Politics
www.uspto.gov
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/21650687 cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/21650482 The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) invites members of the public to a roundtable discussion about the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and legal protections for individuals’ reputations and name, image, voice, likeness (NIL), and other indicators of identity. This is your opportunity to provide input on: * Whether existing legal protections for individuals’ NIL and reputations are sufficient * How these legal protections intersect with other intellectual property (IP) laws * How AI technology impacts existing legal protections for NIL and reputation The feedback received will assist the USPTO’s work to develop IP policy recommendations regarding the intersection of AI and IP, in accordance with the Executive Order on AI issued by President Biden in October 2023.
It's going to take a bit of time. Please bear with me through the process. 🔺 **Publicly traded** * [CNN](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12189763) 🔺💲 **Publicly traded but mostly privately owned** * [New York Times](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12173817) * [Sinclair Broadcasting Group](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12228576) 💲 **Privately owned** * [Business Insider](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12316808) * [Fox News](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12210655) * [Politico](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12316808) * [Reuters](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12174374) * [The Atlantic](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12316051) * [TIME](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12332716) * [Wall Street Journal](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12211140) * [Washington Post](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12172896) 🔷 **Non for profit and/or trust ran by board of directors** (Note: I suggest taking a long look at who the board of directors are, especially AP and NPR) * [British Broadcasting Company (BBC)](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12314946) * [Associated Press (AP)](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12174861) * [Mother Jones](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12211602) * [National Public Radio (NPR)](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12191528) * [The Guardian](https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12192946) There are a lot of Brits running a lot of American (or thought to be American) media groups, I'm going to include quite a few British publications. There is also an American on the BBC board.
www.seattletimes.com
A state worker accused of taking nearly $900,000 in public money had earlier declared bankruptcy four times, public records show. Matthew R. Ping abused his job as a management analyst for Washington’s Office of Administrative Hearings by using an agency credit card to pay large sums of money to businesses he created in his name, according to a state audit released last week. Ping, 48, who had worked for the agency since 2009, was not named in the audit report, but his identity was confirmed by the auditor’s office.
www.sciencenews.org
But last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that some waterways — including these streams — are not federally protected from pollution under the Clean Water Act. The decision could have a substantial ripple effect on the environment.
The Biden administration on Monday proposed to "vastly expand" security review authority over real estate purchases near U.S. military installations conducted by CFIUS, a powerful committee that screens foreign investments for national security risks. "This proposed rule would add over 50 military installations, across 30 states, to the existing list of installations around which CFIUS has jurisdiction, including over land purchases," the Treasury Department said in a statement.
The hacking group, which hit the Christie’s auction house earlier this year, is giving the state until Friday to pay to recover the data, according to its site on the dark web. The dark web is a subset of the internet used by people and groups to hide their locations and identities. Florida’s government has a policy of not paying ransomware. Department of Health Press Secretary Jae Williams would only confirm that the attack affected the state’s online Vital Statistics system, used to issue birth and death certificates. The Herald/Times reported Tuesday that state tax collectors’ offices and funeral homes have been unable to issue birth and death certificates since last week, when the Department of Health’s online system went down.
In a federal lawsuit unsealed late last week, Sonja Eddings Brown — Collier’s former employee — says independent tests show that at least 8,000 acres of the land sold are likely contaminated with a wood treatment chemical called creosote related to a 1956 fire she claims the family never cleaned up. Long-term exposure to creosote may cause birth defects and cancer, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Brown contends that Collier never disclosed the contamination to the state.
www.theguardian.com
The satanists see the law, which comes amid a vigorous theocratic drive into education by the religious right nationally, as an equal opportunity: if Christian chaplains are permitted access to students, often at the most vulnerable and impressionable stages of their lives, then so are they. There are, however, no plans to introduce studies of the dark arts or satanic rituals to any classroom. The Satanic Temple champions Satan not as a literal, omnipresent demon, but as a symbol of rebellion and resistance to authoritarianism. It says its strategy here is to highlight flagrant violations of the constitutionally protected separation of church and state.
