VC-backed startups commit more fraud, and researchers think they know why

New research from the U.K.’s Imperial College and France’s Emlyon Business School mapped out how Silicon Valley founders commit fraud — and the role investors play.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Fox Host Asks Trump If Iranians Have Food And Water, Trump Hits On Her Instead

As Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran steamrolls into its sixth month, with absolutely no conceivable end in sight, one Fox News host attempted to ask the President a starkly serious question: Are the people in Iran okay?

Trump called into Fox for a phone interview this week, where Dana Perino, a co-host on Fox News' The Five and former White House Press Secretary to George W. Bush, pressed him on the living conditions of Iranian civilians amid the ongoing war.

"I think it is alarming that we have not been able to see or hear from any of the Iranian people, and I imagine that is because their internet is shut down, and I think there is some general worry about them. Obviously, their government treats them terribly and killed tens of thousands of them in January," Perino said. "I would never ask you to tell us something that is classified, but do you have any insight as to how they are doing? Do they have drinking water? Do they have food? It's upsetting."

Before Perino was even able to finish her sentence, Trump was already beginning to interject with his typical, "Right... Right... I do. I do."

His interruptions were rude enough, but the more he talked, the worse it got.

In fact, "I do" was the only semblance of an actual response to the question he gave.

read more

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

CareCloud begins to notify hundreds of thousands after hackers stole medical records

The health tech data giant, which handles vast amounts of patients' medical data, said hackers struck one of its protected health data stores.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Google says it fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

As experts have warned for the last two years, some companies — like Microsoft and now Google — are finding and patching an exponential number of bugs in their products, thanks to the use of LLMs and AI tools.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Duffy Finds A New Threat To America - DEI Bike Lanes

Trans Secretary Sean Duffy doesn't have time to worry about plane crashes. He's too busy traveling all over the country _ on the taxpayers' dime, mind you - filming reality TV shows and looking for real threats to America, like rainbow crosswalks.

And sure enough, Duffy has done it again!

Earlier this month, he announced his crusade against DEI bike paths:

But Duffy is doing more than just diverting funds from Biden-era projects. He has also ordered DOT staff to scour the agency's websites and remove all mentions of bike paths, traffic cameras, and other tools proven to improve road safety. He even forced them to take down valuable tools like the Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Analysis Tool.

read more

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

Trump WH Asks Supreme Court Shadow Docket To Limit Mail Ballots

Republicans and Donald Trump will do ANYTHING to cheat in the midterm elections (99 days from today!). Their latest dirty trick is to try to have the Supreme Court allow them to limit mail-in voting through the secretive "shadow docket."

For those unaware, the Shadow Docket is a fast-track way to have an emergency ruled on without hearings. It handles "urgent" requests, like stays of execution, emergency injunctions and administrative stays. There are no oral arguments (ie, the other side doesn't get to present); cases are decided literally behind closed doors without public hearings. The justices review short written arguments, and often the decision is made in a brief and unsigned ruling.

It is a DIRTY way of trying to squeeze something by, so of course Donald Trump is doing it in another attempt to put his fat little thumb on the scale for the November midterms.

The Washington Post is reporting that the Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court to give its blessing to a completely crazy executive order to place "major new restrictions" on mail-in ballots prior to the midterm elections.

Just last week a Massachusetts appeals court kept in place a block on the order, stating that it would “sow confusion” and “threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters.”

read more

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

Waymo, robotaxi operators face fresh scrutiny over emergency response failures

Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-California ) has proposed a bill that would direct federal regulators to establish minimum national safety standards for autonomous vehicle operators.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Trump Is Going To LOSE IT Over What His Allies Are Doing Behind Closed Doors

Midterm elections are closing in like a dark cloud on the Grand Old Party, and many of Donald Trump's own allies seem to be attempting to cut off the hand to spare the body behind closed doors.

According to new reporting from MS NOW White House correspondent Jake Traylor, on Sunday's episode of Alex Witt Reports, many of Donald Trump's own close allies are going behind the President's back, urging Republican candidates to publicly break with the President on the subject of the war in Iran, if they want any hope of securing a victory in their impending elections.

Yesterday, a truly damning poll went public, shedding a vicious light on just how deeply the vein of unpopularity regarding the Iran War runs among Americans, ahead of November, when Republicans will face their most dire and crucial election in modern history as they desperately claw and grasp to maintain their slim control over both branches of Congress.

The enlightening new poll from CBS/YouGov found that Trump's war with Iran maintains a 65 percent disapproval rating, with 66 percent believing that Trump's five-month, ongoing war with Iran is going "somewhat" or "very badly." Two-thirds believe that the war should end immediately, while 60 percent believe that the President is basically lying, in an attempt to make things sound "better than they really are."

read more

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

Paramount Temporarily Halts Merger With Warner Brothers And CNN

It looks like the right-wing media takeover has hit a speed bump, at least when it comes to Paramount and Warner Brothers rolling into one...under the ownership of Trump friend David Ellison.

The Washington Post is reporting that Paramount agreed to "halt" its merger with WB until "as late as July 2027" due to a major antitrust lawsuit brought by 12 Democratic states. They are also "facing a challenge from the Writers Guild of America, which represents many screenwriters and journalists, as well as a group of consumers in Northern California."

So, 3 separate challenges, it appears.

The deal, if it goes through, would be a HUGE merger of Hollywood streaming services and media/news. It would include HBO, Paramount, CBS and CNN. And it would be under the leadership of David Ellison, an ally of the Trump administration who would absolutely push right-wing propaganda.

