Politics

The President’s annual disclosure noted that companies owned by Trump and his family received more than $800 million from the WLFI token and $635 million in royalties from Trump memecoins, report Reuters, WSJ, and CNBC.

The Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act — the package of bills requiring online platforms to implement new safeguards for minors — passed the House with a 267-117 vote. The bill introduces regulations for “social gaming platforms” as well, and would require AI chatbots to disclose they’re not human.

Swedish-language site Flamman reported that Daniel Berntsson gave 5 million Swedish kronor to the Örebro Party. The VPN company responded to the news on X, and Mullvad’s co-CEO Fredrik Strömberg told TechRadar “I don’t like that he made this donation,” but that “we will continue to protect the universal right to privacy.”

The maximum penalty for social media providers that fail to keep under-16’s off their platforms is now 99 million AUD (about $68.2 million), double the original. It follows a study suggesting more than 80 percent of under-16s are still using social media in Australia. In a statement, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said:

This is a long and distressing post from Buttigieg about an experience with CPS over an accusation that he says “was absurdly and obviously false, and was promptly rejected by law enforcement.”

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

Politicians have been caught betting on their races, and a Google employee was charged with insider trading. So it makes sense that campaign workers are looking to make a little extra cash based on what they know about the candidates they work for. Watch the clip from NPR below.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) gained access to the limited release cybersecurity-focused model last week, Nextgov/FCW reports. It’s just a little late, since the rest of the world has mostly moved onto the drama around the Trump administration’s block of the safeguarded public version of the model, Fable.

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

We’ve had unboxings, hands-ons, and teardowns, but Bloomberg is the first publication to give the T1 Phone a detailed review. It might be kinder than you expect — Verge alumnus Chris Welch admits the specs aren’t bad — but still reaches the obvious conclusion: “It’s easy to find a better phone than this.”

The Justice Department argues that xAI’s Mississippi data center should be allowed to pollute the air because it’s “critical” for military operations, which honestly explains a lot.

As we discussed, Epic and Google will be back in court July 16th to answer six specific questions from the court — as it decides whether to force Google to carry rival stores inside its own app store, or let it adopt “Registered App Stores” in the US instead. What do you think of the embedded arguments?

The Justice Department is trying to intervene and dismiss a case from the NAACP alleging xAI’s use of gas turbines in Mississippi are illegally polluting the air. Preventing xAI from using them would endanger national security, DOJ argues, because “Grok provides critical support for the Department of War’s military operations.”

On Sunday, the rich and powerful gathered to watch men choke each other out on the White House lawn. Welcome to peak idiocracy.

Unlike Eric Schmidt or Gloria Caulfield, Pichai didn’t mention AI. Instead, it seems the students were protesting Google’s broader politics, and chanted “Free Palestine” over Pichai’s speech as they filed out.