State Department layoffs and Wimbledon finals

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If you uh wanna really see something that said take a look what happened Aaron Zalloponi caught sight of the shooter's head and shoulders, jutting above the peak of a roof line, about a hundred and fifteen yards away. The Butler County SWAT team operator was standing in an open field between the gunmen and the rally stage. He snapped up his rifle, aligned the red dot of its scope with the shooter's chin, and fired a single shot. According to Zaloponi, would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks immediately jerked to his right and slumped back from the roof's edge. Crooks got off eight gunshots and then suddenly stopped. It left Trump bloodied, one rally goer dead, and two seriously injured, and it possibly changed the course of American history. Zaloponi, a 46-year-old army combat veteran, is convinced that his round struck Crooks' rifle and forced him to stop shooting. His belief that he cut short the assassination attempt has been echoed by Butler County's district attorney, the county's SWAT team commander, and a congressman who investigated the events of that day. Yet one year later, the significance of Zaloponi's shot is unresolved. The FBI has said it found no evidence that the shot hit Crooks or his rifle. This morning, the Post published the first extensive interview with Saloponi. Find it in our newsletter. Trump will visit Texas today in the wake of last weekend's catastrophic floods. That's number two. The president is expected to meet with first responders and affected families. The floods in central Texas have killed at least 1 18 people , making it one of the deadliest disasters in state history. At least 1 73 people are still missing. The Trump administration's actions ahead of the floods have faced scrutiny. FEMA officials said search and rescue efforts were slowed by budget rules imposed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Gnome. According to a post-report, GNOME had to approve ever y purchase, contract, and grant over $100,000 . Officials said that delayed deployments of critical resources. The post will be covering Trump's Texas visit live on our homep age. Number three, the State Department will begin mass layoffs in the coming days. Back in May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress that the department planned to reduce its U.S. workforce by more than 15% . That's almost 2,000 people. The plan had been held up by legal action, but this week, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to launch its plans, to carry out mass firings at 19 federal agencies while litigation continu es. Yesterday, State Department staff were informed that layoff notices would soon start going out via email. The memo did not detail the number of employees who would be let go. The uncertainty has hit morale at the department. Some workers are exasperated with the plans to fire people, especially at a time when many were asked to work additional hours to assist U.S. citizens seeking to flee the Middle East amid Israel's war with Iran . A federal judge placed a new block on Trump's ban on birthright citizenship. That's number four. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court opened a path for the Trump administration to begin enforcing a controversial order to limit the automatic granting of citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. But yesterday, a federal judge in New Hampshire stepped in, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Laplant agreed to a request from civil rights groups to certify a class action lawsuit. It was filed on behalf of U.S. born children or future children whose automatic citizenship could be jeopardized by the president's order. The case could quickly return to the Supreme Court to determine whether the judge's decision complies with its ruling last month. Number five. At least one American will have a shot at Wimbledon Glory this weekend . Six years ago, Amanda Anna Simova made her first Grand Slam semifinal as a precocious teen at the French Open. Yesterday, she reached her second, and she won. Again , seven . Amazing Amanda. Emotional. And the top seed . She outhit world number one Arena Sabalen ka for a six-four-four six-six-four victory that veered from competitive to spicy. It sent her into tomorrow's Wimbledon final against five-time Grand Slam champion Igas Viontek. Anna Simova is the first American woman to reach the final since Serena Williams in 2019. Today, another American woman hopes to join her in this weekend's finals. Taylor Fritz will place Spanish phenom Carlos Alcaraz in a men's semifinal. Alcaraz is seeking a three peat, having won at Wimbledon the past two ye ars. On Sunday, the winner will take on whoever triumphs between Novak Djokovic and Yannick Sinner in the other semifinal. Google's latest AI tool lets users turn photos into videos. That's number six. Google said yesterday that its Gemini AI app will now let pay ing users make eight-second videos out of still images. Upload a photo, describe what you want to happen, and Google's video generator will spit out a short scene. So far, we've seen people use the tech to animate old photos, spin up sci-fi landscapes, and string together longer than eight-second narratives. Video generators work by training algorithms on huge caches of images, videos, text, and audio. Their output is often imperfect. We've all seen the extra fingers and the disappearing legs, but other times the resulting video feels indistinguishable from real footage, making it tough to tell when a clip is AI generated. Some fear the power could be misused for just $19.99 a month. And at number seven, theatre goers in London are reenacting January 6th. For the past months, audiences in London's West End have been acting out the events of January 6, 202 1. That's when a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol in one of the most violent and divisive days of modern American democracy. Instead of just watching the show play out on stage, attendees at Fight for America are active participants. They sing, chant, roll dice, and maneuver tiny figurines around a model of the Capitol. The show is part tabletop strategy game, part political experiment. The production might seem like a dark, even tasteless parody, but organizers see they're trying to make audiences The unusual project was meant to debut in the United States, but after Trump's election victory last fall, the team behind it pivoted to London. A DC run is still planned for January to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the riot