A federal judge on Monday "temporarily paused the merger, ruling that the states had raised significant enough questions about the consolidation that the deal would bring about." Just five days later, both parties agreed to delay the merger for at least 12 months. But the merger could go forward sooner than 12 months if the judge rules on the merits of the case faster.

Paramount spun it in a statement:

read more

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

Trump Suffers Yet Another Loss In His War On Voting

On Saturday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit blocked Donald Trump’s anti-mail voting order. A lower court had already blocked the order after a lawsuit brought by 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia. But Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal attorney cosplaying as the country’s acting attorney general, seems to have no limit for spending taxpayer money to please Donald Trump, in this case by persevering in the effort to make voting harder and less trusted.

Democracy Docket explains: “The Trump administration has ordered DHS to run states’ voter files through a flawed database system called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), which is supposed to be used solely for verifying eligibility for government benefits. Election experts have shown that the SAVE system has regularly misidentified eligible voters.”

“Trump’s order also required the US Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list,” The Guardian noted.

read more

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

Making sense of the panic over Chinese AI

On the latest episode of Equity, we discussed why Moonshot AI's Kimi seemed to panic Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Could Barron Trump Be Subpoenaed Over His Communication With Andrew Tate?

A Democratic congresswoman, Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, has publicly called on the House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer to issue a subpoena to Barron Trump over his extensive communication with Andrew and Tristan Tate. The Tate brothers were just arrested 6 days ago in Miami on dozens of new charges, including CSAM, so it is not shocking that Democrats want to investigate just how deeply the Tate brothers are influencing the Trump administration.

Ansari put out a statement on social media on Thursday:

“Andrew and Tristan Tate have been indicted on horrific charges of rape, human trafficking, and the exploitation of minors. [House Oversight Committee] Chair @RepJamesComer must swiftly open an investigation into the Tate brothers’ coordination and extensive relationships with members of the President’s orbit, including his son, Barron Trump."

read more

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

Warner Bros. lawsuit accuses Amazon of illegally poaching executives

The lawsuit will likely renew debates about whether term employment agreements are enforceable under California. law

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

The hacker who humiliated spyware makers and was never caught

An awe-inspiring hacktivist who hacked two controversial government spyware makers may be the most prolific hacker to have never gotten caught. What do we know about Phineas Fisher?

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Elon Musk’s Boring Company reportedly raising funding at a $20 billion valuation

Elon Musk's tunneling startup is reportedly in talks for a major new funding round.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Volkswagen engineers charged with insider trading tied to Rivian joint venture

The indictment, which was unsealed Friday, alleges the Volkswagen engineers used confidential insider information to buy stock in Rivian.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Sen. Daines: Having Dinner With JD Vance Is Enough Oversight On Iran War

Sen. Steve Daines exposed his ignorance on the US Constitution, budgetary matters and Congressional oversight when he told Fox Business he will vote against an upcoming Senate bill to limit Trump's war powers claiming it violated the principles of the Founding Fathers.

The House just passed a war powers bill "by a vote of 214-208 lawmakers in the House passed a war powers resolution to curb the Trump administration’s military action in Iran, ahead of the lower chamber’s August recces."

Trump supporter Stuart Varney asked the Senator from Montana if the Senate should also "exercise some more control over the war?"

Sen. Daines claimed having dinner with JD Vance counted as Congressional oversight and he will vote against any such bill.

His response was inexcusable for a Senator who sits on the powerful Senate Finance Committee.

DAINES: Stewart, we always have the ability to exercise oversight.

Just look at yesterday. You had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Cain, in front of the Appropriations Committee, you've got Secretary Hegseth, you've got Secretary Rubio, who are in routine contact with members of the U.S. Senate, so we're always engaged.

read more

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

Anthropic updates Claude voice mode with more capable models

Claude's new voice model will let you reschedule your meeting or draft an email

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Trump Is Already Thinking About Starting His Next War

There seems to be no end to the number of people “pro-life” Donald Trump and his minions would love to kill. The latest locale is the West African country of Mali.

The Washington Post got the scoop about the Trump administration’s deliberations over military action targeting an al-Qaeda-affiliated group known as JNIM. The Post goes into great detail about the situation there, which does indeed seem to be quite serious. “Mali, a landlocked nation of nearly 25 million, has in recent years been plagued by violence by Islamist militant groups … particularly JNIM,” The Post explained. They “have grown increasingly powerful, turning Mali and its neighbors in the Sahel into the world’s center for terrorism.”

But is this really a threat to the United States? Or is this really an extortion attempt on behalf of Trump’s cronies? “When the White House was asked for comment, an administration official would not disclose whether the president intended to move forward with military strikes but said the United States has been urging governments in North and West Africa “’to purchase U.S. equipment and services to support their war efforts against the terrorists,’” The Post reported.

read more

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

Jack Reed Rips Pete Hegseth For Using Biden As An Excuse: 'Gross Negligence'

Pete Hegseth got blistered in the Senate Appropriations Committee today by Sen. Jack Reed and others, who refused to hear his editorializing on Trump's greatness, instead exposing his gross negligence over the war and the Strait of Hormuz.

The Trump administration is demanding another $87.6 billion to restock Pentagon resources following their bombing raids on Iran.

Jack Reed gives a master class on how to calmly and systematically demolish an unqualified MAGA cultist in Trump's cabinet.

Reed started off by asking Whiskey Pete if he was prepared for the possibility that the Strait of Hormuz could be closed during a conflict since the Pentagon had been planning for an event like this for decades.

Hegseth tried to blame President Biden for his screw-ups, but Reed would have none of it.

REED: Were you aware that the Strait of Hormuz could be closed, and obviously sinking their ships has not affected their ability to effectively close the Strait.

