作者： root

White House delays release of US voting machine study as midterms near

2026-06-19T10:04:07.221Z / https://www.reuters.com/world/white-house-delays-release-us-voting-machine-study-midterms-near-2026-06-19/

WASHINGTON, June 19 (Reuters) – White House officials have for months delayed the release of a U.S. government report that outlines what it describes as significant vulnerabilities in the ​nation’s voting machines ahead of the November midterms, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concludes that voting ‌machines could be further safeguarded by, for example, updating their software, the sources said. It does not say the vulnerabilities have led to votes flipping, but examines security gaps in how the machines are used during U.S. elections.

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Some White House officials have argued the report could undermine voter confidence, particularly among Republicans. Others have said they do not believe the report goes far enough in supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, the three sources said. Some Democrats said privately they ​worried Gabbard’s probe into voting machines would be used by the administration to push states to use paper ballots.

Several court cases filed by Trump’s lawyers failed to prove voter fraud in the 2020 ​presidential race.

The sources were granted anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who launched an investigation into the voting machines and searched for evidence ⁠to support Trump’s false election fraud claims, steps down on Friday. Stepping in as interim director is federal housing regulator Bill Pulte. Trump has said he wants Pulte to investigate “rigged elections” during his time at ODNI.

It ​is unclear what Pulte plans to do with the report. He has been briefed on efforts by the agency to investigate flaws in voting machines, including the unreleased report, according to two of the sources.

Democrats and some analysts ​warn of possible interference by the Trump administration in the midterm elections, which analysts expect to deliver losses for Republicans.

Officials inside ODNI and experts who advised the agency advocated in meetings with White House officials that the administration begin fixing the flaws late last year in time to complete the process, which requires extensive coordination with states, before the midterms.

Asked about the delay in releasing the report, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement that the administration “continues to offer assistance to state and local ​election officials, including through the FBI and CISA, to ensure the security and integrity of all machines used in American elections.” CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said Gabbard has taken “actions within ​her authorities” to “support the President’s directive to secure our elections — which includes identifying vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure.”

Pulte did not respond to a request for comment.

REPORT PART OF ADMINISTRATION ELECTIONS EFFORT

Some of the vulnerabilities detailed in the ODNI report have ‌long been known ⁠to prior administrations, said one former senior Biden administration official and two of the other sources. The vulnerabilities include machines running outdated software and having the ability to connect to the internet, which hackers could exploit.

All of the sources said they were unaware of any evidence of vote manipulation in U.S. elections.

The report is part of the administration’s broader effort to investigate potential fraud in U.S. elections following Trump’s signing of an executive order in February 2025 that aims to give the federal government greater control over U.S. elections.

Under the U.S. Constitution, states have authority over how elections are conducted.

Senior officials at the FBI and the Justice Department have spoken publicly about their probes ​into potential voter fraud across the country. The report, ​which draws on data from open-source and classified intelligence, ⁠would be the first to detail the administration’s work on voting machines.

It is one of two reports ODNI commissioned on voting machine flaws. The other report, which is also unpublished, was written last year by a government contractor, Mojave Research, which studied voting machines seized from Puerto Rico.

Both reports have been referenced in White House meetings ​in which officials debated whether there was enough evidence to prove Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The Mojave report found no evidence ​the machines had been hacked, ⁠said two other sources.

NO AUTHORIZATION FROM WHITE HOUSE TO RELEASE REPORT

ODNI has briefed the White House on its findings over the last six months, but never received authorization to publish them, two of the sources familiar with the matter said.

The report says many states are using outdated systems, the three sources familiar with the matter said.

The intelligence agency used information from previously issued reports by CISA, the government cybersystems watchdog, that referenced hacking conferences in which the agency found some ⁠voting machines could ​be attacked through insecure hardware.

CISA has said it found no evidence that a foreign adversary interfered in the 2020 vote, and the ​agency joined other federal, state and local officials in declaring the election “the most secure in American history.”

ODNI and the White House have also not published the Mojave report. Mojave’s contract was terminated in October.

The software and coding vulnerabilities identified in that report led to the company’s ​recommendation that the administration implement an emergency remediation plan that would force states to immediately update their software systems. Two sources said that plan has not been implemented.

Why Republicans think they can save their House majority at the US-Mexico border

2026-06-19T10:00:25.535Z / CNN

• Republicans face an uphill battle to retain their House majority this November. But they see hope in flipping three border districts and defending two more in competitive races.
• The GOP is betting on strong challengers and record-low border crossings despite Trump’s declining Latino support.
• Democrats believe they will defend their seats and are targeting up to three Republican-held seats in response.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

Republicans are in an uphill battle to save their narrow House majority, weighed down by an unpopular president and concerns about the cost of living amid the US war with Iran.

But they see glimmers of hope along the US-Mexico border.

The House Republicans’ campaign arm is working to flip three border districts in November while defending at least two more. They believe they have recruited a strong lineup of challengers and can lean on illegal border crossings hitting record lows under President Donald Trump, even as his administration’s deportation efforts have coincided with a sharp drop in Latino support.

In a midterm cycle with fewer likely competitive districts due to redistricting, what happens in as many as six competitive border districts could help determine who controls the House for Trump’s final two years in office. Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map in part to target two longtime border Democrats, banking on GOP gains with Latino voters since Trump’s first run for office.

“Hispanics make up one of our most important voting blocs, and I think majority-Hispanic districts are some of our best pickup opportunities because we have made strong inroads with that community,” said Rep. Richard Hudson, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in an interview with CNN.