www.nbcnews.com
After his arrest, Johnston was indicted by a federal grand jury alongside four other Jan. 6 defendants; the government alleged that all five men took part in the battle at the lower west tunnel leading into the Capitol, where some of the worst rioter-on-law-enforcement violence took place on Jan. 6. The FBI alleged that video footage showed Johnston “handing up a stolen U.S. Capitol police shield to other rioters” and that Johnston “participated with other rioters in a group assault” on the officers protecting the lower west tunnel.
www.businessinsider.com
That explosive growth was driven at least in part by market demand for the sort of exclusivity Tullock lauded. A 2019 study by the economists Wyatt Clarke and Matthew Freedman found that HOA home prices were, on average, higher than non-HOA home prices in the surrounding area — and that this "HOA premium" was strongly correlated with the size of an area's Black population as of 1960. The more Black residents a region had in the last decade of legalized, explicit racial segregation, the larger the gap between non-HOA home prices and HOA home prices. One can surmise that HOAs in these areas tend to be more exclusive in part because they were designed to exclude. Readers will not be shocked to learn that Clarke and Freedman also found that HOA residents were more likely to be white or Asian than non-HOA residents.
www.theguardian.com
According to one journalist’s tally, the New York Times has run **192 stories on the subject since the debate, including 50 editorials and 142 news stories**. The Washington Post, which has also gone for saturation coverage, published a resignation speech they wrote for him. Not to be outdone, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief declared that Biden not going away “would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment” and had a staff writer suggest that Democrats should use the never-before-deployed 25th amendment. Although the Biden administration seems to have run extremely well for three and a half years, with a strong cabinet, few scandals and little turnover, a thriving economy and some major legislative accomplishments, the narrative the punditocracy has created suggest we should ignore this record and decide on the basis of the 90-minute debate and reference to newly surfaced swarms of anonymous sources that Biden is incompetent. Quite a lot of them have been running magical-realism fantasy-football scenarios in which it is fun and easy to swap in your favorite substitute candidate. The reality is that it is hard and quite likely to be a terrible mess. Nevertheless, this pretense is supposed to mean that telling a presidential candidate in mid-campaign to get lost is fine.
www.thedailybeast.com
A thread of bombshell text messages made public Thursday alleged that Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign settled “multiple” seedy lawsuits for a man described only as “Boris,” leading to conjecture it could be a powerful Trumpworld figure. Those messages were revealed by A.J. Delgado—a former staffer on Trump’s 2016 campaign who’s embroiled in a lawsuit against the current campaign, **alleging she was** taken advantage of and **raped by her former superior, Jason Miller.**
An El Paso judge shot down Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to close a Catholic nonprofit sheltering asylum-seekers, which the judge ruled violates state religious freedom laws. In a scathing order calling Paxton’s efforts “outrageous and intolerable,” state District Judge Francisco Dominguez wrote that the Republican attorney general’s request to examine documents from Annunciation House that spurred his attempt to shutter the shelter was a pretext to justify “harassment of Annunciation House employees and the persons seeking refuge.”
www.propublica.org
As we reported, there are seven cases in which the NYPD has, since last summer, declined to formally notify officers of charges brought against them. Without such notification, there can be no disciplinary trial. These cases include chokeholds, Tasings and beating a teenager with a baton. Each one was so serious that the CCRB concluded that the officers’ conduct was likely criminal. And there is no public disclosure when the department simply doesn’t inform an officer, effectively stalling the case indefinitely.
Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner has left his position as an attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. The sources said Meiner resigned from his role as an enforcement attorney in the SEC’s Miami office, where he had worked since 2007. Messages sent to Meiner’s SEC email address this week bounced back with an error message saying the address “couldn’t be found or is unable to receive mail.” It was not immediately clear what prompted the departure or whether Meiner had accepted a job elsewhere. A city of Miami Beach spokesperson directed questions to the mayor’s office. Meiner and his chief of staff at the city, Veronica Coley, did not respond to messages Wednesday seeking comment.
