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SpaceX is building a new power plant for xAI's Colossus data centers, but it won't remove existing, unpermitted turbines for many more months.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has stopped offering free tours, after a tour guide claimed President Donald Trump had killed the nation’s prestigious national theater.

In a Thursday memo review by The New York Times, Brooks Broeke, the director of the volunteer program, announced a “temporary pause” on the tour program for the first time in five decades.

The move follows a Times interview with Sandy Weiswasser, an 87-year-old volunteer tour guide who spoke candidly about Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center.

“This place used to be really thriving and busy and crowded,” Weiswasser said in the interview published Monday. “Now it’s a black hole.”

Before the memo announcing the pause was circulated, three volunteers expressed concerns that the Kennedy Center would target the tour program in retribution for Weiswasser’s interview.

The Kennedy Center has become an outlet for the Trump administration’s shocking pettiness. Trump previously tried to close the Kennedy Center for two years for “renovations” after multiple artists cancelled their performances in response to his proposed name change. After Trump’s name was scraped off the wall, the building’s facade has remained concealed by a massive tarp.

One company's inventive campaign for an unreleased product has become a contest between Anthropic and OpenAI to see which can shout the loudest about its own failures. Readers who tuned in earlier today saw the latest episode in the drama – or sitcom – as Anthropic tried to outdo OpenAI's appropriation of the Mythos marketing playbook and made itself the punchline. Since first teasing Mythos in April, Anthropic has marketed the model through fear – declaring its cybersecurity models too dangerous for public release and offering access only to a select few trusted organizations via Project Glasswing. To its credit, the strategy has paid off. Anthropic has closely associated the Mythos name with cybersecurity, which may explain why OpenAI appeared to borrow its competitor's proven PR strategy last week. OpenAI agents exploited a zero-day to escape their sandbox, leading to the autonomous cyberattack on Hugging Face. The episode duly secured sensational headlines playing on the long-held fear that AI will one day go rogue and take over the world. Anthropic responded this week by lathering on even more clown makeup, squandering an opportunity in the process. The Claude maker sent its models into a testing environment to capture a flag. Their prompts said they had no internet access, but because of what Anthropic called "a misunderstanding" with evaluation partner Irregular, the connection was live. Anthropic's models then followed OpenAI's script: they reached the public internet and attacked systems belonging to outside organizations. This time, three were affected rather than one, the company admitted. In one scenario, Mythos 5 persuaded developers to download a poisoned PyPI package. It was installed on 15 machines, including one at a cybersecurity company that routinely scans such packages for malware. In Anthropic's words: "When that company's scanner installed the package, Claude's hidden code executed. We believe the company's security scanner treated PyPI packages as safe to install, and as a result, Claude was able to exfiltrate the company’s credentials to a collection point it had set up. Claude then used these credentials to access further infrastructure from this company." Worse still, the first of the three incidents occurred in April. Anthropic discovered them only months later, during a retrospective manual review prompted by OpenAI's disclosure. Had it not gone looking, they might never have been discovered, let alone disclosed. There are some caveats. Opus 4.7, the oldest model tested, attacked production systems despite apparently recognizing what it was doing. Mythos 5 recognized that accessing the internet violated its instructions, then reasoned its way into continuing anyway. It was also responsible for publishing the poisoned PyPI package. Only an unnamed research model stopped itself from attacking external organizations. Anthropic also said the models were not running with the production safeguards and monitoring that would normally surround a deployment. Most damningly, Anthropic ran Mythos 5 – the model it had deemed too dangerous for public release – without safeguards in an environment that unexpectedly had internet access. Following OpenAI's admission that it failed so badly in its responsibility to control its technology, Anthropic could have easily spun the story in its favor. You don't have to be fictional tapdancing political PR antihero Malcolm Tucker to see how Anthropic could have used the episode to make its case as the safer, more trustworthy AI company. Instead, realizing its own marketing playbook was being used to help a competitor, it went head-to-head with OpenAI, willingly admitted that it made similar sandbox-based blunders, and disclosed that the results were even more calamitous. Three companies hacked, not just one. So, while the AI biz has attempted to eclipse OpenAI's "rogue agent" story with its own, what's left behind is a new reputation for irresponsible handling of technology. Failed superheroes The incident does not instill a great deal of trust in either Anthropic or OpenAi to safeguard the world from its AI. Dr Ilia Kolochenko, founder of ImmuniWeb and practising cybersecurity and data protection lawyer, likened the two companies to failed superheroes. "While making conclusions would be a bit premature at this point in time, the incidents certainly do not increase confidence in the AI vendor's ability to safely deploy AI, let alone to assure their customers that the so-called frontier models are safe to use," he told The Register. "It is akin to hiring a superhero to protect you but being afraid that the superhero may suddenly go rogue and kill you and your family. Nobody needs such a superhero." Likewise, security pro Jake Williams, VP at HunterStrategy and IANS faculty member, said: "I'm not going to mince words: the major AI labs are negligent in protecting the public from their agents. "We need government regulation now or at the very least a private cause of action with guaranteed punitive damages for agents damaging others." By trying to reclaim a marketing trope that served it well, Anthropic has invited scrutiny of its own safety record and accusations that it is chasing attention above all else. Other experts we spoke to shared the concern that both companies are mishandling their agents, with potentially greater consequences as the systems become more capable. The common thread is recklessness, which Anthropic and OpenAI seem oddly eager to advertise. ®

President Donald Trump triumphantly announced Thursday night that Hamas has agreed to a “complete disarmament” in Gaza, with security being handed over to an international stabilization force. In a sane world with competent leadership, that would be cause for cautious optimism. But with this administration? It’s more likely to suffer the same fate as Trump’s broken Iran deal.

