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Caitlin Clark's season has been dominated by the headlines surrounding the physical play she's faced.

Just three weeks after it was signed, the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran is on life support.

The pink-and-white, two-wheel trailer has been moving around North Long Beach for months, drawing dozens of complaints from disgusted neighbors.

Whatever happens for the Nets in summer league, good or bad, likely none of it will matter more than this: Egor Dëmin is going to the rim. Hard.

An Illinois couple whose two young kids tragically drowned after their boat capsized during a massive storm that ripped through Wisconsin's Lake Geneva were “lifelong, experienced boaters,” friends and authorities said.

Chester Green, 26, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder for killing his mother, Marian Green, 71, at their nearly $2.5 million home in the Fox Meadow region of Scarsdale.

James Talarico Says He Supports The Second Amendment - His Record Says Otherwise

Authored by Leigh Gibson, Texas State Director - Gun Owners of America,

The Second Amendment protects more than the right to own a firearm. It protects the natural right of every law-abiding American to defend themselves and their family. But it also serves a broader purpose: preserving the liberty of a free people by ensuring that ultimate power remains with the citizens rather than the government.

The Founders understood that self-defense and liberty are inseparable. Having just fought a war for independence against a government that abused its power, they recognized that a free people must never become entirely dependent on government for either their safety or the preservation of their liberty. That understanding is woven into the Second Amendment.

That raises an uncomfortable question: Do the people entrusted with government power truly believe in the Second Amendment as it was written? Or do they believe in it only until it conflicts with the policies they want to impose?

Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico provides a timely example.

The Second Amendment is only 27 words long, so I'd venture to say most lawmakers have read it.

The problem is many lawmakers read limitations into the Second Amendment that simply aren't there.

I've spent the past several years at the Texas Capitol as the Texas State Director for Gun Owners of America. My job is to read firearm legislation, testify before committees, work with lawmakers, and hold elected officials accountable for their votes. Before that, my family left California for Texas because we wanted to raise our children in a state that respected constitutional rights.

Those experiences have taught me something important. Almost every politician seeking statewide office in Texas says they support the Second Amendment. The important question isn't whether they say they support it. The question is what they believe it protects.

Their answer isn't found in campaign rhetoric. It's found in the legislation they support and the votes they cast.

James Talarico says he supports the Second Amendment. But listen carefully to how he describes that right.

In a 2020 podcast, Talarico argued that the words "well regulated" justify what he calls "commonsense restrictions" on the right to keep and bear arms.

Like many politicians, Talarico frequently points to the phrase "well regulated" as though it authorizes modern government regulation of a constitutional right.

It doesn't.

At the time the Second Amendment was written, "well regulated" commonly meant properly functioning, well-trained, and in good working order - not regulated by the government.

Talarico is correct that constitutional rights are not unlimited. The real question is who decides where those limits are. Our constitutional system doesn't allow elected officials to invent new restrictions simply because they believe they're "common sense."

Any restriction must be consistent with the Constitution's text, history, and tradition.

Even historical analogs - of which there are few - used by anti-gun politicians to justify modern gun control laws, were focused entirely on violent crime during the founding-era and purposefully did not restrict law-abiding citizens.

The Second Amendment deserves the same respect afforded by every other constitutional guarantee.

That same philosophy appears in Talarico's legislative record.

In 2021, he voted against HB 1927, Texas' Constitutional Carry law. There is no clearer vote demonstrating whether a lawmaker believes law-abiding citizens should be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights without first obtaining government permission.

Then in 2023, he voted against HB 2837, legislation prohibiting firearm-specific merchant category codes that could be used to track gun purchases.

The government has no legitimate business tracking the lawful purchases of peaceable Americans, and financial institutions should never become a backdoor registry for firearm ownership.

During the 2025 legislative session, he also voted against SB 706, legislation requiring Texas to recognize valid handgun licenses issued by every other state. That wasn't simply a vote affecting Texans. It was a vote against recognizing the rights of law-abiding Americans traveling through Texas.

