Author: openjargon

• Monday is the first day of Donald Trump's criminal hush-money trial. 
• During pretrial arguments, his campaign texted supporters saying he "could be locked up for life."
• Legal experts have said it's unlikely Trump will spend any time behind bars if convicted.

As the first day of Donald Trump's criminal hush-money trial got underway in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, the former president's reelection campaign blasted out a text message to supporters saying that he "could be locked up for life."

However, legal experts have previously told Business Insider that the chances of Trump spending any time behind bars if he is convicted in the case are slim to none.

During a court lunch break Monday, Trump's team sent out an "emergency memo" to supporters alerting them, "THIS IS NOT AMERICA! MY TRIAL JUST STARTED…"

"I'm going to be honest with you," the message read, "I don't know what will happen. I could be locked up for life."

The message continued, "THEY HAVE NO CASE, but they're still taking me to court. Right now, I need your support more than ever."

Backers are asked in the memo to send a "message of support" to Trump.

"I'm going to try to read all of your responses before I go to bed tonight," the text says. "This message doesn't have to be long, but it would be really nice to hear from you. PLEASE RESPOND."

At the end of the message, supporters were encouraged to donate money to Trump's reelection campaign.

Trump's first criminal trial was to kick off Monday with jury selection after a morning of final pretrial arguments.

Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors accuse him of lying on documents to disguise hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress.

Prosecutors say Trump's ex-personal attorney and former fixer, Michael Cohen, facilitated $130,000 in payments to Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election to buy her silence over a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. Trump has denied the charges.

Legal experts have told BI that first-offenders virtually never go to jail for the kind of non-violent, low-level felonies that Trump faces.

But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg can still seek to lock Trump up if he is convicted, the experts told BI, given that each count of felony falsifying of business records allows up to a maximum of four years in prison.

Prosecutors can also ask for more likely penalties — including a hefty fine, community service, and probation — in the event that the 77-year-old former president is convicted.

Before Trump headed into the courtroom on Monday morning, he called the case against him "political persecution."

"This is an assault on America," he said. "Nothing like this has ever happened before, there's never been anything like it."

The hush-money case is the first of Trump's four criminal cases to go to trial before the 2024 election, where Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee against President Joe Biden.

The trial is expected to last six weeks.

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• Associate Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday was absent from oral arguments without explanation.
• John Roberts said Thomas would take part in the day's cases via transcripts and briefs, per The AP.
• Thomas, 75, is the eldest member of the court and a key member of its influential conservative bloc.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday was absent from oral arguments and the court didn't offer an explanation as to why he wouldn't be present.

After the court sat for arguments in the morning, Chief Justice John Roberts said Thomas would be absent and would take part in cases through transcripts and briefs, according to The Associated Press.

Thomas, 75, did not take part in arguments remotely, an option that justices sometimes use when they're sick or are unable to physically come to the Supreme Court building, per the report.

Business Insider has reached out to the Supreme Court for comment.

In 2022, Thomas was hospitalized with an infection after he experienced "flu-like symptoms."

Thomas is the longest-tenured associate justice on the court, having been nominated in 1991 by then-President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate later that year.

With the appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Thomas has also seen his judicial influence catapult as the eldest member of the court's six-member conservative bloc.

Last year, ProPublica first reported that Thomas had taken luxury vacations funded by the billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow for more than 20 years without disclosing the trips.

In response, Thomas said at the time that he was advised that it wasn't necessary to report "this sort of personal hospitality."

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• McDonald's is bringing back bagel breakfast sandwiches to California restaurants.
• The popular menu item, plus a $15 million ad buy, could boost sales by 10%, according to Bloomberg.
• Franchisees have said price increases alone won't cover the cost of California's new fast food wage.

California's newly enacted fast food wage hike is already having an effect, though not one lawmakers likely had in mind when writing the law: bagels are back at McDonald's in the state.

The Golden Arches brought the popular menu item back to Golden State restaurants earlier this year as one of several levers the company is pulling to drive sales and offset the cost of the pay increase.