Source

Next Tuesday’s contest in Michigan between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens holds a dubious distinction: No Democratic congressional primary in history has ever attracted so much super PAC cash. The overwhelming majority of the outside money has gone toward ensuring that Stevens, a moderate, pro-Israel Democrat, defeats El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed champion of Medicare for All and Israel critic.

More than $60 million of outside spending has poured into the Senate contest, according to records from the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. The vast majority has come from super PACs that—unlike El-Sayed’s and Stevens’ own campaigns—can accept unlimited donations.

Brendan Glavin, the director of insights at OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics, said the level of outside spending in Michigan far exceeds the top Senate races from 2024. “We’re taking this huge leap up,” he explained. “It’s really exploded.” Only this year’s Republican Senate primary in Texas, where John Cornyn lost to Ken Paxton despite a large funding advantage, appears to have attracted more outside money.

The biggest spender by far in Michigan is the United Democracy Project, a super PAC backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that works to elect pro-Israel candidates. UDP has spent more $30 million backing Stevens, according to FEC records—twice as much as it has ever spent on a single race. (The super PAC hit its previous high in 2024, when it spent more than $14 million to defeat former Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a Democratic House primary in New York.) Additional records show that Stevens has also benefitted from a super PAC that in the past has received donations from companies including Chevron and a subsidiary of the tobacco giant Philip Morris.

The race in Michigan—an open seat that Democrats need to hold to take back the Senate—started out as a competitive three-person contest that initially included Mallory McMorrow, a state senator backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who tried to occupy the ideological lane between El-Sayed and Stevens. But despite strong fundraising and early polling, McMorrow struggled to remain competitive and dropped out in early July. 

It means that Michigan primary voters now have an unusually clear choice to make. El-Sayed has the endorsement of key players on the left like Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and the United Auto Workers. Stevens is understood to be the favorite of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and was recently endorsed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. 

At a national level, the results on Tuesday will be closely watched to see if populist outsiders like El-Sayed can continue to topple favorites of the Democratic establishment from coast to coast. It will also be a measure of whether AIPAC can still upend Democratic primaries in which voters increasingly oppose its agenda. If El-Sayed wins, the general election will then test how left-wing candidates perform in swing states. 

El-Sayed, a 41-year-old Rhodes scholar and doctor, worked as the head of Wayne County’s department of health before running for Senate. In 2018, he unsuccessfully ran for governor in Michigan. After the race, he hosted a podcast for Crooked Media and further established his left-wing credentials by writing a book on Medicare for All that included a foreword by Sanders. 

In this year’s Senate race, El-Sayed is not being outspent due to poor fundraising. His campaign raised more than $14.5 million through July 15, according to FEC records. Stevens’ campaign raised less than $12 million by the same date, despite her being a sitting member of Congress. Stevens’ advantage comes entirely from super PACs and other outside groups that can spend independently to support her. 

The outside spending has become a major issue in the race. At a May debate, Stevens made national news for dodging a question from a moderator about what AIPAC does or doesn’t get from backing her campaign. El-Sayed returned to the theme at a July debate when he asked Stevens what she had “given away” for AIPAC’s support. Stevens replied that no one owns her vote and then claimed that anyone spending on her behalf was doing so because of her record of “fighting for Michigan.”

El-Sayed talked more about AIPAC’s role in the race in an interview earlier this month with my colleague Najib Aminy. “AIPAC is the biggest spender in this race by far, and that’s pretty insane,” he said. “And they’re not spending to keep our money here, they’re spending to send our money there … it’s just another example of why we have to get money out of politics.”

The Senate race is not the first time that UDP has backed Stevens. In 2022, the group spent more than $4 million to help her defeat Rep. Andy Levin in a Michigan House primary. Although Levin is Jewish and Stevens is not, he was deemed too critical of Israel by AIPAC despite having served as the president of his synagogue. Since her 2022 victory, Stevens has remained an ardent supporter of Israel, a nation that she has said “comes to me in my dreams.”

El-Sayed, on the other hand, has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and campaigned with the left-wing streamer Hasan Piker. UDP’s unprecedented spending is a recognition of the threat that El-Sayed poses to its agenda. But the super PAC is also aware that focusing on Israel is not the best way to win. Like in other races, its ads in support of Stevens appear to make no mention of Israel.

The full extent of pro-Israel funding being deployed against El-Sayed may significantly exceed the more than $30 million spent by UDP so far. In October 2025, Delaware corporate records show a new entity called the Center for Democratic Priorities was incorporated in the state.

The Center for Democratic Priorities quickly spent $6.5 million backing Stevens, the New York Times has reported. But the ads did not explicitly tell Michiganders to vote for Stevens. Instead, one ad touted Stevens’ efforts to “hold ICE accountable.” Michael Beckel, an expert on money in politics at the nonprofit Issue One, explained that, due to the vagaries of campaign finance law, groups like the Center for Democratic Priorities can skip reporting to the FEC by avoiding direct endorsements and running ads more than 30 days before an election.

As a result, it is even harder than usual to know who funded the group. But there are potential identifiers. In 2024, a super PAC called Blue Wave Action sprang up to help elect Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) in his House primary in Detroit. After the election, FEC records showed that most of the $2.4 million that Blue Wave Action received came from UDP and a related pro-Israel group.

