When Kat Friday, a revenue operations employee at financial technology firm Marqeta, first came across Pickle on TikTok in February 2025, she didn't think opening a storefront on the app would ever amount to much.
"I am not into fashion one bit. I wear all black everywhere," Friday tells Fortune. She initially opened the app to scan for a few outfits for an upcoming vacation. But as she scrolled through Pickle's more than 500,000 listings, Friday realized she also could use the platform to rent out an expensive camera sitting on a shelf collecting dust in her apartment.
In November 2025, she listed a Canon G7 X camera, which normally retails for around $1,000, for $150 a week, and waited for a response. The rentals came almost immediately.
"I never use this thing and people are dying for them," Friday says. "I immediately got a bunch of rentals for it, and I was like, 'Okay, I'm gonna list some other stuff.'"
The listing's success inspired Friday to add more items to her Pickle offerings, and she started uploading some shirts and dresses she barely wore. As her storefront grew, Friday even started purchasing "trendy" items in a variety of sizes, what she referred to as "investment pieces" to rent out on Pickle.

#items

By Eduardo Baptista
BEIJING, July 27 (Reuters) - China's commerce ministry on Monday accused the United States of "AI hegemonism" and threatened countermeasures after senior U.S. officials said Chinese AI companies could face investigations, sanctions and trade restrictions ‌over the alleged theft of U.S. technology.
The ministry said Washington was threatening Chinese companies with punishment based on allegations ‌they used "distillation" to copy advanced U.S. AI models, despite what it called a lack of factual or legal grounds.
Model distillation is a widely used AI training technique in which developers use the outputs of a more capable model to train or improve another system. U.S. officials say they distinguish between legitimate distillation and large-scale extraction that amounts to intellectual property theft.
'ALL NECESSARY MEASURES'

#model #Companies #eduardo

BOSTON (AP) — More than two dozen states on Thursday sued the Trump administration for requiring them to comply with election and immigration conditions to receive billions of dollars in federal funding for disasters.
The lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island and challenging Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Homeland Security policies, argued that the administration is requiring states to change their elections systems and help DHS with immigration enforcement. The conditions would also allow DHS to terminate grants at any time and for any reason.
"Once again, the Trump Administration is threatening to jeopardize public safety by unlawfully withholding billions in critical funding and once again, they won't get away with it," Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. "This Administration is using the safety of Americans as collateral by attempting to bully the states into relinquishing their constitutional right to enact policies and laws that best serve their residents."
The states argue putting conditions on congressionally appropriated funding violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution's spending clause. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit is one of scores that have challenged the Trump administration over its repeated effort to browbeat mostly Democratic states into complying with its priorities to get billions of dollars in federal funding. The strategy has been used on everything from education funding to domestic violence grants to highway funding.

#federal

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is proposing legislation that would withhold bonuses for U.S. Postal Service executives, citing years of staggering financial losses for the agency and its overall on-time delivery record.
Hawley, who has launched an investigation into the Postal Service over its service record, will name the legislation the No Bonuses for Bad Service Act, Fox News Digital has learned.
The bill would prohibit the USPS Board of Governors from approving any additional compensation for the postmaster general and deputy postmaster general for a fiscal year in which the agency doesn't meet or exceed an on-time delivery rate of 95% for all mail products.
"While Missourians don't receive their mail on time, the Postmaster General receives a hefty bonus each year," Hawley wrote in a statement to Fox News Digital. "I am introducing the No Bonuses for Bad Service Act to ensure postal service leadership isn't receiving bonuses while Americans' mail goes undelivered. It's time for the Postmaster General to do his job and put Americans first."
Senator Josh Hawley Demands Answers From Mlb On 'Pattern Of Discrimination' Over Warnings To Giants Players

#postmaster #time #mail #digital

(NewsNation) — The Department of Defense on Tuesday released the name of an additional U.S. soldier killed in Iranian strikes in northern Iraq, identifying him as 30-year-old Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton of Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The Pentagon said Swinton was killed in action Sunday during a controlled detonation of a downed One-Way Unmanned Aerial System at Erbil Air Base, Iraq. The incident is under investigation.
Cost of Iran war tops $87B as Hegseth heads to Capitol Hill
Swinton was ***** igned to D Battery, 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the Pentagon said.
On Monday, the Pentagon identified two other troops who were killed in an Iranian attack on an air base in Jordan.