A group of franchisees and corporate employees, known as the "Rise and Dominate" team, proposed the idea of reintroducing bagel sandwiches to the state along with a $15 million ad blitz to boost traffic and digital sales, Bloomberg reported.

McDonald's told Business Insider that the team's recommendations were based on best practices from other locations where restaurant operators have had to navigate local wage hikes.

The move could give a financial lift to franchise owners who have complained that the new $20 per hour wage is unfairly squeezing their profit margins.

Scott Rodrick, who owns 18 McDonald's locations in the state, told Business Insider he's already raised menu prices between 5% and 7% since January, but there is a limit to the prices his customers will pay.

Kerri Harper-Howie, who owns 21 McDonald's restaurants in California with her sister, told KTLA News that "the truth of the matter is you can't raise prices enough" to offset the wage increase.

The return of bagels to the breakfast menu — along with a few other moves — could boost top-line sales by 10%, Bloomberg reported, while a higher proportion of digital sales would mean better profitability as well.

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• President Joe Biden began his presidency with a 57% approval rating, according to Gallup.
• It's been on a mostly downwards trajectory ever since.
• Biden's not alone: Many presidents' approval ratings decrease over time.

President Joe Biden entered the White House in January 2021 with a 57% approval rating. Unfortunately for him, his popularity has never passed that mark, and it's been mostly downhill for his approval rating in the years since.

Examining Biden's approval rating as he approaches the end of his four years as president, it's difficult to say with certainty which, if any, events directly correlated with his slide in popularity.

Even when major events in his presidency have occurred under his leadership, there haven't been notable spikes or falls tied to them, with one possible exception: the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

The president's approval rating began to drop steeply around June 2021, a few months into the US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Biden was heavily criticized for the withdrawal, though it largely followed a deal President Donald Trump made with the Taliban in 2020.

Biden's approval rating first dropped below 50% support in Gallup's August 2021 survey, the same month the withdrawal violently ended.

The lowest Biden's approval rating fell to in the first half of his presidency was 38% in July 2022, around a month after gas prices spiked to over $5 a gallon.

His approval rating didn't stay there for long. A month later, in August, it shot back up to 44% when he signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law.

Compared to past presidents

It's not uncommon for the approval rating of US presidents to drop throughout their time in office.

Former President George W. Bush experienced a tremendous spike in approval — jumping from around mid-50% approval to over 80% — after the September 11 terrorist attacks. But by the time he left office, his approval ratings were below 40%.

Former President Barack Obama ended his presidency with a slightly lower approval rating than he had when he took office.

Trump began his time in the White House with an approval rating of just over 40%. For the most part, his popularity actually slowly increased during his one term in office. His election denialism and the January 6 riots at the Capitol appear to have impacted polling respondents, and in his final month in office his approval rating dropped below 40%.

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• Lauren Boebert just had her worst fundraising quarter in years.
• She's facing a tough primary and accusations of carpetbagging after moving to a redder district.
• But some of her House GOP colleagues are donating to her. George Santos even gave her $400.

Rep. Lauren Boebert just had her worst fundraising quarter in years, bringing in roughly $462,000 in the first three months of 2024.

It was the Colorado Republican's first full quarter since she announced in late December that she would be switching congressional districts. After winning by less than 600 votes in 2022, Boebert moved across the state to run in a more conservative district vacated by Rep. Ken Buck.

To put Boebert's poor fundraising quarter into perspective: It was a significant drop from the roughly $540,000 that she raised in the last 3 months of 2023, and far below the nearly $764,000 haul that she brought in this time last year. In 2021 and 2022, she had several quarters where she raised between $800,000 and $1 million.

Boebert's campaign filings show that she's continued to receive financial support from her Freedom Caucus colleagues since switching districts, including donations ranging between $1,000 and $3,300 from campaign accounts tied to Reps. Mary Miller of Illinois, Ronny Jackson of Texas, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

She also received a $400 personal donation from George Santos, the scandal-plagued ex-lawmaker who was expelled from the House in December and has since been making a living off of Cameo videos.