In a closely watched legal fight over how the federal Voting Rights Act can be enforced, civil rights groups have made an unusual move. They relented. Last Friday, attorneys led by the American Civil Liberties Union let a filing deadline pass at the U.S. Supreme Court, choosing not to ask the justices to review a controversial lower court ruling that threatens to help end one of the main ways for enforcing the landmark law’s protections against racial discrimination in the election process. The groups say they are now considering other avenues for challenging a redistricting plan for Arkansas’ state legislature that they argue takes away meaningful opportunities for Black communities to elect representatives of their choice.
www.nbcnews.com
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday ruled 4-3 to reinstate the use of most ballot drop boxes across the crucial battleground state, overturning a decision it made less than two years ago that banned the use of most of those boxes. "Our decision today does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes," the decision Friday read. "It merely acknowledges ... that clerks may lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily-conferred discretion."
www.nbcnews.com
The ruling was one of three delivered in the final week of the court's term that cast blows against the powers of federal agencies. All were decided 6-3 on ideological lines, with the court's conservatives in the majority. And in all three, the liberal justices did their utmost to draw attention to their broader concerns about the court’s chipping away at the powers of federal agencies to issue regulations in areas such as the environment, worker safety and consumer protection.
www.commondreams.org
A Trump-appointed federal judge on Wednesday partially blocked a Federal Trade Commission rule banning most noncompete clauses, ubiquitous anti-worker agreements that prevent employees from moving to or starting their own competing businesses. Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary ruling preventing the ban from taking effect against the handful of plaintiffs that sued the FTC over the rule mere hours after it was finalized in April. The plaintiffs include the tax service firm Ryan LLC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest corporate lobbying organization. Researchers at the Revolving Door Project noted Wednesday that Ryan LLC was "represented by [former President Donald] Trump's Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia, via BigLaw firm Gibson Dunn."
apnews.com
Kansas’ highest court on Friday struck down state laws regulating abortion providers more strictly than other health care professionals and a ban on a common second-trimester procedure, reaffirming its stance that the state constitution protects abortion access. “We stand by our conclusion that section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights protects a fundamental right to personal autonomy, which includes a pregnant person’s right to terminate a pregnancy,” Justice Eric Rosen wrote for the majority in overturning the ban on a certain type of dilation and evacuation, also known as D&E.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17218022 Archive link: https://archive.is/PCpMN > This is *not* being reported in the U.S. news media. Maybe you can argue it's because it's July 4th, but if this doesn't come out in a major way tomorrow, I guess the fix is in. OP note: I couldn't find anything either. "Trump’s name appears over and over again on Jeffrey Epstein’s **message logs** in the grand jury docs released this week. It is also undisputed: Trump’s name appears 7 times on Epstein’s private jet flight logs, that Epstein flew on Trump’s jet with a young girl of indeterminate age, girls who Epstein trafficked worked at Mar-A-Lago, a girl Epstein trafficked mentioned visiting Trump’s casino in a recently released deposition transcript. Trump said Epstein is a great guy who likes girls on the younger side, Trump frequently “partied” with Epstein, Trump wished Ghislaine Maxwell well at her criminal trial, and someone who testified under the pseudonym JANE DOE at the Ghislaine Maxwell criminal trial stated that she was introduced to Trump by Epstein when she was 14 years old," a user posted on X. **Edit:** Newsweek talked about the files being released, but nothing about how Trump is involved. You can read the file on their site or the attached link. https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-documents-released-read-grand-jury-testimony-1919830 **Edit 2:** The Newsweek files is not the entire thing.
