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- Will Trump Pardon Ghislaine Maxwell? Her Lawyer Thinks So.
MIAMI — In David Oscar Markus’ penthouse office, the wall is lined with framed images of the fictional boxer Rocky, Bernini’s statue of David, Jackie Robinson sliding into home plate and Yoda — all an homage to the lawyer’s affinity for the underdog. He counts Ghislaine Maxwell, the accomplice of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Markus’ client, among them. “I think she's a scapegoat,” he said in an extended interview last month. “She would never have been prosecuted had Jeffrey Epstein not committed suicide, or whatever, however he died.” Markus — a career criminal defense attorney and a disciple of lightning-rod lawyer Alan Dershowitz — is at the center of an ever-growing and inescapable political scandal over the Epstein files, which has distracted Congress for months and served as a perennial cudgel against President Donald Trump’s White House. Perhaps no one has as much knowledge of Epstein as Maxwell, his longtime girlfriend and the onetime British socialite, and few people at this point have as much knowledge of Maxwell as Markus. Maxwell — the only convicted co-conspirator of Epstein — was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022 on several sex crime charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. She is seeking clemency from Trump, whose relationship with Epstein has become the subject of much scrutiny and intrigue, and Markus is playing a key role in her communication with senior Justice Department leadership. The bipartisan pressure on the Trump administration and Congress to deliver further accountability in the Epstein case, including potentially more prosecutions, has complicated Maxwell’s path to clemency and, by extension, Markus’ mission. It could also serve as leverage in Maxwell’s quest to get out of prison. Markus has told Congress that his client, who previously invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when she declined to cooperate with the House Oversight Committee probe, would testify freely if she were granted clemency. “Ghislaine Maxwell is a convicted sex offender who helped Jeffrey Epstein traffic young women and girls, and she refused to answer a single question before the Oversight Committee,” said California Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee probing the Epstein case. “The idea that she deserves a pardon is disgusting and outrageous.” “They have their own job to do, and they’re trying to make their constituents happy,” Markus said of the lawmakers investigating the matter. “I’m trying to protect my… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - Trump nominates Dr. Erica Schwartz for new CDC director
President Trump nominated a new director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. Dr. Erica Schwartz is a former deputy surgeon general and retired Coast Guard rear admiral. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - The Allbirds Pivot Is a Terrible Idea … Right?
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Walk into any Silicon Valley office in the late 2010s, and you’d probably see at least one pair of Allbirds. Woolly and eco-friendly, the sneakers once epitomized a certain kind of corporate culture (even Barack Obama was a fan), and the company behind them was valued at roughly $4 billion at its peak, in 2021. But for several years, sales have flagged. Attempts to replicate the success of its signature product—see: wool leggings and wool underwear—didn’t do much to keep the business afloat. Earlier this year, Allbirds sold most of its holdings for pennies and closed its remaining retail stores. Now it has a last-ditch idea: a hard pivot to AI.The plan, announced yesterday, is to change its name to NewBird AI and spend $50 million from an unnamed investor on specialized chips called GPUs, which it will then lease to other companies. The move is a high-risk bid to save the company’s stock, and it has already kind of worked: Allbirds’ value increased by more than 600 percent yesterday. Although businesses reorient themselves around AI all the time, Allbirds is trying a far more extreme version of the strategy. At first glance, it might look like a cynical (and very possibly doomed) cash grab. But for a flailing shoe company, an AI rebrand might also be an escape hatch.Last month, Allbirds was sold for less than 1 percent of what it was worth in 2021. Because almost nothing has been spared in the fire sale, it is now essentially a shell corporation. Bloomberg’s Matt Levine argued yesterday that the company might be banking on tech executives’ “nostalgic fondness for their brand” to make this pivot work. But Allbirds CEO Joe Vernachio is a veteran of the outdoor-apparel industry and has no apparent AI experience; the company did not respond to questions about the future of its executive team or the future of other people who work there.There’s an obvious reason for companies to jump on the AI train—the technology is creating enormous wealth. The S&P 500 hit a record high yesterday, thanks in part to the strength of the American tech sector. And that doesn’t even account for the two leading AI companies, both… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - 2026 Triumph Tiger Sport 660 and Trident 660 Review
Triumph has updated the Trident 660 roadster (left) and Tiger Sport 660 sport-tourer, which share the same engine and frame, adding more power, chassis upgrades, new tech, and useful features. (Photos by Kingdom Creative) Like many of you, my weekdays are spent in the office and my riding is done on the weekends. Flying off to Europe to ride a brand-new motorcycle before it’s available in dealerships is a rare experience for me. Luckily, I know a guy (my brother, Greg, is Rider’s editor-in-chief). A couple years ago he sent me to Alicante, Spain, for a first ride on Triumph’s Daytona 660. The Daytona was well-sorted and confidence inspiring, and it made carving up twisty Spanish roads an absolute delight. I used to live in Spain, I speak Spanish fluently, and I love Spanish food, wine, and culture. Last summer, my wife, our two kids, and I spent a month traveling around Spain. I can’t get enough of the place. So when Greg asked if I wanted to go back to Alicante to ride the updated Trident 660 and Tiger Sport 660, I had my bags packed before we got off the phone. The 2026 Triumph Tiger Sport 