Before he resigned his seat, Buck quipped that Boebert made Santos "look like a saint."

While former President Donald Trump and House GOP leadership have endorsed Boebert, she faces a tough race in her new district.

She has been dogged during the campaign by accusations of "carpetbagging," referring to instances when politicians run for offices far from where they live for political advantage.

Several GOP establishment figures have lined up behind Jerry Sonnenberg, a former state lawmaker who has emphasized his low-key style over Boebert's bombast.

The congresswoman has also faced numerous personal scandals in the last year, the most prominent incident being her ejection from a musical production of "Beetlejuice" in a Denver theatre in September.

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• Leafhoppers are the only species that secrete brochosomes: rare nanoparticles with invisibility properties.
• But for the first time, a group of scientists has created their own synthetic brochosomes.
• They hope their brochosomes will one day be used for invisible cloaking devices and other technologies.

We tend to think of invisibility cloaks as science fiction. But one group of scientists has taken a big step toward making them a reality.

For the first time, scientists at Pennsylvania State University have created synthetic replicas of brochosomes, naturally occurring nanoparticles that could one day be used to make invisibility cloaking devices.

Invisibility cloaking isn't the only application for synthetic brochosomes. In the next few years, they could find their way into a range of commercial applications — from solar energy to pharmaceuticals, according to lead investigator Tak Sing Wong, professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering at Penn State.

Solving a 70-year-long geometric mystery

Brochosomes are bucky-ball-shaped, hollow nanoparticles covered in holes — known as through-holes — that go all the way through them. This complex structure allows them to absorb or scatter certain wavelengths of light, depending on the size of the brochosome and its holes.

The only place in the world where you can find naturally occurring brochosomes is on the back of a leafhopper — a common backyard insect. Their brochosome coats were first discovered in the 1950s, and they probably help them blend into their surroundings.

Scientists aren't sure why leafhoppers secrete and cover themselves in brochosomes. Until now, they didn't even understand the purpose of the nanoparticles' intricate geometry.

"This is really the first study to understand how the brochosome's complex geometry interacts with light," Wong said.

To reach that understanding, Wong and his colleagues had to figure out how to make a replica of a brochosome. After almost a decade of research, they managed to 3D print the world's first synthetic brochosomes.

The invisibility properties of brochosomes

There are two important elements of brochosome geometry: the diameter of the particle, and the diameter of its through-holes.

If a wavelength of light is the same length as the diameter of the brochosomes, it will be scattered in all directions when it hits the particle. But if the wavelength of light is the same length as the diameter of the brochosomes' through-holes, it will pass through the particle and get absorbed by it.

This absorption coupled with light-scattering means that brochosomes have very limited light reflection — and can be invisible over certain electromagnetic ranges. Covering an object in them could, in theory, work as an invisibility cloak.

The beauty of synthetic brochosomes is that they could be made at different sizes, and thus tailored to absorb and scatter different wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum. That means that engineers can customize brochosomes for specific functions, such as invisibility to infrared radiation to help with military defense.

In fact, Wong's brochosomes are the right size to do that. They're about 40 to 50 times larger than naturally occurring ones, and they only interact with infrared radiation. Wong's future research will partly focus on making smaller synthetic brochosomes to target the shorter end of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The commercial potential of brochosomes

Although Wong's synthetic brochosomes mark a major step towards invisibility-cloaking technology, scientists are still decades away from bringing anything to market.

"I think in my lifetime, it's possible," said Hao Xin, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study. It will take at least 50 years, he said.

But in just three to five years, Wong hopes to produce brochosomes on a large enough scale to use them in pigments, pharmaceuticals, and solar panels.

For example, titanium oxide, a white pigment that's used in everything from candy to sunscreen, was recently banned as a food additive by the European Union. Wong believes that brochosomes could eventually replace titanium oxide in foods like candy and coffee creamers.

"Depending on our imagination, I think there are many cool applications that can come out of brochosomes," Wong said.

