• Testimony concluded Tuesday in the Trump hush-money trial in Manhattan.
• The parties then argued over how the judge will instruct the jury on the law.
• "Less is better," the judge has said. Still, the jury charge will be long and complex.

Lawyers in the Donald Trump hush-money trial spent Tuesday afternoon in a spirited battle over this question: what will the judge tell jurors right before they begin their deliberations next week?

The prosecution and defense fought for three hours over this, the so-called "jury charge," splitting hairs over what language New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan will use to instruct the seven-man, five-woman jury on the law.

The level of skill and fervor in these arguments was no surprise.

The jury charge is so important, so sacrosanct, that Merchan will order the doors to his courtroom sealed for its duration, with no one in the well or audience allowed to enter or leave.

He will then tell jurors something like this:

"Under our law, a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when, with intent to defraud that includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof, that person makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise."

These are the opening paragraphs to the New York state court system's jury-charge guidelines for falsifying business records in the first degree.

It's the basic starting template for any New York judge who needs to charge a jury on what's known in legal shorthand as first-degree falsifying.

Trump has been charged with 34 counts of this one felony. That's the entirety of his indictment. There's one count for each of 34 invoices, checks, and Trump Organization ledger entries — all of the records that Trump allegedly "caused" to be falsified throughout 2017, his first year in office.

Prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg allege that each falsified invoice, check, and ledger entry counts as a felony because it concealed an underlying crime. (They say the underlying crime is a state election law violation — more about that in a bit.)

How were they allegedly falsified?

Bragg says each of the 34 records disguised the true nature of a year's worth of payments to Trump "fixer"-turned-foe Michael Cohen by making the payments look like monthly legal retainer fees.

In reality, Bragg alleges, Trump wasn't paying Cohen a monthly retainer at all — he was instead concealing an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.

Rather than compensating Cohen for legal work — Cohen testified he only did a few hours of work for Trump in all of 2017 — the payments secretly reimbursed Cohen in monthly installments for a campaign-law-violating $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, prosecutors allege.

How do they decide?

OK it's a little tricky.

Let's say business records were indeed falsified to hide hush money. That's the coverup of a coverup. And let's say that the hush-money payment — which silenced Daniels just 11 days before the 2016 election — was itself illegal. That's a crime within a crime.

Still, it's not terribly tricky, right?

Trump faces 34 counts of only a single charge, first-degree falsifying, for which the standard charging language barely fills two pages.

And for each count, the jury must consider just two things: whether Trump caused the record to be falsified, and whether he did so to hide his intent to commit "another crime."

If prosecutors meet their burden to prove both tiers — falsification and intent to conceal another crime — beyond a reasonable doubt, then Trump is guilty. If they don't, then Trump is not guilty.

Prosecutors don't even have to prove that "another crime" was actually committed. They just have to prove that Trump intended to commit another crime and then falsified records to hide his tracks.

The jury charge for this single felony should be easy, right? Clear-cut and beyond dispute?

Wrong.

Yes, first-degree falsifying is the only law in Trump's indictment.

But it's not the only law jurors must understand and weigh when they begin deliberations as early as Wednesday.

Prosecutors allege that Trump falsified the hush-money reimbursements in order to conceal his intent to commit an obscure New York election-conspiracy law.

This is what they mean by Trump's "intent to commit another crime." Under the prosecution theory, this "another crime" is election law section 17-152, which it makes it a misdemeanor to conspire to influence an election "by unlawful means."

A crime within a crime within a crime

So you see, to win a conviction, prosecutors must demonstrate three layers of unlawfulness involving at least three separate laws.

They're alleging Trump committed a crime (under the Federal Elections Campaign Act) within a crime (under the state election-conspiracy law) within a crime (the first-degree falsifying charge he's actually indicted on).

It's a Russian nesting doll of wrongdoing, though only the outermost doll, first-degree falsifying, needs to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Prosecutors also plan to give jurors two alternatives to the FECA violation, that innermost of the three nesting dolls.

These alternatives are a violation of federal, state, and/or city tax laws (alleging that Cohen's hush-money reimbursements were unlawfully disguised as taxable income) and yet another records-falsification violation (alleging that Trump was responsible for bogus hush-money paperwork at the National Enquirer.)

