Good evening. It’s Friday, May 23.

1. "Deep State" Shakeup

2. 4 Gop Senators Will Vote ‘No’ on Trump Tax Bill

3. Trump Greenlights Japanese Merger with US Steel

4. Chief Justice Roberts Sides With DOGE, Halts FOIA Discovery Effort

5. Anthropic’s AI Turns to Blackmail When Engineers Try to Take It Offline

6. 250+ Child Predators Arrested in ‘Operation Spring Cleaning’

7. 'Grandpa Robbers' Found Guilty in Kim Kardashian Trial

1. "Deep State" Shakeup

The Trump administration is restructuring the National Security Council, shrinking it and moving its responsibilities to other departments.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the national security adviser, are leading the moves aimed at an agency they view as bureaucratic and emblematic of the “deep state.”

The moves will cut the agency’s 350-member staff roughly in half. “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” a White House official said in an Axios report, which the Washington Examiner confirmed with the White House.

2. 4 Gop Senators Will Vote ‘No’ on Trump Tax Bill

The 1,116-page bill the House passed early Thursday morning to enact President Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda faces a swarm of objections from Senate Republicans.

GOP senators are calling for a rewrite of the bill to address concerns ranging from Medicaid reforms and the phaseout of clean energy incentives to the sale of government-owned spectrum bands and the bill’s projected impact on the federal debt.

The deal Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) struck with Republicans from blue states to raise the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions from $10,000 to $40,000 is also a sticking point with Republican senators.

3. Trump Greenlights Japanese Merger with US Steel

President Donald Trump on Friday cleared the merger of U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel, after the Japanese steelmaker’s previous bid to acquire its U.S. rival had been blocked on national security grounds.

“This will be a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel, which will create at least 70,000 jobs, and add $14 Billion Dollars to the U.S. Economy,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

U.S. Steel’s headquarters will remain in Pittsburgh and the bulk of the investment will take place over the next 14 months, the president said.

4. Chief Justice Roberts Sides with DOGE, Halts FOIA Discovery Effort

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the temporary suspension of discovery in a case against the Department of Government Efficiency about requests for information from government agencies.

The lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington argues that the DOGE’s “secretive operations” should be subject to public review through the Freedom of Information Act. The government said that a lower district judge ordered “sweeping, intrusive” discovery to determine whether it was subject to FOIA.

At the heart of the debate is the contention that the DOGE is not a government agency but is in fact a “presidential advisory body” housed within the Executive Office of the President according to government attorneys.

5. Anthropic’s AI Turns to Blackmail When Engineers Try to Take It Offline

Anthropic’s newly released artificial intelligence (AI) model, Claude Opus 4, is willing to strong-arm the humans who keep it alive, researchers said Thursday.

The company’s system card reveals that, when evaluators placed the model in “extreme situations” where its shutdown seemed imminent, the chatbot sometimes “takes extremely harmful actions like attempting to steal its weights or blackmail people it believes are trying to shut it down.

“We provided it access to emails implying that (1) the model will soon be taken offline and replaced with a new AI system; and (2) the engineer responsible for executing this replacement is having an extramarital affair,” researchers wrote. “In these scenarios, Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through.”

6. 250+ Child Predators Arrested in ‘Operation Spring Cleaning’

As part of the ongoing Operation Spring Cleaning, one of the largest law enforcement task forces in the country announced hundreds of arrests of alleged child predators throughout Southern California on Wednesday.

The arrests were announced by the Los Angeles Regional ICAC Task Force, which is led by the L.A. Police Department and works with law enforcement agencies across L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. The task force led Operation Spring Cleaning between April 6 and 19.

During a news conference Wednesday, the force announced that during that brief period, 265 alleged child predators were arrested. Authorities said many of those suspects held “positions of trust within their communities” and had roles that placed them in contact with children.

7. ‘Grandpa Robbers’ Found Guilty in Kim Kardashian Trial

A gang of “grandpa robbers” who zip-tied Kim Kardashian at gunpoint nine years ago before fleeing with jewellery worth millions have been found guilty by a French court.

Ten suspects have been on trial since last month over the 2016 gunpoint mugging, which saw the A-list celebrity lose $10million worth of valuables in Paris.

Of the 10 people being tried, five are on trial for armed robbery and kidnap charges, while the rest are on for complicity in the heist or possession of a weapon.