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CBS’s 60 Minutes is getting another Trump-styled makeover.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat is leaving The New York Times to join the storied broadcast magazine in a new role, 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton announced Tuesday.

Douthat has served as one of the Times’ principal conservative voices for more than two decades, writing for the daily’s opinion section since 2009. His latest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, was published in 2025.

Despite being an early skeptic of Donald Trump’s politics and popularity, Douthat has since downplayed the president’s authoritarian and fascist tendencies while attempting to rationalize Trump’s behavior.

He has also criticized Democrats for their “resistance” showcases, spurring condemnation from those on the left that Douthat has been incorporated into a sort of “anti-anti-Trump” persona among the American intelligentsia, apparently ready to castigate Trump’s critics even as he himself scrutinizes the president and his policies.

Douthat will join the show alongside author Sebastian Junger, CBS News correspondent Trevor Phillips, and filmmaker Gianna Toboni, according to Bilton.

Bari Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist herself, has changed seemingly everything at CBS News since she was tapped to run the fabled network late last year. Weiss was appointed despite the fact that she had never worked in broadcast, lacked traditional reporting experience, and had also never run a major news operation.

Under Weiss’s stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories in order to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on now former correspondent Cecilia Vega’s 60 Minutes segment investigating the result of Trump’s mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT mega-prison.

The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, ranging from Vega to 60 Minutes’ veteran executive producer Bill Owens and the program’s de facto face Scott Pelley.

In March, Weiss attempted to install another questionable commentator in the show’s lineup—wellness influencer and Epstein pen pal Peter Attia—though his job offer was quickly revoked.

Runlayer is suing Rippling after Rippling evaluated the startup's MCP gateway product and then opted to build one itself.

Businesses operating in Santa Cruz County must register with the county clerk. Lookout Santa Cruz reviews the public filings from local businesses to report on new businesses starting in the area.

Here is what’s new in local business recently.

New businesses

• BETTER DAYS was registered at 269 Zurich Ave., Watsonville CA 95076 by Julie A Zeise as an individual business on July 13.
   
• FENIXA was registered at 2623 41st Avenue, Soquel CA 95073 by Fenixa LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 13.
   
• PENINSULA CONSTRUCTION was registered at 1185 San Andreas Rd, Watsonville CA 95076 by Ricard Carl Rodriguez as an individual business on July 14.
   
• PALETERIA LOS FRESEROS was registered at 7985 Highway 9, Ben Lomond CA 95005 by Paleteria Los Freseros LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 14.
   
• THE INTERCONNECT PRESS was registered at 849 Almar Ave., Suite C-191, Santa Cruz CA 95060 by Claudia Michele Lamoreaux as an individual business on July 15.
   
• TRICORD GENOMICS was registered at 117 Gault St., Unit G, Santa Cruz CA 95062 by Mark Diekhans as an individual business on July 15.
   
• SIENA STUDIOS-CREATIVE DESIGN was registered at 523 Centennial St., Santa Cruz CA 95060 by Siena E. Royer as an individual business on July 16.
   
• HORIZONVIEW TECHNOLOGIES was registered at 117 Goss Ave., Santa Cruz CA 95065 by Sky Horse LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 16.
   
• IRON ROSE DESIGNS was registered at 1434 El Rancho Dr, Santa Cruz CA 95060 by Emillie Rose Feenan as an individual business on July 17.
   
• TALLIE’S TAILORING, TRUE CRUZ was registered at 1840 41st Ave. Ste 102-116, Capitola CA 95010-2527 by Tallie Adair Crawford as an individual business on July 17.
   
• MOUNTAIN HIGH CRAFTERS was registered at 81 Vick Dr, Santa Cruz CA 95060 by Brent Clarence Jacobs as an individual business on July 20.
   
• ELIZABETH ANN STUDIOS was registered at 1567 Pesce Way, Santa Cruz CA 95062 by Elizabeth Ann Plummer as an individual business on July 20.
   
