SmartNews

Meta employees reported Wednesday that in the company’s offices on the day mass layoffs hit thousands of their colleagues, fliers were taped to walls urging workers to sign a petition in support of stopping the company’s new artificial intelligence data tracking program—which CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted late last month as a way for its new AI models to “learn from watching really smart people do things.”

A day before about 8,000 Meta employees began receiving emails notifying them that they were being laid off—a process that began in Singapore at 4:00 am local time Wednesday and continued in European and US offices in their respective time zones—the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union shared a leaked audio file in which Zuckerberg was heard explaining how the AI training program worked.

There could not be a worse time for Donald Trump’s pick to take over as chair of the Federal Reserve from Jerome Powell, with economic indicators trending towards a possible interest rate increase at a time when the president expects cuts.

That is according to Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who wrote on his Substack on Wednesday that newly-appointed Kevin Warsh may find himself as the lone vote opposing a rate increase, or leaving the current rate in place until the next meeting.

House Democrats have quickly stepped up their pressure on officials involved in setting up President Donald Trump's massive fund to pay off allies who say they were politically targeted by previous administrations.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, moved to subpoena acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other administration officials involved in establishing the $1.776 "Anti-Weaponization Fund," reported MeidasTouch correspondent Scott MacFarlane.

House Democrats are opening an inquiry into the "massive slush fund" established by the Department of Justice to pay off President Donald Trump's allies.

The DOJ announced the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund" as part of a settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, and House Democrats notified Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano that they were seeking documents and other evidence related to the fund.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) came armed with gotcha questions at Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center — and walked away empty-handed after civil rights attorney Maya Wiley repeatedly deflected his attacks by pointing to one inconvenient fact: the donors don't care.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche used the phrase "Manufacturing Hate" — charging that the SPLC was "not dismantling these groups" but "manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose" — and it became the hearing's title. The committee convened in the wake of a federal grand jury indictment on April 21, charging the SPLC with 11 counts, including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon has become the latest symbol of the Trump administration's chaotic approach to election investigations after sending a records demand to the wrong office in her attempt to investigate Detroit's 2024 election results.

According to Talking Points Memo, the controversial Dhillon demanded that Wayne County's clerk provide records from the 2024 election, claiming the DOJ intended to investigate supposed fraud. However, she made a fundamental error: in Michigan, cities and townships run elections — not county clerks.

President Donald Trump has ushered disgraced filmmaker Brett Ratner into his inner circle, and his former biographer offered an explanation.

The 57-year-old director accompanied the 79-year-old president to China last week ostensibly to scout filming locations for "Rush Hour 4," a franchise reboot Trump helped greenlight last year, and author Michael Wolff told The Daily Beast's "Inside Trump's Head" podcast he had an idea why Ratner been added to his orbit.

Sen. John Cornyn briefly shared a post calling Donald Trump the "Commander-in-Cheat" on Tuesday — then deleted it — in a stunning moment of apparent candor from a Republican incumbent fighting for his political life one week before a Trump-backed primary runoff.

As first reported by The Federalist's Sean Davis, Cornyn retweeted a post from advocacy group Pastors for Children that ticked through Ken Paxton's long list of scandals — his impeachment, felony indictment, and divorce on grounds of adultery — before landing on the kicker: "Endorsed by our Commander-in-Cheat."

The in-studio audience for Tuesday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC burst into cheering and raucous applause after the host shared a clip of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) putting acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in his place earlier in the day.

According to Kimmel, it was “perfect.”

A former police officer arrested by Tennessee officials for making a Facebook post about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder will receive $835,000 as part of a wrongful incarceration settlement, CNN reported on Wednesday.

"Under the deal announced Wednesday, Larry Bushart, agreed to drop the five-month-old case alleging that his constitutional rights were violated when officials in Perry County, Tennessee, held him in jail," said the report, noting that the lawsuit, brought with help from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), had been set to go to trial in two months. "'I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,' Bushart said in a statement Wednesday. 'The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy.'"