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  • FIFA plan for Kushner-backed $20 billion operation to run World Cup meets fury from Europe’s UEFA

    FIFA plan for Kushner-backed $20 billion operation to run World Cup meets fury from Europe’s UEFA

    GENEVA — FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s plan to create a $20 billion company running the World Cup with private investors including the Kushner family was announced Tuesday — and immediately attacked by European soccer body UEFA.

    “It is not FIFA’s to sell,” UEFA said in a statement. “None of us are the owners of football.”

    Infantino’s plans to form a commercial subsidiary, which would be called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), running competitions like the World Cup and Club World Cup was first reported by The Times of London.

    FIFA said in a statement FFE would raise up to $4.2 billion later this year to help fund development programs “based on an initial equity valuation of $20 billion by carefully selecting long-term investors who will purchase minority, non-controlling interests.”

    FIFA is working with J.P. Morgan while intended investors include Thrive Eternal launched by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared Kushner is a son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump.

    The men’s World Cup that finished this month only deepened the political and personal ties between Trump and Infantino, and fueled concerns about those ties including from UEFA.

    “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially,” UEFA said Tuesday, responding to the reports of selling stakes in FIFA competitions.

    FIFA is currently a Swiss-based not-for-profit association of its 211 national member federations worldwide.

    Those members must approve any plan and would get the chance “to access up to $20 million in one-off capital,” FIFA said.

    “This is about the democratization of football worldwide,” Infantino said in a FIFA statement, which added that “a consultation process has begun.”

    UEFA, however, said it took reports of the project “extremely seriously. So should every national Football Association.”

    “This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” said UEFA, which comprises 55 of the FIFA members.

    FIFA’s $20M offer to member federations

    The outline of Tuesday’s surprise announcement was, FIFA said, detailed by Infantino to members who met in Manhattan on July 18 ahead of the World Cup final. There, Infantino promised to “unleash the commercial potential and opportunity that FIFA has.”

    FIFA’s statement Tuesday about its proposed project led on how much money each of its 211 members could get through 2038 in the “FIFA Fast-Forward Program.”

    Instead of the currently promised $8 million each in development funds through the 2027-30 World Cup commercial cycle, it would be $20 million, then $22 million and $24 million in the following cycles.

    FIFA banked record World Cup income of about $12 billion from the 2026 tournament which had unprecedented high prices for tickets and hospitality across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It already was unclear how that money could be matched from Spain, Portugal and Morocco co-hosting the 2030 men’s edition.

    Member federations could choose if they wanted to take part in the new financial opportunities, FIFA said.

    “FIFA would retain sole control of FFE and exclusive authority over football governance, competitions, match calendar, and all regulatory and sporting decisions,” the soccer body said.

    FIFA’s integrity standards were called into question during the World Cup, including by team coaches, Norway’s soccer federation and a top European public body, the Council of Europe.

    FIFA’s previous attempt to privatize assets

    The project announced Tuesday is the second time in Infantino’s increasingly controversial 11-year presidency he has tried to push through a multi-billion dollar deal with private backers.

    In 2018, Infantino proposed a secretive $25 billion offer over 12 years with SoftBank of Japan to create new global competitions, including an expanded men’s Club World Cup, seemingly backed by Saudi Arabian money.

    That ultimately failed after meeting fierce resistance from UEFA, which saw threats to its prize assets: the Champions League and the European Championship.

    Infantino still built closer ties to Saudi soccer and the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 World Cup and largely funded the revamped men’s Club World Cup hosted in the U.S. last year.

    Infantino’s future?

    The financial success of the just-ended World Cup has looked likely to ensure Infantino is re-elected next year unopposed for a fourth and final term in office through 2031.

    At his re-election by acclaim in 2023 in Rwanda, Infantino suggested any CEO delivering similar financial results would be kept in the job forever.

    Speculation has swirled for years Infantino might want a different global role in soccer beyond his FIFA presidency, which is due to end when he is 61.

    The Times reported Tuesday that a CEO-like commissioner role of the new FFE operation could be created for Infantino.

    “This has never been discussed,” FIFA said in a statement Tuesday. “However, the FIFA president and the FIFA administration will and must have leading roles in this entity — if approved.”

    There was no timetable suggested Tuesday for debate and decisions by FIFA, its ruling Council chaired by Infantino, and the 211 members.

    FIFA is scheduled to hold an online congress on Nov. 23 to confirm hosts of the Women’s World Cup editions in 2031 and 2035.

  • Ex-Olympian charged with damaging Reflecting Pool sees ‘irregularities’ in grand jury proceedings

    Ex-Olympian charged with damaging Reflecting Pool sees ‘irregularities’ in grand jury proceedings

    WASHINGTON — A former Olympian charged with deliberately damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is seeking access to all of the closed-door testimony that led to his indictment, pointing to “irregularities” in those grand jury proceedings.

