Author: potus

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is returning to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for the last in a series of often combative hearings before lawmakers, who have pressed him on everything from a ban on transgender troops to his use of a Signal chat to share sensitive military plans.The questions — which also have touched on his firings of top military leaders and even some of his inner circle of advisers — may be dominated by the escalation of airstrikes between Iran and Israel that threaten a potentially devastating regional war. But he is still expected to face sharp…

(The Center Square) – Arizona is paying $6 billion in Medicaid benefits to more than 20,000 recipients who don’t need the help, legislative leaders said Tuesday at a news conference about a Patient First Coalition report.About one-fourth of those people are “Medicaid millionaires,” who could have as much as $1 million in total assets, Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, told reporters Tuesday in Phoenix. As reported by The Center Square Monday, the Patient First Coalition report found tens of thousands of wealthy people across the U.S. are enrolled in Medicaid, a program designed to help low-income individuals and families, including seniors,…

Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu | Getty ImagesFor a third time since taking office in January, President Donald Trump plans to extend a deadline that would require China’s ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. business. “President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to…

The World Liberty Financial website arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe Senate on Tuesday passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill that for the first time establishes federal guardrails for U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins and creates a regulated pathway for private companies to issue digital dollars with the blessing of the federal government.The bill passed with a 68-30 vote.It’s a milestone day for the crypto industry, which put around $250 million into the 2024 cycle to elect what’s now considered to be the most pro-crypto Congress in U.S.…

Amazon Web Services is set to announce an update to its Graviton4 chip that includes 600 gigabits per second of network bandwidth, what the company calls the highest offering in the public cloud.Ali Saidi, a distinguished engineer at AWS, likened the speed to a machine reading 100 music CDs a second.Graviton4, a central processing unit, or CPU, is one of many chip products that come from Amazon’s Annapurna Labs in Austin, Texas. The chip is a win for the company’s custom strategy and putting it up against traditional semiconductor players like Intel and AMD.But the real battle is with Nvidia…

(The Center Square) – Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, joined 29 other Democratic senators to introduce a bill granting all Americans access to in-vitro fertilization procedures.IVF is a “procedure that involves fertilizing an egg with sperm in a laboratory dish,” according to Yale Medicine. The Protect IVF Act seeks to allow patients to have access to IVF services, doctors who provide IVF treatment and insurance companies that will cover IVF.To enshrine this into federal law, the legislation prevents states from outlawing IVF. Last year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled to temporarily suspend IVF procedures.Addressing this concern, Rosen said, “No family should have…

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks to the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan, New York City, on April 23, 2024.Mike Segar | ReutersJPMorgan Chase is taking a step further into the cryptocurrency space with its own stablecoin-like token, called JPMD.The U.S. banking giant told CNBC on Tuesday that it’s planning to launch a so-called deposit token on Coinbase’s public blockchain Base, which is built on top of the Ethereum network. Each deposit token is meant to serve as a digital representation of a commercial bank deposit.JPMD will offer clients round-the-clock settlement as well…

From left, Cliff Obrecht, Canva’s co-founder and chief operating officer, and George Howes, co-founder and CEO of MagicBrief, pose for a photo at the Cannes Lions festival in Cannes, France, in June 2025.CanvaCanva has grown into a $32 billion startup through its popular design tools used for easily creating images, marketing material and presentations.Now the company, with its 12th acquisition, is buying its way into the analytics market. Canva said on Tuesday that it’s buying MagicBrief, whose technology is used for analyzing ad performance, for an undisclosed sum. With MagicBrief, companies can track spending and engagement on their ads and…

(The Center Square) – A new deal between Meta and the Clinton nuclear plant is sparking debate over Illinois’ energy future.State Rep. Brad Halbrook, R-Shelbyville, confirmed that Meta has signed a deal to buy the clean energy credits, not the power, from the Clinton nuclear plant run by Constellation Energy, helping boost its economic, social and governance profile on paper.“My understanding from Constellation is that DeKalb [data center] is not using any of the Clinton power that’s being generated out of Clinton. This was just a paperwork move to bolster their clean or renewable attributes on their paper, it’s a…

Ramp, which offers a financial operations platforms to corporate clients, has raised its valuation to $16 billion in a new fundraising led by long-time investor Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s venture firm. The $200 million round is the fifth that Founders’ has led for Ramp and raised its valuation by $3 billion. It last raised money at a $13 billion valuation in March.Founded in 2019, Ramp offers services that cover corporate cards, procurement, bookkeeping, travel booking, and vendor management, and says it handles tens of billions in purchases annually across 40,000 companies. Ramp ranked No. 6 on the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50…