As the Detroit Metro Times has reported, federal records show that a “John Jones” filed paperwork for both Blue Wave Action and the Center for Democratic Priorities. Federal Communications Commission filings I reviewed strongly suggest that the same John Jones worked with both groups: Jones signed paperwork for both groups using Docusign; both signatures have the same string of 15 identifying numbers and letters that are unique to an individual’s account on the digital signing service.

Who John Jones is has been a mystery but FCC records contain significant clues. Advertising agreements that Jones signed for Blue Wave Action in 2024 list the group’s address as a UPS Store in East Lansing and also include a Gmail address for him. According to open source records, the email address is tied to the LinkedIn page of a John Jones who previously worked on government affairs for Sprint and now handles fundraising for a Christian school in Lansing.

Jones did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email and phone.  A colleague at the Christian school where he works was surprised to hear that he may be involved in the Michigan race. His wife, Sandi Jones, who co-owns a Michigan lobbying firm, told me that she did not think the Gmail address listed on FCC records belongs to her husband. But there is reason to doubt whether that is correct. Among other things, the avatar for that Gmail account is a photo of a man who appears to be her husband, the same account has written Google reviews for businesses near the Jones’ Michigan home as recently as this month, and the East Lansing UPS store listed as Blue Wave Action’s address in 2024 is about 15 minutes from their home. 

Who funded the the Center for Democratic Priorities remains unclear. AIPAC has denied being behind it, but there is no way to verify that from public records. Down to the common name of its director, the group appears designed to be as opaque as possible.

The second largest spender in the Michigan race is another innocuously named super PAC called A Stronger Michigan. FEC records show that the group has spent more than $17 million supporting Stevens—more than El-Sayed’s entire campaign had raised as of mid-July. 

A Stronger Michigan, which did not register with the FEC until June, is based at a residential address associated with Jeff Murray, a Virginia-based lobbyist who has represented groups ranging from the Boy Scouts to the tobacco giant Altria. Murray has longstanding ties to Center Forward, a nonprofit that backs moderate Democrats and Republicans that is the source of nearly all the donations disclosed by A Stronger Michigan. (A related super PAC called Center Forward Committee has spent about $1 million backing Stevens in addition to the money routed through A Stronger Michigan.)

As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Center Forward does not have to disclose its donors. But it is possible to put together a partial picture of its funding from other public records. The group, for example, has received millions of dollars from PhRMA, a trade group that represents drug manufacturers. The related Center Forward Committee, formed by Murray in 2014, lists only three corporate donors this election cycle: Chevron, a subsidiary of Philip Morris, and UnitedHealth Group. But those donations do not show where the specific funds given to A Stronger Michigan to support Stevens came from. Murray did not respond to a request for comment. 

The outside spending picture for El-Sayed looks much different. The biggest individual donor to Fighting for Michigan—El-Sayed’s main outside backer—is the candidate’s father-in-law, a nephrologist at a Detroit hospital who had given $300,000 as of July 15. Overall, the super PAC has expended about about $2.8 million—less than one tenth of what has been spent against El-Sayed by the United Democracy Project alone.

When it comes to the role of AIPAC and UDP, El-Sayed sees the results next Tuesday as being about about much more than a single Senate seat. “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,” he said. “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.”

Additional reporting by Najib Aminy.

Reddit is developing a new video experience that lets users watch — or simply listen to — its most popular posts, taking inspiration from the viral TikTok videos that pair Reddit stories with gameplay or other footage. CEO Steve Huffman said the feature is already in the works and could begin testing later this year.

At least one Republican governor is pushing back against President Trump’s plan to take over elections, saying they should continue to be run by states.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt told the Associated Press in an interview published Friday, “I don’t think that we should federalize the elections at all.

“I believe that is a state issue. The states should control their own elections. Should we make sure they’re done fairly and U.S. citizens are voting? 100%. I think there’s broad agreement with that,” Stitt said, ahead of the National Governors Association meeting in his state this weekend, where he will turn over leadership of the organization to Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a Democrat.

Stitt noted, “It is weird that in a swing state, in a certain county, it takes them a month to count the votes. So rightly, you should be questioning some of these things.” However, he also said he trusted the leaders of those states “100 percent.”

“I don’t think we should federalize that. Because then you’ve got a pendulum swing. What about the next guy gets in office and the next guy and the next guy? The system that we have with 50 different states is the right system,” Stitt said. But he also came out in support of Trump’s voter ID bill.

“Now, the SAVE America Act, making sure that we know who’s voting, I think that’s a very legitimate thing to do,” Stitt said.

Stitt isn’t entirely on Trump’s good side. During the last NGA meeting in Washington in February, he had to persuade the president not to exclude two Democratic governors from a White House meeting, and Trump ended up criticizing his performance and calling him a “RINO” for his efforts. In October, Stitt also called out Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to places like Illinois.

“We believe in the federalist system—that’s states’ rights,” he said at the time. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

As states wrap up their primary elections and gear up for the general election in November, Trump is taking drastic steps to engineer a favorable Republican outcome, including demanding voter rolls from states and severely restricting mail-in voting. Statements like Stitt’s aren’t enough—after all, Oklahoma has already agreed to hand over its voter rolls to the Trump administration. Republicans have to actually fight to safeguard the vote from Trump overruling the will of the people.

The startup is building voice models designed to make AI phone calls pass the Turing test.