None of those votes were about violent criminals. They were votes affecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.

This debate isn't about James Talarico alone. It is about a governing philosophy that says constitutional rights exist, but only to the extent government approves of how citizens exercise them.

I've heard politicians tell me they support the Second Amendment countless times at the Texas Capitol. Then, they turn around and vote for greater government control over how law-abiding Texans exercise that right. Nearly every proposal is offered in the name of safety.

The problem is that constitutional rights were never intended to depend upon whether government believes restricting them serves a worthy purpose.

The Second Amendment was written precisely because the Founders distrusted concentrated government power - not because they expected future politicians to exercise it perfectly.

Reasonable people can disagree about public policy. They can debate crime prevention, criminal penalties, and law enforcement. But they should also be honest about what they believe.

If someone believes government should determine who may fully exercise the right to keep and bear arms, under what circumstances, and only after satisfying additional government requirements, then they don't believe in the Second Amendment as it was originally understood.

They believe in a government-managed privilege.

For voters who genuinely value the Constitution, the next time a politician says, "I support the Second Amendment, but...," don't focus on the words that come before the comma. Listen carefully to what comes after it. That's where you'll usually discover what they truly believe - and how they'll govern.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/08/2026 - 21:45

Left-wing influencers are overjoyed following release of the UBS Global Wealth Report, which indicates America is (surprise!) insanely rich, but the richest Americans are (surprise, part 2) far richer than the average Joe — an historic level of “wealth inequality,” they’re screaming, as if this is self-evidently outrageous.

Terrifying video obtained by The Post captured the man walking across the steel cables from a towering pillar on the bridge Wednesday night.

Hundreds of people remained under evacuation orders Wednesday more than 24 hours after they were forced to flee over fears a Midtown high-rise would collapse — including hotel guests completely caught off guard. Cris Stennett, 47, a public health researcher, said she learned about the evacuation early Tuesday as she stepped from her hotel room’s...

For the first time in three games, the Yankees did not strike out 17 times Wednesday, so there was that. Otherwise, their offense remained abysmal.

Baldoni and Lively settled their long legal battle on May 4, just two weeks before they were set to go to trial.

Baldoni and Lively settled their long legal battle on May 4 — just two weeks before they were set to go to trial.

The beloved reality star's death was "a total shock and unexpected," according to her heartbroken parents.

The beloved reality star's death was "a total shock and unexpected," according to her heartbroken parents.

California lawmakers are ramping up efforts to reopen Canada's market to American wine after a trade dispute triggered a sharp decline in exports and deepened financial pressure on wineries across the state.

Current State Of Physical AI: Everything You Need To Know

Citi's Robotics & Physical AI Leadership Conference wrapped up on Tuesday. The annual Citi Research event brings together robotics founders, investors, operators, and industry executives to assess the state of "physical AI."

Analyst Heath Terry summarized the key takeaways Wednesday morning, painting a picture of the robotics industry moving from proof of concept to commercial deployment, while warning that scaling robots remains challenging.

"Labor shortages, reshoring, and favorable regulatory tailwinds are accelerating enterprise demand, while data scarcity, talent constraints, battery limitations, and high deployment costs remain key friction points," Terry explained to clients. 

Citi said the winners in physical AI will likely be firms that own proprietary real-world data, solve specific labor bottlenecks and use Robotics-as-a-Service models to reduce upfront costs for customers.

Terry highlighted automation-exposed industrial names including Rockwell Automation, Emerson Electric, Honeywell, Symbotic, Ralliant and Belden as potential beneficiaries.

Humanoids are attracting significant investor interest. Last month, we detailed how readers can invest ahead of a major ramp in humanoid production expected in the coming quarters. Read the report. 

Via Deutsche Bank: 

Over the last two years, about $20 billion has been invested in physical AI, with applications spanning warehouses, logistics, trucking, construction, aviation, and defense.

Last week, carmaker BMW revealed that a new upgraded humanoid is walking its factory floors at the Spartanburg plant in South Carolina. 