Trump won 46% of Latino voters in 2024, according to CNN exit polling, up from 32% in 2020, a critical shift that helped him return to the White House. But Latinos nationally have soured on him since he returned to office. In an April survey from the Pew Research Center, Trump’s approval rating among Latino voters who supported him was down 27 percentage points from the start of his second term.

Republicans believe they can buck national headwinds at the border due to the strength of their recruited candidates, Trump’s inroads with Hispanic voters in the 2024 election, and voter concerns about returning to the border policies of former President Joe Biden’s administration.

Republicans’ ability to turn out Hispanic voters when Trump is not on the ballot is critical to the long-term health of the party. Hudson said it is a “challenge we’ve got to overcome” and that the NRCC’s “entire apparatus this time is built to solve that problem.”

“The GOP thinks that they can erase the damage they’ve caused just by propping up candidates with a Hispanic last name. They are dead wrong,” Bridget Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, responded in a statement, adding, “Latino voters are energized and showing up, and they will be the ones who deliver the House for Democrats.”

One of the Democratic incumbents the NRCC is targeting, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, acknowledged in an interview that border districts can be unique from the national political environment. Cuellar was an early and sharp critic of Biden’s handling of the border as unauthorized crossings hit record highs.

But Cuellar argued Republicans continue to operate off the “false premise” that Trump’s past success with Hispanic voters translates to midterm victories, especially given widespread pessimism about high costs.

“They have not gone down, and now you have another issue with immigration,” Cuellar said. “It’s not open borders, but it’s the overreach of ICE. And I told some of my Republican friends, ‘If Trump would’ve just said … I closed the border. I’m deporting the worst of the worst,’ and stop there, I think people in South Texas would’ve said, ‘Yeah, that’s the way.’ But he didn’t stop there.”

Cuellar will face Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, the chief administrative official of the county that includes Laredo, the congressman’s longtime political base. Tijerina switched parties in late 2024, citing “the radicalization of the national Democrats.”

In a reflection of the leeway House Republicans are giving candidates on the economy, Tijerina praised Trump for launching strikes against Iran but acknowledged the war was “unpopular” and expressed confidence in the president’s ability to wrap it up soon.

“Sometimes we got to take a step back to take two steps forward,” Tijerina said, “and I think that’s what he’s trying to do, and I think that’s what people are seeing, and they understand that.”

Border districts that REPUBLICANS SEE AS PICKUP OPPORTUNITIES

• New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District: Greg Cunningham is challenging Rep. Gabe Vasquez
• Texas’ 28th Congressional District: Tano Tijerina is challenging Rep. Henry Cuellar
• Texas’ 34th Congressional District: Eric Flores is challenging Rep. Vicente Gonzalez

BORDER DISTRICTS THAT DEMOCRATS SEE AS PICKUP OPPORTUNITIES

• Texas’ 15th Congressional District: Bobby Pulido is challenging Rep. Monica De La Cruz
• Arizona’s 6th Congressional District: JoAnna Mendoza is challenging Rep. Juan Ciscomani
• Texas’ 23rd Congressional District: Democrat Katy Padilla Stout and Republican Brandon Herrera will face off for Rep. Tony Gonzales’ seat

Republicans are betting on candidates such as Eric Flores, a former federal prosecutor running against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez in Texas’ 34th Congressional District.

Hudson credited Trump with backing Flores early in his primary and helping him sail past former Rep. Mayra Flores, who is not related. National Republicans soured on Mayra Flores after she ran against Gonzalez in 2022 and 2024 and lost both times.

The NRCC doubled down on its commitment to the district earlier this month when it opened an office in Harlingen.

“This election is simple,” Eric Flores said at the office opening. “I proudly wear the Republican jersey, and he proudly claims to be ‘the right kind of Democrat’ — voting for the left woke agenda.”

Republicans are hoping to dent Gonzalez’s moderate profile with messaging about the border under Biden. One anti-Gonzalez ad cites a 2021 interview on CNN in which he was asked about then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ meetings in Central America to study the “root causes of migration” — work that caused critics to label her Biden’s “border czar.”

“I feel fully confident that the vice president is on the right track,” Gonzalez said then.

Gonzalez has responded by taunting Flores as a “Trump lapdog” who will not stand up to the administration.

“My district is struggling under the weight of disastrous Republican policies coming out of Washington, which are denying families health care and driving up prices on everyday necessities like gas, food and housing,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “Eric Flores blindly rubber-stamps this Administration’s policies like a paid-for lapdog, all in exchange for a financed campaign to the detriment of South Texans’ quality of life.”

Rep. Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, who represents a district stretching from Albuquerque south to the border, won his last reelection by 4 points even as Trump carried his district by 2. At a recent event in Washington, Vasquez said the economy is the “unifying link” for voters who split their tickets.

“A lot of folks that thought President Trump was going to be this great businessman, that was going to improve the economy, that was going to change the status quo … are also those folks whose doors I knocked on,” Vasquez said at WelcomeFest, an annual gathering for centrist Democrats.

Greg Cunningham, a former undercover cop who investigated crime along the border, is the GOP nominee against Vasquez. Cunningham said it was important for Republicans to level with voters about the state of the economy, but like Tijerina, he backed Trump’s war as worthwhile for national security.

“I actually applaud the president for doing the right thing instead of the politically expedient thing,” Cunningham said,adding that he believes the war will end soon and that oil prices will come down.

Hudson, the chair of the House GOP campaign arm, said Republicans should “acknowledge that folks are struggling out there” but also remind voters what the economy was like under Biden.