HEGSETH: We had U.S. boats that surrendered to Iranian ships under the Biden administration, so their navy was affected in expeditious ways in the past.

REED: Listen, we're talking about a war you started, not a situation in which oil was flowing freely, there was no conflict, we weren't losing personnel as a result of Iranian actions, so your fallback to the Biden administration is just a very, very obvious excuse for what I think is probably, as you described, so often gross negligence.

read more

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

Travis Kalanick’s robotics company raises $1.7B, led by a16z

Uber is also investing in Travis Kalanick's company Atoms, which has made gauzy claims about using industrial AI to modernize the world.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

OpenAI says Hugging Face was breached by its own pre-release models

OpenAI has come forward to claim responsibility for the Hugging Face breach, saying it was the result of internal testing gone awry.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Bucking EV slowdown, Sila raises $300M to expand battery materials factory

Sila's fresh $300 million round will help it make enough of its silicon-carbon anode material to power more than 100,000 EVs.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Natural raises $30M to reinvent payments for AI agents — and take on Stripe

The one-year-old startup aims to reinvent financial architecture for autonomous AI transactions.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Where's The Brain Bleach: Hunter Biden Paints Mental Image Of 'Really Kinky' Ted Cruz

In an appearance on progressive pundit Jennifer Welch’s I’ve Had It podcast, Hunter Biden got particularly candid when it came to his thoughts, feelings, and theories on Texas MAGA Senator Ted Cruz's sex life.

According to former President Joe Biden's controversial second son, he's unsure as to whether Ted Cruz is gay or not, but he's all but certain that the Texas Republican is into some "really kinky" stuff, going so far as to imply that there may even be animals involved behind the (thankfully) closed doors of Cruz's private life.

The rather bizarre conversation came to fruition after Welch asked for Biden's take on the "Top 3 MAGA laptops" he would like to see publicly revealed -- a play on the infamous Hunter Biden laptop scandal that still to this day plays rent-free on an infinite loop inside the hollow brains of the MAGA movement.

Hunter couldn't answer fast enough: "Ted Cruz, of course. 100%."

"Ugh, do you get a gaydar ping from Ted?" Welch asked the former First Son.

"No, you know what I get, I get a really, really kinky weird sh*t-type thing," Biden answered, before going in for the kill shot: "It may be gay, it may not be gay, it may be a little bit of this, it may be a little bit of that, but it may involve animals, too."

read more

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

Trump Doesn’t Let Troop Deaths Keep Him From Golfing

Donald Trump’s unnecessary war with Iran has claimed the lives of two more Americans, with a third missing, as I write this on Saturday afternoon.

The New York Times reported about this latest development in President Peace Prize’s war: “The deaths could prompt fierce retaliation, which would come on top of an already intensifying conflict. The United States and Iran expanded the scope and intensity of their attacks overnight, striking critical infrastructure sites that included a power station and water facilities, with no sign of an off-ramp to end the fighting.”

Funny, it was just two weeks ago that Trump declared Iran was “totally defeated militarily.” He made the same claim in April. But maybe Grampa Trump is having trouble remembering which killing spree is which in his “pro-life” administration.

read more

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

'People Could Die': WH 'Scrambled' To Stop Trump From Naming Names In Election Speech

According to a deeply unsettling new report from POLITICO, White House staffers were left "scrambling" to calm President Trump down and keep him restrained and on script during his big election fraud speech, after Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte took it upon himself to get the president "all spun up," only to tuck his tail right before Donald took the stage after he realized "people could die."

Inside sources with direct knowledge on the matter told POLITICO that Pulte was heavily pushing for Trump to publicly name the names of multiple intelligence analysts who stand accused by the Trump Administration of purposefully hiding "election interference" from the president.

Unsurprisingly, the mere notion of this move sent Donald Trump into a rabid tizzy, with sources describing him as "all spun up," ready to drop names like bombs from the stage, as senior White House officials "scrambled" to regain control of the situation before Pulte and Trump popped a Genie out of a bottle that could never be put back again.

read more

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

Can an Apple lawsuit derail OpenAI’s hardware plans?

On the latest episode of Equity, we debate whether Apple's lawsuit will cast over OpenAi's much-discussed plans to get into hardware and go public.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Secret Service Shielding Donald Trump Jr From BBC Subpoena: Filing

The Secret Service has blocked the BBC from serving Donald Trump Jr. with a subpoena seeking his Jan. 6 communications, according to a court filing Friday.

The British Broadcasting Corporation disclosed the blockade in a filing that accused the Justice Department of a conflict of interest — fighting the same subpoena in court that a fellow executive branch agency was stopping on the ground.

President Donald Trump sued the BBC in December, seeking $10 billion over a Panorama documentary that spliced together two portions of his Jan. 6, 2021 Ellipse speech — separated by nearly an hour — to make it appear he had directly urged supporters to "fight like hell" and storm the Capitol. The president claims the edit defamed him and damaged his brand.

ALSO READ: Mike Johnson battered in Dem victory speech as key GOP bill crashes in House

read more

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

Kimi: Threat or menace?

Chinese company Moonshot AI released a new version of its Kimi model this week, prompting concern about "full AI communism."

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Democrats Demand Voter Fraud Investigation Into Ken Paxton

As I’ve previously reported, a blockbuster investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune recently found that crooked Ken Paxton voted six times in the past two years at an address where he almost certainly didn’t live.

The irony is that Paxton, the Texas attorney general now running for the U.S. Senate, fancies himself as the Eliot Ness of voter fraud prosecution. In February, he declared his office “will stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity” and announced the creation of a tip line.

The subject must have been top of mind.

