New poll shows how Americans feel about Trump's decision to strike Iran
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USA Today
a few seconds ago
- USA Today
All work and no play: House heads out while Senate eyes skipping summer break
WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives has fled Washington for their annual August recess, but the Senate may be stuck sweltering at work. Both houses of Congress typically take a month off each summer, with many returning to their districts and visiting with constituents. This year, House members were sent home a day early, amid tensions over the Trump administration's refusal to release records from sex offender and former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein's case. Meanwhile, senators have at least one more week before they go on break. But as legislative business hits a series of delays and major deadlines loom, President Donald Trump is pushing the upper chamber to stay in town. Either way, both chambers have a tall order waiting for them in September if they want to keep the government doors open. House heads home Following the Justice Department's announcement that they had found no evidence of an Epstein list of sex work clients or proof of other conspiracy theories such as the claim that the disgraced financier did not really commit suicide in 2019, Trump has been at odds with some of his high-profile supporters. Democrats and some Republican lawmakers have called for the release of documents related to Epstein's case. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, is spearheading bipartisan legislation to force the Justice Department's hand on the matter. Pressure to address the scandal prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, to cut members loose a day early. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, called it a 'chicken move.' 'And so irresponsible,' she told USA TODAY. 'We have a lot of work to do to take care of people.' 'Because they are afraid to buck Donald Trump, they cancel half of the session week and go home for six weeks?' she added. 'I don't (know) what the hell they ran for Congress for, but I ran for Congress to make people's lives better.' Now, lawmakers are heading home, where voters could press their representatives on the issue. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who said he'll be spending a good portion of his recess visiting and campaigning with colleagues in other areas, said he wouldn't be surprised if questions on Epstein come up. 'Constituents ask all of kinds of questions,' he said. 'But when I was back home a week or so ago, and we were at the pizza place in Urbana, Ohio, people were coming up to me just excited. 'President Trump's doing great. Thanks for the big, beautiful bill' ... It was all positive.' Senators could stick around Senators are set to wrap up their schedule in Washington on Aug. 1. But some would rather forego the break. 'I'm for staying and doing what we need to do,' Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, told USA TODAY. 'They pay us to work. They don't pay us to go home and sit for a month.' Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass a series of appropriations bills or a temporary funding extension in order to avoid a government shutdown. That major task, along with a backlog of nominations by Trump for the Senate to confirm, has the president calling for the chamber to keep working and Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, considering it. 'We're thinking about it,' Thune told Axios on Monday. The decision would be a tough sell to many senators, on both sides of the aisle, who have a fondness for their time back home. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia, said that along with meeting voters, he will be spending the weeks away with his children in Georgia. Asked about the possibility of recess being canceled, Warnock said, 'That's above my pay grade.' Working hard or hardly working Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Nebraska, said she is doing what she usually does during recess, which is travel by car across the state, with her husband at the wheel, visiting communities and constituents. House members, who have since left the city, say they won't be slacking over August. Members of Congress will return to their district offices, often holding events, meeting with constituents and discussing legislative business from afar. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, said when asked if he had any fun recess plans, 'Uh, no. Working.' Tennessee's Republican Rep. Tim Burchett offered a similar response. 'I'll do more work when I'm home than I do up here,' he said, adding jokingly, 'These two-hour work weeks up here wear me out.'
Boston Globe
a few seconds ago
- Boston Globe
Bondi facing Democratic calls to testify following report she told Trump he was in Epstein files
Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, responded to the report by calling on Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'We need to bring Bondi and Patel into the Judiciary Committee to testify about this now,' Schiff said Advertisement The Justice Department declined to comment on the report but issued a joint statement from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche saying that investigators had reviewed the records and 'nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.' 'As par of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings,' the statement said. The mere inclusion of a person's name in Epstein's files does not imply wrongdoing and he was known to have been associated with multiple prominent figures, including Trump. Advertisement Over the years, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein's criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests. They include a 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted she spent several hours with Epstein at Trump's Atlantic City casino but didn't say if she met Trump and did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. Trump has also said he once thought Epstein was a 'terrific guy' but they later had a falling-out. White House spokesman Steven Cheung on Wednesday said the reports were 'nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.'
Boston Globe
a few seconds ago
- Boston Globe
Trump administration plans to give AI developers a free hand
Advertisement The report signals that the Trump administration has embraced AI and the tech industry's arguments that it must be allowed to work with few guardrails for the United States to dominate a new era defined by the technology. It is a forceful repudiation of other governments, including the European Commission, that have approved regulations to govern the development of the technology. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But it also points to how the administration wants to shape the way AI tools present information. Conservatives have accused some tech companies of developing AI models with a baked-in liberal bias. Most AI models are already trained on copious amounts of data from across the web, which informs their responses, making any shift in focus difficult. On Wednesday afternoon, Trump delivered his first major speech on AI, a technology that experts have said could upend communications, geopolitics and the economy in the coming years. The president also signed executive orders related to the technology. Advertisement 'We believe we're in an AI race,' David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, said on a call with reporters. 'And we want the United States to win that race.' The changes outlined Wednesday would benefit tech giants locked in a fierce contest to produce generative AI products and persuade consumers to weave the tools into their daily lives. Since OpenAI's public release of ChatGPT in late 2022, tech companies have raced to produce their own versions of the technology, which can write humanlike texts and produce realistic images and videos. Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and others are jockeying for access to computing power, typically from huge data centers filled with computers that can stress local communities' resources. And the companies are facing increased competition from rivals such as Chinese startup DeepSeek, which sent shock waves around the world this year after it created a powerful AI model with far less money than many thought possible. The fight over resources in Silicon Valley has run alongside an equally charged debate in Washington over how to confront the societal transformations that AI could bring. Critics worry that if left unchecked, the technology could be a potent tool for scammers and extremists and lay waste to the economy as more jobs are automated. News outlets and artists have sued AI companies over claims that they illegally trained their technology using copyrighted works and articles. Trump previously warned of China's potential to outpace American progress on the technology. He has said that the federal government must support AI companies with tax incentives, more foreign investment and less focus on safety regulations that could hamper progress. Advertisement President Biden took one major action on artificial intelligence: a 2023 executive order that mandated safety and security standards for the development and use of AI across the federal government. But hours after his inauguration in January, Trump rolled back that order. Days later, he signed another executive order, 'Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,' which called for an acceleration of AI development by US tech companies and for versions of the technology that operated without ideological bias. The order included a mandate for administration officials to come up with 'an artificial intelligence action plan,' with policy guidelines to encourage the growth of the AI industry. The administration solicited comments from companies while it considered its plan. OpenAI called for the administration to expand its list of countries eligible to import AI technologies from the United States, a list that has been limited by controls designed to stop China from gaining access to American technology. OpenAI and Google called for greater support in building AI data centers through tax breaks and fewer barriers for foreign investment. OpenAI, Google, and Meta also said they believed they had legal access to copyrighted works like books, films and art for training their AI. Meta asked the White House to issue an executive order or other action to 'clarify that the use of publicly available data to train models is unequivocally fair use.' The plan released Wednesday did not include mentions of copyright law. But it did outline a wide range of policy shifts, divided into moves that the administration said would speed up the development of AI, make it easier to build and power data centers and promote the interests of American companies abroad. Advertisement This article originally appeared in
