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Two key U.S. Republican senators agreed to a revised federal moratorium on state regulation of artificial intelligence to five years and to allow states to adopt rules on child online safety and protecting artists’ images or likelinesses. Senate Commerce Committee chair Ted Cruz originally proposed securing compliance by blocking states that regulate AI from a $42 billion broadband infrastructure fund as part of a broad tax and budget bill. A revised version released last week would only restrict states regulating AI from tapping a new $500 million fund to support AI infrastructure. Under a compromise announced Sunday by Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a critic of the state AI regulatory moratorium, the proposed 10-year moratorium would be cut to five years and allow states to regulate issues like protecting artists’ voices or child online safety if they do not impose an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI. Tennessee passed a law last year dubbed the ELVIS Act to protect songwriters and performers from the use of AI to make unauthorized fake works in the image and voice of well-known artists. Texas approved legislation to bar AI use for the creation of child pornography or to encourage a person to commit physical self-harm or commit crime. It is not clear if the change will be enough to assuage concerns. On Friday, 17 Republican governors urged the Senate to drop the AI plan. “We cannot support a provision that takes away states powers to protect our citizens. Let states function as the laboratories of democracy they were intended to be and allow state leaders to protect our people,” said the governors, led by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick voiced his support for the revised measure, calling it a pragmatic compromise. “Congress should stand by the Cruz provision to keep America First in AI,” Lutnick wrote on X. Congress has failed for years to pass any meaningful AI regulations or safety measures. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, said the Blackburn-Cruz amendment “does nothing to protect kids or consumers. It’s just another giveaway to tech companies.” Cantwell said Lutnick could simply opt to strip states of internet funding if they did not agree to the moratorium. By David Shepardson, Reuters
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U.S. stocks are adding to their records on Monday as Wall Street nears the finish of a second straight winning month. The S&P 500 was 0.3% higher in its first trading after completing a stunning rebound from its springtime sell-off of roughly 20%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 218 points, or 0.5%, as of 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher. Stocks got a boost after Canada said its rescinding a planned tax on U.S. technology firms and resuming talks on trade with the United States. On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump had said he was suspending talks with Canada because of his anger with the tax, which he called a direct and blatant attack on our country. One of the main reasons U.S. stocks came back so quickly from their springtime swoon has been the hope that Trump will reach deals with other countries to lower his stiffly proposed tariffs. Otherwise, the fear is that trade wars could stifle the economy and send inflation higher. Many of Trump’s announced tariffs are currently on pause, and they’re scheduled to kick back into effect in a little more than a week. In an interview with Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures, Trump said his administration will notify countries that the trade penalties will take effect unless there are deals with the United States. Letters will start going out pretty soon before the approaching deadline, he said. The U.S. stock market being back at a record high could raise the risk of renewed escalations on tariffs, according to strategists at Deutsche Bank led by Parag Thatte and Binky Chadha. They point to the pattern in 2018 and 2019 of rallies for the market prompting escalations for tariffs, which then drove market pullbacks followed by relents on tariffs that then sparked rallies again. Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, this dynamic looks alive and well, the strategists wrote in a report. In our view, beyond the market reaction, if negative impacts of tariffs on growth, earnings or inflation start to materialize, we will get further relents. On Wall Street, Oracle’s 4.8% rise was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. CEO Safra Catz said the tech giant is off to a strong start in its fiscal year and that it signed multiple large cloud services agreements, including one that could contribute over $30 billion in annual revenue two fiscal years from now. Bank stocks were also strong after the Federal Reserve said on Friday that they are financially strong enough to survive a downturn in the economy. JPMorgan Chase climbed 1.8%, Wells Fargo rose 1.5% and Citigroup gained 1.1%. GMS stock jumped 11.8% after the supplier of specialty building products said it agreed to sell itself to a Home Depot subsidiary in a deal that would pay $110.00 per share in cash. That would give it a total value of roughly $5.5 billion, including debt. Less than two weeks ago, another company, QXO, said it was offering to buy GMS for $95.20 per share