On Tuesday, the Collin County Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Texas secretary of state, asking the secretary to investigate whether Paxton committed election fraud when he voted in the May primary runoff. The reporting found strong evidence that Paxton lived in Denton County with his mistress each of the six times he voted in Collin County,

read more

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

Republicans Discover Wildfires Are Bad, Blame The Country That's Currently On Fire

Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno posted on Xitter that he plans to introduce a bill next week to sanction Canada and their government officials for this atrocity. The backdrop: smoke from wildfires burning across northwestern Ontario and northern Minnesota has pushed air quality in Toledo above 600, a new historic high for the city, and Ohio's EPA issued a statewide air quality advisory.

Moreno's office argued that Canada's government failed to invest in wildfire prevention, such as forest thinning, fuel reduction, prescribed burns, and stronger enforcement against arson. That follows a letter from Michigan Republicans earlier in the week making a similar case — accusing Canada of mismanaging forest maintenance and offering "excuses instead of results," and warning "we are done accepting apologies in place of action... if Canada will not manage its forests to prevent these fires, the United States will look elsewhere, and act on our own, to protect our people."

Canadian PM Mark Carney didn't respond directly to the criticism but took a swipe back, saying "climate change is everyone's responsibility — truly everyone's — including the United States."

read more

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

Nuclear startup Valar Atomics in talks to raise new funding at $6B valuation

The potential deal highlights a growing trend of complex, multi-stage funding rounds that mask true entry prices.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Border Czar Threatens More Bloodshed, Warns Dems To 'Shut Their Mouth'

Within a week of each other, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, became the third and fourth people killed by federal immigration agents this year — the latest sign that Donald Trump's aggressive deportation push has brought not just arrests and removals, but violence and death along with it.

So, of course, Trump's border czar Tom Homan dialed up the violent rhetoric on Laura Ingraham's show toward Democrats who are appalled at the needless murders.

"But it all goes back to the Dems, who want to continually attack ICE, and tell people to evade them, tell people don't comply, tell people to resist, and tell people ICE isn't a real law enforcement agency," he said. "You and I talked about this a year and a half ago, Laura."

"I said if the hateful rhetoric didn't stop, there would be bloodshed," Homan continued. "And I'm saying it right now."

"There's still going to be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted," he added.

Yeah, that tough guy routine isn't going to work coming from a guy who accepted a $50,000 cash payment in 2024 from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives. That bribe was to help businesses win contracts during a second Trump administration.

read more

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

Founders Fund hires former OpenAI exec Ryan Beiermeister (and not because of her ‘Mafia’ skills)

Ryan Beiermeister, who demonstrated cool analysis in the Founders Fund YouTube series "Mafia," has joined the firm as a partner.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Grandpa Needs An Ambien: Trump Goes Ham On Truth Social In Wee Hours Of The Night

Donnie Boy is clearly in desperate need of a glass of warm milk, an Ambien, or an exorcism after the sitting President of the United States went on a Truth Social bender for nearly 3 hours in the wee hours of the night, comparing himself to Lightning McQueen.

It's certainly not unusual for Donald Trump to spend his nights posting up a storm on his Truth Social echo chamber. But despite having a regular baseline of unhinged and bizarre, he managed to get a little extra last night, as he made a whopping 19 posts between the hours of midnight and 2:30 a.m., ranging in topics from the defense budget to international relations to his scammy Trump Accounts for children to a truly absurd video portraying himself as a cartoon race car.

In what appears to be an attempt to paint himself as the hero of all existence, the President posted a video featuring a rousing speech by Lightning McQueen in the Disney movie Cars, overlaid with a montage of images of Trump going about his presidential duties.

"Okay, here we go. Focus. Speed. I am speed. One winner, forty-two losers," the voice of actor Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen bellows in the Disney movie monologue, playing over photos of Donald Trump. "I eat losers for breakfast. Breakfast? Maybe I should have had breakfast? Brekkie could be good for me. No, no, no, focus. Speed. Faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am Lightning."

read more

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

E. Jean Carroll Trolls Trump With Public Victory Lap Over $5.6M Payment

E. Jean Carroll did not go gentle into that good night.

She toppled statues, took scissors to the closet full of Versace, cleared the contents of the desk top in one dramatic fell swoop of the arm, and kicked the trashcan over on her way out the door.

Now, she's taking her well-deserved victory lap with a public "Haha! Better luck next time!" in the sitting US President's face.

Literal years after E. Jean Carroll won her civil sex abuse case against Donald J. Trump, the American author and advice columnist finally received a chunk of what the washed-up reality TV star-turned-dictator owed her.

Trump has spent more than 3 years fighting that verdict against him via every avenue he could conceive, only to find himself brutally shot down at every turn -- even by his own carefully stacked Supreme Court. The buck had to stop somewhere, as a judge finally ordered the release of the $5.6 million Trump owed to Carroll from escrow.

After the coins finally landed in her account, Carroll took to X with a simple but pointed post. Captioning a screenshot of the New York Times article that reported on the release of the funds, she quoted the famous first words astronaut Neil Armstrong spoke to NASA's mission control after he and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969: "The eagle has landed."

read more

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

OpenAI’s new flagship model deletes files on its own, people keep warning

A number of social media posts claim that GPT-5.6 Sol deleted files and data without warning. OpenAI had basically disclosed the problem in June.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

The founder of Hinge raised $18M to build a new AI dating service, Overtone

Overtone describes itself as "a voice- and audio-forward service, enabled by AI, that provides highly curated introductions."

