Friday night, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei switched off Fable 5, the most powerful AI his company had ever released.
Its performance had crushed every rival when it launched days earlier. He pulled it because the Commerce Department invoked national security and barred every non-American from it, down to the noncitizens inside Anthropic who built it.
Amodei has pressed Washington for months to hold this power over the whole industry. But taking the model offline does not erase what it can already do. The fight now is over who controls that capability. We are entering a two-tier world where governments and the largest institutions get the state of the art, and the rest of us get whatever is left.
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A giant 86 47 message surfaces in dead grass on the National Mall days before Trump's 80th birthday UFC event fills the area with crowds and cameras.
Today’s GovBrief News
Pakistan declares a final U.S.-Iran peace deal text reached as Iran attacks Strait of Hormuz shipping and Trump rejects Tehran's account of the terms.
Source: CBS News
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A coalition of state attorneys general subpoenas OpenAI over its handling of advertising, health data, and minors, as wrongful death suits mount against ChatGPT.
Source: CNBC
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Fourteen Republican attorneys general ask the EPA to regulate the abortion pill mifepristone as a water contaminant, a claim environmental scientists say has no evidence.
Source: News from the States
June 12, 2026
Commerce Department imposes export controls on Anthropic's two newest AI models, forcing the company to shut them off for all users days after launch.
Source: Ars Technica
June 12, 2026
A U.S. military strike kills Tren de Aragua leader Héctor Guerrero Flores inside Venezuela, in a joint operation its government confirms.
Source: The Associated Press
June 12, 2026
A federal judge clears the UFC's fight card to proceed on the White House South Lawn Sunday, rejecting a corruption suit over the 154-foot arena built on parkland.
Source: NOTUS
June 12, 2026
A federal judge dismisses the University of Florida College Republicans' free speech lawsuit over a deactivation that followed a member's Nazi salute photo.
Source: The Alachua Chronicle
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A federal judge permanently blocks Trump's $1.78 billion fund to pay January 6 rioters, saying she does not trust officials who refused to disavow it under oath.
Source: UPI
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Crews begin prying Trump's name off the Kennedy Center after two courts reject the board's last-ditch bid to keep it past a judge's deadline.
Source: The Washington Post [gift link]
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The Washington National Opera sues the Kennedy Center for $17 million, saying it refused to return donor gifts after the opera ended their partnership.
Source: The Hill
June 12, 2026
Alabama seeks to execute death row inmate Jeffery Lee by lethal injection a day after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his nitrogen gas execution.
Source: The Alabama Reflector
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The Trump administration agrees to resume asylum processing for 39 countries after a judge ruled there was no excuse for defying his earlier order.
Source: The Washington Post [gift link]
June 12, 2026
The Pentagon releases a third batch of UFO files it bills as transparency, though they show strange lights and no proof of alien craft.
Source: The Guardian
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Justice Department approves Paramount Skydance's $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, clearing a merger that puts CBS and CNN under one Trump-allied owner.
Source: NBC News
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A federal judge orders the Trump administration to restore displays about slavery and climate it stripped from national parks, ruling the removals unlawful censorship.
Source: USA Today
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