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The Stickney Water Reclamation Plant in Illinois is one of the largest wastewater-treatment facilities in the world, serving about 2.3 million people and cleaning an average of 700 million gallons of wastewater a day. During rainfall, the facility can handle a whopping 1.44 billion gallons of wastewater in a single day — that's a million gallons every minute.

The clean water is released into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the sludge that is removed from the water is converted to biosolids, which are a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers.

For more, visit: mwrd.org/what-we-do

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• When John Jacob Astor IV died on the Titanic 112 years ago, he was one of the world's richest people.
• He built landmark New York hotels like the Astoria Hotel and the St. Regis.
• Astor's wife, who was 30 years younger than him, was pregnant aboard the Titanic and survived.

John Jacob Astor IV was one of the wealthiest people in the world when he perished in the Titanic sinking. 

His life was marked by amazing innovations and wealth, but scandal as well. Astor's wife, who was 30 years younger than him when they married, was pregnant aboard the Titanic and survived. Astor reportedly planned to make their child his heir, but his fortune ended up being left to Vincent Astor, his son from his first marriage.

Here's a look at the life of John Jacob Astor IV, one of the most famous Titanic victims. 

John Jacob Astor IV was born on July 13, 1864, in New York into one of the most affluent families in the world.

The Astor family dates back to the early 1700s when the original John Jacob Astor (pictured) came to the Americas from a small village in Germany to make a name for himself. According to Biography, he started making money in the fur-trading businesses, but his real fortune began when he entered the world of real estate.

One of his first big purchases was a plot of land in the middle of Manhattan, modern-day Times Square. Quickly, Astor bought land all around Manhattan, becoming one of the richest men in the world and creating a dynasty. 

When John Jacob Astor IV was born to William Astor and Caroline Webster Schermerhorn in 1864, the Astor name was already well-respected in high society, and the family's fortune was one of the world's largest. 

As an heir to the family fortune, John Jacob Astor IV received an education at the finest schools in the US.

According to the New Netherland Institute, he first attended St. Paul's School in Concord and then went on to Harvard University, but there is no official record of him graduating from the college. After schooling, Astor went abroad for a few years before returning to New York to take up the family business: real estate. 

In 1897, Astor used his fortune to build the Astoria Hotel in New York.

In 1893, William Waldorf Astor built the Waldorf Hotel on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street. Reportedly, he built the hotel to spite his cousin, John Jacob Astor IV. In retaliation, Astor built a competing hotel in 1897 on the adjacent corner and named it the Astoria Hotel.

When the cousins were finally convinced that joining both hotels would be a smart business decision, a 300-foot marble corridor was built between them, according to Architectural Digest. The famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was born. 

For the next few decades, the hotel became a symbol of luxury, wealth, and class in New York. It was considered one of the best hotels in the country and even in the world. 

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel closed in 1928 and was demolished, making room for the Empire State Building. The new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was built farther uptown in 1931, long after Astor's death.

Astor also built another New York landmark hotel: the St. Regis.

In 1904, Astor opened the St. Regis Hotel, which The New York Times called "the finest hotel in America" at the time.

According to the St. Regis Hotel, Astor aimed to make the hotel technologically advanced and ensured that each room had a telephone, making the hotel's rooms as practical as they were glamorous. Some historians call the hotel Astor's "greatest achievement," according to Biography.

While developing some of New York's finest hotels, Astor still had time for his hobbies, like writing.

In 1894, Astor published his first and only science-fiction novel, "Journey in Other Worlds."

"A 'Journey in Other Worlds' races far ahead of the nineteenth century to imagine what life would be like in the year 2000," the Amazon synopsis reads. "At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Earth is effectively a corporate technocracy, with big businesses using incredible advances in science to improve life on the planet as a whole. Seeking other planets habitable for the growing human population, the spaceship Callisto, powered by an antigravitational force known as apergy, embarks on a momentous tour of the solar system."

Astor was also an accomplished inventor.

