Trump's Next Vanity Project Will Tear Up The White House South Lawn: Report

President Donald Trump is plotting yet another overhaul of the White House grounds — this time digging up the storied South Lawn to install a permanent helipad, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Sunday night.

The helipad would mark the latest in a dizzying string of renovations Trump has imposed on the people's house since returning to power. He's already paved over the Rose Garden, slapped a black granite walkway along the West Wing Colonnade, redesigned the Oval Office, planted two massive flagpoles on the grounds, and demolished the entire East Wing to clear room for his 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

Now the South Lawn is on the chopping block.

The official justification: the military's powerful new VH-92A Patriot helicopter — the replacement for the decades-old VH-3D Sea King that's flown every president since Gerald Ford — is too much for the grass to handle.

"The exhaust on the new helicopters can burn up the ground, especially in hot and dry conditions," the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the plans. The new chopper can also haul 6,200 pounds more than its predecessor.

read more

from Latest articles from Crooks and Liars
via Click me for Details

OSHA probing worker death at SpaceX’s Starbase site

The death is the latest worker safety issue at the Starbase facility, which has a higher injury rate than all other SpaceX sites.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

SandboxAQ brings its drug discovery models to Claude — no PhD in computing required

Other venture-backed companies like Chai Discovery and Isomorphic Labs have raced to build better models. SandboxAQ is betting that the bigger obstacle is access, and that Claude solves it.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Anthropic has acquired the dev tools startup used by OpenAI, Google, and Cloudflare

Stainless, a New York-based startup, will wind down all hosted products as part of the acquisition.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Thousands Marched In Selma For Voting Rights On Saturday

If you’ve been feeling depressed about the Republicans’ rush to disenfranchise Black and minority voters, after a greenlight from the U.S. Supreme Court, you should be heartened by the National Day of Action for Voting Rights on Saturday.

The kickoff event was at the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama with a prayer service and remembrance for those who marched there in 1965. Later, there was a national rally in Montgomery.

It’s the launch of a sustained effort. Wisdom Cole, the Senior National Director of Advocacy for the NAACP, told The Root, “Black folks from across the country are gonna be busing in, flying in, to show up and to really begin organizing to turn out in the November election. … This is a moment in time where we have to be able to show up and show the power that is within the people who are most impacted.”

It’s not just Alabamans who have heeded the call. “A consortium of more than 228 groups came together from across the country to oppose the actions in Alabama and other states to change voting lines and reduce heavily Black districts,” AL.com reported. By afternoon, the protest was “dominating downtown Montgomery in open resistance to efforts by state lawmakers to change the district maps.”

read more

from Latest articles from Crooks and Liars
via Click me for Details

Apple’s Siri revamp could include auto-deleting chats

Privacy will be a major theme when Apple unveils a new version of Siri.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Why trust is a big question at the Elon Musk-OpenAI trial

A big theme in the trial’s final days was whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is trustworthy.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details