    In a court filing Monday, David Hearn’s attorneys requested an order for the government to turn over a complete transcript of all grand jury proceedings. They also want prosecutors to disclose the legal instructions they gave to grand jurors about the elements of Hearn’s alleged crime.

    Hearn pleaded not guilty earlier this month to one felony count of property destruction and has a trial scheduled to start Sept. 28 in D.C. Superior Court. The charge, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years upon conviction, accuses Hearn of causing at least $1,000 in damage to the pool.

    But his lawyers question whether prosecutors properly presented the grand jury with adequate evidence to support the amount of damage alleged in Hearn’s indictment. A National Park Service official testified that the pool already was damaged before Hearn allegedly touched it, couldn’t quantify any damage attributable to Hearn and said the same repairs would have been required regardless of his conduct, defense attorneys said.

    “The witness’s testimony established that the pool had substantial preexisting damage requiring repair before any alleged conduct by Mr. Hearn,” his lawyers wrote. “According to the witness, the pool was leaking more than one million gallons of water per week; its expansion joints had exceeded their service life; and the liner already contained a rip.”

    Hearn’s attorneys are basing those arguments on their limited review of grand jury testimony. They want court-ordered access to all the proceedings.

    A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office in Washington didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Hearn’s arguments.

    Hearn previously asked the court to dismiss the case, which stems from the troubled multimillion-dollar renovation project championed by President Donald Trump. His attorneys argued the government has failed to properly preserve important physical evidence from the Reflecting Pool.

    Trump, a Republican, has claimed that vandals have damaged the pool, but administration critics attribute the problems to shoddy repair work. During a speech Monday at General Motors in Michigan, Trump claimed a “sick” person cut the liner in the pool but said the attraction is receiving treatment.

    “It’s in the hospital now, but it’s going to get better very soon,” Trump said. “It’s almost ready to open.”

    Hearn and his supporters claim his prosecution is a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to deflect blame and scapegoat others.

    Hearn told The Associated Press he was detained by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police for five hours after stopping by the pool during a bike ride on June 19. He said he reached in to examine the pool’s newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool, but said he obeyed a park worker who told him to let go of it.

    Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Maryland, competed in three Summer Olympics, earning his best finish, ninth, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee says on its website.

    At least three other people have been charged in the same court with misdemeanors for allegedly removing pieces of paint from the pool.

  • 15-year-old arrested at Seattle food festival shooting was armed with a ghost gun, police say

    15-year-old arrested at Seattle food festival shooting was armed with a ghost gun, police say

    SEATTLE — The 15-year-old arrested after a shootout at a food festival near Seattle’s Space Needle over the weekend was armed with a ghost gun with an extended magazine, police said Tuesday.

    Police Chief Shon Barnes told a news conference that the weapon was a 9 mm gun from Polymer80 — a now-defunct company that was once a leading manufacturer of ghost gun parts.

    Investigators also recovered two other weapons and 14 shell casings that had been fired by weapons of two different calibers, he said.

    Shooting killed 3 people and injured 4, including a toddler

    The shooting in the waning hours of the three-day Bite of Seattle festival left three people dead, including a 19-year-old gunman, and at least four people injured, including a toddler. Authorities say they believe the violence was gang-related, and they are reviewing any available surveillance video and interviewing victims and witnesses in an effort to identify others who may have been involved.

    An eighth person with a possible gunshot wound checked themself into a Seattle hospital after the shooting, but checked out before investigators could conduct an interview, Barnes said. Legal obstacles have prevented detectives from obtaining the patient’s identity, he added. It’s unclear if the injury was related to the festival shooting or whether the person might have been involved in it, but Barnes asked for the person to come forward and speak with investigators.

    Ghost guns lack serial numbers law enforcement can use to trace them

    Ghost guns are privately made — often homemade — firearms that lack serial numbers used to trace them. They have often been purchased without a background check. Law enforcement officials say ghost guns, including those made with 3D printers, have been used in violent crimes across the U.S.

    Lawsuits and state-level bans eventually pushed Polymer80 out of business in 2024, and last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a rule adopted under former President Joe Biden requiring companies to treat gun kits like other firearms by adding serial numbers, running background checks, and verifying that buyers are 21 or older.

    The weapon the 15-year-old had been shooting when he surrendered to police was equipped with an extended 33-round magazine, Barnes said. The magazine still had 19 rounds in it.

    At the scene Sunday night, police also recovered a 9 mm handgun that they do not believe was used in the shooting.

    And on Monday, as food vendors were allowed to return to the area to clean up and collect their equipment, a third weapon was discovered: a Glock 45 model 9 mm with a switch allowing it to fire fully automatically, Barnes said. Police believe that gun was fired during the shooting. It had an extended 40-round magazine, with 21 rounds remaining in it.