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Videos Show ICE Agents Walking Beside Car Before Shooting And Dumping Body On Ground

Videos from a fatal Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting in Biddeford, Maine, show agents walking beside a slow-rolling car, undercutting the government's claim that the driver tried to use it as a weapon.

The victim was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States, according to the Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition. He was shot dead Monday morning.

A second video shared by journalist Sam Stein shows ICE agents removing the man's body from the car and dropping it headfirst on the ground. He appeared to have been handcuffed.

The agents involved in the shooting were not wearing body cameras, according to the Portland Press Herald.

"Objectively, this is a video of a car slowly turning and ICE agents walking alongside it," Stein, who shared the first video on X, wrote. "Hard to understand how we could end up with ANOTHER deadly shooting here."

read more

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

Satya Nadella has issued a shocking warning to companies using AI

Of all the debates raging about the potential downsides of AI, there is one worry causing the most hand-wringing among AI enthusiasts in Silicon Valley — that the giant AI labs that sell proprietary models are somehow acting like Trojan horses.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Apple says former employee exploited ‘rare’ bug to download confidential files after leaving for OpenAI

Apple would not comment on the "security breach," which allegedly allowed a former employee to download sensitive files from Apple's network long after he departed the company for rival OpenAI.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Vance Has A Cringe-Inducing Marie Antoinette Moment

J Divan Vance once again demonstrated how he has a complete disconnect from what's going on in the country with a Marie Antoinette moment. While Americans are struggling to make ends meet and having to choose between food, medicine, and gasoline, Vance is bragging about how posh his life is:

Vance was speaking with Mike Rowe on his podcast when he couldn't contain himself:

Like, my life is - dude - totally transformed.

I don't go to the grocery store anymore. People go to the grocery store for me. Most of my meals, like, when I cook a meal - it's like, I love to cook, actually, big baker. I like to cook for my kids as a special occasion, but I don't have to cook anymore because I've got an army of people who are willing to like cook me my food. My life is so weird. I fly around on a 757, no more TSA lines for for me and the kids. It's so weird, but it can become the sort of thing that if you internalize it, you start to be an entitled asshole.

Oh, wow, J Divan, dude, like that ship has totally sailed, dude. I can think of only one person who is a bigger entitled asshole than you are, and his initials are President Pedo.

Vance doesn't even grasp that this "army of people" he thinks just live to cook for him are actually employees, most of whom are probably getting paid shit wages, to serve his pampered ass. Trust me, dude, no one likes you enough to put up with you for free.

read more

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

This slushie machine was a lifesaver during NYC’s heat wave

Last weekend’s brutal NYC heat wave had me craving a frozen drink almost every afternoon. Normally, that would mean sweating through a walk to 7-Eleven for a slurpee. This time, though, I stayed home and put the new Ninja Slushi Twist to the test. Ninja’s latest slushie machine builds on the popularity of the original […]

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Trump's CDC Stopped Monitoring A Parasite. Guess What's Spreading Now.

A nationwide outbreak of explosive diarrhea is currently underway, and it's tied to a parasite the CDC quietly dropped from federal surveillance back in July 2025. That timing lines up almost exactly with the Trump administration's broader gutting of health and science agencies under the "government efficiency" banner, HuffPost reports.

A parasite called Cyclospora has sickened over 1,000 people across 29 states, with Michigan getting hit the worst of all. The CDC would probably have caught this sooner — if it hadn't stopped watching for it.

The agency's FoodNet program used to track eight foodborne pathogens, until that surveillance simply stopped. Cyclospora, Campylobacter, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia were tracked. But in July 2025, right around the time the Trump administration started gutting federal health agencies and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed out scientists and researchers, that surveillance ended.

What's left of FoodNet now tracks exactly two things: Salmonella and E. coli. Everything else, apparently, is on the honor system.

read more

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

Kevin McCarthy Continues To Beclown Himself On Fox Over Platner

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's hypocrisy was on full display this Friday as he demanded apologies from liberals who supported Platner and "overlooked the womanizing" before the rape accusations.

He made a fool of himself this Monday when he made the ridiculous claim that Republicans "walk away" from their bad candidates during an appearance on Jesse Watters' show.

He was back at it again with John Roberts on America Reports, attacking the potential candidates that might replace Platner, which prompted Roberts to read from a portion of a Wall Street Journal article claiming they'll be making a huge mistake if they nominate another liberal to take Platner's place.

Which was followed by this nonsense by McCarthy:

ROBERTS: I mean, what's the problem with a moderate candidate in the state of Maine?

MCCARTHY: Well, see, it's kind of what I raised earlier. It's the weakness of the style of leadership that we have in Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

They sit back, and then the socialists, because they have more enthusiasm, they're running the tables on these individuals instead of people standing up.

And when you look at who is the real leader of the Democratic Party, it is Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Mamdani. But what you're finding is, why isn't Bernie Sanders apologizing, or Ro Khanna, for what they did?

read more

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

Trump Goon Subpoenas NYT Reporters Over Embarrassing Air Force One Story

Friday night, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, soothed Donald Trump’s ruffled feathers and petty, authoritarian ego by subpoenaing at least four New York Times reporters who had the audacity to embarrass President P***y Grabber.

The offense to Trump’s fragile fee-fees was a Times report exposing the inadequacy of his renovations to the Qatari “gift” Air Force One, the one that we, the taxpayers, are paying hundreds of millions to upgrade. Trump had claimed that he flew the old Air Force One out of Turkey last week “for old times' sake” and “so the new jet could leave early and make stops at U.S. military bases to show it off to the troops because the aircraft is ‘magnificent.’” The Times noted.

In reality, Trump flew the old plane for security reasons. “People briefed on the new plane’s capabilities, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues, said the new plane does not have all the features of the older plane,” The Times reported.