• MB BOOKKEEPING was registered at 618 Mckenzie Avenue, Watsonville CA 95076 by Silva Anthony as an individual business on July 20.
   
• FUEGO JALISCIENSE was registered at 738 Martinelli St., Watsonville CA 95076 by Aldo Perez-lara as an individual business on July 20.
   
• ALWAYS RIDING NEVER HIDING CLOTHING was registered at 1045 Water St. A, Santa Cruz CA 95062 by Conquistadores Fernandez LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 20.
   
• NAUTICAL CUSTOMS SANTA CRUZ was registered at 1045 Water St. A, Santa Cruz CA 95062 by Conquistadores Fernandez LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 20.
   
• CROSSOVER CREATORS FUND was registered at 2a Madrone Ave., Mount Hermon CA 95041 by Crossover Sound Waves Incorporated as a corporation on July 21.
   
• BROTHERS KEEPER BASKETBALL was registered at 1840 Wharf Rd, Capitola CA 95010 by Brothers Keeper Basketball LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 21.
   
• BMS AUTOMATIC GATES was registered at 325 Soquel Ave. #200, Santa Cruz CA 95062 by Bms Garage Doors And Gates, Inc. as a corporation on July 21.
   
• WALTZ BEHAVIOR GROUP was registered at 231 Oregon Street, Santa Cruz CA 95060 by Access Educational Solutions LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 21.
   
• COASTAL HOME CONCIERGE was registered at 3357 Chardonnay Rd, Soquel CA 95073 by Anne M.f. Harrison as a general partnership on July 22.
   
• PACIFIC COAST ELECTRICAL SOLUTIONS was registered at 836 Seacliff Drive, Aptos CA 95003 by Pacific Coast Trades Group, Inc. as a corporation on July 22.
   
• THE APPLE BIN FRUITSTAND was registered at 1907 East Lake Ave., Watsonville CA 95076 by George Basich as a business operated by a married couple on July 22.
   
• ALEGEND, EOSGROVE, LEGEND TEXT was registered at 160 Pine Flat Rd, Santa Cruz CA 95060 by Hencke,joseph David as an individual business on July 22.
   
• SIGNAL INSTITUTE was registered at 2125 Pleasant Valley Rd, Aptos CA 95003 by Braveheart Inc. as a corporation on July 22.
   
• THE QUEEN PUPUSAS was registered at 163 West Lake Ave., Watsonville CA 95076 by Nelia Rivas as a co-partnership on July 23.
   
• CRUZ’N SHUTTLES AND TOURS was registered at 200 12th Avenue, Santa Cruz CA 95062 by Cruz’n Transportation LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 23.
   
• NURTURED BEGINNINGS was registered at 525 Airport Blvd. #52, Watsonville CA 95076 by Mayra Paulina Fernandez-zamora as an individual business on July 23.
   
• DAY VALLEY DAHLIAS, DAY VALLEY GARDENS was registered at 1805 Leslie Ln, Aptos CA 95003 by George J. Lucchesi as a business operated by a married couple on July 23.
   
• SHOCKWAVE SANTA CRUZ was registered at 9509 Soquel Drive, Aptos CA 95076 by Hastings Chiropractic Inc. as a corporation on July 23.
   
• RESTORATIVE INK LLC was registered at 7495 Soquel Drive, Suite D, Apots CA 95003 by Restorative Ink LLC as a Limited Liability Company on July 24.
   
• PACIFIC COFFEE ROASTING COMPANY S.C. was registered at 815 Ocean St., Santa Cruz CA 95060 by Hassan Ayyad as an individual business on July 24.
   
• MITCHELL MAINTENANCE was registered at 45 Boling Rd, Royal Oaks CA 95076 by Richard Mitchell as an individual business on July 24.
   
• TACOS DON VERGAS was registered at 55 Gardner Ave., Watsonville CA 95076 by Rene Hernandez Resendiz as an individual business on July 24.
   

The post Santa Cruz County business filings: week of July 27 appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

His change of position comes after "the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally."

President Trump couldn’t stay awake at Lindsey Graham’s funeral Tuesday.