    Police believe there were at least 3 shooters

    In a document filed in juvenile court in Seattle on Monday, police said they believed there were at least three shooters: the 15-year-old, an acquaintance who died at the scene, and “at least one other unknown suspect.” Authorities had earlier said they believed there were two.

    A judge on Monday ordered the 15-year-old to be held in juvenile detention for investigation of assault and firearms charges pending further hearings. The King County prosecutor’s office said it expected to receive the case from police on Wednesday for a charging decision. Hong Tran, a public defender assigned to the teen’s case, declined to comment in an email to the Associated Press on Tuesday.

    The King County Medical Examiner’s Office on Monday identified the dead as Carlos Israel Sanchez Villalba, 44; Ashley Whitehead, 56; and Junior Cee Niko Semo, 19.

    Victims remembered as a kind man, and a ‘free spirit’

    Villalba was a husband and father of three known for his kindness and willingness to help others, according to a GoFundMe campaign launched Monday to help his family with funeral expenses. He died from a gunshot wound to his torso, while Whitehead died from a gunshot to her pelvis, and Semo died from multiple gunshot wounds, according to the medical examiner’s office.

    Whitehead had just moved to Washington from Alabama a year ago and was enjoying the festival with one of her adult daughters when she was shot, her cousin Michelle Whitehead told the Associated Press. She was taken to the hospital and died in surgery, she said.

    Ashley Whitehead adored her two adult daughters, and also loved nature and arts and crafts, her cousin said.

    “I would consider her just a free spirit. She had the best sense of humor, the best gorgeous smile,” she said.

    During a vigil Monday night at the center, Michelle Whitehead stood among dozens of others with a sign that said “Whitehead Strong” as the group held a moment of silence and raised up flashlights on their phones to honor those that had been killed. Candles and flowers were arranged around them.

    The four wounded included a 2-year-old boy, two men, ages 23 and 27, and a woman, 39, all of whom were discharged, a hospital spokesperson said.

    One of the victims was walking a bicycle when struck, the court document said. The toddler was with his mother.

  • Zelensky has a ‘good meeting’ with Trump at the White House as he seeks more cooperation with U.S.

    Zelensky has a ‘good meeting’ with Trump at the White House as he seeks more cooperation with U.S.

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Tuesday ahead of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral, with the two leaders discussing ways for Ukraine to produce its own powerful weapons and “other ideas that could help” in its ongoing war against Russia.

    The sit-down in the Oval Office, which was closed to the media, followed a consequential meeting at the NATO summit earlier this month in Ankara, Turkey, where Trump announced that the U.S. will give Ukraine a license to make Patriot defense systems — a long-running request from Kyiv to counter Russian missile attacks.

    In a post on social media after the meeting, Zelensky thanked Trump for the “good meeting” and the Republican administration’s efforts to aid Kyiv in the long-running war, which began more than four years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine.

    “The President and I discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help,” said Zelensky, who also noted that he offered condolences to Trump for the death of Graham, a close ally. “We also spoke about diplomacy – it’s important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated.”

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said both the Zelensky meeting and a separate, later sit-down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were “positive and productive.”

    Trump welcomed Zelensky to the White House as the Ukrainian leader traveled to Washington to honor Graham, whose final act as a public official was visiting Kyiv and securing an agreement on a package of sanctions that seek to punish countries that purchase Russian oil, gas, and other exports.

    In a Fox News Channel interview on Tuesday, Trump recalled Graham’s hawkishness and said the Republican South Carolina senator’s support for Ukraine never wavered. Trump said Graham had suggested it was time to make a deal with Iran but had no similar suggestion for the Russia-Ukraine war.

    “Ukraine, he’s very militant about,” Trump said on Fox & Friends. “I mean, Lindsey liked war, to be honest with you.”

    The Trump administration’s embrace of Zelensky comes as a far-right activist with the U.S. president’s ear had a recent, widely publicized change of heart on Russia’s war against Ukraine.

    Laura Loomer, known primarily for her incendiary social media posts and her influence with Trump, has been traveling through Ukraine, witnessing Moscow’s barrage firsthand, and interviewing Zelensky while admitting she was “bamboozled by Russian propaganda.”

    Loomer said she spoke to Trump after she met with Zelensky in Ukraine last week and she expects to meet with the U.S. president once she returns from her trip.

    “It’s looking good for Ukraine, right?” Loomer said during an interview with the Associated Press. “Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good.”

    Ahead of the meeting, Zelensky also warned that Russia has been aiding Iran as the war persists by capturing satellite imagery of U.S. bases in the Gulf region that later appear in Iran. The Ukrainian president also asserted that there was a “clear correlation” between Russia’s images and subsequent Iranian strikes.