Here are Citi's top takeaways from the physical AI conference: 

Key AI Takeaways

Physical AI is transitioning from proof-of-concept to commercial deployment, but the path to scale is more operationally intensive than the digital AI analogy suggests. Unlike large language models, where a base model carries a lot of the value, physical AI places the premium on proprietary, task-specific data collected in real-world environments, purpose-built hardware, and safety certification.

Across sessions, participants consistently identified data scarcity as the binding constraint, with Instawork noting that even tens of millions of hours of data being collected in 2026 likely represents only basis points, not percentage points, of what is ultimately needed to achieve high-level robotic performance. Power, battery longevity, and chip architecture are also emerging as critical bottlenecks, with panelists noting that existing semiconductor platforms were designed for datacenter workloads, not real-time edge inference on mobile platforms.

The most commercially advanced companies, whether in humanoids, warehouse AMRs, autonomous trucking, or construction, shared a common profile: they started with a specific, high-pain labor problem, adopted a Robotics-as-a-Service model to lower customer adoption barriers, and prioritized safety and reliability above model sophistication.g significant investment enthusiasm, but near-term ROI is being driven by purpose-built AMRs and specialized systems from companies like Locus Robotics and Dexterity. The conference reinforced our view that physical AI is a decade- long buildout, with durable value accruing to companies that own the data flywheel, solve real deployment problems, and meet the highest safety standards.

Key Industrials Takeaways

After attending Citi's Robotics & Physical AI Leadership Conference, we came away convinced that automation, robotics, and physical AI continue to make gradual progress toward broader commercialization, creating what we view as a durable long-term growth tailwind for our automation-exposed industrial companies. Our preferred ways to gain exposure to industrial automation are through Buy-rated ROK, EMR, and HON (pure-play automation providers), SYM (warehouse automation), RAL (sensors and T&M), and BDC (industrial networking), as we view these companies as well positioned to benefit from increasing investments in automation (including equipment, software, and AI). Key drivers of automation adoption remain a constrained labor market as well as accelerating domestic manufacturing activity and capacity expansions, with automation supportive of higher throughput, increased uptime, and improved operational efficiency/accuracy that appears supportive of healthy ROIs.

While logistics, warehousing, and autos appear to be important end markets driving automation adoption (higher volume, repetitive tasks), several panelists highlighted AI's potential to unlock new skills/capabilities for robotics and automation, which could, over time, expand addressable markets for automation solutions (new end markets and new use cases), which we view as a broad positive. Advances in AI/LLMs along with growing availability of data (real-world as well as simulated) are leading to more refined technology through, for instance more integrated hardware and software and more active usage driving increasingly capable deployments (as AI-enabled systems grow "smarter"), which we think could further support accelerating automation adoption over time. In some instances, access to high-quality data remains a bottleneck (where companies are combining simulations with limited real-world data), but we also view this as an opportunity and competitive moat for our companies, given their large installed base and ability to leverage/mine data to further drive autonomy and operational efficiency.

Select companies also highlighted robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) business models that potentially lower the barriers to adoption for small and medium sized enterprises given lower or minimal upfront capital costs, which we view as supportive of our constructive view on SYM's warehouse-as-a-service offering (GreenBox/Exol), which we think could help drive increasing adoption of SYM' warehouse automation solutions amongst a broader range of customers.

The most important takeaway is that Physical AI is emerging and deployments will be ramped up as Robotics-as-a-Service models reduce upfront customer costs. Physical AI may eventually benefit from scaling laws, but the path will be much slower and more operationally intensive than the chatbot boom.

Professional subscribers can read a whole lot more on physical AI at our Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/08/2026 - 21:20

Maine state Rep. Valli Geiger, a Rockland Democrat, former nurse and former mayor, is drawing sudden national attention after saying Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner encouraged her to consider taking his place on the ballot in the Maine Senate race.

Platner announced Wednesday evening that he will be dropping out of the Maine Senate race.

The proposal, which was reportedly discussed during a recent senior staff meeting, would suspend academy operations for several months after the department’s January 2028 graduating class.