#pentagon #north #carolina #base

Tehran has spent decades preparing for — and welcoming — a U.S. ground invasion, a senior Iranian official has claimed, as fresh explosions rocked the region on the eighth day of renewed U.S.-Iran strikes.
Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian American academic identified as a regime "mouthpiece," also boasted that Tehran had just launched a "new missile" while decentralizing and burying its ***** nal deep underground to withstand sustained American air campaigns.
"The Americans are planning an invasion. I'm not saying it will necessarily happen. I'm not saying it will necessarily happen in the next few days. But they have plans for an invasion," Marandi, who served as an advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team during recent talks with the U.S. in Pakistan, said in an interview with political ***** yst Glenn Diesen.
I've Studied Military Strategy. Trump Now Faces Iran's Oldest Battlefield Trick
"Whether they carry them out or not, we'll see. But the Iranians, as you pointed out, the focus of Iranian strikes is on Bahrain and Kuwait, and that's because that's where most American ***** ets have been placed for a ground invasion," Diesen said.

July 20 (Reuters) - Nicaragua's long-serving president Daniel Ortega said the Central American country will no longer hold elections, eliminating the possibility of an electoral challenge when his term ends next year and further entrenching the rule he shares with ‌his wife.
Ortega, who has continuously held power since 2007 following an earlier presidential term in the 1980s, said the move ‌will close off any path to the opposition, although he did not provide details about carrying out the ban.
"There won't be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power," Ortega said in a speech on Sunday evening to commemorate the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which Ortega helped overthrow the U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza dictatorship.
"The days when parties backed by the Yankees (United States) and the Somocistas would return to power are over - never again," he added, in the 80-year-old's first public appearance in two months.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for ‌comment. The Trump administration has described the Ortega ⁠government as a dictatorship, and imposed sanctions on more than 2,350 Nicaraguan officials and their relatives.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal from an Alaskan bush pilot whose plane was seized by authorities after they discovered it was bound for a remote, dry village with beer on board.
The appeal from the 82-year-old pilot, Kenneth Jouppi, could have national implications if the 6-3 conservative court limits the ability of state and local governments to rely on ******* et forfeiture. Jouppi claims that the taking of his $95,000 Cessna for what amounted to a six-pack of beer violated the 8th Amendment's bar on excessive fines.
The Supreme Court is likely to hear oral arguments in the case later this year or early next — and hand down a decision by next summer.
"The Excessive Fines Clause of the Constitution was built for cases like this," said Sam Gedge, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which is representing the pilot. "As government agencies increasingly exploit fines and forfeitures to pad their budgets, it's vital that the Supreme Court make clear that the Excessive Fines Clause is a meaningful check on government overreach."
Jouppi says that the Budweiser and Bud Light found on his plane, which was packaged with other groceries, belonged to a passenger. He said that most of it was out of sight, but state police said one six-pack was in plain view inside a grocery bag. One trooper claimed that Jouppi would "have to be blind" not to have seen at least some of the alcohol and that "pilots with that bad of eyesight just don't fly."

By Yi-Chin Lee and Ann ****
TAIPEI, July 19 (Reuters) - Taiwan must work together to protect its democracy and not become part of China, President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday, calling ‌on members of his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to oppose the "red terror" coming from Beijing.
Lai, who won ‌election two years ago, and his ruling DPP, champion Taiwan's separate identity from China, a position that frequently angers Beijing which views the island as an inviolable part of Chinese territory.
Speaking to the DPP's annual convention, Lai said Taiwan must remain vigilant in times of peace, pointing to what he said was China's "legal warfare", such as its new ethnic unity law which gives Beijing the basis to take action against people outside its borders.
That has alarmed Taiwan, because ‌it could give Beijing another legal ⁠basis to try and prosecute or arrest Taiwanese it views as separatists. China has rejected all criticism of the law. China's legal system has no jurisdiction in Taiwan.

The FBI will no longer investigate ***** ault confrontations with ICE agents, according to two people familiar with the directives. According to those sources, FBI special agents in charge of field offices and agents in those field offices were told Thursday that the FBI would no longer investigate cases of ***** ault against a federal officer. NBC News' Julie Tsirkin reports.

