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The U.S. Justice Department’s senior ethics official resigned on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump’s administration pulled him off his duties and assigned him to a new sanctuary cities working group, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The official, Bradley Weinsheimer, decided to accept the government’s deferred resignation offer rather than accept the reassignment, the latest in a string of nonpolitical career Justice Department officials who have resisted efforts that they say politicize investigations. Dozens of career Justice Department officialswho normally remain in office from one administration to the nextin cities including Washington and New York have been fired, reassigned or quit since Trump took office on January 20, after he vowed to rapidly shake up a department that he says was used against him during his years out of power. Last week, seven people resigned in protest, including two top officials who oversee the most politically sensitive investigations, after acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered them to drop criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Weinsheimer, a 34-year department veteran who was named to his current role as associate deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term, provided ethics counsel to department officials related to conflicts of interest, including on decisions related to when they should be recused from working on particular cases. He also reviewed disciplinary recommendations by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates attorney misconduct, and referrals for discipline or prosecution from the Office of the Inspector General. Weinsheimer did not return a request for comment. When Reuters tried to reach him in the evening on Tuesday, his government email responded with an auto-generated message saying he was “on administrative leave pursuant to the deferred resignation program.” On January 27, around the same time Weinsheimer was reassigned, Bove delegated all ethics-related decisions to two political appointees. One of them, Kendra Wharton, previously worked alongside Bove and Todd Blanche, the president’s nominee to serve as deputy attorney general, to help defend Trump against criminal charges in New York alleging he falsified records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star. The other, Bove’s chief of staff Jordan Fox, graduated law school in 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile. “Bradley is the senior career ethics official at the Justice Department and provides advice to people across the country and in the building on really important and weighty matters,” said Joyce Vance, the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, noting that the job he performed was apolitical. She said the reassignment of ethical decision-making to two political appointees is troubling, adding: “This is evidence that the Justice Department is being weaponized.” Chad Gilmartin, a spokesman for the Justice Department, rejected any criticism of the move by Bove to delegate the ethics decision-making to Wharton and Fox. “Kendra has a decade of experience as a criminal defense lawyer, which is exactly the mindset we want in such a role,” he said. He added that Fox “is a highly respected attorney.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and Bove, who will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general once Blanche is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, all previously served as defense attorneys for Trump. The White House has previously argued that the Department of Justice was weaponized against Trump when it pursued charges against him for retaining classified documents and subverting the 2020 election. The department dropped both cases after Trump won the November 2024 election, citing a longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. On Bondi’s first day as Attorney General, she issued a directive creating a new “weaponization working group” that would be tasked with reviewing two criminal cases brought against Trump by former Special Counsel Jack Smith for retaining classified documents and trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, as well as Trump’s conviction in New York. Sarah N. Lynch, Reuters
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Ever wondered what it would be like to wake up in Pompei on eruption day? How about how it would have felt to be a passenger on the Titanic? Now you dont need to. A new TikTok trend lets you travel back in time via artificial intelligence and experience the POV of someone living though that time period. From waking up as a caveman in 40 B.C. to being the last person on earth in 2087, many of the most viral videos have been posted by creator @timetravellerpov. The inspiration behind my videos is the desire to bring history to life in a way that feels immersive, @timetravellerpov tells Fast Company over email. Each one is designed to transport viewers into different eras, myths, and alternate realitiesmaking them feel like theyve stepped into another world. While the account posted its first video just at the start of this year, it has quickly grown to over 329,000 followers with over 5.7 million likes. @timetravellerpov POV: You wake up as the last person on Earth in 2087 #history #historytok #ai #apocalypse original sound – Time Traveller POV One viral example drops you in 1351 London during the Black Plague. The clip begins in bed before the POV takes you for a walk through the muddy streets. Here, everyone is sick and hungry. All you have left is a crust of bread, which you give to a beggar child. You visit your sick