house. Predictably, this puts Gemma and her child in a very dangerous predicament. 

Sony Pictures

2026 continues to be a year where horror is shining, with the success of Backrooms and Obsession. But it has also had its not-so-great offerings like Scream 7. It seems that this year is where creepypasta, dark magic, and psychological horror trumps slashers. And if the trailer for Insidious: Out of the Further is any indication, this film will be yet another win for the enduring franchise. 

RELATED ARTICLE

INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER Trailer Is Scarily Good

Insidious: Out of the Further hits theaters really soon on August 21.

The post INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER Trailer Brings Demons to the Real World appeared first on Nerdist.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to The TNR Blue Book. It’s our new daily newsletter that covers Congress and much more, but with a distinctly TNR twist: Our focus will be strictly on Democrats, liberal and progressive groups, and the fight to take back power and save democracy. Every morning, you’ll get a rundown of late-breaking news, what Democrats on Capitol Hill are thinking, quick hits on what you need to know nationally, the latest on what’s coming out of the think tanks and activist groups, short interviews with progressive newsmakers and authors, and more (including some humor and political trivia!). There’s nothing else out there like it.

Sign up and get this newsletter for free. 

Inside Washington

How popular is Hakeem Jeffries among Democrats?

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is struggling among some Democratic voters, a new poll from the progressive A Fight Worth Having, or AFWH, PAC suggests. The poll comes as Democrats are poised to take back the House this November, which would vault Jeffries to the position of speaker of the House.

The poll surveyed likely voters in three blue districts: New York’s 15th congressional district, a heavily Hispanic and Black district represented by Representative Ritchie Torres; Arizona’s 4th congressional district, represented by Representative Greg Stanton; and Missouri’s 1st district, a plurality-Black district represented by Representative Wesley Bell. New York’s 15th and Missouri’s 1st are both heavily Democratic districts, and Arizona’s 4th is rated D+4 by the Cook Political Report. Both Stanton and Torres easily defeated progressive challengers in their primaries this year. Bell handily won reelection against progressive Cori Bush on Tuesday.

“What we’ve been trying to do with our polling is go into Democratic strongholds where you would think that Hakeem Jeffries would be the strongest,” said Corbin Trent, who runs AFWH. Trent was the national campaign coordinator for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s communications director.

The poll found that a plurality of voters in Arizona’s 4th district (45 percent) and Missouri’s 1st district (43 percent) say Democrats in Congress should replace Jeffries as leader if they win back the House in November—with only 34 percent and 37 percent, respectively, thinking he should remain in his position. The rest were “not sure.” Jeffries had more support in New York’s 15th district, where 61 percent of respondents support Jeffries staying on as the leader of the caucus and 31 percent want someone else. After being given a set of strongly worded progressive messaging points against Jeffries, respondents’ support for Jeffries dropped in all three districts.

Of course, voters don’t decide who is speaker of the House. Representatives of the majority party vote for their speaker when the new Congress convenes. Still, the findings reflect a broader frustration with how Democratic voters perceive their leaders as having fought back against President Donald Trump. A number of progressive candidates who won their primaries this year have declined to say whether they will support Jeffries as speaker, including Darializa Avila Chevalier, Adam Hamawy, and Claire Valdez. Melat Kiros, who won her primary in Colorado’s 1st congressional district, has pledged not to support any Democrat who takes corporate PAC money for leadership (Jeffries receives such money).

AFWH ran the poll through Redbox Research, its polling unit managed by Peter Feld. The poll was fielded by Braun Research of Princeton, New Jersey.

“One should never put much weight on any one poll,” Jeffery Jenkins, provost professor of public policy, political science, and law at the University of Southern California, cautioned in an email. “I think Jeffries maintains a lot of support within the caucus.” While leftist candidates may have criticized Jeffries, he added, “it remains to be seen how they will vote on a speakership contest if the Democrats win a majority.… Comments at this point are cheap talk. Actual votes cast are costly signals.”

Jeffries’s team did not comment directly on the poll, but referred The New Republic to a recent speech Jeffries gave outlining Democratic strategy to win the midterms and advance their agenda if they take back the House. In that July 26 speech, Jeffries made the pitch that he and House Democrats were ready to lead if elected to the majority this November. Speaking at the United Steelworkers Union Hall in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he promised to hold the Trump administration accountable for corruption, “clean up the mess at the United States Supreme Court,” ban the president, vice president, and members of Congress from trading stocks, and make health care affordable for “every single citizen.”

Jeffries’s support among Black voters remains strong, particularly in New York’s 15th congressional district, close to his home district, New York’s 8th. Seventy-four percent of Black voters in the 15th district support his leadership, while 20 percent want him to be replaced. In Missouri’s 1st district, a smaller number of Black voters, but still a plurality of 43 percent, support his leadership.