(NewsNation) — More than 30 states have reported cases of the "explosive diarrhea" parasite cyclospora, according to the CDC, with several Midwest states facing the brunt of the outbreak.
Here's where the outbreak is hitting states the hardest:
Michigan has reported the most cases of any state. More than 5,000 cases have been reported as of Thursday, according to the state's Health and Human Services department. More than 100 people have been hospitalized.
Can vinegar kill cyclospora? How to wash produce amid parasite outbreak
The Detroit area is the hot spot in the state, with Wayne County reporting nearly 600 cases as of Thursday, the state agency reported. To the northwest of Detroit, Oakland County reported just shy of 400 cases.

NBC News has obtained new audio of a call made to a private towing company by friends of Nolan Wells, the 18-year-old who was found dead two days after a July 4 trip to Horn Island, Mississippi, where they're heard saying "We're sinking. Can you all please come?" Aaron Gilchrist reports for TODAY on the latest details of the case.

NEW YORK (AP) — It's an idea whose time, as it were, may have come — again.
The twice-yearly changing of the clocks in the United States could be a thing of the past if legislation currently in Congress that calls for permanent daylight time makes it through. But even as annoying as some find the back-and-forth of the time shift in the spring and the fall, that doesn't necessarily mean sticking to one would go over well. America has tried it before, most recently in the 1970s, and it didn't last.
Now it's a new era, one full of people working at home who didn't before — and advances in sleep science that tell a more nuanced tale.
Could this time (shift) be the charm?
The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to pass a bill that makes the shift to daylight saving time, when clocks are moved forward one hour, become permanent.

By Enas Alashray, Tala Ramadan and Yomna Ehab
CAIRO/DUBAI, July 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. launched two waves of attacks on Iran's coastal defenses and missile sites on Wednesday after reimposing a naval blockade of its ports, while Iran struck back by targeting U.S. military sites in neighboring countries in what it called an "existential war" with America.
The latest escalation comes days after a ‌fragile truce collapsed, raising the specter of a return to full-scale war, with Iran once again threatening to shut off more regional energy exports.
Hostilities have intensified since Iran said late on Saturday ‌it had closed the Strait of Hormuz. Military operations are also keeping ships from transiting the vital artery, which carried about a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war. Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, closed at a one-month high of $84.95 a barrel on Wednesday.
U.S. Central Command said the military had attacked coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Iran's Greater Tunb Island starting around 6:00 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), then launched a second wave of strikes against multiple cities nine hours later.

An eight-year-old girl was among three members of the same family found dead in what is being treated as a double murder and suicide.
A murder investigation was launched after the three people - a 41-year-old man, a 39-year-old woman and the girl - were found at a house on the Cullybackey Road in Ballymena at 09:00 BST on Monday.
Supt William Calderwood described how emergency services were met with a "shocking scene".
The family was originally from Poland, although it is understood the child was born in Northern Ireland. The honorary consul of Poland in Northern Ireland Jerome Mullen said he had never experienced such a tragedy in his 18 years in the job.
Police have said the cause of the deaths has not been formally established and they were not seeking anyone else in relation to the deaths.

Coming back from a far-flung vacation? Traveling abroad on a business trip? Just happen to find yourself within 100 miles of a U.S. border? I regret to inform you that U.S. Customs and Border Control (CBP) agents can search your phone, laptop, GPS system, smartwatch, or other electronic devices for virtually no reason. No particular suspicion of criminal activity is needed. No probable cause. No warrant.
At "the physical border, the functional equivalent of the border" (such as an incoming or outgoing flight at an international airport), or "the extended border," border policy is to allow device searches "with or without suspicion."
Wilmer Chavarria is trying to change this. The Vermont-based school superintendent is suing the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that his 4th Amendment rights were violated when border agents searched his personal and work devices as he was traveling back to the U.S. after visiting family in Nicaragua.
You may be surprised to learn just how expansive border policies around electronic device searches are.
According to a January 2026 policy directive, CBP agents can search "any device that may contain information in an electronic or digital form, such as computers, tablets, disks, drives, tapes, flash drives, SIM cards, global positioning systems, unmanned aircraft systems, vehicle infotainment systems, smart watches, mobile phones and other communication devices, cameras, music and other media players." If you're entering the country, exiting the country, or within 100 miles of a border, it's fair game.