660 is available in Interstellar Blue/Mineral Gray (shown) and Silver Ice/Intense Orange. Pricing starts at $10,445. Nice Package(s) Triumph knows how to throw a press launch. Southern Spain is often a destination of choice because it typically has mild, dry weather during winter and early spring and its roads are nothing short of fantastic. We arrived at a large resort within sight of the Mediterranean to find Triumph banners and gleaming motorcycles parked at strategic locations around the hotel, including near the registration desk in the lobby. The 2026 Triumph Trident 660 is available in Cosmic Yellow (shown) and Stone Gray. Pricing starts at $8,995. I was bone-tired from the flight, but not too bone-tired to take a few minutes to admire the Trident roadster and the Tiger Sport, its sport-touring sibling. The Trident in Cosmic Yellow looks bloody brilliant, as our British hosts would say. The only splash of color is on the gas tank, which has eye-grabbing, angular knee cut-outs in contrasting black and a swooping black-and-white accent stripe. Some of today’s motorcycles look like the design team’s AutoCad got stuck in Acute Angle Mode. Not so with the Trident. It strikes a balance… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - Trump Voters Have Had Enough
Tomas Montoya has sold festival foods—funnel cakes, burgers, hot dogs—across the American Southwest for years. But lately, business has been rough. Costs are up, so he’s increased his prices. Employees are begging for hours he can’t give them. In Arizona, where he lives, Montoya pays $6 a gallon to fill up his food trucks with diesel. This summer, he may have to skip the California leg of his festival route because fuel is even more expensive there.“It’s Trump,” Montoya told us outside a popular Hispanic grocery store in Casa Grande, Arizona, much of which sits in one of the most evenly divided House districts in the country. Montoya voted for President Trump in 2024, but now, well, frustrated doesn’t begin to cover how he’s feeling. The president is bragging about the economy, even though everyone Montoya knows is hurting; he promised to stop wars, but started one in Iran. “When Trump opens his mouth, three-quarters of what he says is stories, lies,” Montoya said. He’s planning to vote in the midterm elections this fall. But he may not choose a Republican.You can’t flip a funnel cake in this part of Arizona without spattering someone who sounds just like Montoya—anxious, and a little regretful about how they voted two Novembers ago. These days, a shocking number of the president’s supporters have turned against him. Some of Trump’s fanboys in the libertarian-leaning manosphere have spent the past year baffled by his actions on the Epstein files, immigration, and now Iran. And in the past week, religious conservatives have been criticizing their once-unassailable leader after he posted a photo on social media of himself as Jesus and attacked the pope, calling the first American pontiff “WEAK on Crime.” Some Republican operatives in battleground states told us that they’d rather Trump not campaign too hard for their candidate; others have seen their small-dollar donations plummet.[Read: The manosphere turns on Trump ]Midterm elections are typically rough for an incumbent president’s party. But this year threatens to be brutal. Trump’s approval is lower right now than it was at this point ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats won back the House in a historic blue wave. Almost every new poll is a red flag for Republicans: Independents, young voters, and Latinos—groups that were crucial to Trump’s win in 2024—aren’t in the bag anymore. Even non-college-educated white Americans, once the president’s strongest group, have turned… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - AI’s Next Frontier: People SkillsEarlier this year, when I walked into a renovated loft in downtown San Francisco, the couches and tables were littered with flyers advertising an “emotionally intelligent real-time AI coach.” They were for Amotions AI—one of several start-ups that had gathered that day to pitch investors, entrepreneurs, and tech workers. Pianpian Xu Guthrie, Amotion AI’s founder, was eager to tell me more. The AI model observes video calls on your computer, she said, and gives you real-time tips based on the other person’s tone and facial expression. Maybe you’re a salesperson, and the bot flags that your potential customer is “confused” and suggests what to say.Emotions are the AI industry’s new fixation. Not only are growing numbers of start-ups such as Amotions AI promising tools that interpret feelings; the major AI companies are developing chatbots that apparently aren’t just smarter—they get you. When OpenAI launched a new version of ChatGPT late last year, it described the bot as “warmer by default and more conversational.” Anthropic has stated that its model, Claude, “may have some functional version of emotions or feelings,” and Google has claimed that its AI models are now capable of “reading the room.” Elon Musk’s lab, xAI, has boasted that a recent version of Grok did well on a test of emotional intelligence, or EQ, that posed scenarios such as this: “You think you might have been scapegoated by a fellow employee for the lunchroom thefts that have been happening.”Silicon Valley has good reason to push EQ. For AI products to work as advertised—to genuinely substitute for personal assistants or co-workers—they have to be not just competent but caring; not just effective but empathetic. And so the AI industry seems to believe that the next step in developing smart and useful bots requires instilling them with people skills.[Read: The people outsourcing their thinking to AI]The search for an emotionally intelligent machine has long been part of AI research. In the 1960s, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum developed a primitive chatbot, called ELIZA, that could simulate a psychotherapist by repeating back what a person said in question form. One day, as Weizenbaum recalled, he found his secretary chatting with ELIZA; she asked him to leave the room to give them some privacy. The original ChatGPT from late 2022 was not smarter or more powerful than other existing tools—the underlying model was actually several years old—but OpenAI’s main innovation was to… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
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