Hudson said candidates can say that “This election is a choice: Do you want to go back to the way it was three years ago, or do you want to let us continue to work to make your lives better?”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is officially targeting two districts along the border — the seats held by Reps. Monica De La Cruz and Juan Ciscomani. But some Democrats also want to flip Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, which opened after Rep. Tony Gonzales announced he would not seek reelection after admitting he had an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.

Republicans have nominated Brandon Herrera, a conservative activist and firearm reviewer on YouTube. The Democrats advanced attorney Katy Padilla Stout.

A top national Democratic recruit in Texas’ 15th District is Bobby Pulido, a Tejano music star running against De La Cruz.

Pulido speaks openly about being more culturally conservative than most Democrats. He talks about owning 11 AR-15s — his oldest son is named Remington after the Remington 700 bolt-action gun — and has chastised his party for prioritizing “social justice” issues over a more “aspirational” economic message.

Pulido said at WelcomeFest that South Texans “have become disillusioned with parties” and that he often hears from people that “‘I just want you to fight for me and for us. I don’t want your loyalty to be with your party. And will you break with your party if it means defending us?’”

Pulido has had to answer questions about his relationship with Frankie Caballero, a former bandmate previously convicted of a child sex crime. Pulido’s campaign has said he was not aware of Caballero’s status as a sex offender and that his managers fired Caballero when they learned in 2021.

Leading Democrats have continued to tout Pulido’s story. Rep. Suzan DelBene, the chairwoman of the DCCC, told CNN on Friday that Pulido was part of a crop of candidates who are “authentic, independent voices for their communities.”

Amid Pulido’s challenge, De La Cruz has sought some daylight with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement, floating new protections for migrant workers who have been targeted by deportation raids. And in March, she helped secure the release of Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar, a high school mariachi student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement along with his family after a regular check-in with immigration officials.

De La Cruz said in a statement that South Texans want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals, “not families working through the system the right way.”

“I’ve been very direct with leadership about that,” she said, “and I’m going to keep fighting for folks who follow the law and contribute to our community.”

US acting spy chief seeks to fire hundreds of staff, CNN reports

2026-06-19T11:27:39.101Z / Reuters

U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

June 19 (Reuters) – Acting U.S. spy chief Bill Pulte is seeking to cut hundreds of jobs at the ​Office of the Director of National Intelligence, CNN reported on ‌Friday, as he prepares to take over the sprawling U.S. intelligence community.

Citing two sources familiar with the matter, CNN reported that Pulte showed up at his new ​job a day early on Thursday after asking for a ​list of every employee in the office so he could ⁠assess whether to fire them.

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President Donald Trump appointed federal housing regulator Bill ​Pulte as acting director of national intelligence earlier this month, elevating a political ​loyalist with no national security experience at a time of war and global tensions.

He would oversee the premier foreign spy service, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the ​National Security Agency, the massive agency that eavesdrops on foreign communications and ​helps defend the United States against cyberattacks.

Pulte met with lawyers and staffers during his ‌visit, ⁠the report added. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence didn’t immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Pulte replaces Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from her job last month. Her last day in office is June ​19.

Pulte’s appearance at ​ODNI on Thursday ⁠caught staff off guard, including Gabbard, who was given a brief heads-up on the visit, the CNN report ​said.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that staff at the office ​of ⁠the top U.S. spy had been told by managers to expect extensive cuts in the coming months following comments by Trump that he wants the ⁠new ​interim director to shrink the agency’s ranks.

Gabbard ​has already cut the workforce of the agency by about 40% since taking up the position ​last year.

Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh in Barcelona Editing by Peter Graff, Aidan Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Walz approval rating craters to lowest level ever and trails Trump amid massive fraud scandal: ‘Tired of it’

2026-06-19 7:00am EDT / Fox News

The governor’s 39% approval marks his lowest since taking office six years ago

By Andrew Mark Miller Fox News

Published June 19, 2026 7:00am EDT

Expect to see ‘real accountability’ in alleged Minnesota fraud investigation, Rep James Comer

Rep. James Comer, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, reveals that Minnesota state leaders, including Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, ignored whistleblower warnings and allowed $300 million in federal nutrition fraud. Comer emphasizes that the decision was driven by political reasons to avoid accusations of racism, leading to unchecked fraud and retaliation against those who spoke up.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s approval rating in his state has plummeted to a level below President Donald Trump as the state’s top executive continues to face blowback from the massive fraud scandal that erupted under his watch.

Walz, who is leaving office in January after announcing he will not run for re-election, has an approval rating of 39% in the state and a disapproval rating of 53% with 8% not sure, according to a new poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy Inc. for KARE 11, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The poll surveyed 800 Minnesota registered voters likely to participate in the November general election via live telephone interviews from June 8-10, 2026 and the numbers represent Walz’s lowest approval rating since taking office six years ago.

On the fraud issue, 45% of voters say they trust Republicans to fix it compared to 38% who chose Democrats and 14% who said neither party.

FINAL WALZ FRAUD REPORT RIPS ‘CULTURE OF TOLERANCE’ AS MINNESOTA TAXPAYERS FACE BILLIONS IN ALLEGED LOSSES

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz testifies during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 2026. The hearing examined alleged misuse of federal funds for Minnesota social services and Medicaid programs.(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The same polling unit registered Trump’s approval rating in the state at 41% this week, which conservatives on social media took notice of.