That means three layers of wrongdoing under a half-dozen potentially applicable laws, all with their own wording and definitions, much of which had to be argued over on Tuesday.

What is a "conspiracy?" What is "intent?" What is "accessorial liability?" Do those definitions differ, law to law?

And then there were broader, more arcane questions, including this one:

Must jurors agree unanimously on the "unlawful means" at the center of the case?

Meaning, must all jurors find that, in causing Cohen to pay the hush money, Trump conspired to violate FECA campaign-contribution limits? Or can some jurors find that Trump conspired to violate tax law, while other jurors see the falsification of National Enquirer business records as the central offense?

In other words, do jurors need to be unanimous in deciding which of the three options, if any, is the central unlawfulness?

That brings us back to Tuesday's charge conference and why the sides fought for three hours as the defendant, and many in the audience struggled to stay awake.

"This is, obviously, an extraordinarily important case," defense lawyer Emil Bove told the judge, in arguing that jurors be instructed that they must unanimously decide on an underlying wrongdoing.

"The most critical point here is that the jury does not need to conclude unanimously what the specific unlawful means are," Matthew Colangelo, a prosecutor, argued back Tuesday, referring to "well-established New York law."

"So I think the key point here for this instruction is to advise the jury that, yes, there has to be some unlawful means, and to alert them as to what those unlawful means are, but also advise them that they don't have to unanimously agree on each of the unlawful means," he added.

"We think your honor has some discretion," countered Bove.

Merchan was not swayed. 

"I think I understand what you're saying, what you mean when you're saying it's an important case," Merchan told Trump's lawyer. "What you're asking me to do is change the law, and I'm not going to do that."

Charging the jury is a tedious task

Tuesday's debate was granular stuff.

In general, Bove pushed for longer, more complex definitions of such terms as "contribution" and "unlawful means." This was in the apparent hope that the narrower the definitions, the less likely jurors would find that Trump's actions fell within their bounds.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, fought to keep the charge as simple as possible.

"As we discussed, we think the jury needs less, not more, on FECA instructions," Colangelo, the prosecutor, argued at one point Tuesday.

"And we think the term, 'for the purpose of influencing an election' is a pretty straightforward term that jurors can understand," Colangelo added.

In awarding the most "wins" to prosecutors, Merchan chose brevity over expansiveness.

"Some of the issues are confusing enough, I think," the judge said Tuesday. "We want to make it as easy as possible for the jury."

Merchan told prosecutors and Trump's lawyers that he'll give them the final draft of his instructions on Thursday.

He told jurors to expect his charge to last "at least an hour."

• Nvidia's Q1 revenue hit a record $26 billion, surpassing analyst estimates.
• Nvidia also gave a bullish second-quarter sales forecast.
• Demand for its new AI chips may exceed supply well into next year, it said.

Tech's hottest stock isn't cooling down anytime soon.

Nvidia released its fiscal first-quarter results on Wednesday and reported record quarterly revenues of $26 billion — outdoing analyst estimates for $24.65 billion. That's up over 260% from a year ago, showing that raging demand for its chips, which are used to power artificial intelligence technology, is still growing.

Nvidia shared a solid forecast for the future, too, saying second-quarter revenue will be about $28 billion, also ahead of expectations.

The news helped push Nvidia's shares up in late trading to above $1,000 for the first time. The stock has risen more than 200% in the last twelve months.

Even as customers wait for Blackwell, Nvidia's next GPU chip, to be released later this year, sales of its H100 chip are still strong, the company said. CFO Colette Kress also told investors on a call that demand for its H200 and Blackwell chips is well ahead of supply as the company works towards global availability of the latter later this year.

"We expect demand may exceed supply well into next year," Kress said.

Meantime, CEO Jensen Huang said the company would see "a lot of Blackwell revenue this year."

Nvidia also raised its quarterly dividend by 150%, from four to 10 cents per share, and announced a 10-for-1 stock split, effective next month.

Jacob Bourne, a senior analyst at Emarketer, a sister company to Business Insider, said Nvidia defied gravity again as "AI companies globally continue to depend on its chips, networking hardware, and its software ecosystem."