In 1898, he patented a brake for the bicycle, invented a vibratory disintegrator, and created a pneumatic road-improver. He also helped invent a turbine engine. 

Astor married Ava Lowle Willing in 1891, but they divorced in 1909.

Ava Lowle Willing and Astor had two children together, Vincent and Alice.

Although they seemed like the perfect, upper-class family, the marriage was largely unhappy. The couple got divorced in 1909, setting Astor up for one of the family's biggest scandals. 

At 47 years old, Astor met Madeleine Talmage Force, who was 18.

When Astor and Madeleine Talmage Force married in 1911, it became a scandal — at the time, divorce was rare and remarrying was even more so.

The controversy over their relationship even made its way onto screens decades later. In the 1997 Oscar-winning movie "Titanic," Rose points out Astor and his pregnant wife to Jack. 

"His little wifey there Madeleine is my age and in delicate condition. See how she's trying to hide it? Quite the scandal," she says.

When Madeleine fell pregnant in 1912, they decided to return to New York from Europe. Astor booked them a room on the Titanic.

At the time, Astor was one of the world's richest men, and he certainly was the wealthiest aboard the Titanic.

He had a fortune worth somewhere between $90 and $150 million, CNBC reported, when he boarded the fateful ship. Today, he would be worth between $2.9 and $4.8 billion when adjusted for inflation.

After the Titanic hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912, Astor calmly brought his wife, Madeleine, to the second-to-last lifeboat.

According to Biography, Astor was among the first few people who knew the ship was sinking.

He woke his sleeping, pregnant wife and told her to get dressed in her warmest clothes. He then put all of the couple's jewelry on her, took her to the deck, and placed her in a lifeboat.

She clung to her husband and wanted to stay with him, but he reportedly said, "The sea is calm. You'll be alright. You're in good hands. I'll see you in the morning."

The New York Times reported that Astor was last seen smoking a cigarette on the deck. He was wearing a dinner suit and holding a personalized pocket watch.

Nearly two weeks after the Titanic sank, The New York Times reported that Astor's body had been recovered by a search team from Halifax, Canada.

Astor was among the 306 bodies found by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett in the weeks after the tragedy, according to the Nova Scotia Archives, but only one of 59 bodies that were claimed by victims' relatives and returned home. 

He was reportedly identified by the initials sewn into his jacket. His pocket also contained a solid gold watch engraved with the initials JJA, according to The New York Times.

Many of the Titanic's victims were buried in a cemetery (pictured) in Halifax, but Astor's son, Vincent, traveled there to claim his father's body and bring it home to New York.

Astor's wife, Madeleine, survived the shipwreck and gave birth to their son, naming him John Jacob. But most of his fortune went to his son from his first marriage, Vincent.

If Astor made it to the US, it's reported that he would have made his and Madeleine's unborn child the heir to his fortune, according to Biography. However, most of his money went to his first son, Vincent (pictured), from his first marriage.

John Jacob Astor VI received only a small portion of his father's fortune, but Vincent went on to donate a large sum of his father's money and became a philanthropist in New York City. 

John Jacob Astor IV's legacy has lasted long after his death.

As the most famous person to die in the tragedy, Astor's name and reputation have survived through the years.

In fact, he has been portrayed in a number of TV shows and movies. Most notably, Eric Braeden played Astor in "Titanic." 

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• The conference is a gathering place for influential investors and founders across generative AI.
• The 2023 conference in San Francisco became famous for producing one of the biggest AI deals.
• Cerebral Valley New York will be Newcomer's first east coast event.

The Cerebral Valley AI Summit, the generative AI conference created by tech journalist Eric Newcomer and AI startup Volley, will be hosting its first New York event on June 27th. Cerebral Valley New York as the event is being called, will bring together investors and founders for a one day conference to discuss the future of this booming industry.

The original Cerebral Valley Summit, held in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco in 2023, made headlines for producing one of the largest generative AI acquisitions ever and effectively firing the starting gun on the AI arms race. Now Newcomer tells Business Insider he thinks the time is right for an eastward expansion.