WhatsApp will automatically move messages from large businesses to a new folder a few hours after you receive them

Teams mobile users now have even less time to update the app before older versions lose calendar access. Microsoft originally set a late-October deadline in its message, but we're guessing someone familiar with the impending demise of Exchange Web Services (EWS) had a quiet word. The date has been brought forward to the beginning of October, leaving users until the end of September to update the Teams mobile app. The October deadline applies only to the iOS and Android apps. The web and desktop versions are unaffected. Users with automatic updates enabled will probably receive a compatible version without doing anything. Managed devices are another matter, and administrators will need to ensure an updated Teams app is deployed, though we can't imagine why they might hesitate to roll out one of Microsoft's updates. Microsoft has stern words for refuseniks: "Older versions will lose calendar access." "This change helps maintain a reliable calendar experience on iOS and Android devices and ensures compatibility with ongoing Teams service updates." Microsoft will begin disabling EWS in Exchange Online on October 1, 2026. The service stopped receiving feature updates in 2018, its retirement was announced in 2023, and Microsoft detailed the shutdown process earlier this year. EWS allows applications to access mailboxes and other data in Exchange. It dates to 2007 and has proved popular with both integrators and miscreants, including those behind the Midnight Blizzard intrusion. Microsoft is understandably keen to shut it down. EWS in on-premises Exchange Server is unaffected, but the Exchange Online version is heading for retirement. Administrators can re-enable it temporarily through a policy setting, but the plug will be pulled for good next year. At the time, Microsoft stated: "There will be no exceptions past April 2027." ®

The Todd Blanche nomination mess in the Senate is truly one of those pass-the-popcorn moments for Democrats and liberals. One can sense that John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, the two outgoing Republican senators who have suddenly developed the backbone to maybe vote against the attorney general nominee now that they’re not facing their voters again, represent a far more broadly (if privately) held view in the Senate GOP that the man is manifestly unqualified.

But this fracas is more than mere entertainment. It’s a full-blown scandal, as President Trump’s real interests here have become clearer, notably via a Truth Social message he posted late Thursday morning. It’s raw sewage even by his standards, and if the Democrats retake the House, this matter has now jumped to the top of my list of grounds for impeachment. It should provide the basis for the first article Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin and his Judiciary Committee draw up.

It all has to do with the slush fund. The fund, you’ll recall, was the result of a settlement in a mind-bending legal proceeding in which Trump sued himself: That is, the president of the United States sued the Internal Revenue Service, seeking $10 billion for the (admittedly illegal) leak of some of his tax returns back in 2019. In May, Trump’s Justice Department, led at the time by Blanche as the acting attorney general, settled the suit between Trump the president and Trump’s IRS by establishing a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, whose moneys were to go to parties Trump deemed to have been wronged by the deep state—starting of course with Trump himself. It also included a shocking clause granting Trump, his family members, and his companies immunity from prosecution for any tax-related crimes they may have committed before the date of deal.

In other words: Blanche created a nearly $2 billion slush fund for Trump to steer money to anyone he wants—and granted him and his kids broad immunity from potential federal prosecution. One observer called it “a breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system.” Raskin put out a 10-point memo on why the deal is “unconstitutional, illegal, and a fraud on the court.” In June, a federal judge blocked the fund’s creation, so it’s on hold for now and probably headed, one supposes, to the Supreme Court.

Around that time, amid the public outcry, Blanche said that the fund would not go forward. He told Congress that the department would put that in writing. But it never has. That’s the holdup with Cornyn and Tillis. If they get it in writing, presumably they would still vote for Blanche.

So that’s when Trump stepped in Thursday morning, when it looked like Blanche’s nomination might be dead, and “truthed” (and boy, it was the truth for once, all right): “Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time. However, John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting. Remember, both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland, and others, too numerous to mention. I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.”

What Trump is saying here is obvious. The slush fund and probably especially the immunity are far more important to him than Blanche is. And anyway, Blanche, whose servile lickspittleism makes predecessor Pam Bondi look like a paragon of independence, can stay in the job more or less indefinitely as acting A.G.

This morning, around 7 a.m., Trump “truthed” again. The fund isn’t for me, he insisted. Rather, it’s for the people who raided the Capitol and banged cops’ heads in; it’s for “the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration.… Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history.” He’s almost surely lying about himself. But even if he’s not, sending $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars, received in the corrupt manner this money was received, to convicted January 6 insurrectionists is without question a high crime in and of itself.

Once again, as with so many other things Trump has done, it’s inconceivable to imagine any other modern American president even thinking this up, let alone doing it. Suing himself; then installing a spineless yes-man—his former personal lawyer, no less—as acting attorney general, who then agrees to a settlement including nearly $2 billion in taxpayer money plus an immunity grant; then being willing to sacrifice said A.G.’s confirmation in order to preserve the fund and the immunity claim. It defies belief.

It’s hard to say how many articles of impeachment the Democratic House might come up with. Indeed, Raskin and his committee’s biggest challenge will be deciding which high crimes and misdemeanors not to pursue. There’ve been dozens, hundreds, and they just can’t plausibly bring an indictment of 100-plus counts. They’re going to have to keep it to some number that the public can digest and buy into.

But the slush fund and immunity grant sure look like count number one to me. Unless of course five members of the you-know-what decide it’s all legal. If that happens, the House Judiciary Committee might look at impeaching them, too.

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.

President Donald Trump lashed out Friday at Texas Senator John Cornyn for holding up acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation.

Cornyn has refused to support Blanche’s nomination over Trump’s cushy settlement deal with the IRS, which granted protections for the president’s family against audits and established a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund for so-called victims of political weaponization. 

But in an angry social media post, Trump insisted the issue was personal. 

Cornyn “never had a problem” with the fund “until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

Trump claimed that his MAGA allies deserved financial compensation because they’d been allegedly targeted by the federal government. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”

Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who cheated on his wife, was impeached by his own party on corruption charges, and illegally targeted his donor’s enemies as state attorney general, among other transgressions. 