“Tim Walz has a lower approval rating than President Trump in deep blue Minnesota right now,” Townhall columnist Dustin Grage posted on X. “That’s how toxic the fraud has become for Democrats.”

Over the past year, the Trump administration has taken a major interest in Minnesota and unleashed its fraud task force into the state resulting in raids, arrests, and further investigations into how the fraud was able to grow so quickly in the state.

Another contentious issue revealed by the poll is Minnesota’s new state flag, supported by Walz, that 50% of voters say they disapprove of.

The state’s new flag has become a cultural and political flashpoint in a state already reeling from one of the largest fraud scandals in U.S. history, heavily involving the Somali immigrant community. The flag was approved by a 13-member commission created by the Democratic-controlled legislature in 2023. Critics of the flag say it is overly simplistic and some have even knocked it as bearing a resemblance to Somalia’s national flag.

MINNESOTA LAWMAKERS UNLOAD ON WALZ’S ‘LEGACY’ AFTER HE TOUTS FRAUD RECORD IN FINAL ADDRESS: ‘RIDICULOUS’

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6395331754112

“Two issues that unite a majority of Minnesotans are the rejection of Tim Walz and his failed policies and our hatred for the Minnesota Somali state flag,” Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who represents Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, told Fox News Digital. “The flag is an embarrassment and good on the cities who are actively removing it from their city halls and communities.”

“President Trump is more popular than Tim Walz in his home state because Minnesotans are sick and tired of Walz siding with illegal aliens and Somali fraudsters over his hardworking, taxpaying constituents.” he continued. “The legacy of Tim Walz will be the fires that destroyed Minneapolis, the fraud that he allowed to be stolen under his watch, and his failures that have harmed our great state.”

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a press conference about the state’s new paid family leave policy at the Coliseum Building in Minneapolis on Jan. 6, 2026. The event occurred a day after Walz announced his withdrawal from the 2026 gubernatorial race.(Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Fraud appears to have played a significant role in Walz’s cratering approval, which is evidenced by a 10-point drop in his support since last year as the fraud scandal has dominated headlines.

Only 1% of Republicans in the state say they approve of the job Walz is doing to go along with 73% of Democrats and 32% of Independents.

“America rejected Tim Walz in 2024,” Republican Minnesota State Sen. Michael Holmstrom told Fox News Digital. “Now Minnesotans are following suit. The good news for Tim is that, now that his record is on full display, he could soon be the most popular guy in the jailhouse.”

Republican State Sen. Mark Koran told Fox News Digital that the polls “really tell you what Gov. Walz has done to himself.”

“He let his fraud crisis blow up and didn’t do anything to fix it while he was busy shoving all this radical stuff into state government,” Koran said. “After years of extreme far-left ideology and policies that don’t help normal people, Minnesotans have had enough. His legacy is going to be the fraud crisis and desecrating the state flag. Minnesota is just tired of it.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo contributed to this report

Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.

翻新不到两周 美国林肯纪念堂倒影池开始脱漆

2026年6月19日 17:32 / 联合早报

美国林肯纪念堂倒影池池底藻类大量繁殖，导致池水变绿。图为6月18日，国家公园管理局的员工和承包商使用吸尘器清除池底的绿藻。 （法新社）

（华盛顿综合电）美国林肯纪念堂倒影池翻新后，于6月6日正式重新开放。然而，仅12天后，池底油漆已开始剥落。

美国政府星期二（16日）往池里倒入大量过氧化氢（hydrogen peroxide），但水体仍大面积爆发水藻，池水变回浑浊的暗绿色。

通过长满藻类的绿色池水可见，林肯纪念堂倒影池底新铺设的密封防水层多处出现裂口。（法新社）

美国总统特朗普此前公开批评这种水色“肮脏不堪、令人作呕”，于是耗资约1400万美元（约1810万新元）开展大规模翻新，以“先进纳米气泡水”等方式杀灭藻类，并主推铺设一款“国旗蓝”防渗衬层。但竣工不到两周，新铺设的密封防水层多处就出现裂口。

负责管理国家广场，倒影池所在地的国家公园管理局尚未回复路透社的置评请求。负责翻新工程的弗吉尼亚州大西洋工业涂料公司也未作回应。

有游客看到倒影池中的“脏水”后告诉路透社：“我觉得我们的资源应用在更有意义的地方。”

这项修复工程一开始便引发巨大争议。批评者抨击工程未公开招标，并称修复成本不断上升，他们也质疑特朗普与承包商之间的关系。

非营利组织美国文化景观基金会还提起诉讼，指林肯纪念堂倒影池涂上蓝漆是亵渎这个地标。

政府补贴压低能源成本 日本5月核心通胀维持稳定

2026年6月19日 19:01 / 联合早报

日本5月份核心通货膨胀指标持稳，部分原因是政府补贴压低了能源成本。日本央行仍有望在今年晚些时候再次加息。

日本总务省星期五（6月19日）公布，剔除生鲜食品的核心消费者价格同比上涨1.4%，符合经济学家预期。进一步剔除能源的消费者价格同比上涨1.8%，也符合经济学家的预估中值。

日本5月份核心消费者价格同比上涨1.4%。图为东京池袋区的烤肉店。 （彭博社）

彭博社引述最新的数据说，日本政府有效降低了中东能源危机对生活费的影响。高市早苗政府近期推出追加预算，将有助于在未来几个月继续缓冲中东冲突对家庭的影响。日本政府还采取措施降低育儿成本。