    “The purpose is clear,” Zelensky said earlier this month. “None of us in the world should turn a blind eye to one very simple fact: Evil always seeks ways to make things worse and spread further.”

    But on Monday, Trump downplayed any impact of potential Russian assistance for Iran.

    “I don’t think they’ve been doing it, certainly not at a high level,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he traveled to Michigan. “And if they have, it has been very un-impactful.”

    Still, he said he would raise the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Zelensky has a busy itinerary during his latest visit to Washington. Besides his White House meeting, Zelensky was to head to the Capitol to meet with senators on Tuesday evening after Graham’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    Republican leadership is hoping to advance Graham’s sanctions legislation this week, although the Senate is juggling several other priorities before lawmakers leave Washington for their August recess.

    The bill has dozens of backers from both major political parties and is seen as the main policy tribute to Graham, who died unexpectedly this month from a tear in his aorta. It imposes tariffs on goods from the world’s top five purchasers of Russia oil or natural gas, including China and India.

    The legislation also includes sanctions against Putin; senior Russian political and military leaders; and Russian financial institutions and energy projects.

  • Lawmakers seek ban on using campaign funds to fight sexual harassment claims

    Lawmakers seek ban on using campaign funds to fight sexual harassment claims

    Federal politicians would be barred from using campaign contributions to fight or settle sexual misconduct allegations under a bill announced Tuesday by two House members from opposite sides of the political spectrum.

    The proposal, from Reps. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida), aims to further shape the debate over how Congress should move forward from a spate of sexual misconduct scandals this spring, which prompted the creation of a bipartisan working group to revise the policies protecting Capitol Hill staffers. Both Khanna and Luna have been active on the issue.

    Khanna said politicians would behave better if they had to rely on their own financial resources when they get into trouble rather than being able to dip into campaign accounts or legal-defense funds.

    “That creates this culture of impunity where people think they’re untouchable,” Khanna said in an interview.

    “There’s such a power asymmetry,” he said, because of “the extraordinary legal advantage that elected officials have.”

    The progressive Khanna came into national prominence last fall as he helped force the release of federal investigative files related to financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, over the objections of President Donald Trump.

    Khanna is collaborating on the bill with the conservative Luna, one of several Republican women lawmakers who have begun demanding more consequences for alleged sexual misconduct by their colleagues. She led the charge in April against Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), filing a complaint with the Senate that was dismissed last month with no findings that he violated federal law or broke Senate rules.

    The bill would prohibit elected officials and candidates for federal office from using campaign donations or a legal-defense fund to cover legal fees related to claims of sexual assault, sexual abuse or sexual harassment. If they are not held liable, they could be reimbursed for expenses.

    Luna said the proposed change is overdue and would serve as a “massive deterrent” amid a culture of sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill that has gotten out of hand.

    “It is not what the Founding Fathers intended for members of Congress,” she said. “It’s a perversion of the system.”

    The proposal would also make campaign contributions off-limits for paying settlements or court-ordered judgments for sexual misconduct claims, as well as for private investigators and other research into the accusers.

    Khanna said that politicians would still be able to tap into their savings to defend themselves like most other Americans but that they should not be allowed to fundraise for what frequently amounts to public relations activities more than actual legal work.

    “In most of the cases, they’re being used to smear survivors,” he said.

    The bill emerged from conversations with activists supporting women who have come forward in recent months with accusations of sexual misconduct by politicians, including former congressman Eric Swalwell (D-California).

    In April, the San Francisco Chronicle spoke to a former Swalwell staffer who said he sexually assaulted her. CNN reported more allegations of inappropriate behavior, and a second woman accused Swalwell of raping her. He has categorically denied the allegations of sexual misconduct, calling them a political hit job, though he acknowledged some “mistakes in judgment.”

    Swalwell dropped out of the race for California governor and then resigned from office within days. But he has since spent $50,000 from an old congressional campaign account, as well as hundreds of thousands from contributions to his gubernatorial bid, on prominent defense attorney Sara Azari. Her firm hired a private investigator to look into the allegations, according to NOTUS.

    “Many of those women were forced back into hiding, and this ordeal is still not over for them,” said Cheyenne Hunt, an influencer who worked with some of the accusers and subsequently launched the advocacy group Reckoning Action.

    That’s retaliation, Hunt said, and a “bad-faith use” of campaign funds.

    “No donor gives to a campaign thinking, ‘Yes, I want my money to go toward harassing a survivor,’” she said. “This truly feels like such a no-brainer.”

    Despite bipartisan support for the bill, its prospects are uncertain. Congress has struggled to pass major legislative priorities this year, and only two months of floor time remain for the rest of the session.