As several well-wishers eulogized the former senator at the Washington National Cathedral, Trump could barely hold his face up and keep his eyes open. It didn’t take long for him to start dozing off, occasionally blinking to try and hide his drowsiness.

Trump, face drooping heavily, is struggling to stay awake at Lindsey Graham's memorial service pic.twitter.com/E0SzRm87s2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026

Trump is out 💤 pic.twitter.com/xeQcm5fDXM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026

Trump is fighting nuclear war against wokeness pic.twitter.com/PnOdJn8l5k

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026

At certain points, Trump even started tilting his head as he was falling asleep.

this is elder abuse pic.twitter.com/dkaZ0ZGkof

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026

All of this took place shortly after Trump delivered his own eulogy, in which he went off-script and made fun of Graham a little, with all of his friends and family present, and reminded the audience about the time he publicly shared Graham’s cell phone number. All of that was probably much too tiring for the 80-year-old Trump, and he decided to take a little rest.

Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio has been accused of horrifying acts of violence by multiple former partners. His ex-wife Emily Moreno—daughter of Ohio GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno—said Miller threw hot water on her, held a gun to her head, and possibly broke the collarbone of the couple’s 2-year-old daughter. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who served during Donald…

Source

A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Which Republican ghoul will take Lindsey Graham’s spot?

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President Donald Trump has made a habit of insulting our northern neighbors, and it’s coming back to bite him.

Canadians are boycotting travel to the United States in record numbers, costing the U.S. economy upward of $3.3 billion, the Canadian government reports. Tourism is at an all-time low this July, dropping more than 30 percent in year-over-year declines for the first time since 9/11.

“Following the change in the U.S. administration in early 2025 and the implementation of America First policies, Canadian travel sentiment shifted abruptly,” the report states.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, the number of Canadians willing to describe the U.S. as a “reliable partner” has dropped from 83 percent in 2022 to only 35 percent today.

No mystery here: Since the start of Trump’s second term, he has levied massive tariffs on Canadian goods, threatened Canadian sovereignty, and repeatedly insulted the Canadian people. Just last week, Canada rescinded its invitations to U.S. officials for the grand opening of the Michigan-Ontario Gordie Howe Bridge, days after Trump imposed new 50 percent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods and blamed the country for wildfire smoke drifting across America’s northern border. Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the “51st state” and references to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as a “governor” only add insult to injury.

But actions have consequences. As Canadians sour on the prospect of visiting the U.S., the American people are losing tourist dollars to the tune of $3.3 billion.

“In response to these measures and threats to Canadian sovereignty, provinces, territories, and Canadians from coast to coast to coast have stood together, taking the necessary actions to support our economy and defend our workers, farmers, businesses, and families,” Prime Minister Carney wrote in a statement following the latest round of tariffs. “In all circumstances, Canada will work relentlessly and take any measures necessary to build our strength at home and to support Canadian workers, farmers, businesses, and families.”

If only President Trump could say the same.

A longtime Department of Homeland Security official has resigned, citing the Trump administration’s “brazen corruption” and the “war on immigrants.”

Over the weekend, Marc Rosenblum, who serves as executive director for the Office of Homeland Security Statistics, announced he would end his decade of service at the DHS, Wired reported Monday.

“I’m sad to suspend my career in public service and leave my amazing team,” Rosenblum wrote in a LinkedIn post. “But it will come as no surprise that I’m thrilled to end my relationship with the current administration.

“Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I just need a change,” Rosenblum wrote.

Rosenblum spent years working to improve transparency at DHS, and spearheaded efforts to publish information on immigration arrests and deportations for the first time. But after the Trump administration launched its sweeping deportation efforts, DHS stopped publishing data on ICE detentions, Customs and Border Protection encounters, and deportations—gutting the department’s transparency and undermining accountability. Rosenblum told Wired that he and his co-workers had faced “a challenging and often hostile work environment.”

In his LinkedIn post, Rosenblum said he was taking a month off, but looking forward to taking up a new role that would “actually align with my values and those of most other Americans.”