Trump has claimed that he defected from Cornyn due to the senator’s “disloyalty.” Now he’s demanding the senator he betrayed fall in line.  

The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed the vote to advance Blanche’s nomination, after Cornyn and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina made clear that they would not support him. Even if he’s not confirmed before the Senate’s August recess, Blanche will continue to serve as acting attorney general. But it would be a humiliating blow to the president, who is clearly losing his grip on party members. 

Despite everything on his plate as the president of the United States, Donald Trump has decided to carve time out of his schedule to fundraise for his personal projects.

Trump checks in with his top fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke—whom he’s warmly nicknamed his ‘princess of darkness’ for her “killer” instincts—almost nightly, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The calls touch on a number of Trump’s financial interests: he routinely asks O’Rourke who has donated, who has not, and the size of individual contributions, and he frequently presses her to ask for even more.

O’Rourke is more than happy to play the part, regularly invoking the president’s name—to whom she refers as “the boss”—while pushing prospective donors to sign larger checks.

“This is very important to the president. He’s asked me to call you and ask you for this donation,” O’Rourke has been known to say, according to the Journal. Or, she might drop that “the boss wants this money.”

Among the donations that O’Rourke has recently secured include $50 million from Softbank for Trump’s presidential library, $25 million from Apple for his White House ballroom project, $10 million from Meta to a Trump-aligned super PAC, $10 million from Microsoft, and $5 million from Amazon.

Trump has been in office for 18 months. Within that same timeframe, he has also raised more than $800 million, in no small part due to O’Rourke’s resolve. She has worked with Trump since 2016 and “absolutely has the president’s 100 percent trust and respect,” according to Brian Ballard, a top Washington lobbyist and former colleague of O’Rourke’s that spoke with the Journal.

Her loyalty and hard labor have been duly repaid: O’Rourke is firmly entrenched in Trump’s inner circle and has been tasked with shouldering some of the Trump family’s bigger projects. She has flown with U.S. officials aboard Air Force One, joined the board of the National Park Foundation that oversees Freedom 250, and was recently appointed as a director at Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.

FBI Director Kash Patel wants to know where you are.

Patel’s FBI has taken a new and dangerous step in its quest to root out alleged voter fraud—tracking down the IP addresses of people who register to vote online.

According to a new report from Axios, the FBI recently requested and obtained the IP address of someone who went online to register to vote in South Carolina. This move is a massive overreach by the Trump administration into local election processes.

“It’s not typical for the FBI to be calling state election officials … and conducting a fishing expedition to see private voter data,” a former senior Justice Department official told Axios. “It’s not typical and it’s not appropriate.”

Although an IP address cannot reveal a person’s exact identity, it does show the user’s geographic location, service provider, and the network they’re using. In the context of voting, an IP address could indicate the state and country a person is registering from.

Axios also spoke with longtime election official in York County, South Carolina, Alan Helms, who said he had never seen this kind of election interference before.

“It is not common” to get a request like this, Helms said. “In my tenure as an election official, going on 20 years, that is the first interaction with law enforcement.”

If the FBI continues pursuing voters’ IP addresses, the fallout could extend far beyond any one state—42 states, plus Washington, D.C., currently allow some form of online voter registration.

The move to track down voter IP addresses is just the latest in President Trump’s ongoing mission to make it harder for Americans to vote ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. Trump has sued 30 states and D.C. in an attempt to obtain state voter rolls. In the past month alone, the president has attacked mail-in voting, repeated his ridiculous claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” in a primetime national address, and attempted to shove his signature voter suppression bill, the SAVE America Act, through Congress. Since the start of his second term, he has mobilized government agencies—including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and now the FBI—to request voter registration lists, ballots from previous elections, and access to voting equipment.

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.

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Inside Washington

Can Dems exploit the tension between Trump and Republican senators? 

Cracks are starting to show in the Republican trifecta: Senate Majority Leader John Thune and President Donald Trump are growing frustrated with one another, as Trump demands the Senate pass the unpassable SAVE Act. Two Republican senators—Thom Tillis and John Cornyn—may have just blocked Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Todd Blanche. In the chaos, Democrats see an opportunity for both midterm success and legislative victories. 

Asked whether Democrats are taking advantage of their increasingly fractured opponents, Senator Tim Kaine said, “We are trying to on things like war powers. Some of the Republicans who’ve been most at odds with Trump have signaled an openness to working with us on those issues.”

On Thursday, the Senate voted on a resolution to curb Trump’s war on Iran—Democrats’ thirteenth attempt at a war powers resolution, including one that passed in late June. At 49–50, this vote failed, but Democrats picked up three Republican votes from Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul. Senator John Fetterman was the only Democrat who opposed the vote. 

“It’s actually pretty typical to see members of a president’s party distancing themselves from him as midterm elections approach, especially when that president is unpopular,” said Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver. He compared it to how Democrats acted in 1994, refusing to give President Bill Clinton what he wanted. Trump is a somewhat unique case because he endorses so heavily in Republican primaries, striking fear into members of the conference. “He’s proven that he can end careers, so they’re pretty fearful of him,” Masket said. “But now that we’re past the primaries, that loses some of its power.”

Some Democrats say that Republicans splitting over the Iran war and fighting over the SAVE Act—Trump’s controversial voter ID bill—reflects well on Democrats. “That’s going to be the contrast that will be on people’s minds when they go into the voting booth,” Senator Andy Kim said.