Some tech giants have recently announced plans to create their own chips to help power their AI offerings. Google is making its own Arm-based CPU processor, Axion, and Microsoft is also attempting to develop its own AI chips. However, most companies are still relying on Nvidia.

"Tech companies' public praise of Nvidia is a telltale sign of its dominance — they want to reduce their dependence on the chipmaker but realize they're not quite there yet," Bourne said. "We can expect that more bold innovative moves from Nvidia will help it maintain its industry position for the foreseeable future."

• The Regeneron ISEF is a huge science fair that attracts top talent from all over the world.
• This year, the competition awarded $9 million in prizes. It has a history of prestigious winners.
• That can make for a stressful competition, but parents shouldn't add to it, CEO Maya Ajmera said.

What's been called the "granddaddy" of science fairs took place last week.

With over $9 million in prizes and heaps of prestige, the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) attracts some of the best and brightest students from around the world, like Hawaii and California as well as Kildare, Ireland and Shanghai, China.

Past winners include Nobel Prize recipients, Rhodes Scholars, and MacArthur Foundation genius grant awardees.

With that kind of money and acclaim on the line, it's not surprising that the atmosphere surrounding the competition is intense.

"I think a lot of kids who are here actually — I don't think I'm reading it wrong — are truly excited to be here," said Maya Ajmera, the president and CEO of the Society for Science, which coordinates ISEF. "But they also feel the pressure of wanting to win and the pressure of going to college," she told Business Insider last week.

The biggest mistake that parents with ambitious, curious kids can make is adding to that pressure, she said.

Besides, between addictive social media, the climate crisis, growing up during the pandemic, and feeling lonelier than ever, Gen Z already has more than enough sources of anxiety.

Stepping back and letting the kids do the work

While it can be useful to have a parent invested in helping their kid meet deadlines and make a nice-looking poster, some adults take it too far. Ajmera advises parents to "stand back and let your kid do it."

"Get out of their way," she said, "and don't pressure them too much."

If competing at ISEF is any indication of success, then Ajmera's advice certainly seems to work. Parents of ISEF competitors who spoke with Business Insider shared her philosophy.

"We never pressure them," Maria Estrada, whose two children have both competed and won awards at ISEF, told Business Insider. Estrada said she's never expected her children to have 5.0 GPAs, and that she's even asked her daughter to slow down and be a kid.

"I accepted my kids for who they are," she added. "I think it's important for parents to know their kids' abilities."

Another parent, Alexa Groff, has a daughter, Taylor, who competes in science fairs and is a competitive dancer. She said that a friend recently told her she'd expected Groff to be an intense "dance mom" who showed up early to everything.

In reality, the friend told her she was "super-duper chill."

"I think it's important for Taylor to explore her passions without my hand in it," Groff said. When her daughter wanted to quit volleyball, for example, she said she let it happen and supported the decision."I want her to figure things out on her own, but know that I'm there for whatever she needs me for," Groff said.

Combining passion and hard work to solve problems

As part of the ISEF competition, nearly 2,000 students from 49 states and 70 countries gathered in Los Angeles to showcase their research to judges. ISEF pulls the finalists from 400 smaller science fairs from around the world, taking the winners from a pool of 175,000 competitors.

While not typically at the same level as peer-reviewed scientific research, ISEF students' topics can be as sophisticated as microbial genetics, bone tumors, and microplastic filtration.

Far from overly involving themselves, parents are often surprised at what their children accomplish with their projects. "They're kind of amazed, actually," Ajmera said.

Students are often inspired to pursue these difficult subjects because of real-world issues and not by their parents' insistence to compete, Ajmera said.

"A lot of kids have their own personal stories to share of something that's affected their families or their communities, and they want to go in and solve it," Ajmera said of the Gen Z competitors.

For example, 18-year-old Maddux Alexander Springer received this year's $10,000 Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication for his studies on a tumor-causing disease in green sea turtles near his home in Hawaii.

That kind of interest and enthusiasm can carry a student far, which is important since most winning projects are often complex and time-consuming.

For example, 16-year-old Grace Sun won this year's top prize, the $75,000 George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award, for her project on organic electronic devices. Sun told Business Insider she had to miss hours of school to work in a university lab for her project.