Although the article doesn’t come right out and say so, it seems pretty clear that President Deal Maker was so eager to fly around in his new luxurious “gift” that he rushed the renovations and didn’t have them finished properly. Sound familiar?

read more

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

Trump Has To Fly Old AF One Out Of Turkey For Reasons

Told ya he rushed it and the plane doesn’t have all the defense bells and whistles it is supposed to have, and now that we are in a shooting war with Iran (AGAIN!), he cannot fly this thing home, hence another older AF-1 is going to pick him up. So we get to pay for the fuel X2.

The Affordability Prznint.

Anyway, here’s the dopey liar try to gild the turd:

To honor our brave men and women of the Military, we are sending the brand new, and truly spectacular, Air Force One to Mildenhall Air Force Base, in the United Kingdom, to give them a chance to tour the Aircraft – Everybody is so excited, and we thought that they should be the first. For old time’s sake, we’ll be taking the former Air Force One, from Turkey to Mildenhall, a short trip that is totally worth doing in order to give our Great Military Heroes a chance to appreciate our beautiful new addition to the Air Force Fleet! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Yeah, I’m sure that they will be thrilled to tour this thing.

OK, Congress: time to make sure he knows that this bird is not his personal toy, and if he wants to keep it, he has to pay for this $400M bribe + upgrades himself, out of his own pocket. I defy the Republicans to try to make it some sort of tribute to the Grifter-in-Chief.

Published with permission of MockPaperScissors

read more

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

Bluesky’s interim CEO, Toni Schneider, drops the ‘interim’

Schneider, who formerly served as the CEO of Automattic and is a partner at True Ventures, says he is "all in" on the unconventional social media platform.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Apple sues OpenAI over alleged trade secret theft

Apple alleges the misconduct was directed by OpenAi's senior leadership, including a long-time former employee.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Trump Fires All Election Assistance Commission Members — Just In Time For The Midterms

The Election Assistance Commission doesn't touch ballots or voter rolls — it just helps states run elections smoothly. Trump just fired everyone on it, four months out from the midterms, using new power from a Roberts Supreme Court ruling that dropped last month—nothing to see here.

Trump has cleared out the last people standing at the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that helps states run elections — and he did it four months before the midterms, which is either a coincidence or exactly the point, VoteBeat reports.

The two Democrats on the commission, Chair Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were fired outright. The lone Republican, Christy McCormick, got to resign instead, which is a nice touch. The agency was created to be split down the middle. Now it's empty.

Congress created this agency in 2002 specifically so it couldn't be steamrolled by one party — now it has no one in charge at all. No one.

To be clear about what the EAC actually does, because it's not glamorous: it doesn't touch ballots, doesn't talk to voters, and has zero authority over state election officials. What it does do is help train election officials, keep them current on voting tech, run the national mail voter registration form (the same one Trump already tried to rewrite by executive order last year), certify voting machines, and hand out election security grants.

read more

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

FanDuel sent a video from star athlete Bryce Harper to a customer with a gambling problem

The video call highlights the murky relationship between professional athletes and gambling apps.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Autonomous drone delivery startup Manna plots major US expansion

Manna is launching a U.S. operations and manufacturing facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that will eventually employ 1,000 people.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

This startup thinks robotics is about to have its ChatGPT moment

General Intuition is betting millions of hours of video game data can train the foundation models for physical AI, making it easier to build smarter robots with minimal real-world data.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

MAGA To Mitch McConnell's Team: Prove He's Not Dead

It's been nearly a month since Mitch McConnell's mysterious June 14 hospitalization, and his own party is starting to wonder if anyone's actually seen the guy. A growing chorus of MAGA figures is demanding McConnell's staff produce actual proof he's still breathing, because his office's strategy so far has been to say absolutely nothing useful — no update on his treatment, his prognosis, or whether the 84-year-old will ever make it back to the Senate floor.

What we do know: he reportedly went into cardiac arrest, was found unconscious, and needed CPR at his own home, after which his team settled into a loop of the same vague "thanks for the well-wishes" statement. And just to keep things extra suspicious, his wife Elaine Chao apparently hopped a flight to Beijing three days later for a sit-down with China's Vice President Han Zheng — because nothing says "everything's fine here" like a diplomatic trip abroad.

Of course, Trump whisperer Laura Loomer and others like Catturd weighed in.

Not true.

Mitch McConnell is allegedly in a vegetative state. https://t.co/flxl7aQR73

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 7, 2026

read more

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

Discord admits AI moderation bug wrongfully banned users over harmless images

The company confirmed that the issue had been affecting accounts since May, with an additional 200 users banned over the weekend before its team identified and fixed the problem.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

'Code Red': Trump's Ego Fireworks Leave D.C. Fearing For Their Health

Donald Trump chose to put his fragile, maniacal ego on full display over the holiday weekend with a positively massive fireworks display meant to celebrate America's 250th birthday. However, it seems the ordeal only left countless D.C. residents stranded indoors as they waited for the acrid smoke to clear.

That massive fireworks show was originally scheduled for 9 pm. Still, it was ultimately rescheduled to take place after Trump's big speech, which didn't begin until after 11 pm due to an evacuation order following dangerously high temperatures that swept through Washington, D.C. this weekend, sending the city into a record-breaking 103-degree heatwave. As a result of all of the rescheduling, the fireworks display didn't wrap up until the wee hours of the morning on July 5th.

Visually speaking, the display was certainly spectacular, if not a bit overwhelming. Featuring something in the ballpark of a staggering 850,000 fireworks, launched from 20 different sites across the nation's Capital, lasting an entire 40 minutes, the pyrotechnics event was dubbed the "largest fireworks show in history" by the big man himself.