尽管美国和伊朗的临时和平协议已经生效，但油价仍处高位。能源交易员指出，经由霍尔木兹海峡运输的石油和液化天然气规模可能需要数月甚至更久才能恢复正常。

政府补贴压低能源成本 日本5月核心通胀维持稳定

2026年6月19日 19:01 / 联合早报

日本5月份核心消费者价格同比上涨1.4%。图为东京池袋区的烤肉店。 （彭博社）

日本5月份核心通货膨胀指标持稳，部分原因是政府补贴压低了能源成本。日本央行仍有望在今年晚些时候再次加息。

日本总务省星期五（6月19日）公布，剔除生鲜食品的核心消费者价格同比上涨1.4%，符合经济学家预期。进一步剔除能源的消费者价格同比上涨1.8%，也符合经济学家的预估中值。

彭博社引述最新的数据说，日本政府有效降低了中东能源危机对生活费的影响。高市早苗政府近期推出追加预算，将有助于在未来几个月继续缓冲中东冲突对家庭的影响。日本政府还采取措施降低育儿成本。

尽管美国和伊朗的临时和平协议已经生效，但油价仍处高位。能源交易员指出，经由霍尔木兹海峡运输的石油和液化天然气规模可能需要数月甚至更久才能恢复正常。

中国据报正加强AI关键金属铟出口审查

2026年6月19日 16:03 / 联合早报

中国据报正加强AI关键金属铟出口审查

中国的铟产量占全球近70%，是建造下一代人工智能（AI）数据中心亟需的关键小众金属。 （路透社档案照片）

中国正加强对铟（Indium）出口的审查，此举引发市场担忧，这种下一代人工智能（AI）数据中心亟需的关键小众金属，可能被纳入北京出口管制体系。

据路透社报道，中国的铟产量占全球近70%。作为锌精炼过程的副产品，铟不仅常用于显示面板和焊料，也是制造磷化铟的重要原材料。磷化铟被广泛用于制造AI数据中心所需的高速光通信晶片。

中国在2025年2月将磷化铟列入出口管制清单。这项限制措施促使美国晶片制造商相干公司（Coherent）首席执行官，在今年5月随同美国总统特朗普访华时，专门提出这一问题。

尽管铟目前尚未被北京列入出口管制清单，但两名买家向路透社透露，中国海关对采购行为的审查日益严格。今年，一名欧洲买家首次被要求披露最终用户信息，包括用户具体所在的地点。

一家北美大型买家表示，清关审批时间已从原来的“当天放行”延长至“数天”。该买家将此归因于中国海关对文书的审查趋严，并形容当前局面令人“紧张”。不过，这名买家没有被海关要求提供额外信息。

这种额外的尽职调查并非一视同仁。另外两名买家告诉路透社，尽管他们听说审查变得更严，但他们尚未遭遇这类情况。截至目前，路透社尚未发现任何相关货物被拦截的案例。

目前，铟已被视为美国供应链中的一个潜在脆弱节点。今年早些时候，美国国防后勤局发布了一份采购提案，计划在三年内储备高达403吨的铟材料。

另一名北美买家坦言，怀疑当前的申报要求可能是“未来实施出口限制乃至全面禁令的前兆”。

Analysis: What the missing center has meant for the Supreme Court

2026-06-19T08:00:25.508Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/19/politics/analysis-supreme-court-missing-center

For over 50 years, conservative centrists like Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy anchored the Supreme Court.

Today’s court lacks a pragmatic middle, leading to landmark reversals and heightened tensions among justices.

Recent voting rights rulings during midterm primaries demonstrate how the absence of a center reshapes American law.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

For more than a half century, the Supreme Court was anchored by a series of conservative centrists who controlled the most anticipated end-of-term rulings in June, pragmatic justices like Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy.

O’Connor, a former state senator with keen political instincts, also created a social glue by encouraging lunch together after oral arguments, arranging bridge parties and occasionally organizing trips to meet with foreign judges. She believed in keeping the justices together even when they feuded on the law.

Today’s justices are ruptured in multiple ways, most importantly in their intractable views. They are split 6-3 along ideological lines, and even within the six-justice conservative bloc, the justices divide over how far to upset precedent and roll back past cases.

A particularly defining characteristic of today’s bench is the absence of a pragmatic middle. The consequences have been building for years, but they have crystallized both in recent decisions and the way the justices are working together.

The Louisiana and Alabama voting-rights cases this spring that make it nearly impossible to remedy intentional race discrimination in redistricting demonstrate the historic change underway.

Those rulings did more than topple legal precedents. Coming in the middle of the country’s current midterm primaries-cycle, they have disrupted electoral practices across the country in a way that mostly benefits Republicans.

They fit a pattern that, along with reversal of Roe v. Wade and the end of racial affirmative action in higher education, reflects a mindset the opposite of the pragmatic considerations Kennedy, O’Connor, and before them, Justice Lewis Powell, held. All three were appointed by Republican presidents.

When O’Connor and Kennedy voted in 1992 to preserve the 1973 right to abortion in Roe, they said they could not dismiss the cost of reversal to “ people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case.”

They cast the court’s dilemma in broader societal terms: “Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”

A decade earlier, when Powell cast the key fifth vote to ensure a right to public education for children of undocumented immigrants, he wrote, “It hardly can be argued rationally that anyone benefits from the creation within our borders of a subclass of illiterate persons.”

Unlike today’s majority under Chief Justice John Roberts, neither Powell, nor O’Connor and Kennedy, set out to wholly remake the country’s laws.