mother in the quarantine zone and try not to catch the deadly disease. Spoiler alert: It doesnt end well. @timetravellerpov POV: You wake up in 1351 During the Black Plague #history #historytok #ai original sound – Time Traveller POV Each video takes @timetravellerpov around four hours to bring to life. You can tell the content is AI because, obviously, cameras didnt exist in the 14th Century. However, the content is realistic enough to receive over 18.6 million views and thousands of comments. Shoutout to the camera man, one person wrote. The only right way to use ai, another added. I just died in pompeii now Im here give me a break, a third commented. I believe my videos have resonated with so many people because they tap into nostalgia, curiosity, and the desire to explore places and moments we could never otherwise experience, says @timetravellerpov. For me, its all about creating that wow momentwhere someone watches and says, I feel like Im actually there. While the Black Plague might not be everyones first choice of time period to travel back to, the trend has since taken an even darker turn. Other POV videos posted by different creators include being a student during COVID-19, a worker in the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, or living through President John F. Kennedys assassination. But the trend isnt just for experiencing the darkest days in history. For those wishing to travel back to happier times, one of @timetravellerpovs videos lets viewers experience a day in the life of a child living in England in the 2000s. Here, the POV takes you under a parachute in the school playground and on a trip to the now-defunct video store Blockbuster. @timetravellerpov POV: You wake up as an English Kid in the 2000s #history #historytok #ai #nostalgia #nostalgic #CapCut original sound – Time Traveller POV I know this is AI, but damn that felt real, one viewer commented under the video. Nah this is too sad, take me back to Pompeii, added another.
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Shares in Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMCI) are once again rising in premarket trading this morning. As of the time of this writing, SMCI stock is up over 6% to $59.25 per share. That rise is in addition to the more than 16% rise in the stock yesterday. When looking back year-to-date, Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) has seen shares rise over 83% as of yesterdays close. It is now at highs not seen since late August when a spate of bad news, including alleged accounting issues, kicked off a months-long drop in the stocks price. The turnaround in SMCIs stock price fortunes has been especially evident over the last five days. During that time, SMCI shares were up over 30% as of yesterdays close. But why? There are two likely reasons: Supermicro ‘believes’ it will file critical SEC paperwork on time One of the problems that have rattled Supermicro investors is companys delayed filing of its Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The form should have been filed last year, and if Supermicro does not file it by February 25, which is next Tuesday, the company could be delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange. But as Fast Company previously reported, Supermicro last week announced that it believes it will be able to make that deadline. The statement was music to investors ears. Supermicro continues to work diligently toward the filing of its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, and its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended September 30, 2024,” the company said in a statement. “Based on information currently available, the Company believes it will make such filings by February 25, 2025.” A strong 2026 forecast Last week, Supermicro announced its second-quarter fiscal 2025 results. With those results, the company also updated its projected revenue for full-year fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026. While Supermicro lowered its fiscal 2025 projected revenue forecast, the company raised its 2026 forecast. Supermicro now suggests that it will make over $40 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026. Some of that revenue increase is partly due to another companyNvidia. As companies adopt the new line of Nvidia Blackwell GPUs to power their AI needs, many will need the server racks that Supermicro makes to deploy them, thus giving Supermicro sales a boost. With our leading direct-liquid cooling (DLC) technology and over 30% of new data centers expected to adopt it in the next 12 months, Supermicro is well positioned to grow AI infrastructure designs wins based on NVIDIA Blackwell and more, CEO Charles Liang said last week. He continued, [We] will expand our leadership as the premier US-based data center infrastructure solution provider. Where does SMCI stock go from here? Of course, revenue forecasts are just thatforecasts, not guarantees. And despite Super Micro Computer’s statement that it believes it will be able to file its delinquent SEC form by next Tuesdays deadline, nothing is certain until the forms are actually submitted. Yet investor optimism seems strong regardless given SMCIs stock price surge over the past five trading days and since the beginning of the year. But even though SMCI stock is up over 30% in the past five days and over 83% since the beginning of the year, the companys stock price is still down by more than 30% over the past 12 months as of yesterdays close. Where it goes from here is anyones guess, but the next big driver of its rise or fall will likely be confirmation of whether it was able to file its missing 10-K form by February 25.
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