Jenney Bitner always looked forward to her family's annual trip to see her mother in San Diego. For her three kids, it was a two-week vacation at their grandmother's house. For Bitner and her husband, it meant some relaxing time in the sun while their Washington home battled wet February weather.
In 2020, the trip was even more welcome than usual: Bitner was 22 weeks pregnant, and she looked forward to the family time amid the second half of her pregnancy. But after one day, Bitner felt too sick to get out of bed. Her head ached, she was nauseous and vomiting, and she felt unsteady on her feet.
Two urgent cares suggested she was just dealing with pregnancy symptoms. That didn't feel right to Bitner, but she figured an upcoming appointment with her obstetrician would provide answers. But when the family got home from San Diego, Bitner fell twice. Her husband insisted on bringing her to the emergency room.
An MRI revealed a "giant tumor" in her brain. Doctors scheduled an operation to remove as much of the tumor as possible. Tests on the mass revealed Bitner had Stage IV melanoma that had spread to her brain. It was a shock: melanoma usually presents with a mark or lesion, and Bitner had never seen one. When the disease has spread this far, patients have a five-year survival rate of about 35%, according to the American Cancer Society.
"I had just turned 38, and I was pregnant with my fourth kid. I was thinking, 'I'm too young for this to be happening,'" Bitner recalled. "I was thinking, 'There's no way I'm going to make it through this. I'm never going to see this baby survive to a year old.' I was terrified."

BEIJING, July 10 (Reuters) - A zoo in southwestern China locked lions, bears and wolves in their cages as deadly flooding triggered by Typhoon Maysak swept through the region, ‌a decision that the animal rights group PETA on Friday called "unconscionable."
Earlier this week, a zoo ‌in the city of Guigang - one of the hardest-hit cities in the southwestern region of Guangxi - locked up animals to prevent them from escaping when flooding hit the city, Red Star News, a regional outlet, reported.
Three lions drowned and more than 100 animals went missing.
"We didn't want to create more trouble for the country when the floods came and let dangerous animals escape and hurt people," Red Star News cited the owner ‌of the Guigang Zoo as saying.
Floodwaters ⁠at the zoo rose to more than 2 metres (6.6 feet).

A California family is suing a fitness club after video appeared to show a childcare worker throwing and dropping their son. According to the lawsuit, the toddler suffered a traumatic brain injury and vision issues as a result. The Bay Club gym facility tells NBC News that it will not comment while the investigation is ongoing, but that the safety of members is its "highest priority."

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., believes Democrats are headed for a "reckoning," pointing to embattled Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner's refusal to bow to mounting calls from his own party to abandon his campaign amid bombshell **** ual misconduct allegations.
"A reckoning is coming for the Democratic Party," Kennedy said Tuesday night during a "Hannity" appearance.
"Most of my colleagues in the United States Senate know better. They could see this about Mr. Platner. The guy's a clown, he can't even juggle. He's a 'Saturday Night Live' skit, but once the Hamas wing of the party nominated him, it became raw-gut politics."
Top Platner Ally Turns On Him After Bombshell Rape Allegation Rocks Campaign: 'Red Line'
Kennedy argued Democrats ignored what he described as warning signs about Platner because they were focused on winning the seat, adding that the controversy now threatens to engulf the party.

Tools like Lovable and Replit have made coding vastly accessible to non-technical builders.
But in a sea of cookie-cutter vibe-coded apps, it's getting harder to stand out.
Here are three signs that your app looks AI-coded, and how you can fix it.
If you've noticed that websites have started to converge into one beige, sans-serif haze, you're not imagining it.
One of AI's biggest boons has been allowing non-technical folks to vibe code their ideas into real, monetizable apps. As we wrote in April, anyone can build an app in a couple of hours, using tools such as Claude Code, Lovable, Replit, or Base44.

