Today’s edition of quick hits.
* A modest first step: “Seven leading artificial intelligence companies have agreed to a handful of industry best practices, a first step toward more meaningful regulation, the White House announced Thursday. The companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — have agreed to the principles that include security, transparency with the public and testing of their products internally before debuting them to the public.”
* The latest from the Korean Peninsula: “North Korea has escalated its fiery rhetoric over its threatened use of nuclear weapons, days after a U.S. soldier was taken into custody for crossing the border from South Korea.”
* Keep an eye on this one: “The U.S. Justice Department has threatened legal action against Gov. Greg Abbott over the 1,000-foot floating barrier that the state deployed in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass earlier this month.”
* An awful story out of Nebraska: “A Nebraska teenager who used abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy was sentenced on Thursday to 90 days in jail after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to illegally concealing human remains.”
* The final vote was 351 to 69: “The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for the next half-decade, moving at a time of growing dysfunction and disruption in the system to make a number of changes that affect passengers.”
* I’m glad the White House has maintained focus on issues like these: “President Biden has picked Dr. Paul Friedrichs, a military combat surgeon and retired Air Force major general who helped lead the Covid-19 response at the Pentagon, to head a new White House office created by Congress to prepare for and manage future biological threats.”
* What a weird story: “Former President Donald Trump agreed to return ancient artifacts after Israel’s antiquities authority launched a public campaign to get them back.” * If I were Biden, I’d probably do the same thing: “The White House plans to use a little-known law to keep acting Labor Secretary Julie Su in the job even if she fails to win Senate approval, a White House official told NBC News.” * I found this funny, but he wasn’t kidding: “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to disqualify three Democratic state senators from serving as jurors in his upcoming impeachment trial, arguing public statements show they cannot be impartial.” Have a safe weekend.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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