    Other ideas for improving how Capitol Hill handles sexual misconduct complaints are also circulating. A group that says it represents more than 1,500 congressional staffers released a letter this month calling to expand legal representation for employees, make independent investigations easier to trigger, and provide more time to file workplace claims.

    With the blessing of congressional leadership, the Republican and Democratic women’s caucuses united in the spring to develop recommendations for making Congress a safer work environment. Their proposed solutions are forthcoming.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) recently said he would support banning lawmakers from having sexual relationships with any congressional staffers, not just their own subordinates.

  • Kentucky governor demands that McConnell prove he is fit to serve or resign

    Kentucky governor demands that McConnell prove he is fit to serve or resign

    WASHINGTON — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a rising national figure in the Democratic Party, is calling on the state’s Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell to either prove that he is fit to continue serving after his lengthy hospital stay or resign from office.

    Beshear made the demand in a letter after McConnell’s office said Monday that the 84-year-old senator had not yet been medically cleared to leave the rehabilitation facility where he has been undergoing physical therapy. The office said he would miss a major Kentucky political event and upcoming Senate votes. McConnell was hospitalized June 14 and disclosed weeks later that it was the result of a fall.

    Beshear, who is widely viewed as a potential presidential candidate in 2028, first urged McConnell in early July to release more information about his condition after weeks of public silence. His letter Tuesday marked a significant escalation.

    “I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign,” Beshear wrote to McConnell.

    Beshear also sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, urging him to investigate McConnell’s condition if the senator does not demonstrate that he is capable of continuing to serve.

    McConnell and Thune’s offices did not provide comment on the letter.

    McConnell, who led Senate Republicans for nearly two decades, has long guarded his personal life. Since he was hospitalized last month, his office has issued major updates on July 12 and July 27, each accompanied by a single photograph.

    But public scrutiny of aging elected officials has intensified after several recent health episodes and deaths in office, including the deaths of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2023 and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham earlier this month, as well as President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek reelection after concerns about his age and health became a dominant political issue.

    In the absence of regular public updates from McConnell himself, speculation about his condition has grown online.

    “All of this speculation and even this letter could have been avoided with a minimal amount of transparency,” Beshear wrote to Thune.

  • Workplaces look for cheaper AI as ‘tokenmaxxing’ fades as a corporate fad

    Workplaces look for cheaper AI as ‘tokenmaxxing’ fades as a corporate fad

    A corporate fad of “tokenmaxxing” on artificial intelligence technology is hitting its limits as workplaces throwing AI at everything are seeing the costs rise without a similar spike in productivity.

    What started as tech industry-fueled springtime hype over squeezing as much AI-generated work as possible out of products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude has shifted to a summertime backlash.

    “It’s very easy to create something you don’t need with AI,” said Vincent Gusdorf, head of AI analytics at Moody’s Ratings and author of a new report that recommends a more disciplined approach.

    “Tokenmaxxing” refers to maximizing usage of tokens — the building blocks of generative AI that correspond to small pieces of text that an AI system reads or writes. Each token is about three quarters of a word. And there’s typically a limit to how many you can use, with pricier versions of AI products offering higher caps.

    “As bills started to pile in, people realized that those new tools are quite expensive and you need to use them wisely,” Gusdorf said.

    Tech executives cast high AI usage as a badge of honor

    Just a few months ago, Silicon Valley executives were promoting high token consumption as a signal of high-performing employees. The stereotypical tokenmaxxer was staying up late — perhaps ignoring their significant other — while orchestrating an army of 24-hour AI agents performing work on their behalf.

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in May he was “excited to see what will happen with tokenmaxxing startups, both for how they work internally and the products they can build.”

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said “if your $500K engineer isn’t burning $250K in tokens, something is wrong.” Facebook parent Meta had an internal competition rewarding token usage.

    The trend boosted revenue for leading AI large language model developers like Anthropic and OpenAI, but it fizzled as it became apparent it wasn’t necessarily the best strategy for everyone else.

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has admitted that tokenmaxxing can be addictive but warned in a recent blog post that customers of those models are paying twice for AI, first in spending on tokens and second by feeding all their proprietary data to them. While promoting Microsoft’s own approach, Nadella’s comments were unusual in the way he raised doubts about the data protection assurances of leading AI providers.

    Alex Karp, CEO of the software firm Palantir Technologies speaks during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20.Markus Schreiber

    Palantir CEO Alex Karp went further, telling CNBC earlier this month that something had gone “completely wrong.” He said he was channeling the voice of American businesses privately “livid” about paying so much for tokens that create no value.

    “The basic view among enterprises in this country is, ‘I’m going to chillax and waste my time with tokens. I’m going to get no value and they’re going to get my IP,” said, a Haverford College graduate with ties to the Philadelphia area.