"I definitely think San Francisco is the heart of the generative AI world," he said, "but I live in New York, I believe in the New York tech ecosystem."

He says Cerebral Valley will continue to host its San Francisco-based conference but with Cerebral Valley New York, the hope is to attract New York financial muscle as well as more attendees from Europe, which now boasts major AI research labs from both Google and Meta, as well as the headquarters of OpenAI rival Mistral.

"We're trying to bring together the actual people making the news and so if you're in the middle of AI, this is where it is, so that's where you should be," he said.

Newcomer anticipates that the conference will be dominated by questions of what AI investing looks like beyond foundation models, who's going to crack the killer app for generative AI, and what's in store for the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

"I think there'll be a lot of reckoning around OpenAI's position," Newcomer said. At the last Cerebral Valley Summit in November, 2023, it was a given that OpenAI had already won the AI battle. Just two days late of course, CEO Sam Altman would be out of a job and the company's future looked uncertain.

Today with Altman back at the helm OpenAI continues to outpace competitors in LLM research, and the company will likely be top of mind for most of the attendees at the conference.

Cerebral Valley will be announcing this year's lineup of speakers over the coming weeks. Past speakers have included Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi, legendary investors such as Reid Hoffman and Vinod Khosla, and Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei.

At the very first Cerebral Valley AI Summit, Newcomer half-jokingly challenged someone to raise $100 million at the conference. What he got instead was the $1.3 billion acquisition by Databricks of MosaicML, negotiated over dinner at the summit.

"Clearly I thought too small," said Newcomer, who hopes to outdo himself this year. "I'm cheering for a multi-billion dollar deal now, and you know the activity level could certainly justify it," he said.

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• Despite the failed attack on Israel, experts warn of Iran's potential for a more effective strike.
• Iran's retaliatory attack consisted of over 300 missiles and drones.
• Analysts say that Iran's strategy mirrors Russian tactics in Ukraine.

Israel thwarted Iran's retaliatory missile attack, but experts said Iran can use this loss to learn and plan a more effective strike. Israel and its allies can't afford to get complacent they say.

"The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and the weaknesses of the Israeli air defense system," analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in an April 14 report.

ISW analysts Brian Carter and Frederick Kagan argued that "the Iranians will learn lessons from this strike and work to improve their abilities to penetrate Israeli defenses over time as the Russians have done in repeated strike series against Ukraine."

On April 13, Iran launched a barrage of roughly 150 missiles and 170 drones at Israel in response to Israel's attack on an Iranian consulate building in Syria earlier this month that killed several officials, escalating a years-long shadow war.

Iran's missiles and drones were overwhelmingly intercepted by Israel, its neighboring countries and allied forces, however, experts say this attack could offer Iran lessons for its next big hit.

While many of Iran's missiles and drones were intercepted, the number of weapons that were able to break through Israel's defenses is notable enough for concern. In the future, if Iran learns from its wins and losses in this exchange, these weapons "could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy."

"Russian strikes on Ukraine have demonstrated that even a small number of precise strikes against key nodes in energy or other infrastructure can cause disproportionate effects. Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency," ISW said.

ISW analysts explained that Iran's strategy is in some ways similar to Russia's tactics targeting Ukraine. Iran's drones and cruise missiles were launched earlier in order to hit Israel's defense air system at the same time as ballistic missiles.

"The Russians have used such an approach against Ukraine repeatedly," the ISW report said. "The purpose of such a package is to have the slower cruise missiles and drones distract and overwhelm air defenses in order to allow the ballistic missiles, which are much harder to shoot down, to reach their targets."

With Iran mirroring its partner's strategy, experts said that it could report its findings from the attack back to Russia and help inform Russia's military as to how it can better challenge defense systems that NATO and the US have provided Ukraine.

That said, the worsening conflict between Iran and Israel could also hurt Russia's relationship with Iran as Moscow may not be able to adequately support Tehran, which also would be unable to offer the same level of support it has been were it to find itself in a wider war.

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