AIs not only make life-and-death targeting decisions on the battlefield, but also involve humans in only some stages of the decision-making process. To illustrate how that happens and prompt greater scrutiny of model-enabled killing, Airwars, a not-for-profit transparency watchdog, has published a detailed report, taking apart the ways machine learning powers modern warfare. The investigation, titled Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain, offers a visual guide through a fictitious kill chain – the steps real militaries go through to identify targets and eliminate them, with an emphasis on decisions delegated to AI. Authors Sophia Goodfriend, Heidy Khlaaf, Namir Shabibi, Joe Dyke, and Nathan Walker cover six stages: the decision support systems used to assist data gathering, surveillance technology, intelligence and identification, target selection, strikes on targets, and post-strike assessments. The report notes, "A recent book about US military AI revealed that in some operations only two of the six stages of the US military kill chain now involved humans in the loop, with a third involving some human oversight. The rest are now fully automated." Given that targeting mistakes have been widely documented, it's worth wondering whether AI is making such errors more common. And since military officials have, in the past, insisted AI's role cannot be known, there's reason to look for ways to better understand when AI is involved in life-and-death decisions. "In journalism and in policy, there's a tendency to focus on maybe one autonomous weapon system, like an Anduril drone or a Palantir anomaly detection system, and to look at the specific companies that are producing a few single machine learning algorithms that are undergirding those systems," said Sophia Goodfriend, research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Pembroke College and co-author of the report, in a phone interview with The Register. "What we wanted to do … is to really underscore the stack of AI systems that are upending what it means to wage war, specifically what it means to surveil, target, and kill on the battlefield, and also emphasize how various technologies work together or don't work together throughout the kill chain." The project's goal, she said, is to look beyond specific technical systems at the way warfare is mediated by machine learning algorithms and to highlight the specific limitations of those systems. For each stage of the kill chain, the report touches on sources of potential errors: the reliability and accuracy of decision support systems, automated translation errors during surveillance of a target's text messages, target risk scoring systems derived from algorithmic assessment of social media data, computer vision systems that may misidentify objects and people, the shortcomings of recurrent neural networks used during drone strikes when there's GPS and/or electronic jamming, and the potential problems with AI-assisted battle damage assessment systems. The specific kill chain described is fictitious, but Goodfriend said that this was necessary to avoid making overreaching claims about how specific militaries operate. "Obviously it's hard to reconstruct proprietary systems used by militaries in real time today because they are often censored and secret and reporters cannot pry open exactly how a military is operating," she said, adding that she hopes the report prompts people to question claims about having a human in the loop. "What comes across in this piece is just how difficult it is for a human to intervene in a machine learning decision, the pernicious problem of automation bias, especially under the time constraint of war, and just how thoroughly everything is mediated by AI and automation already on the battlefield," she said. "So even if you have somebody who's reviewing a risk profiling system by looking at a social media post, that social media post will be translated by a machine learning algorithm and they won't be able to verify if that translation is correct because they're dealing with this time constraint and it will be really tempting and much easier to defer to an AI-generated output." Goodfriend acknowledges that it's difficult for civilians to make decisions about technologies they use that might amplify physical safety risks from military AI systems. That's why, she said, it's important to draw attention to the way these systems work. "The stack of AI systems integrated into warfare are the subject of a lot of hype and a lot of mystique and it's rare for those making or deploying these systems to really break down how they actually operate it and what it entails for civilians living under warfare," she said. "So, in illustrating how these technologies work, the massive amounts of data, of people's private information, of passive surveillance that is the foundation and lifeblood of automated warfare, I think that that's one way of moving the needle in terms of advocacy." The other key takeaway of the report, she said, is to underscore that machine learning systems make errors. "The point is not that these are teething problems that will be mitigated or ironed out once these technologies are deployed more and refined more, but really to emphasize the inherent flaws of machine learning and how they can't perform the tasks that militaries expect them to perform when they're deployed on the battlefield," she said. ®

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