    Workplaces look more for better ‘routing’ of their AI work

    Bain & Company management consultant Jue Wang said many of the big businesses her firm advises have been taking a closer look at returns on their AI investments.

    “The token cost for them has been doubling, almost every other month,” she said. “Let’s say $200 per developer per month. Multiply that by 20,000 developers, which is often what we’re dealing with at these companies, and that quickly gets you to a number that is not a line item that any general manager has planned for.”

    Sometimes that just means not using the AI equivalent of a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

    “Not everything needs a Claude Opus 4.6,” she said of one of Anthropic’s more capable models suited to software engineering or deep research. “And yet you see so many companies, so many users, default to using Opus for everything, including generating emails.”

    That’s led to a search for tools that do AI “model routing” — in which easier queries get automatically sent to cheaper and more efficient AI systems and more complex tasks go to more powerful models.

    Open-source AI models built in China offer less costly alternatives

    Software developer Hassan El Mghari said companies’ sticker shock over the “ridiculous amount of money” spent on subscriptions to AI products from leading U.S. companies has led many away from rewarding high usage.

    “It’s better to kind of just empower employees on how to use this stuff and let them use AI when and however much they need to,” said El Mghari, who leads developer experience at the startup Together AI, which supplies developers with a variety of “open-source” AI models.

    At the same time, those who favor racking up as many tokens as possible are having a field day with new open-source models from Chinese startups like Moonshot’s Kimi or Zhipu’s GLM, which nearly match the capabilities of top U.S. models at a fraction of the price.

    “There is some validity to the theory that this could push tokenmaxxing a little bit further,” said Raffi Krikorian, the chief technology officer at Mozilla. “But if we look at the industry overall, I think it’s realizing that tokenmaxxing is a dumb thing.”

    It’s similar, Krikorian said, to how software companies once considered how many lines of code a programmer wrote to be a good metric of productivity. That later fell out of favor.

    “I think tokenmaxxing is moving through the exact same pattern,” he said. “I think this is going to be an interesting blip that we’re all going to look back to laugh at in a year.”

  • Joe Biden interviews with memoir ghostwriter reveal him discussing sensitive information

    Joe Biden interviews with memoir ghostwriter reveal him discussing sensitive information

    Newly released audio tapes, disclosed by a conservative activist group, appear to show Joe Biden sharing classified information with a biographer and sometimes claiming memory lapses during interviews that occurred before his election to the presidency in 2020.

    About three hours of audio and 117 pages of transcripts — with many redactions — were released by the Oversight Project, an arm of the Heritage Foundation, after Biden lost a prolonged legal fight to keep his conversations with his memoir ghostwriter, Mark Lewis Zwonitzer, private.

    “They didn’t even know I had this,” Biden told Zwonitzer in October 2016, near the end of his second term as Barack Obama’s vice president, as he talked about sensitive foreign policy matters handled by the administration.

    In one 2017 session, after Biden had left the West Wing and before he’d launched his own presidential campaign, he appeared to admit retaining classified information from his time as vice president.

    “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” Biden said. “I wrote the President a handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq — I mean, to Afghanistan on the grounds that it wouldn’t matter, that the day we left would be like the day before we arrived.”

    The potentially classified information itself is redacted in both the audio and transcripts that the Oversight Project released.

    The right-wing group first sued to obtain the tapes after Special Counsel Robert Hur decided in 2024 not to charge Biden for how he handled classified information. Biden cooperated with Hur’s inquiry and told the special prosecutor during his presidency that he did not intentionally mishandle any classified material.

    Hur, who obtained the tapes as part of his inquiry, said in announcing his decision that he believed a jury would find Biden a sympathetic figure because of his age and what Hur described as a “poor memory” — a statement that became a flashpoint in public debate about Biden’s age and fitness for the presidency.

    Biden was 74 when the interviews began. He was 81 and seeking reelection when Hur released his report in early 2024, though Biden later ended his campaign for a second term after a halting debate performance against Republican Donald Trump.

    The tapes contain instances of Biden being unable to recall some dates and details of topics he was discussing with Zwonitzer. Biden also showed a command of many details, recalling meetings and details of conversations referenced in the notes he shared.

    At the Oversight Project, vice president of litigation Jeff Clark insisted the tapes prove Biden’s decline.

    “The tapes have always belonged to the American People, the Oversight Project just delivered them to their rightful owner,” Clark said in a statement. “The knowledge of his deterioration was well-established.”

    A Biden spokesperson blasted the release as politically motivated.

    “President Biden’s conversations for a book a decade ago that discussed his late son are private, and were provided to the Department of Justice on the express condition they stay that way,” said TJ Ducklo. “Reversing course and making them public is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DOJ for political retribution.”