www.bbc.com
Another fake which went viral earlier this year was more directly aimed at American politics. It was published on a website called The Houston Post – one of dozens of sites with American-sounding names which are in reality run from Moscow - and alleged that the FBI illegally wiretapped Donald Trump’s Florida resort. It played neatly into Trump’s allegations that the legal system is unfairly stacked against him, that there is a conspiracy to thwart his campaign, and that his opponents are using dirty tricks to undermine him. Mr Trump himself has accused the FBI of snooping on his conversations. Experts say that the operation is just one part of a much larger ongoing effort, led from Moscow, to spread disinformation during the US election campaign. While no hard evidence has emerged that these particular fake news websites are run by the Russian state, researchers say the scale and sophistication of the operation is broadly similar to previous Kremlin-backed efforts to spread disinformation in the West. “Russia will be involved in the US 2024 election, as will others,” said Chris Krebs, who as the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was responsible for ensuring the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
www.nbcnews.com
New campaign finance records show that Donald Trump's political action committee paid the legal firm representing the former president's longtime adviser Boris Epshteyn ahead of his pending criminal trial in Arizona. The leadership PAC, Save America, made two payments of $40,000 and $10,000 on May 14 to the Phoenix-based law firm Tully Bailey LLP. Named partner Michael Bailey, who was the U.S. attorney for Arizona from 2019 to 2021, has represented Epshteyn in the Arizona case since at least May 9, according to court records.
For more than a year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has owed the state over $11,000 in fines for filing late campaign finance reports. Now, his office is charged with collecting the money. The situation presents a clear conflict of interest for enforcement of the state’s campaign finance laws, said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group.
www.propublica.org
He did not send questions to the White House ahead of time, nor did he get approval for the topics to be discussed during the interview. Recording began as soon as Biden was miked and sitting in the chair that Friday at 2:50 p.m. Earlier that day, Biden’s press staff had said the president would have only 10 minutes for the interview, instead of the previously agreed upon 20 minutes. We requested that the interview go the full 20 minutes. You can hear during the unedited interview a couple of moments when White House staff interrupted to signal that the interview should come to a close. Biden seemed eager to continue talking.
www.nbcnews.com
The agency had first proposed to revoke the regulation in November 2023. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, BVO was banned in the UK in 1970, followed by **India in 1990**, the EU in 2008 and Japan in 2010.
www.eff.org
The Supreme Court today correctly found that social media platforms, like newspapers, bookstores, and art galleries before them, have First Amendment rights to curate and edit the speech of others they deliver to their users, and the government has a very limited role in dictating what social media platforms must and must not publish. Although users remain understandably frustrated with how the large platforms moderate user speech, the best deal for users is when platforms make these decisions instead of the government.
abcnews.go.com
Handing the Biden administration an unexpected win amidst a legal back-and-forth, a court over the weekend agreed to let the Education Department continue implementing the final phases of a student loan repayment plan that will lower people’s monthly bills. This comes after the department had already begun the process to put 3 million borrowers into a payment pause, a move officials said was necessary to comply with the court’s initial ruling last week to halt the payment cuts. But because of the latest ruling, borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan will now go forward with payments at their new rates beginning in July and August, officials said.
apnews.com
In a letter filed with the New York court, prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said they would be open to a two-week delay in the July 11 sentencing in order to file a response to Trump’s motions. “Although we do believe the case to be without merit, we do not oppose his request” to delay the sentencing pending determination of the motion, the prosecutors wrote. The letter came one day after Trump’s attorney requested the judge delay the sentencing as he weighs the high court’s decision and how it could influence the New York case.
abcnews.go.com
Giuliani has been disbarred, according to a decision handed down Tuesday by the Appellate Division First Department in New York. The ruling is a consequence of Giuliani's "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump's failed effort at reelection in 2020."
www.thenation.com
Organized labor is in the midst of a fierce campaign to make inroads at auto manufacturers in the South, most recently at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, where on May 17, 56% of workers voted narrowly against joining the United Auto Workers. But a few months before the unsuccessful vote at Mercedes, workers 100 miles away at an EV bus manufacturing plant in Anniston, Alabama, unionized and won a historic contract. In January 2024, the majority of the around 600 workers at a plant run since 2013 by New Flyer, the largest transit bus manufacturer in North America, signed a union card to join the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA). Over the last couple of years, workers at the company’s other plants in Kentucky and New York have unionized, joining two longtime union shops in Minnesota. Together, they now make up the largest union in the public transit bus manufacturing sector in the United States, with over 2,350 members.
