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American Bitcoin, Eric Trump’s bitcoin mining company, announced Monday that it plans to go public. 

The firm will merge with fellow bitcoin mining firm Gryphon Digital Mining and operate under the American Bitcoin brand, appearing on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ABTC,” according to a press release. 

“Our vision for American Bitcoin is to create the most investable Bitcoin accumulation platform in the market,” Trump, co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin, said in a statement. 

“Today’s announcement marks an important milestone in that journey, bringing us closer to offering every investor access to a purpose-built platform engineered for scale and long-term value creation in what we believe is one of the most important asset classes of our time,” he continued. 

The president’s son launched American Bitcoin earlier this year alongside bitcoin mining company Hut 8. Bitcoin mining is used to create new bitcoins and verify bitcoin transactions.

The decision to go public is the latest move by President Trump’s family in the crypto space, which has increasingly raised concerns as his administration seeks to boost the industry.  

World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture launched by the president and his sons last year, announced earlier this month that its new stablecoin would be used to complete a $2 billion transaction between Emirati firm MGX and crypto exchange Binance.  

Trump is also set to attend a dinner later this month with the top investors in his meme coin, which he launched shortly before his inauguration. 

Both moves have prompted concerns from Democrats and advocacy groups, who warn that Trump and his family may be profiting off his office and opening up the government to foreign influence.  

The Trump family’s expanding crypto portfolio is also starting to cause problems for the president’s legislative agenda.  

The administration and Republican lawmakers have made crypto legislation a priority in this Congress, focusing on getting stablecoin and market structure bills across the finish line.  

However, recent progress appears to have largely come to a halt. House Democrats walked out of a hearing on market structure legislation last week, citing concerns about Trump’s recent crypto ventures.  

Senate stablecoin legislation also failed to clear a key early hurdle on the floor Thursday, after Democrats voted down the bill. They accused Republican leadership of cutting negotiations short. The World Liberty Financial deal also gave the bill’s opponents new fuel.

(NEXSTAR) — Have you ever suspected Siri of spying on you, especially after you suddenly received targeted ads about, say, shoes or a restaurant after you had a conversation about them near your Apple device? You may be entitled to a portion of a recently reached settlement in a class action lawsuit.

The $95 million settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by California resident Fumiko Lopez, which claimed Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, could be activated without consent and record conversations. The suit alleged that the recorded information would be provided to third parties, citing a report from The Guardian, which explained that contractors confirmed recordings included conversations people had with their doctors, “drug deals,” and other intimate moments.

Two plaintiffs in the case said they received targeted ads regarding Air Jordan shoes and Olive Garden after speaking about them near an Apple device with Siri, according to Reuters.

Apple denied wrongdoing in the case, previously telling Nexstar that “Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning,” but agreed to the $95 million settlement.

Do I qualify for a payment?

You must have had a Siri-equipped Apple device between September 17, 2014, and December 31, 2024. During that time, your “confidential communications” must have been “obtained by Apple and/or were shared with third parties as a result of an unintended Siri activation.”

You may have already received an email or postcard confirming that you may be entitled to payment in the case. Either correspondence will have an identification code and a confirmation code used to apply for a payout.

If you meet the qualifications and have not received an email or postcard, you will be able to file a claim on the settlement’s website.

How do I submit a claim?

If you qualify for the Siri settlement and received an email or postcard about it, you can enter the necessary codes online to make a claim.

If you believe you qualify for the settlement and did not receive those codes, administrators say you can submit a new claim on the settlement website. There, you’ll be asked to fill out a form with your contact information and details about your device (or devices) that may be impacted.

For the latter, you’ll need to include the email address linked to the device and proof of purchase, like a receipt or an invoice. Without proof of purchase, you’ll need to provide the serial number and model for each device.

How much will I receive?

While the settlement totals $95 million, you’ll receive far less. You can submit claims for up to five Siri-enabled devices that you believe were unintentionally activated during a conversation you meant to be confidential or private.