However, it seemed to leave D.C. residents worse for wear when it was all said and done, as the over-the-top display left the air thick with a blurry haze of acrid smoke that blanketed the D.C. skyline, obscured the big finale, and led to a "Code Red" warning about unsafe air quality for residents of the city.

read more

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

You can now customize Siri’s pace and expressivity in the latest iOS 27 beta

The new controls let you control how quickly Siri speaks and expressive its voice is.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Uber’s European expansion plans may have hit a speed bump

Back in February, Uber announced ambitious plans to launch in seven new European markets in 2026 — but now five of those launches are reportedly on hold.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Trump memecoin investors lost $3.8 billion, analysis finds

Nearly 1 million people have lost a total of $3.8 billion after buying President Donald Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin, while Trump made $636 million.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Trump Misquotes Declaration Of Independence During Speech At National Mall

As always, just imagine what the reaction in the right-wing media would be if Joe Biden had done something like this.

Trump delivered a venom-filled speech this Saturday for America's 250th anniversary:

President Donald Trump marked the 250th anniversary of the United States on Saturday with ​a campaign-style speech that repeated his calls for new voting restrictions, warned that "communists" could gain ground in the country and cycled through what he touted ‌as his achievements.

After a storm-related delay of nearly two hours, Trump appeared on the National Mall in Washington to deliver a speech that mixed broad appeals to patriotism with pointed attacks on perceived ideological threats at home and abroad. [...]

TRUMP WARNS OF COMMUNIST 'CANCER,' WHITE NATIONALISTS APPEAR

"We like to stop a threat like that immediately and before it begins. It's ⁠like a cancer – you've got to cut it out and you got to cut it out fast," he said.

The Republican president has in the past repeatedly referred to left-wing Democratic ​candidates who have won a string of primary elections as "communists," though he did not explicitly do so on Saturday.

And he managed to misquote the Declaration of Independence while he was doing it.

read more

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

Happy 250 Years Of America! ICE Decides It Isn’t Brutal Enough

The White House is supercharging its deportation efforts again, and the timing shouldn’t go unnoticed.

According to The New York Times, daily immigration arrests have recently doubled as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers put in seven-day workweeks to sweep the streets of people they’ve deemed deportable.

Over 10,000 immigrants were reportedly detained within a five-day span, with many being targeted at immigration check-ins, traffic stops, and simply while walking down the street. This increase in quota—which demands agents to hit 2,000 arrests a day—comes from the White House, according to the Times.

The timing of this deportation push speaks volumes. The documented and undocumented immigrant communities in the U.S. have been in mourning and shock.

Last week, The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to rip away Temporary Protected Status from Haitian and Syrian immigrants, enabling Trump to deport them more easily and leaving them vulnerable to his will. Many are now scrambling to secure a different type of protected status before ICE comes knocking on their doors.

“Now we are vulnerable, we are exposed to detention and to deportation,” Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center, told Daily Kos in a phone call this past weekend.

read more

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

New Google commercial imagines a Declaration of Independence written with help from AI

Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Video Of Dallas PD Officer Shoving Egypt World Cup Staff Goes Viral

There have been lots of reports of World Cup teams facing issues in America due to insanely horrible new immigration policies rolled out by the fascist Trump regime.

Reports have included a referee from Somalia being denied entry, an Iraqi team member being denied entry, fans from countries being denied entry (even though they have tickets), Iran's team being forced to lodge their team in Mexico, and after each game, they had to fly out immediately. They could not stay in America overnight at all.

Now we have a viral video of a Dallas Police Department officer getting into a physical altercation with a staff member of the Egypt team. And it looks bad.

The video shows an officer getting into a confrontation with Egypt's team as they posed with fans outside their hotel in Dallas. The officer shoved Egypt national team director Ibrahim Hassan while posing for a photo with a young fan.

The Dallas officer began arguing with the staff member, with the officer shouting “Back off! Back off!” as he shoved the man backward. Hassan says, “No pushing, no pushing,” to the officer as the altercation intensifies. Another officer can be seen attempting to separate people.

Police claim that the hotel security team called them.

DPD spokesperson put out a statement saying:

read more

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

Mamdani Marks Country's 250th Birthday, Points Out It's Still Got Some Growing Up To Do

Flanked by a group of naturalized citizens and seated at George Washington's own desk, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the moment to make a forceful case for the country's history as a nation of immigrants, timed just ahead of the 250th anniversary festivities. The roughly quarter-hour address, delivered July 3, wove in personal biography alongside a more extensive look at America's long tradition of welcoming newcomers from around the globe.

Mamdani drew a sharp contrast: extreme wealth concentration alongside child hunger, and ICE-style enforcement actions described in visceral terms — masked agents making arrests after being served food by the very undocumented workers they're detaining.

"As we mark 250 years, what do we see?" he began before making Republican heads explode. 'We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more."

"We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections," he continued. "We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone."

read more

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

The only AI glossary you’ll need this year

The rise of AI has brought an avalanche of new terms and slang. Here is a glossary with definitions of some of the most important words and phrases you might encounter.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

Energy Secretary Applauds The End Of Federal Wind And Solar Subsidies

Idiocracy indeed.

And as a reminder, before leading the U.S. Department of Energy, Wright served as the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second-largest hydraulic fracturing company.

Source: International Business Times

The 4 Jul 2026 deadline will end core tax credits for future US wind and solar projects, but not all federal support.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on 2 Jul that the Trump administration would 'end the subsidies for wind and solar' after about 35 years. The statute reaches two principal clean-electricity tax credits rather than every federal mechanism that can assist the sector.