But, he emphasized, Republican disorganization only helps blue candidates at the polls if Dems can stick together and project unity. He pointed to Senate Democrats’ front against the National Defense Authorization Act, which they blocked in mid-July due to concerns over Iran. “Because of the Republicans fracturing, I think it’s more important than ever to show our unity,” he said. “Otherwise they might be able to push forward on things like the supplemental [funding request] or a [budget] reconciliation 3.0.”

Masket emphasized that there’s almost no partisan legislation Democrats can actively advance while in the minority. So it becomes a waiting game. “Democrats are happy to watch their opponents destroy themselves and don’t really feel like lending a hand one way or the other,” he said.

Senator Richard Blumenthal is hoping Dems can ride the conflict in the GOP to a midterm win. “We need to continue to drive home the message about not just Republican disarray, but profound disrespect for the law, which is outraging the American public, and should advance energy and turnout in the upcoming election,” he said, before reiterating: “It’s all about the elections.”

—Emma Janssen  

Outside Washington

Data center backlash is bipartisan. But is it starting to get bluer?

As Michigan’s much-anticipated primaries on August 4 draw near, most people are watching the Senate matchup between progressive front-runner Abdul El-Sayed and establishment favorite Haley Stevens. Many are also keeping an eye on the 7th district House race, which has become a last-minute vehicle for moderate angst, going by a recent Axios report. But the state legislature is worth watching, too, and a particularly hot topic right now is data centers, which Michigan granted a tax exemption to in bipartisan legislation passed in 2024. One characteristic of data center backlash so far is the way it has united people across the political spectrum. Many have wondered whether this can possibly last in today’s hyperpolarized political environment. 

The Detroit Free Press asks state legislative candidates where they stand on the issue, and while this is hardly a rigorous statistical analysis, the responses do indeed hint at an emerging partisan gradient. A quick rundown: The paper talks to one Republican and one Democrat (Douglas Wozniak of the 24th Senate district and Jason Hoskins of the 7th Senate district, respectively) who think data centers are a fact of life now and the state risks falling behind if it doesn’t host them. The paper identifies 10 Democrats and two Republicans who want more guardrails. (Some, like Democrat Natalie Price, want to see data centers pay property taxes and meet certain environmental standards. Republican Roman Gaskey wants a “closed-loop system that recycles water.”) The paper then finds two Democrats—Rick Silva of the 9th House district and Sean Carlson of the 13th Senate district—who want a full one-year moratorium until government can catch up and figure out how to regulate, and one (Crystal Bailey of the 5th House District) who just wants no new data centers, period. 

Last month, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has supported data center construction, was caught on microphone saying, “We’re used to people saying ‘f—k no,’ and then doing it anyway.” (Whitmer is not seeking reelection, but there is speculation about her making a run for the White House in 2028.) 

Elsewhere:

• A map of Africa presented by the U.S. State Department at a conference in Brazil this week mislabeled every country it featured. After images made it to the internet via AIDS expert Emily Bass’s LinkedIn and Substack posts, Reuters started asking questions. Reuters reported Thursday that a watermark on the map “⁠signals it was made with OpenAI tools.” The State Department blamed the affair on a “team member who ​hastily changed the slide deck before the event.” 
• In case you missed it: The Guardian profiles Wisconsin gubernatorial hopeful Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist currently leading the Democratic pack for the primary on August 11. One of her opponents, Mandela Barnes, suddenly dropped out of the race on Thursday. The piece explores how free childcare, one of Hong’s signature policy proposals, “started winning U.S. elections.”
  
  

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Roosevelt Institute publishes a report titled “Building Up in 2029: How to Make Green Statecraft Durable.” The report takes a more optimistic view than some, with the institute’s Todd N. Tucker emphasizing in the introduction that while the climate crisis is already “harming Americans” and policies “are moving in the wrong direction … somewhat ironically, the Trump administration has shown what an [Inflation Reduction Act] 2.0 might look like, by both exposing the IRA’s vulnerabilities and breaking glass on new tools of economic statecraft that could be beneficial for green priorities.” The report outlines possibilities for a “Project 2029,” in contrast to the Heritage Foundation’s far-right “Project 2025.”

The Groundwork Collaborative releases a statement on Thursday’s Bureau of Economic Analysis report, which found slowed (1.5 percent) growth and 3.7 percent year-over-year inflation. “Today’s report,” said Alex Jacquez, Groundworks’ senior vice president of policy, advocacy, and research, “is a snapshot of an economy under a ceasefire that no longer exists.” The press release also argues that “the economy isn’t as strong as even the modest headline suggests,” since “AI investment continued to prop up the economy” and “consumer spending continued to lose momentum.”

On Monday, August 3, New America holds a virtual event 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. titled “The Next Generation of Voters,” focusing on “the systems that reinforce America’s gerontocracy, the structural reforms that could change them, and what young voters actually want out of US politics.” Speakers include The Age Divide authors Oscar Pocasangre and Dustin Wahl. 

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good week: Francesca Hong

Hard to deny it was a pretty good week for Hong, the democratic socialist candidate for governor of Wisconsin who vaulted to the head of the polls this week. A prominent opponent also dropped out. The primary is August 11.

Bad week: Todd Blanche

Among many contenders, we give the nod to Blanche, who may become the first A.G. nominee voted down by the Senate since 1925; Donald Trump revealed (in?)advertently that he cares more about his slush fund than he does Blanche.

—Michael Tomasky

Political Trivia Question of the Day

The A.G. position was not always intended as being independent of the White House. Who was the A.G. in fairly recent American history who established that precedent and made it the standard to which all A.G.s should aspire? Hint: He followed a world-class sleazeball. (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

⚡ Quick Take

• Sadie Sink’s mystery character in Spider-Man: Brand New Day also has a sibling in the movie, and that sibling has her own Marvel Comics history.

