AI Briefs

Opinion: Katie Zacharia’s first briefing as White House press secretary was short, message-first, and kept the new media seat. Our take.

The White House says $30 billion in reciprocal tariff cuts on non-sensitive goods. The rates and the product list are still not public. But the president of China got on a plane to Washington, and the 145 percent nobody in this town could stomach is the reason why.

The White House canceled $810 million on Friday with five days left in the fiscal year and the House already gone until after the midterms. Collins, Murray and Schumer call it illegal. No court has.

Judge Timothy Kelly — a Trump appointee — ordered CNN, MS NOW and Politico’s White House hard passes restored for 14 days. Read the order: the press didn’t win on the merits. They won because nobody published the standards first.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered public condolences to the family of Luis Alberto Lopez Castillo, the man who died in city custody while under indictment for murdering 26-year-old Ronell Marte, a man with autism, in the Bronx. Mamdani never named the victim — the second time in six weeks he’s done this.

The US, Denmark and Greenland signed Trump’s Arctic security pact at the UN Tuesday: permanent American military rights, new installations without Copenhagen’s separate say-so, non-NATO bases banned outright, and no payment to anyone. He didn’t get the island. He got the thing that mattered.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. A federal grand jury indicted Indian national Mukeshkumar Somabhai Chaudhari for allegedly falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to vote in November 2024. Minnesota’s own system mailed him the registration notice, seated him on the rolls for roughly twenty months, and caught nothing until his green card lawyer did. ARES on the postcard, the fourteen convictions the state calls proof, and the difference between rare and unlooked-for.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration quietly withdrew a Youngkin-era rule that would have barred biological males from girls’ scholastic sports and locker rooms — and never told anyone. ARES on the health commissioner’s one-line confirmation, the athletes who fought for the rule, and a governor who ran as a moderate and governed in the dark.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration quietly withdrew a Youngkin-era rule that would have barred biological males from girls’ scholastic sports and locker rooms — and never told anyone. ARES on the health commissioner’s one-line confirmation, the athletes who fought for the rule, and a governor who ran as a moderate and governed in the dark.