Its timing also matters: a project that establishes construction before the cut-off can remain outside the new termination rule.

Wright's statement referred to sections 45Y and 48E of the Internal Revenue Code: the Clean Electricity Production Credit and Clean Electricity Investment Credit. Public Law 119-21, enacted on 4 Jul 2025, amended both provisions to terminate them for wind and solar facilities placed in service after 31 Dec 2027, subject to a construction-date exception.

read more

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

Turns Out The Best Way To Leak The Smith Report Was To Just Ask The DOJ

The DOJ accidentally handed over the sealed second volume of Jack Smith's classified-documents report to lawyers for Carmen Lineberger — the woman they're currently prosecuting for allegedly stealing that exact report by emailing it to herself disguised as a cake recipe.

According to a legal filing published Thursday, it happened during a routine discovery handoff on flash drives in early June. Lineberger's attorneys found three unfamiliar documents, flagged them to the government, and once DOJ lawyers confirmed what they were, the defense team stopped reading, deleted the files, and returned the drives — playing it a lot straighter than the DOJ apparently did.

Here's the kicker: this is the same report Trump successfully fought to keep sealed after winning the 2024 election, and the same case that Judge Aileen Cannon tossed on shaky grounds before it ever reached trial. So the government spent over a year making sure the public never saw this thing, then just mailed it all willy-nilly to a defendant's lawyers by mistake.

Via The New Republic:

read more

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

A warning sign about AI’s real cost, courtesy of Google and Amazon

AI has made it a lot harder for tech companies like Amazon and Google to deliver on their net-zero pledges.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details

At Roosevelt Honor, Trump Attributes TR Son's Valor To 'Racehorse' Genetics

During a dedication at the Theodore Roosevelt library, Donald Trump equated Theodore Roosevelt, and his son Arthur winning the Medal of Honor because of eugenics, genetics and race horses.

It's never a wise policy to promote genetics and eugenics during a speech if you're German, but Trump believes he is genetically superior.

TRUMP: And it'll be displayed alongside the Medal of Honor earned by his brave son.

His son was brave.

It's genetics, you know.

It's like the racehorse theory, right?

Fast horses.

Trump continued on talking about the Congressional medal of honor winners and brought up the fact that he said he wanted to award himself a medal of honor, claiming it was a joke lost on the media.

Which led him back et him back into genetics.

TRUMP: And when I joke — I always — I learned early on, don't be sarcastic in politics.

But I actually said a few times that I've seriously thought of giving myself the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Now, everyone knows I'm doing it with a chuckle, but then they report, he wants to give himself the Congressional.

So I don't say that anymore.

It's very dangerous to say.

But it is the highest award, and they had a father-son get it.

And that's a tremendous tribute to a genetic pool.

I won't bother listing off the amount of celebrated mothers and fathers, who had murderers and criminal kids to disprove his point.

read more

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

Trump Dodges Conflict-of-Interest Question, Thanks Himself For Stock Market Instead

A reporter asked Donald J. Trump what message he'd send to Americans struggling financially, given his own eye-popping year on his latest disclosure. Trump's answer: he doesn't "get involved" with his money — it's all handled through what he called a "blind account," run by institutions he claims he never speaks to. Sure thing, Mr. Grifty McGrifferson.

Pressed on whether he's benefiting anyway, he didn't deny it. He pivoted to the stock market, insisted that "everybody is profiting," and asked the reporter how their 401 (k) was doing. When they said it was up roughly 85%, Trump replied, "Thank you, President Trump" — apparently thanking himself on the reporter's behalf.

"Your financial disclosure shows you had a very lucrative year last year," a reporter said. "What message do you think to send to average Americans, especially those who are now financially?"

"Well, you know, I don't get involved in my personal — we have funds that run my money," Trump said.

"But you are benefiting," the reporter noted.

"Well, I've made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money," he said. "And I don't talk to them. I never — I don't even speak to them."

"So I have many people — I don't know what they call it — closed accounts or something," he continued. "You put your money in, and that's it. I don't talk to them."

"But, yeah, I've had a great career," the bankruptcy king said. "In business, I've had a great career."

read more

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

Melat Kiros Defeats 15-term Incumbent Diana DeGette

The news outlets have been calling this a major upset, and I suppose it was. But anyone paying attention to this race knew that 30-year incumbent Diana DeGette was in serious trouble and did not give her DSA opponent as much attention as she ought to have until it was already too late. Millions were poured in from the usual suspects at the last minute, but to no avail. Since CO-01 in Denver is one of the bluest districts in the country, Melat Kiros will be their next congresswoman.

Source: Denver Post

Melat Kiros, a political newcomer and democratic socialist, defeated 15-term U.S. Rep Diana DeGette on Tuesday night in the Democratic primary to represent Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, a major upset in the nationally watched race.

The Associated Press called the contest for the 29-year-old Kiros — an attorney who pitched herself as a fresh, non-establishment Democrat — shortly after 10 p.m. after her initial 2-percentage-point lead had grown to 5.8 percentage points. By 11:30 p.m., Kiros’ lead had expanded to 9.6 percentage points as she collected 51.3% of the vote.

DeGette, 68, had won 41.7% of the vote as of 11:30 p.m., with an estimated 93% of the total votes counted.

Soon after the AP called the race, Kiros stepped on stage at a watch party attended by her supporters in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to declare victory.

read more

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

SpaceX has an AI device prototype, and it sure sounds phone-ish

SpaceX reportedly showed investors a "handset-like" AI device before going public. It could be another signal SpaceX wants to expand into wireless.

from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details