“Both Justices Kennedy and O’Connor cared about what the country as a whole thought about the court,” said University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman, a former Kennedy clerk. “They provided a middle to the court because they cared about the middle, median views in the country and didn’t want the Supreme Court to stray too far from that. And rightfully so – it doesn’t work to have an apex, unelected court that’s catering to a smaller and smaller minority section of the country.”

The disappearance of a constructive center likely contributes to the current testiness in written opinions and apparent difficulties in resolving cases. With about 10 days to go in the current 2025-26 session, the justices have 17 cases left, several concerning the boundaries of President Donald Trump’s power.

The disputes involve Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, defying the 14th Amendment guarantee that anyone born on US soil is automatically a US citizen, and Trump’s effort to fire the heads of independent agencies, specifically at the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. Roberts has in past cases sought to expand presidential power over executive agencies such as the FTC, putting him in sync with Trump.

“I thought there was an institutional pragmatism to Roberts,” said Georgetown University law professor Brad Snyder, “but I kind of had on rose-colored glasses.”

Snyder pointed to the Louisiana decision in April that dramatically curtailed voting rights and the 2024 opinion that gave Trump significant immunity from prosecution as he was running for reelection and still faced charges of election subversion from 2020.

Both decisions reinforced the public perception that the justices are, as Snyder put it, “politicians in robes, an idea that Roberts has otherwise worked hard to dispel.”

As the third appointee of Trump’s first term, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the catalyst for the transformed court, having succeeded the late liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg in October 2020. That meant, for the first time in modern history, the court had a six-justice conservative supermajority.

The consequence was not merely a one-vote difference, between five and six, on the right. The spare vote for what’s needed to produce a majority emboldened conservatives, as seen in the successive reversals of milestone rulings on abortion rights, in 2022; college affirmative action, in 2023; and the redistricting overhaul this year.

In between, by the familiar 6-3 split, the justices in 2024 enhanced presidential immunity and in 2025 declared that federal judges lack authority to issue universal injunctions to block presidential policies.

Equally important: Because it takes four votes even to grant a case (as opposed to five to decide it), the three Democratic-appointed liberals now need at least one of the Republican-appointed conservatives to join them to even grant a hearing for an appeal.

The 5-4, conservative-liberal split that defined the court in the decades before 2020 was more fluid. To be sure, O’Connor (who served from 1981-2006) and Kennedy (1988-2018) were conservatives. They joined their right-wing colleagues in the 2000 case of Bush v. Gore, giving Texas Republican Governor George W. Bush the White House over Democratic Vice President Al Gore in the middle of a disputed Florida vote count. Separately, Kennedy was solidly with the conservatives as he wrote the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010 that led to more corporate money in election campaigns.

But O’Connor and Kennedy also voted to retain decades-old reproductive rights and regularly sought a middle ground, for example, in tests of the separation of church and state.

Kennedy also wrote the decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide and kept open the possibility that federal judges could block extreme partisan gerrymanders. In 2019, the year after he left the bench, the court ruled 5-4 that federal judges lack the authority to decide if politicians went too far in drawing district lines to protect partisans.

Kavanaugh and Barrett transform the court

The changes that brought the country to this moment began in 2018, when Justice Brett Kavanaugh – another former Kennedy clerk – succeeded Kennedy, and, in 2020, the appointment of Barrett. Because of the long history of a pragmatic center, Supreme Court scholars watched in the early years to see if either of them or another justice filled the void.

“There were those of us who thought Barrett might play that role,” said Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus. “To a small degree she has, but she is not pivotal the way Powell, O’Connor or Kennedy were through the years.”

Barrett, like Roberts, has occasionally sided with the left in select cases. But her motivation is rooted in her textualist methodology and desire for narrow results, rather than the pragmatism that dates back at least to Powell (who served from 1972-1987).

As she has been promoting her book in recent months, Barrett has explained her legal approach and the “limits of my role.” On law school campuses and at other public appearances, she has contrasted her focus on the precise text of a law to “having pragmatism be your guide” or using “just your sense of justice in resolving cases.”

She did not join the majority in the most aggressive part of the Trump v. US decision. She also dissented, in a separate 2024 case, from the majority view that government prosecutors exceeded the bounds of an obstruction statute as they charged people involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Still, Barrett was fully with the majority to reverse a half century of abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center Organization. Roberts, who was a sixth vote to limit reproductive rights, separated himself from the majority that toppled Roe v. Wade. Roberts wanted to restrict Roe but retain some protection for a woman’s right to end a pregnancy.

The most consistent members of the far right are Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. Thomas, who has served since 1991, decried in an April speech people who “recast themselves as institutionalists, pragmatists, or thoughtful moderates, all as a way of justifying their failures to themselves, their consciences, and their country.”

Solidly on the left wing are Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Tensions between the current right and left blocs have been boiling. In May, after the conservative majority voted to speed up the release of an order tied to their Louisiana voting-rights decision, dissenting Justice Jackson said the majority was trying to influence elections in the state. Alito, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, called Jackson’s opinion “baseless and insulting.”

University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq traces the current tensions to the 2022 early leak of the Dobbs opinion reversing Roe v. Wade. “Ever since the leak of the Dobbs opinion, I think we’ve seen public evidence of frictions amounting to more distrust than is normally the case among the justices.”

Shortly after the leak, Thomas lamented an absence of the collegiality he experienced with former Chief Justice William Rehnquist and O’Connor, who cajoled all the justices into eating lunch together and had a reputation for keeping the conversation around the table going.

https://www.cnn.com/

Justice Clarence Thomas speaks out after Roe v. Wade draft leak

1:07 • Source: CNN

In the era leading up to Rehnquist’s 2005 death and O’Connor’s 2006 retirement, Thomas recalled the justices “actually trusted” each other.

