The second problematic provision — found within Section 43201(c) of the House reconciliation bill — would impose a 10-year ban on the enforcement of all state and local laws that regulate artificial intelligence (AI), including rules for AI’s use in political campaigns and elections.
From what I've read about reconciliation bills, provisons need to be mainly about the budget rather than policy. What does banning AI regulation at lower levels of government have to do with the federal budget?
[18 U.S. Code] Section 111 makes it a crime to “forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with” federal officials engaged in their duties. But here’s the problem: You don’t even need to know they’re federal officials. You can be convicted for shoving someone you think is just someone yelling in your face, even just placing them in “reasonable fear of harm” without physical contact—if they turn out to be a plainclothes agent. That’s not hypothetical. That’s precedent, courtesy of the Supreme Court over 50 years ago.
Which means this: An undercover agent embedded in a protest, a public meeting, even a constituent town hall could claim to have been “impeded,” and the federal government can treat that moment as a federal crime. Under the current administration’s appetite for authoritarianism, that’s not a loophole, it’s a feature.
The music labels have responded by trying to make artists wait much longer before they can try something similar:
It’s significant, Greenstein said, that the first Taylor’s Version wasn’t released until she’d been off Big Machine for three years. Until then, she was legally bound not to re-record any of the material, and this time frame was typical of record deals in the past. But this is the part of the equation that Swift likely changed for good.
“For decades, major labels were somewhat rational when it came to the prohibition of re-recordings,” Greenstein said. “But now they’re going to be asking, ‘What’s the risk of a Taylor’s Version?’”
In response, record companies are now trying to prohibit re-recordings for 20 or 30 years, not just two or three. And this has become a key part of contract negotiations. “Will they get 30 years? Probably not, if the lawyer is competent. But they want to make sure that the artist’s vocal cords are not in good shape by the time they get around to re-recording.”
Users on reddit and lemmy always seem to think ad-based stuff is going to fail, and then it turns out people in the real world are depressingly accepting of ads. I would bet that this program is more likely to be expanded than canceled.
Australia has never contemplated imposing a similar tax. New Zealand tried but backed down last week after the United States threatened to impose higher tariffs on New Zealand goods.
What happened in New Zealand is almost certainly what will happen in Australia. This will go nowhere.
Well the AI companies and investors should have understood that building an industry off of doing something questionable was risky and risks don't always work out.
When President Donald Trump and Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred met at the White House last month, they discussed one of the president’s passion projects — reinstating baseball star Pete Rose to make him eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
This week, that’s exactly what Manfred did.
When I heard Pete Rose was going to be eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame my immediate reaction was to joke that "Somehow this is Donald Trump's fault". I didn't think I'd be right.
The Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority claims the store owes it up to $17 million in unpaid rent going back years, while Royal Bank of Canada says $3.3 million in debt is outstanding.
Sounds like they were having trouble long before the current drop in travel. Could be they never recovered from covid.
"ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES" says the tremendously unpopular president who routinely violates the Constitution presidents swear to "preserve, protect and defend".
It’s a common phenomenon, really. Sydney Sweeney is beautiful now, and would be considered so in any era. But because she’s no longer the only type of woman who’s considered beautiful, certain people on the right think they’re being oppressed and the world has gone to hell.
Why have these weirdos zeroed in on Sweeney in particular? There are lots of beautiful white women with big boobs out there—Kate Upton, Blake Lively, Katy Perry, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Ratajkowski, and more. As far as I can tell, part of it seems to be that Sweeney doesn’t shy away from talking about or sharing her body. On Euphoria, she does a lot of nudity, and she’s spoken in interviews about feeling comfortable with it. On SNL, she repeatedly joked about her boobs and even wore a Hooters uniform. The National Post praised Sweeney for “playfully owning her sex appeal with zero apologies” and criticized Vanity Fair for suggesting it might have been nice to give her some material that wasn’t about her beauty.
Trump's tariffs lowering the US wine industry's sales is just preparation for his environmental policies lowering their production by making it harder to grow grapes. It'll all balance out eventually.
Tesla is far from alone in flashing the “death cross.” The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 both showed it as well on Monday, as the indexes continue to fluctuate in wild and somewhat unpredictable ways thanks to the endless uncertainty that the Trump administration has introduced to the market through its blanket tariffs and “will they, won’t they” exceptions that keep getting tacked on and taken off.
An individual stock hitting this point doesn't really seem like that big a deal when indexes are getting there.
Between this and his tough on crime nonsense, it feels like Poilievre has given up on winning anyone over and is just trying to hang on to his base. Which is a weird thing to do when your base wasn't enough to win the last election, but whatever.
“How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him? Of course I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said while sitting beside President Donald Trump. “The question is preposterous.”
Ideally you would return him because the president of the United States asked you to, but I suppose Trump doesn't think the Supreme Court's ruling that the US government needs to "facilitate" Garcia’s return requires such an extraordinary level of effort.
It's ridiculous that the US government is paying a foreign government to detain prisoners on its behalf and seems to be claiming it didn't put anything in the contract about a way to get the prisoners back.
From what I've read about reconciliation bills, provisons need to be mainly about the budget rather than policy. What does banning AI regulation at lower levels of government have to do with the federal budget?