www.thedailybeast.com
Justice Clarence Thomas used the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity on Monday to again request that the constitutionality of special prosecutors, like Jack Smith, be called into question. In his opinion, Thomas asked the lower courts to render a ruling on Smith and the legality of the special prosecutor’s office before they proceed with Donald Trump’s pair of federal criminal cases that Smith’s team is prosecuting. No other justice signed onto Thomas’ opinion. “If this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, it must be conducted by someone duly authorized to do so by the American people,” Thomas wrote. “The lower courts should thus answer these essential questions concerning the special counsel’s appointment before proceeding.”
www.cnn.com
The Supreme Court on Monday revived a lawsuit by a North Dakota truck stop that is challenging the fees banks can charge for debit-card transactions in a ruling that could have deeper implications for other government regulations. The decision was the latest from the Supreme Court this term that would make it easier for industries to challenge what conservative critics describe as the “administrative state.” “Today’s ruling is especially significant in light of Friday’s decision overruling Chevron, because it means that even old agency rules can be challenged anew so long as they produce any contemporary harm,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
A Sarasota judge has ruled that law enforcement officials violated former Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler’s rights during their investigation into an alleged sexual battery and video voyeurism. In a 46-page order posted early Monday morning, Sarasota County Circuit Court Judge Hunter Carroll declared that search warrants that allowed investigators to comb through Ziegler’s cell phone for documents — including hundreds of thousands of photos, videos and text messages — were “severely overbroad,” and contained communications that had “no connection” to the allegations against Ziegler.
www.theguardian.com
The loan was finalized in February after the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, suggested sending pandas to the San Diego zoo as “envoys of friendship” between China and the US. Officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were on hand in China for a farewell ceremony commemorating the departure of the giant pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao. The celebration included cultural performances, video salutations from Chinese and American students, and a gift exchange among conservation partners, the zoo said in a statement. After the ceremony, the giant pandas began their trip to southern California.
www.latimes.com
California’s legislators pass hundreds of new laws each year, most of which take effect in January. But a handful kick in on July 1, the start of the state’s fiscal year. Signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, the wide-ranging new laws include sweeping protections for California consumers against hidden “junk” fees that add unexpected costs to everything from concert tickets to food delivery. The laws also tackle issues related to housing affordability, the difficulty of fixing your own iPhone and other electronic devices, and screening measures to detect date-rape drugs in alcoholic drinks at bars and nightclubs.
www.nbcnews.com
Officials in Nevada have formally certified a proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion access in the state's constitution to appear on the November ballot. The move was announced late Friday by organizers behind the ballot measure as well as the Nevada secretary of state’s office. It makes Nevada the sixth state to put the issue of abortion rights directly before voters in this year's election. “The support this initiative has received from Nevadans throughout the signature collection process shows what we’ve known to be true: Nevadans believe that healthcare decisions about abortion are best left to women, their doctors, and those they love and trust — not politicians,” Lindsey Harmon, the president of Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the group behind the effort, said in statement.
www.nbcnews.com
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, rejected Trump's broad immunity claims and said that Trump only has immunity for his "official" acts as president. The high court did not determine what constitutes an official act in this case, leaving that to the lower court. The court's liberal justices issued blistering dissents of the majority opinion. In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the ruling "breaks new and dangerous ground."
www.bbc.com
**A former Goldman Sachs banker** turned alt-right media figure, Bannon was seen by Democrats as the brain behind not only Trump's extraordinary political rise but also some of his most divisive policies. The huge handbook of "Project 2025" is positioned in a place of pride in the room. The 900-page tome put together by the Heritage Foundation - a conservative think tank - contains detailed plans for how a second Trump administration will transform the American government and the power of the executive branch. It is “impossible”, he told me, for Joe Biden to win the election in November. And, therefore, there is no way he or his "Maga army" will accept the result if the president is reelected.
abcnews.go.com
The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped ruling whether Florida and Texas laws limiting how social media companies regulate content violate the First Amendment, sending the issue back to the lower courts for further review. Theopinion was authored by Justice Elena Kagan.
Politics
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