in cash. After the announcement of the Home Depot bid, QXOs stock rose 2.2%, and Home Depots stock slipped 0.8%. Hewlett Packard Enterprise rallied 13.7% and Juniper Networks climbed 8.4% after saying they had reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that could clear the way for their merger go through, subject to court approval. HPE is trying to buy Juniper in a $14 billion deal. In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit ahead of major economic reports later in the week. The highlight will be Thursdays jobs report. Its often the most anticipated economic data of each month, and it will come a day earlier than usual because of the Fourth of July holiday. The job market has remained relatively steady recently, even in the face of tariffs, but hiring has slowed. Economists expect Thursdays data to show another slowdown in overall hiring, down to 115,000 jobs in June from 139,000 in May. Such data has kept the Federal Reserve on hold this year when it comes to interest rates. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said repeatedly that its waiting for more data to show how tariffs will affect the economy and inflation before resuming its cuts to interest rates. Thats because lower rates can fan inflation higher, along with giving the economy a boost. Trump, meanwhile, has been pushing for more cuts to rates and for them to happen soon. Two of his appointees to the Fed have said recently they could consider cutting rates as soon as the Feds next meeting in less than a month. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.26% from 4.29% late Friday. In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped modestly in Europe following a more mixed finish in Asia. Stocks fell 0.9% in Hong Kong but rose 0.6% in Shanghai after China reported its factory activity improved slightly in June after Beijing and Washington agreed in May to postpone imposing higher tariffs on each others exports, though manufacturing remained in contraction. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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There isnt a single element that carried Zohran Mamdanis campaignexcept, well, for Mamdani himself. However, there was one campaign artifact that became ubiquitous on New York City streets in the months ahead of the mayoral primary: his campaign poster. Taped up on storefronts, in apartment windows, and around light posts, it was impossible to miss. The mix of colors (Metrocard yellow, Mets blue, and fire-engine red); Mamdanis affable portrait; and a hand-drawn wordmark with an exaggerated drop shadow that alighted his head like a crown stood out in the cacophonous cityscape (and bland arena of the competitions branding). Could a single-term assemblyperson ascend to the highest political office in the United States most-populous city? The poster sure made it easy to envision. Mamdanis aesthetics, from his fashion to his video filters, are a master class in the communication required for a 21st-century campaign to be successful. His branding, by the Philadelphia-based design cooperative Forge, was nimbly applied to social media, mailers, and merch and brought cohesion to the multi-platform campaign without veering into corporate territory. And for all the new media associated with Mamdani, his poster, one of the oldest tools in a candidates kit, encapsulated the innovative messaging at the heart of his campaign: It was fresh, welcoming, and specificand set a new gold standard for progressive, political design. The poster was designed by Tyler Evans, a designer based outside of Washington, D.C., who was Bernie Sanderss design director and, as of three months ago, became Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs creative director, and was the first widely circulated printed matter rooted in the visual identity that Forge created for the campaign. We spoke to Evans and Aneesh Bhoopathy, a creative at Forge, about what makes Mamdanis poster design so compelling. [Photo: Tyler Evans] Rooted In New York The poster is based on the design system Bhoopathy and the team at Forge created. The identity is grounded in New Yorks iconography and typographic legacy, Bhoopathy says, and features a primary color palette that pulls from Metrocards, taxi cabs, and even the New York Lottery logo. While design systems trace their roots to corporate branding, Mamdanis avoids feeling contrived or stiff. Bhoopathy hand-drew Mamdanis wordmark, a nostalgic nod to the once-ubiquitous hand-painted signs that adorned bodega storefronts, and specified Unique Gothic, a sans-serif typeface, for all other text as a way to balance out the playfulness so the identity doesn’t get too Barnum and Bailey, he says. The colors, lettering, and levity help Mamdanis branding feel relatable. The nostalgia, the human touchthat is obviously different from a more corporate brand, Bhoopathy says. Its just the feeling of it being for everyone. [Photo: Zohran for New York City] A Handmade Look Before designing Mamdanis mayoral campaign, Bhoopathy designed graphics for his assembly run and has also worked with New York State Senators Julia Salazar and Jabari Brisport. These experiences taught him that the branding for progressive candidates is often memedlike the famous Hot Girls for Zohran shirtswhich he welcomes. One thing about working in leftist campaigns is knowing that people are going to remix, screen