Qualifying Apple devices include:

• iPhones
• iPads
• Apple Watches
• MacBooks
• iMacs
• HomePods
• iPod touches
• Apple TVs

Settlement officials say you may receive up to $20 per qualifying Siri device, meaning at best, you could receive $100 (for five qualifying devices). The payout could increase or decrease based on the number of valid claims, however.

Tens of millions of people may qualify for the settlement, Reuters previously reported.

How long do I have to file a claim, and when will I be paid?

The deadline is currently July 2, 2025, according to the settlement website. That is also the final day to exclude yourself or object to the settlement.

A final hearing is scheduled for August 1, 2025, which means approved payments will likely not arrive until later this year.

A Republican tax bill released late Sunday seeks to block states from regulating artificial intelligence (AI) models for the next 10 years. 

The bill text from the House Energy and Commerce Committee would bar states from enforcing laws or regulations governing AI models, AI systems or automated decision systems. 

It provides some exemptions for laws and regulations that aim to “remove legal impediments” or “facilitate the deployment or operation” of AI systems, as well as those that seek to “streamline licensing, permitting, routing, zoning, procurement, or reporting procedures.” 

It would also permit state laws that do not “impose any substantive design, performance, data-handling, documentation, civil liability, taxation, fee, or other requirement” on AI systems. 

The bill, which comes as Republicans gear up to advance President Trump’s legislative agenda this week, aligns with the administration’s emphasis on AI innovation instead of regulation. 

Shortly after taking office, Trump rescinded former President Biden’s executive order establishing guardrails around AI and fielded input on his own forthcoming “AI Action Plan.” 

Vice President Vance also slammed “excessive regulation” of AI during his first international trip in the administration in February. 

“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off,” Vance said at the AI Action Summit in Paris. “And I’d like to see that deregulatory flavor making a lot of the conversations this conference.” 

Meanwhile, as AI regulation at the federal level remains in limbo, states have sought to develop laws around the rapidly developing technology.  

State legislatures considered nearly 700 AI bills last year, 113 of which were ultimately enacted into law, according to the Business Software Alliance.  

California launched a controversial effort last year to regulate extreme risks from AI that faced pushback from federal lawmakers. 

State S.B. 1047, which sought to require powerful AI models to undergo safety testing before they could be released and hold developers liable for severe harms, was ultimately vetoed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). 

Educators are reaching into their toolbox in an effort to adapt their instruction to a world where students can use ChatGPT to pull out a five-page essay in under an hour.  

Teachers are working to make artificial intelligence (AI) a force for good in the classroom instead of an easy way to cheat as they balance teaching the new technology with honing students’ critical thinking skills.

“Even before the AI era, the most important grades that we’d give at the school that I led and when I was a teacher, were the in-class writing assignments,” said Adeel Khan, CEO and founder of MagicSchool and former school principal, noting the assignments worth the most are normally final exams or end-of-unit tests.  

Khan predicts those sorts of exams that have no access to AI will be weighted more heavily for students’ grades in the future.

“So, if you’re using AI for all of the formative assignments that are helping you practice to get to that final exam or that final writing test … then it’s going to be really hard to do it when you don’t have AI in those moments,” he added. 

The boom of generative AI began shortly after students got back in the classrooms after the pandemic, with educators going from banning ChatGPT in schools in 2023 to taking professional development courses on how to implement AI in assignments.  

President Trump recently signed an executive order to incorporate AI more into classrooms, calling it the technology of the future.  

The executive order aims to have schools work more closely with the private sector to implement programs and trainings regarding AI for teachers and students. 

“The basic idea of this executive order is to ensure that we properly train the workforce of the future by ensuring that school children, young Americans, are adequately trained in AI tools, so that they can be competitive in the economy years from now into the future, as AI becomes a bigger and bigger deal,” White House staff secretary Will Scharf said.

Dixie Rae Garrison, principal of West Jordan Middle School in Utah, describes herself as an early advocate for AI in schools.  

She said her classrooms have had “an overwhelmingly positive experience” with the technology.