If you’ve seen Spider-Man: Brand New Day, then you now know all of those rumors and reports were correct.

Marvel Studios/Sony Pictures

Stranger Things star Sadie Sink is indeed the MCU’s Jean Grey. But Brand New Day introduced an element of Jean’s past from the comics that the Fox live-action X-Men films never touched on, Jean’s older sister, Sara Grey. In the film, what became of Sara led to Jean’s turn to the dark side, so to speak, and a foundational moment for her character arc. But Sara Grey as a character has a history in the pages of Marvel Comics, going back to Uncanny X-Men #136, a key issue in Chris Claremont’s Dark Phoenix Saga.

The First Mentions of Sara Grey in Uncanny X-Men Marvel Comics

Jean Grey having an older sister first gets a mention in 1966’s X-Men #22. Jean describes visiting “a sister in Albany.” Eventually, Chris Claremont introduced Jean’s elder sister, now named Sara, when a Dark Phoenix-controlled Jean, during a moment of clarity, went to her family home. Sara (originally spelled Sarah) was present at the Grey residence, and it was only then that she learned Jean was even a mutant. Jean read her mind and learned that she worried that her two kids would also turn out to be mutants. Jean died in the very next issue, Uncanny X-Men #137 from 1980.

Marvel Comics

In a story one year later in Bizarre Adventures, we learned how Sara actually knew her sister was a mutant hero, but after a dangerous encounter with Atlantean villain Attuma, Jean psychically erased knowledge of her mutant life from Sara’s mind. When Jean died, that psychic block dissipated, and Sara remembered everything again. Chris Claremont was clearly setting up Sara Grey for bigger things.

Sara Grey Almost Became a Founding Member of X-Factor Marvel Comics

Sara almost had a superhero career herself. When Marvel launched X-Factor in 1985, it reunited the original five X-Men after 15 years. But at the time, Jean Grey was still very dead. Writer Chris Claremont had no desire to resurrect Jean, so he proposed that her sister Sara was indeed a mutant too, and should take her spot. In Claremont’s pitch, her power went undetected, as her mutant ability was to unlock the latent powers in other mutants. She would have effectively replaced her sister as the new Marvel Girl. But Marvel’s EIC Jim Shooter overruled Claremont, and Jean Grey came back to life.

The Disappearance and Death of Sara Grey Marvel Comics

Subsequent issues of X-Factor mentioned that Sara Grey Bailey and her husband Paul became mutant rights advocates. After Jean returned from the dead, she learned her sister went missing in X-Factor #12. Bigots firebombed their home, but they were not present. The mystery of what became of Sara remained for almost a decade. Eventually, we learned that the anti-mutant billionaire Cameron Hodge’s followers killed Sara and her husband. However, the alien robotic race, the Phalanx, absorbed her body into their Borg-like collective. Later, her children were killed by the alien Shi’ar, who murdered the whole Grey bloodline, as a way of preventing another Dark Phoenix from rising.

Jean Grey as Phoenix Brings Her Sister Sara Back to Life Marvel Comics

Very recently, however, Jean Grey as the Phoenix essentially willed her older sister back to life. (But not her family? That seems mean, Jean). This happened in 2025’s Phoenix #11. She now has the powers that Claremont originally intended for her, to detect and unlock the X-gene in others. Her presence after death made reality unstable, but Jean defended her sister against powerful cosmic entities like Eternity and the Living Tribunal. They allowed Sara to continue existing as the Beacon, a cosmic judge. So for now, Sara Grey continues on in the Marvel Universe, after being cast aside decades earlier.

Sara Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day Sony Pictures

In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Sara Grey and her sister Jean were teenage runaways. And both had psychic powers of considerable strength. In this version, both sisters did not have loving parents as they did in the comics. Sara (Olivia Booth-Ford) mentions her mother in particular not being kind and tossing them away. After living on their own, we see how the government agency Damage Control kidnapped Sara to experiment on, and use for its own ends. This leads Jean to go on a rampage to find her sister, who she believes is still in Damage Control custody.

Eventually, Jean finds out the sad truth. Sara died during one of Damage Control’s inhumane experiments, conducted by the agency’s head, William Metzger (Tramell Tillman). However, we never see a body, so who knows if Sara Grey has a future in the MCU or not. She could have used her considerable power to make Damage Control think she was dead. But we have a feeling if any of that plays out, it’ll be in the MCU’s X-Men films. We have a feeling that Sara’s death is substituting the death of Jean’s childhood best friend Annie in the comics. That childhood event trauma truly unlocked her Omega-level mutant powers. We’ll see if Olivia Ford Booth’s Sara Grey gets mentioned in the upcoming X-Men reboot, or maybe even appears.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is currently playing in theaters everywhere.

The post Who Sadie Sink’s BRAND NEW DAY Character’s Sibling Is in the Comics appeared first on Nerdist.