    Biden initially sued to stop the Department of Justice from releasing the material, claiming the conversations were private. But he dropped his suit after a divided panel of appeals court judges rejected his bid. Biden could have petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene or asked for a rehearing by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

    In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel from the circuit court found a “substantial” public interest in disclosing the material.

  • Asylum seekers could be sent directly to deportation under new federal rule

    Asylum seekers could be sent directly to deportation under new federal rule

    The Trump administration launched a plan Tuesday to channel hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers directly into deportation proceedings, a change that some attorneys said could lead to people being removed from the United States without a hearing.

    Trump officials introduced a rule designed to reduce the 1.4 million asylum cases pending in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security agency that processes immigration applications, by nearly a third. The rule took effect immediately, before the public could weigh in.

    In the past, asylum seekers who entered the U.S. legally or were never charged with an immigration violation had the opportunity to apply for refuge in an office before a trained asylum officer. The officer could refer them to immigration court for removal proceedings if they were rejected, or allow them to continue proceedings and potentially get on a path to obtaining U.S. citizenship.

    Under the new rule, officials say as many as 444,724 cases could be transferred directly to one of the Justice Department’s immigration judges. Trump officials have empowered judges to dismiss certain cases without a hearing, so attorneys say it is possible that many asylum seekers will be deported without a chance to be heard.

    Trump officials said in a statement that the rule is necessary because the asylum system is facing a “crisis.”

    “For far too long the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection,” USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow said in a statement. “America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who genuinely fear persecution and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to the timely adjudication of those claims instead of to those seeking to use the system as a loophole.”

    The measure is the latest means through which the Trump administration has sought to transform the asylum system. President Donald Trump, in one of his first acts in office, barred asylum seekers’ entry into the United States by declaring an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    He has also targeted those who are already living inside the U.S., including hundreds of thousands of people who probably arrived legally and followed the rules to apply for asylum.

    Trump officials are preparing to terminate work permits for Haitians and Syrians in the coming days after the Supreme Court enabled officials to allow their temporary protected status to expire. If those immigrants also applied for asylum and their cases are referred to the courts, lawyers say, the threat of deportation could be imminent.

    “It’s all part of a plan to take legal people and make them illegal,” said Ira Kurzban, one of the attorneys who represented Haitians in the case that went to the Supreme Court. “That’s what they’ve essentially done.”

    The United States is a signatory to the 1967 United Nations protocol on refugees, which prohibits member countries from expelling immigrants to nations where they face serious threats to their lives.

    Trump officials, Kurzban said, are betraying that principle and turning the asylum system into “a joke.”

    “At a 30,000-foot level it sure looks like a deportation machine,” he said.

    Trump officials argue that smugglers have exploited the U.S. asylum system, flooding it with weak applications so that immigrants may live and work legally in the United States as their cases drag through the system.

    Asylum creates a path to U.S. permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship. To be eligible, applicants must show that they face persecution in their homeland based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or another trait that makes them a specific target. They also must pass background checks and apply within one year of arrival.

    The more than 400,000 pending asylum cases before USCIS that could be sent to deportation proceedings largely involve individuals who filed for refuge after being in the United States for more than a year, officials said in announcing the rule.

    Federal law says asylum seekers must apply within a year of arriving, and officials contend that most late applicants referred to immigration judges in the past few years have been ineligible for an exception to that requirement.

    Advocates for immigrants have long argued that people fleeing for their lives are not well versed in the intricacies and deadlines of U.S. immigration laws, and note that the immigration courts do not assign them public defenders. Sometimes bona fide applications are filed late, they say, and federal law allows judges to overlook that in extraordinary cases.

    Though the new rule took effect immediately Tuesday, USCIS said it will accept public comments and later issue a final rule with its responses.

  • Betye Saar, artist who shattered stereotypes of Black women, dies at 99

    Betye Saar, artist who shattered stereotypes of Black women, dies at 99

    Betye Saar, who scoured flea markets for ordinary items – clocks and window frames, plastic dolls, miniature ships and masks — from which she crafted works of art that explored and exploded images of Black women in America, died Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 99 and would have celebrated her 100th birthday on Thursday.

    Her death was announced by Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represented her.

    Ms. Saar, a lifelong Californian, was 93 when she became an art world star in 2019. That year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted simultaneous exhibitions of her work. Reviewing the Los Angeles show in The Washington Post, art critic Sebastian Smee wrote that her “modestly scaled assemblages address racism and female labor with excoriating intensity and moody finesse. But they also vibrate with spiritual yearning.”

    By then, she had been an artist for more than 50 years. In interviews, Ms. Saar described the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 as the event that politicized her and gave her work purpose. “I was a mother with young children,” she told the New York Times. “I couldn’t walk in protest, but I did have a weapon, and that was art.”