print, and make their own things, Bhoopathy says. And so you have to be comfortable with letting things take on a life of their own and not feel too precious about it, like you might be with a corporate brand. A human touch is also important to Evans in poster design. In Democratic politics especially, there was a rush to kind of put a corporate sheen on things and to make things really nice and clean, he says. And it kind of forgets the fact that people are involved and people are messy. I don’t think people should be afraid of making things look a little rough, making things look handmade, or potentially even doing things handmade. The people element of politics cant be overlooked, and that follows through into visuals. The campaign poster was the first project to test Forges flexible approach to the design system. The only constraints? Evans was asked to use a portrait Mamdanis team provided and to stick to the typefaces that Bhoopathy specified; everything else was open to interpretation. [Photo: Zohran for New York City] Not a Political Type Evans designs political posters that dont look political. Its a strategic move the voters his candidates are vying for are distrustful of establishment politics. Usually this draws people in and makes them curious about what this person is about, Evans says. In order to do this, Evans opts for expressive typography. There’s always got to be some mood, energy, and spirit present, he says. It has to feel alive. The sensibility Evans likes is common in the sports and entertainment industry and, occasionally, in political design from the past, especially from the FDR and Lyndon B. Johnson eras. Baseball logos are frequent reference material; he used the Gothic font from the Pittsburgh Pirates in an Instagram poster for one of Bernies rallies in the Steel City; in an Instagram poster he designed to announce Bernies endorsement of Mamdani, he borrowed from the Brooklyn Dodgers logo for Sanderss name and from the Mets logo for Mamdani. (In addition to designing the printed campaign poster, Evans also designed multiple Instagram posters for the campaigns pivotal moments.) The wordmark Bhoopathy designed has the gravitas Evans looks for. Evans riffed on the drop shadows found in Bollywood posters so it stands out even more. Somebody on the AOC campaign said [Zohrans poster] looked more like a concert poster for a singer than a political campaign poster, which I take as a compliment, he says. [Photo: Kara McCurdy] Brevity, for Legibilitys Sake There is very little writing on Mamdanis poster and what words are there are efficient. They say exactly what he is running for and what his campaign platform is: A New York You Can Afford. And once the poster earns that attention, its respectful of it by being clear with what it saysno vague proclamations of Hope, which might have worked in Shepard Faireys 2008 poster for Obama, but isnt enough today. Thinking of people walking by on foot, you have probably two seconds max for people’s attention, Evans says. Editing down the copy to the right amount was trial and error. Originally, the campaign wanted Mamdanis full name on the poster, but Evans eventually pared it back to Zohran. Additionally, when Evans began working on the poster, the campaign hadnt finalized its tagline; the working copy was Afford to Live and Afford to Dream, a phrase that appeared on a banner behind Mamdani when he gave his election night speech. The back of the poster features Mamdanis platform: building affordable homes, making buses fast and free, and a rent freeze for all stabilized tenants. This campaign is uniquely disciplined and sharp, Bhoopathy says of the messaging. In March, the campaign released a new version of the poster on Instagram, which was even more pared back. Brief phrases also help with another key aspect of Mamdanis campaign: its multilingual. Mamdani frequently spoke to constituents in Spanish and filmed videos in Urdu/Hindi. His printed material was translated into 14 languages, some that are written in characters and some that are read right to left. The need to be nimble influenced the identity Forge designed and the poster Evans designed. Keeping the copy short and sweet lends itself to translations, Evans says. [Photo: Zohran for New York City] A Design Fit for the Candidate But most importantly, the campaigns design fit Mamdani. No matter how good a visual identity might be, if it isnt authentic to the candidate, it just wont work. The candidate matters, Bhoopathy says. And Evans echoes a similar sentiment. Not to oversimplify it, but 95% is him. To wit: Dianne Morales, a candidate for mayor in 2021, had distinctive gradient-inspired branding (and inventive merch), but her campaign spectacularly flopped after her staffers protested against poor working conditions. If you cant manage your campaign, it doesnt bode well for managing a city. Meanwhile, the branding for Kamala Harriss 2020 presidential campaign nodded back to Shirley Chisholms historic run for the countrys top office, but her For the People slogan was impotent against the chorus of Copmala memes. Meanwhile, Mamdani understood how important branding is and had strong personal opinions about what his should look like. I admire his attention to detail, his belief in the power of design to communicate ideas, and his willingness to get creative with it, Bhoopathy says.
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