A week after suspending online banking, CAF Bank still has no timetable for restoring access to its 14,000 UK charity customers. The bank updated customers on Thursday about the outage, which has disrupted payments to staff and suppliers. Little had changed. In a message seen by The Register, CAF Bank said it was not yet able to restore the service safely. As it had earlier in the week, the bank said it detected attempted fraud on some accounts and acted quickly to stop it. Its investigation uncovered a previously unknown vulnerability in the connection between its systems and third-party software. CAF Bank said its technical team was working around the clock with suppliers and external experts on a fix. The Register understands that no timetable has been set for restoring online banking. Earlier this week, CAF Bank CEO Alison Taylor apologized for the disruption. "The core bank is not affected. We are acutely aware of the impact this has on our customers and want this to be fixed as soon as possible, but we cannot restore access to the online service until we are assured the issue is safely resolved," she said. Since The Register first reported the story earlier this week, the BBC has spoken to charities struggling to make essential payments, including payroll. Kevan Hodges, chief executive of Down's syndrome charity 21 Together, told the BBC the outage was "appalling." "People are concerned that wages won't get paid because of this, and that's just stressful when they have bills to pay. My team have wasted days trying to get through to [CAF Bank], but all in vain," he said. Bali Rodgers, chief executive of Safer Communities Alliance, told the BBC the grassroots organizations it represents were slowly losing trust in the bank. CAF Bank also came under fire last year after the introduction of a new banking platform left customers unable to log in or make transactions. The bank later apologized but has not disclosed how much it spent on the system. CAF Bank held £1.45 billion ($1.93 billion) in customer deposits at the end of its 2024/25 financial year. ®

⚡ Quick Take

• The sound of a carpenter’s speed square tool being thrown sounds astonishingly like Mjölnir, Thor’s hammer.
• The sound designers use the doppler effect on the familiar tone of the hammer to show its movement.
• Both Mjölnir and Stormbreaker will appear in Doomsday.

Marvel’s cinematic sound effects are instantly recognizable to fans, from Tony’s iconic metal hammering to the sound of Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, being thrown and returning to his hands. One YouTuber, Zach “The Speed Square” King, has discovered that a carpenter’s speed square tool, ironically triangular and used for measuring and marking projects, makes the same sound as Mjölnir when thrown.

The creator made his first video with the tool in 2024, and since then, most of his content surrounds the throwing and the “satisfying” sound. He seems to be one of the only people making this kind of content, too.

And the sound is pretty on-point. Adam Savage from Mythbusters spoke with Samson Neslund, a sound designer from Skywalker Sound, the studio that works with Marvel. Neslund discussed using the familiar tone of Mjölnir to create dopplers for when it is thrown. Even when the object moves back and forth, fans can instantly recognize the sound.

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Marvel has its own sound library at Skywalker Sound, containing over 1,600 sound effects. The sound of Mjölnir flying through the air is that of “metal resonance,” like a meditation bowl. While Neslund didn’t reveal the actual objects the Foley artists (that’s artists that create ambient noise for movies) used to create the tone and the whoosh of the hammer, he did note that the sound for it returning to Thor’s hand is actually the throwing sound in reverse.

Marvel / Zach “The Speed Square” King

Needless to say, the Foley artists probably didn’t use a speed square for Mjölnir. Despite that, Zach “The Speed Square” King managed to find a near-perfect copy of the sound. The sound is created by throwing the “square” against an object and letting it return, boomeranging as Mjölnir does.

Mjölnir has been on quite a journey. After being broken in Ragnarok, reassembled in Love and Thunder, and wielded by Jane Foster, it has now returned to the God of Thunder. During the hammer’s absence, Thor wielded Stormbreaker, a battle axe. Now, it seems Stormbreaker will make a return, as seen in the Doomsday trailer. Luckily, if you are a fan of Mjölnir, it also makes its Doomsday appearance during the return of Steve Rogers. Both weapons will be featured in the highly anticipated Marvel movie.

And hey, if you love Mjölnir, you too can try to recreate its sound.

The post DIY The Sound of the MCU’s Mjölnir appeared first on Nerdist.

Tesla had already reportedly prepped for the idea in the event that Beijing invades Taiwan.

⚡ Quick Take

• After a seven-year hiatus, White Wolf is announcing the sixth update in 30-year-old VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE’s history.
• World of Darkness creative director Jess Lanzillo announced the update at Gen Con’s “The Future of White Wolf” panel.
• The hiatus comes after a lore controversy in their 2018 edition.

White Wolf, the publisher behind Vampire: The Masquerade, just recently concluded its seven-year hiatus, one the company has been on since the release of its fifth edition. White Wolf was shut down and absorbed into its parent company, but as of 2025, the company is back. During Gen Con 2026, the White Wolf revealed that it will be releasing a brand-new 6th edition of Vampire: The Masquerade after over 30 years.

White Wolf

World of Darkness creative director Jess Lanzillo unveiled the thirty-year-old RPG’s sixth edition at a Gen Con panel titled “The Future of White Wolf.” It marks her first project with White Wolf after years spent with Wizards of the Coast and is also the first Vampire: The Masquerade project since the brand’s 2025 return.

“Never before have we been able to bring the community into a Vampire: The Masquerade project at such an early stage, and we’re confident that will help us build a line of V6 books that speaks to both new and longtime players,” said Lanzillo.

Lifelong fans of the game will be pleased to know that, according to White Wolf, the 6th edition is “built to honor the legacy” of Vampire: The Masquerade while bringing its game mechanics into the modern era. With updated tools and mechanics for players and storytellers, things will just be a bit more streamlined and “removing friction,” according to Lead Game Designer Diogo Nogueira.

The edition will feature changes to the core system for Vitae, Willpower/Health, and dice rolling. The character creation will be deeper, but the system for building NPCs will be simpler. “Devil’s Bargain” and “Choose Your Pain” are two new mechanics the edition introduces.

All of this and more will be available in the sixth edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, but for now, the alpha playtest is free and open for registration on Demiplane, with seven of fourteen vampire clans available for play.

The post VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE Is Getting a 6th Edition appeared first on Nerdist.