    She began collecting likenesses of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, Little Black Sambo and other caricatures that she described as “Black derogatory images.” She incorporated them into collages and assemblages, transforming the scavenged items into statements of political and social protest.

    The most famous of those works was “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972), in which she depicted the apron-wearing “mammy” with one hand holding a broom and the other a gun.

    “It’s like they abolished slavery but they kept Black people in the kitchen as Mammy jars,” Ms. Saar told the Los Angeles Times. “I had this Aunt Jemima, and I wanted to put a rifle and a grenade under her skirts. I wanted to empower her. I wanted to make her a warrior.”

    Ms. Saar worked in a variety of media, but her assemblages — collections of objects she found on the street or at swap meets — attracted the most notice. She was inspired by a 1967 visit to the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum), where she saw assembled works by a master of the form, Joseph Cornell. Ms. Saar said she recalled thinking: “Hey, I can do that. I’ve got all this fantastic stuff.”

    Some of her pieces told stories, and some didn’t. “I prefer it when they don’t tell a story so the viewer can invent their own,” she told the New York Times. Some assemblages displayed materials that belonged to Ms. Saar’s female ancestors, who were African American, Irish, and American Indian. Others referenced events in her life. In “Black Girl’s Window” (1969), a Halloween skeleton, alluding to her father’s death when she was 5, accompanies Ms. Saar’s self-portrait, among other images.

    Still others were overtly political. In his review of the Los Angeles exhibition, Smee focused on an assemblage called “The Edge of Ethics,” from 2010.

    A dark green birdcage contains an armless black figurine chained to a glass bottle and standing on outsize bird’s feet. Smee called the work “a masterpiece,” and he observed that “it makes a bald statement about slavery and incarceration.” He added, “It is more succinct, more poignant and more pressingly urgent than a roomful of research papers, a month of Sunday sermons, a year of news reports.”

    Ms. Saar’s work often referred to such religious traditions as shamanism and voodoo, as well as astrology, palmistry, phrenology and tarot. In a 1977 documentary about Ms. Saar, Los Angeles-based artist John Outterbridge, remarking on her interest in ancient beliefs, said, “She could be a daughter to one of the pharaohs.”

    Betye Irene Brown was born in Los Angeles on July 30, 1926. Around the time of her father’s death, her family moved in with relatives in Pasadena. She spent summers with her paternal grandparents in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she watched the construction of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, a major work of architectural sculpture.

    Ms. Saar said Rodia, an Italian immigrant, influenced her by his use of broken dishes, seashells, rusty tools, even corn cobs that he pressed into cement, creating an art of assemblage and presaging her own eclecticism.

    At the University of California at Los Angeles, she majored in interior design. “Being from a minority family,” she told the Los Angeles Times, “I never thought about being an artist. But I could tell people how to buy curtains.”

    After graduating in 1949, she created a greeting card line and founded an enamelware business. She started graduate school in graphic design, but an encounter with printmaking changed her trajectory. The form was “liberating,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “It gave me the freedom to experiment.” She began creating color etchings, ink drawings, and intaglio prints.

    In 1952, while in graduate school, she married Richard Saar, a ceramicist. They soon had three daughters: Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh, now a writer, and Alison and Lezley Saar, both artists. In 1962, the family moved to L.A.’s bohemian Laurel Canyon, where Ms. Saar continued to live after she and her husband divorced.

    In addition to her daughters, survivors include six grandchildren.

    During a 1970 trip to Chicago, Ms. Saar studied the African artifacts in the basement of the Field Museum. From then on, many of her works incorporated objects and artworks from Africa.

    In 1974, she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. It made her feel “like an artist for the first time,” she said. “Before I was just making stuff.” A year later, she was the subject of a small exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

    Although she mostly avoided art world disputes, Ms. Saar led a letter-writing campaign in 1997 to protest the awarding of a MacArthur “genius grant” to Kara Walker, an African American artist whose silhouetted images included depictions of enslaved people as participants in debauchery with their masters.

    In an interview for the PBS series “I’ll Make Me a World,” Ms. Saar called Walker’s work “sort of revolting and negative and a form of betrayal to the slaves, particularly women and children, and that it was basically for the amusement and the investment of the White art establishment.”

    She subsequently explained to the International Review of African American Art: “Here we are at the end of the millennium seeing work that is very sexist and derogatory. … The trend today is to be as nasty as you want to be: TV, Rodman, rap. … There is no personal integrity. … Aunt Jemima is back with a vengeance.”

    But mostly, when she had something to say, Ms. Saar did so through her art. In her later years, her assemblages sometimes grew into room-size installations. “I’m basically a recycler,” she told the New York Times. “I’m a person who walks looking down, because you can find lots of great things on the ground.”