Overall, Jeffries maintains good favorability ratings, including among the voters surveyed by A Fight Worth Having’s poll. In New York’s 15th district, he comes away with a 66 percent favorability rating. In Arizona’s 4th district, 53 percent of respondents approve of him, and 50 percent do in Missouri’s 1st district. In a January poll of base Democratic voters conducted by Embold Research for The New Republic, Jeffries received a 60 percent favorability rating. But in both these polls, national progressives like Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani tended to outperform Jeffries’s favorability ratings. In Missouri’s 1st district, the AFWH poll found Mamdani outperforming both Jeffries and Bell, with a 66 percent favorability rating. 

Trent didn’t offer a specific name, nor a plan to replace Jeffries as leader of the caucus. “The list of people that could do the job is quite long,” he said. “But there’s also a pretty long list of people that aren’t ready for that job.”

Jeffries is all but certain to hold onto his leadership role, even if the midterms usher in a few more progressives skeptical of his leadership. But the AFWH poll, along with recent election results and anti-incumbent attitudes, does point to a challenge for him. Ultimately, the question probably isn’t whether Jeffries will remain at the helm, but rather how he will manage an increasingly progressive caucus and prioritize legislation if he does hold the gavel come January.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

GOP attacks on Francesca Hong are getting ugly

Wisconsin’s primaries will take place next week. But Tom Tiffany, favored to win the Republican gubernatorial primary, has already begun attacking Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who’s favored to win the Democratic primary, over her old tweets. In 2022, Hong posted to the site then known as Twitter about witnessing “the worst of humanity” emerge on Valentine’s Day when she was working in restaurants. In 2019, she described feeling uncomfortable in the fast food chain Culver’s around “old white people who didn’t think we spoke english.” A third tweet said, “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done that in 1621.” Tiffany has reposted the tweets with statements of support for the holidays in question. “Just so everyone knows where I stand, I won’t cancel Thanksgiving as governor,” read one. 

Hong told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Molly Beck that the tweets were “jokes,” but took a more nuanced position in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities,” Hong said when asked whether she favored canceling the holiday, adding, “I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve.”  

In recent days, Mother Jones’s Julia Métraux recently reported, right-wing media have also attacked Hong over her medical history. Hong has spoken in the past about having been hospitalized during a mental health crisis as a teenager and having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Asked about conservatives’ focus on the issue, Hong told Mother Jones in a statement that her own struggles have increased her “empathy and compassion” and made her a “stronger leader,” adding that “it’s important to talk openly so that others aren’t isolated and can take that first step to get help.”

Recent polling showed Tiffany narrowly leading Hong 43 to 40 in a hypothetical matchup. He also heads into the general election with $5 million in his war chest—“10 times as much cash as any Democratic candidate,” Beck reported Tuesday.

Elsewhere:

• Veteran wildfire fighters worry that “aggressive fire suppression tactics ordered by the Trump administration … could put firefighters in danger,” Stateline’s Alex Brown reports.
• New Jersey’s “assault weapon” ban will remain in effect, a federal appellate judge ordered on Tuesday, until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear the case.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Groundwork Collaborative and Ipsos release a new poll that goes beyond the typical finding that workers are worried about AI in the workplace. Turns out some workers are less worried than others. “Nearly half of workers with college degrees believe that AI will improve their own job compared to just 19% of workers with a high school education,” the press release explains. “Sentiment about AI in the workplace diverges along racial lines as well, with Black workers far more likely than their white peers to say that AI will replace them in the workplace outright (12% vs 4%).”

On Thursday, the Brookings Institution hosts “Teachers at the Frontlines of Climate Change,” an online event about the challenges facing teachers in eastern and southern Africa as they teach students about the climate change they’re already seeing on a daily basis—without adequate support.

The Economic Policy Institute’s Ismael Cid-Martinez writes on the organization’s Working Economics blog that, “while the overall financial well-being of most adults held steady in 2025, the financial well-being of Black adults declined. These individuals were also more likely to experience layoffs, leaving a higher share of Black adults and their families with increased fear of finding or keeping a job in 2025.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn  

In Closing

Book of the Week: The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud by Cecilia Rikap

THE GIST: Based on over 100 interviews with figures at the world’s leading tech and artificial intelligence firms, Rikap argues Microsoft, Amazon, and Google—and relative newcomers like OpenAI and Anthropic—have grown so powerful that they more closely resemble states than traditional corporations, which poses a significant problem for the contemporary anti-monopoly movement. Even other behemoth corporations, she writes, cannot avoid relying on these tech companies.

PRAISE: Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, says The Rulers is “an essential read for anyone seeking to understand why governing AI and digital infrastructure in the public interest is one of the defining political challenges of our time.”

CRUISING THE INDEX: One of Rikap’s many provocative ideas is that data centers should be public goods, used as counterbalances to the growing power of massive tech corporations.

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: Especially interesting for those well versed in the growing literature around corporate consolidation, The Rulers is troubling and persuasive about the limits of anti-monopoly tactics given the massive size of the current giants. Its argument that these corporations have grown state-like is particularly compelling.

—Alex Shephard  

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

One of Michigan’s greatest senators was a liberal crusader who was a major force behind 1965’s Voting Rights Act (remember the Voting Rights Act? It used to be a thing). Who was he? Possibly too-big hint: One of the Senate office buildings is named for him. (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)