Garrison remarked the problems with AI need to be resolved through innovative thinking, not passivity.

“There needs to be a shift from the types of questions we were asking students, so shifting away from repetitive exercises,” Garrison said, adding educators “really have to think about the way that you’re teaching students to write, the way that you’re framing your questions.” 

One way her school has used AI to help students is by creating more avenues for pupils to study for exams such as the AP U.S. history test.

Teachers are “able to provide the students with more frequent opportunities to practice” by inputting the AP rubrics into a generative AI tool, leading the students to get feedback “instantaneously” on their work. 

Another strategy used for preparing students to work with AI as well as lower concerns about cheating is to create collaborative projects. 

“I think in the younger classes there is a shift towards project-based learning, and even homework is more sort of collaborative, which is harder to replicate” with AI, said Tara Chklovski, founder and CEO of Technovation. 

The integration of AI varies across the United States, with about 60 percent of principals reportedly using AI tools for their work, according to a survey by RAND, a research nonprofit. 

Among teachers, only 25 percent are using AI for their instructional planning or teaching, although English language arts and science instructors were twice as likely to use the technology than mathematics educators. 

Educators in higher poverty schools are also less likely to use AI and are more likely not to have guidance on AI implementation compared to lower poverty schools, according to RAND. 

The lack of guidance makes it even more difficult for educators as concerns of cheating with generative AI become louder. 

“Pragmatically, on the ground, some teachers are shifting towards more short, oral questioning of students. … In fact, for some kids — I hear this from science teachers that I work with — the ability to ask kids questions orally, instead of writing on a test, helps reveal” they might know more “than they would have been able to express on a written test,” said Bill Penuel, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

For many, it is still a challenge to balance the benefits of AI with the drawbacks in the classroom.

Most educators don’t want AI “to be used as a shortcut for thinking, but they want people to be able to use it as a tool to help them solve problems, to give them feedback on things that they’re working on and writing, maybe even support folks who are multilingual learners in classrooms,” Penuel said. 

The Trump administration is currently probing the impact of imported commercial jets, engines and other aircraft parts on national security, according to a copy of the federal notice made public on Friday. 

The Commerce Department started the investigation on May 1, per the notice.

The department is seeking public comments on the current and projected demand for commercial aircraft and jet engines, the role of foreign supply chains in meeting U.S. demand for commercial jets and the “impact of foreign government subsidies and predatory trade practices on the competitiveness of the commercial aircraft and jet engine industry.” 

The probe marks the latest use of a Section 232 provision under the 1962 Trade Expansion Act.

It also comes after President Trump imposed sweeping tariffs last month on steel and aluminum coming into the country. 

Delta Air Lines said last month that it is figuring out how to avoid the additional cost due to tariffs when receiving jets from Airbus this year. 

“We will not pay tariffs on any aircraft deliveries we take,” Delta’s top executive Ed Bastian said in early April. “We will defer any deliveries that have a tariff on it.”

The Commerce Department also opened up a probe into the impact of imported medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks on national security. 

GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp said that he met with the president in April and that he pushed for re-inserting a duty-free option for the aerospace industry, arguing under the 1979 Civil Aircraft Agreement, the sector was able to enjoy a massive surplus. 

“I have argued that it was good and would be good for the country,” Culp said in an interview with Reuters in April, adding that the administration “understood” the company’s position.

The investigation also comes as the administration works to negotiate trade deals with foreign trade partners after Trump imposed a 10 percent baseline tariff on nearly all foreign nations. The president has since paused the majority of reciprocal tariffs for 90 days.

Trump on Thursday announced the U.S. had reached its first major trade deal with the United Kingdom since the “Liberation Day” tariffs were rolled out. U.S. officials are also in Switzerland Saturday for talks with Chinese counterparts.

China, the world’s second largest economy and a major U.S. trading partner, last month ordered its airlines to ditch jet deliveries from Boeing — an American company — amid the trade war.

The nation, notably excluded from the 3-month tariff pause, currently faces a 145 percent import tax, though the White House has suggested it could be significantly reduced.