“We might have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family. … You laughed together. You went to lunch together every day.”

The court still holds a private lunch after the daily oral arguments. It’s just that it’s easier to skip these days.

What’s missing from the Epstein files? Questions persist about unexplained redactions, missing documents, email gaps

2026-06-19T06:02:30-0400 / https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epstein-files-whats-missing/

When the Department of Justice released more than 3 million pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, survivors, advocates and lawmakers quickly raised questions about an apparent discrepancy: the DOJ had said it collected more than 6 million pages of material during its investigation but was only releasing half that number.

The Justice Department tells CBS News it “has released every document required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” and maintains that those unreleased 3 million documents were either duplicative, unrelated to Epstein or protected by legal privilege.

But concerns persist about evidence that important documents are still being withheld. At the same time, the Government Accountability Office recently announced it was launching an investigation into the way documents that were released had information blacked out. That move comes at the request of several members of Congress.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says that if there are duplicates, “OK, that’s fine, let’s see them.” He adds, “I think what people need to understand is … we’re not sure what’s in the 3 million.”

CBS News has analyzed the archive not only for what has been disclosed, but also for documents that appear to be absent. Despite the unprecedented volume of material now available, it’s apparent that many gaps remain in the public record surrounding Epstein’s activities, his communication, the federal investigations into him and the circumstances surrounding his death behind bars.

Our review identified several areas where important questions remain unanswered or documents appear to remain unreleased.

Redaction issues

The Epstein Files Transparency Act provides only limited grounds for withholding information or redacting names. Its primary purpose is to protect victims. The bill specifically excluded “reputational harm, or political sensitivity” as a reason for redacting. Yet in many instances prominent individuals’ names were redacted while victims’ names were not.

Some redactions seem difficult to justify. In one example, a text where Epstein sent Steve Bannon a link to an article, Bannon’s face was blacked out in a photo that had already been publicly posted online.

The DOJ redacted a photo of Steve Bannon in the Epstein files. U.S. Department of Justice

Elsewhere, the names of business contacts and acquaintances of Epstein appear to have been redacted without an obvious reason under the terms of the law.

Many emails contained in the Epstein files had senders’ or recipients’ names redacted. U.S. Department of Justice

In another widely cited example, a 2002 email with the signoff “Love, Melania” had the full name and email of the sender and receiver redacted. In April, first lady Melania Trump acknowledged having exchanged emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, saying in a statement that it “cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence. My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note.”

A 2002 email in the Epstein files signed “Love, Melania,” with the sender’s and receiver’s names redacted. U.S. Department of Justice

The Epstein Files Transparency Act requires the DOJ to provide a justification for every redaction. It permits withholding information that “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” but also states that all redactions must be accompanied by a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress. The Department of Justice has made no attempt to address specific redactions and instead issued a general statement saying its redactions were “[c]onsistent with the Act.”

Members of Congress have been given the opportunity to review redacted material, but the process is time consuming and some have complained their searches are being monitored by the DOJ.

After CBS News reached out to the DOJ for comment on these redactions, the photo of Bannon and two of the emails were quietly un-redacted. After one of those was un-redacted, it revealed the sender was former U.K. diplomat Peter Mandelson, who was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of mishandling sensitive government documents, which BBC News reports he denies. Mandelson has said he regrets his friendship with Epstein and says he never witnessed criminal activity.

After CBS News reached out to the DOJ, the name on this email from former British diplomat Peter Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein was un-redacted. U.S. Department of Justice

A gap in email communications

The DOJ released millions of Epstein’s emails. Nearly all originate from an email account he created around the time he went to jail in 2008: jeevacation@gmail.com.

Missing from the Epstein files are emails from his other, earlier accounts, including approximately 20,000 messages from Epstein’s jeeproject@yahoo.com account, which were previously obtained by hackers and later archived by the nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets. It’s unclear if the DOJ itself ever obtained those emails.

Some older email messages do appear in records apparently obtained from Ghislaine Maxwell’s accounts or other sources, but the DOJ’s release is missing most of Epstein’s earliest communications.

However, a batch of documents raises questions about what the DOJ does have; a series of screengrab images of Epstein’s inbox for an email account littlestjeff@yahoo.com (a reference to his island, Little St. James) from the early 2000s — notably a period of time when Epstein was in touch with Donald Trump, whom he knew through New York and Palm Beach social circles. The sender and recipient fields on those records are heavily redacted. Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed he has never used email, but those communications could potentially have references to Epstein’s relationship with Mr. Trump and others. This was also the period in which Epstein was found to have been recruiting underage girls for sexual massages, and would likely have been of high interest to investigators.

Mr. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

Despite the DOJ apparently having access to Epstein’s inbox, only a handful of emails from that account were included in the release.

Internal FBI communications

The release includes a substantial amount of internal DOJ and FBI correspondence. The names of many DOJ and FBI officials involved in those communications have been redacted, making it difficult to reconstruct who was responsible for key investigative actions.

An email in the Epstein files with names of FBI officials redacted. U.S. Department of Justice

Missing email attachments

Numerous emails in the archive reference attached documents that do not appear to have been included in the release.