By Enas Alashray and Mrinmay Dey
July 6 (Reuters) - Iran's Revolutionary Guards fired at least two missiles at commercial ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday night, Axios reported, citing two U.S. officials.
Two commercial ‌ships suffered significant damage but had no casualties, the report said, citing a U.S. official.
Separately, Britain's maritime security ‌agency said a tanker caught fire after being hit by an unknown projectile east of Oman's Limah early on Tuesday.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) said early on Tuesday that the tanker was struck on its port side while travelling southbound about 8 nautical miles (15 km) east of Limah, causing a fire. No casualties or environmental impact had been reported.

Happy Fourth of July!
I wonder — how many Americans will be bothered or offended by that greeting today? And how many more Independence Days will we celebrate as a country? We have made it to 250, but it's hard to imagine another hundred. It is much easier to imagine 20 or less.
A strong argument can be made that the left — via majority control of the media, academia, entertainment, science and medicine — is slowly but surely winning the messaging war. In fact, you might say they are crushing it.
Just look at the trend of stories online citing the fact that millions of Americans have little or no interest in celebrating the 250th anniversary of our nation. Or look at the rise of so-called "democratic socialist" candidates, who look upon the country created by our Founding Fathers as something that needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the inside. Don't forget about the alarming results of a recent poll showing that more than half of Americans under age 30 said believe "democracy isn't essential to the country's identity."
It is little wonder. Many of those young Americans grew up believing, after years of being taught in school, that our Founding Fathers were White supremacists and evil slave-owners from the privileged class, whose vision, courage and sacrifice must now be reexamined, rewritten and largely swept into the dustbin of history.

Jamie ****** , a managing partner at Harris Financial Group in Richmond, Virginia (with $1.3 billion in ****** ets under management), had a visceral reaction to the June jobs number from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: "These data are misleading and should be disregarded," he said in an email to Fortune. "There is zero chance leisure and hospitality posts a negative print in the midst of the World Cup. Revisions higher in the next few months are coming."

He's not alone.

Increasingly, ****** ysts and economists at major banks and financial institutions are saying they don't believe the numbers. Partly, this is a routine function of the way in which the U.S. government collects economic stats. It takes time to gather all the survey data needed to describe hiring (nonfarm payrolls, in the official lingo), and the BLS publishes a series of revisions to its numbers as the months go by.

So not believing the initial figure is par for the course. The numbers will always be revised later as straggling data sets and survey responses trickle in. This chart from Pantheon Macroeconomics shows the scale of the revisions over time—usually downward:
But this time, there was a number in the jobs data that, on its face, stands out as being implausible: The leisure and hospitality sector lost 61,000 jobs in June, the BLS reported, even though the U.S. is hosting the single largest sporting event on the planet—the World Cup.

Is it really likely that dozens of soccer matches, followed by hundreds of thousands of domestic fans and foreign tourists, somehow resulted in fewer people being employed in hotels, bars, and restaurants?
Pimco economist Tiffany Wilding said the sector "was actually expected to benefit from World Cup hiring."
RSM Chief Economist Joe Brusuelas said in an email that the report should be taken "with a grain of salt." "Expect an upward revision to the top-line June estimate when the July data is released," he said.
There is good evidence that the World Cup has juiced economic activity recently. This chart from Bank of America shows card spending was up 5.4% year-on-year over the group stage of the cup. "The boost is being particularly driven by 'non-locals' coming into the cities for the matches, whose spending was up 17.4%," BofA Institute's Liz Everett Krisberg and David Tinsley said in an email.

A coastal Los Angeles neighborhood reached its breaking point this week as more than 100 residents confronted leaders of two supportive housing programs over what they described as rising crime and deteriorating public safety.
One resident told the packed meeting on Monday that Venice, California, neighbors are now "finding dead bodies" during routine cleanups, while others described drug activity, trespassing and fears of letting their children walk the neighborhood alone.
The heated community meeting centered on The Journey Program and Safe Place for Youth, two supportive housing facilities on Lincoln Boulevard that neighbors blame for a sharp decline in safety and quality of life since opening roughly 18 months ago in an effort to address homelessness in the area.
La Business Leader Says Crime, Wildfire Fallout Fueling Pratt Surge As Voters Seek Change: 'People Are Angry'
While residents questioned the programs' impact on the surrounding neighborhood, Venice Community Housing says on its website that "providing supportive services in conjunction with stable housing is the proven long-term solution to end homelessness."