One example concerns the theft of approximately 30 firearms from Epstein’s Zorro Ranch property in New Mexico. In August 2018, an employee emailed Epstein a file titled “ZMC-_Gun_Inventory.pdf,”_ which contained information about the weapons, including their serial numbers. According to a New Mexico State Police report obtained by CBS News, those serial numbers were withheld from investigators during the theft investigation. CBS News was unable to locate any document containing firearm serial numbers in the released archive.

Even where attachments may have been released, linking them back to the emails from which they originated is nearly impossible; the DOJ replaced original file names with its own document numbering system, making it difficult to determine whether such attachments were included elsewhere in the archive, or which email a file may have been originally attached to.

The DEA investigation

One notable document in the files is a 69-page report produced by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Fusion Center identifying Epstein and 14 others as targets of a DEA investigation into alleged money laundering connected to ecstasy or ketamine trafficking.

An investigation of that scope would likely have generated substantial records, including investigative reports, emails and financial analyses. None of that material was released.

Jeffrey Epstein, at right, and the cover page of a 2015 Drug Enforcement Administration memo listing him as one of 15 people targeted in an investigation. Document released by Department of Justice

The DEA denied CBS News’ requests for related records under the Freedom of Information Act and also declined a request from Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden seeking additional information about the investigation, the senator’s office told CBS News.

Other agencies and investigations

Previous reporting by the Washington Post revealed that Epstein had been named in an investigation in the 1990s into Towers Financial, a notorious Ponzi scheme, but was never charged. Documents related to that investigation were not included in the release despite it having been conducted by the DOJ.

One notable limitation of the law requiring the Epstein files’ release is that it only applies to the DOJ. Other agencies may have documents relating to Epstein that they have not released.

The document about the DEA investigation revealed three separate Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations, two of which had already been closed by the time of the 2015 report and one that was listed as pending. But ICE, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, is not covered by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Neither are other government agencies including the State Department, Treasury Department, CIA or NSA, which may have collected material on Epstein over the past several decades. (With his global network of political and business contacts, Epstein himself wondered if U.S. intelligence had files on him.)

Index issues

CBS News spent weeks analyzing indexes of files provided to Ghislaine Maxwell by the DOJ during her criminal case. This same index had been used previously by media outlets to identify three missing FBI interview records, known as 302s, in which agents documented what they were told by Epstein accusers who made claims about Mr. Trump.

This index used a Bates numbering — a common legal document indexing system — to catalog records. More than 70% of the roughly 5,000 documents listed in the index could not be located through searches of the released archive using their assigned document numbers, according to a CBS News analysis.

The DOJ told CBS News that many of the missing entries may have been identified as duplicates, and therefore were excluded from publication. Using contextual clues, including witness interview dates and document descriptions, some files could be located elsewhere, but for many that was not possible.

One example involves an individual named Joseph Alvarez, also known as “Gypsy Gita.” Gita had previously reportedly been named by one Epstein survivor as someone who introduced her to Ghislaine Maxwell. Alvarez died in 2021.

The Epstein files include these photos related to Joseph Alvarez, also known as “Gypsy Gita.” U.S. Department of Justice

CBS News was unable to locate four of eight documents associated with Alvarez in the index. Of the documents that were present, one was a picture of Alvarez with Mr. Trump, one was Alvarez’ business card and two were photographs of large bags of cash. The four missing documents were listed as “alvarez asset report,” “alvarez law enforcement report,” “alvarez contact card report” and “screenshot of [redacted] facebook.” It’s unclear from the documents why these photos were included in the case files.

Massage scheduling communications

One of the most conspicuous absences is communication relating to the scheduling of massages in the years prior to Epstein’s death.

Epstein was known to have multiple massages each day, a practice that he used as a mechanism for recruiting and exploiting young women and girls. When authorities searched his Palm Beach residence in 2005, investigators found hundreds of messages from women and girls that they said referred to the scheduling of massage appointments.

A few of the notes from the Epstein files about scheduling massages. U.S. Department of Justice / Names and phone numbers redacted by CBS News

Yet the released archive contains little correspondence about how appointments were arranged after his release from jail in 2009.

Signal messages

Epstein frequently encouraged associates to communicate using the encrypted messaging app Signal.

No Signal messages have been included in the release; it is possible that investigators were unable to obtain them.

Among those who apparently used Signal to communicate with Epstein were technology investor Peter Thiel and real estate investor Thomas Barrack. Barrack, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump, is now U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Iraq. Both Thiel and Barrack were involved in Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. They have not been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein case.

Suspicious activity reports

Suspicious activity reports, which document millions of dollars in transactions made by Epstein that were flagged by financial institutions, were released, retracted and then re-released in an entirely redacted form. They originated from the Treasury Department but were used in the DOJ’s investigation of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes.

At left, a suspicious activity report on Epstein’s financial transactions. At right, the DOJ took the form down and then re-released it with the contents entirely redacted. U.S. Department of Justice

Prison videos

One document from the Epstein files revealed that the DOJ had footage from 147 cameras from the Metropolitan Correctional Center covering a 24-hour period before and after Epstein died, totaling over 8 terabytes of data. The internal documents indicate that the footage does not reveal anything significant “since the cameras in the Special Housing Unit … were not active at the time.” Even so, by law, those videos should have been released.

Also missing are videos from July 23, 2019, the night Epstein apparently first tried to take his life.

Lawsuits and hearings

The independent journalist Katie Phang is currently suing the Department of Justice to force it to provide justifications for many of the redactions and release additional documents. According to former Attorney General Pam Bondi, her deputy and now Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was responsible for handling the redaction and release of the Epstein files.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has requested that Blanche appear before the committee and answer questions about that process.