A man who flew his plane into Beijing's tallest skyscraper last week was a 66-year-old local resident who had expressed suicidal thoughts, Chinese authorities said Thursday, amid intense speculation about the pilot's identity and motivation.
The crash took place on Friday evening when a small plane appeared to evade some of the world's strictest aviation controls and slam into the 109-story CITIC Tower that dominates the capital's skyline, killing the pilot and injuring 13 other people.
The incident was strictly censored in China and it took nearly a day for authorities to acknowledge the crash.
On Thursday, authorities released new details about who was flying the plane.
The pilot, who was only identified by his surname Liu, took off from a general aviation airport in northeastern Beijing on Friday afternoon, initially flying with a companion in the two-seater Sunward SA60L Aurora, a domestically manufactured aircraft, according to a statement from the city's Chaoyang District government.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — With incense wafting to an elevated pulpit and 13 altar boys looking on, the priest at the Church of Saint Agnes preached about merging old Catholic customs with fidelity to the Vatican this week — as Pope Leo XIV tackled a major challenge from a traditionalist breakaway group.
"Our Catholic faith is a living tradition, and there is a difference between being rooted and being stuck," the Rev. John Ubel said in homilies Sunday at English-language and Latin Masses.
Since the Second Vatican Council modernized the liturgy more than 60 years ago, celebrating Mass in the traditional Latin Rite that preceded those reforms has become a lightning rod of the theological, cultural and increasingly partisan divides among Catholics.
The conflict made global headlines when Leo declared Thursday that one traditionalist group — the Society of St. Pius X, founded to reject the Council's reforms and celebrate exclusively the old Latin Mass — had formally broken with the Catholic Church.
The Vatican excommunicated the SSPX bishops and priests and warned its thousands of faithful after the society consecrated four men as bishops in defiance of Leo.

CNN journalist Paula Reid is leaving the network for MS NOW out of concerns over Paramount Skydance's acquisition of the network, according to a Variety report Wednesday.
"Reid turned down a chance to renew her current contract at CNN, according to two people familiar with the situation, in part because CNN's next era appears chaotic," Variety reported.
The article noted that Reid's decision allegedly came because of concerns over Paramount CEO David Ellison taking over the network and potentially installing CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss as head of CNN.
Jake Tapper Ruefully Reveals Cnn Will Be Affected By Paramount's Looming Takeover Of Network
"Paramount has made some indications that it sees Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News who has generated several public controversies, as the next steward of CNN," Variety reported.

Work is under way to protect a coastal former landfill site from the effects of erosion.
After operating for nearly 30 years, the tip beyond Biggar Bank, at South Walney, **** bria, closed in the 1980s, but recent months have seen buried items exposed as the soil and rock washes away.
Westmorland and Furness Council has begun reshaping the edge of the site with the aim of creating a gentler slope to reduce slippage. It will then be topped with a liner, along with a 250m (820ft) stretch of rock armour designed to provide protection against severe flooding.
The scheme is expected to be completed by mid-August.
Councillor John Murray, cabinet member for climate, biodiversity and regulatory services, said the previous sea defences "haven't proved adequate to protect this site".

By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - Inside President Donald Trump's six "Freedom Trucks" that will drive across the country to celebrate America's 250th birthday, an AI-generated George Washington greets visitors and proclaims: "Thy rights are a gift from God," beneath a ceiling emblazoned with the words, "In God We Trust."
On the eve of the holiday observing the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence, the tricked-out "Freedom 250" mobile museum trucks have fanned out, from ‌Washington State on the West Coast to North Carolina on the East Coast. The trucks offer what backers call a year-long patriotic salute to the American Revolution and the nation it birthed.
Freedom 250 spokesperson Rachel Reisner said ‌the organization "is sparking a unifying movement across all 50 states that celebrates the American spirit and showcases our nation at its best."
But the trucks have sparked some backlash. In Massachusetts in June, local media reported that some citizens in one town objected to a planned Freedom Truck visit, leading to its cancellation. Critics say the trucks and other celebrations give an overly religious version of American history and gloss over problems such as slavery and racial injustice.