For some kids, though, it's all worth it because the time and effort are investments in what they hope will be their future careers.

"A lot of these kids are going to either land in academia doing research, or they're going to be entrepreneurs and start new companies on the new cutting-edge technologies," Ajmera said.

• Vivek Ramaswamy ran a failed campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
• Now he owns 7.7% of BuzzFeed, the struggling digital media publisher.
• What's going on? We don't know. So we're guessing here.

Why is Vivek Ramaswamy buying up shares of BuzzFeed?

Let's start by stating the obvious: It is very funny to type the sentence "Why is Vivek Ramaswamy buying up shares of BuzzFeed?"

Ramaswamy, as you may recall, was a fringe candidate in the most recent Republican presidential primary, where his platform consisted of praising Donald Trump and promising to "Take America First further than Trump." He dropped out of the race in January, after spending a reported $30 million of his own money on the campaign and coming in fourth in the Iowa caucuses.

And BuzzFeed is BuzzFeed — the cheeky digital publisher that sprouted up alongside Facebook and, at one point, seemed poised to become the future of media. At its peak, it sported a valuation of nearly $2 billion and had a knack for commanding the attention of millennials, advertisers, and old media giants like The New York Times, which worried that BuzzFeed would displace it.

By the time BuzzFeed went public in 2021, however, almost all of the air had left the digital publishing bubble. Since then BuzzFeed has gone through multiple layoff rounds, unwound a big M&A deal that was the supposed reason for its IPO in the first place, and its stock sank so low it risked getting kicked off the Nasdaq.

And now Ramaswamy has bought up 7.7% of BuzzFeed — for a little less than $4 million — and announced that he will be an activist investor — someone who thinks the company's shares are undervalued and that he can convince BuzzFeed's management to make changes that will make the shares worth more.

One issue complicating any of Ramaswamy's plans is that BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti controls the company, even though he owns a minority of its shares, due to a dual-class stock structure.

But that doesn't mean Peretti is immune to shareholder pressure. Just this month, he announced a new plan that ties his compensation to the company's stock performance in an attempt to convince investors that he's really serious about turning things around.

So, again: What's Ramaswamy's actual plan?

Ramaswamy has yet to talk to BuzzFeed's board or management, says a person familiar with the company. And neither BuzzFeed nor Ramaswamy has responded to requests for comment, so we're just going to have to guess here. A few theories from the peanut gallery:

• It's the money! This is the most obvious answer because it's why any activist shareholder invests in a company. They may say they have better strategy, or that management is incompetent, or whatever. What they really want is for shares in the company to be worth more than what they paid for them, and it doesn't really matter how they get there.
• It's the clicks! Ramaswamy likes attention — he spent $30 million of his own money getting himself onto the national stage last year. So why not spend a few million more and buy his very own media platform? BuzzFeed no longer commands the same kind of media spotlight it used to, but it's still pretty big and includes not just BuzzFeed.com, but also The Huffington Post as well as First We Feast — better known as the company that makes the "Hot Ones" viral chicken wing/celebrity interview show. ("Viral chicken wing/celebrity interview show" is also fun to type.)

• It's a troll! $4 million is a lot for a practical joke, but Ramaswamy (apparently) has cash to burn. Maybe he's getting a kick out of the idea that a Trump-loving Republican can cause chaos at a media company famous for publishing the infamous Trump "dossier".
• It's the wings! Again: BuzzFeed owns Hot Ones, the show that most recently helped Conan O'Brien take over the internet again. And again: Ramaswamy likes attention. There are probably cheaper ways to secure a booking with Sean Evans. But this could speed things up.

• Nicole Shanahan reportedly received over $1 billion from her divorce from Google founder Sergey Brin.
• Brin, one of the wealthiest persons in the world, is worth over $139.5 billion.
• Shanahan has used her wealth to buck up RFK Jr.'s long-shot presidential campaign.

Attorney Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s running mate, has a staggering wealth that would make her one of the wealthiest vice presidents in history if their long shot campaign were successful this November.

According to The New York Times, Shanahan's largess is largely due to her divorce settlement with Google founder Sergey Brin. Shanahan received more than $1 billion from the divorce, three people with knowledge of her finances told The Times. Brin, one of the wealthiest people in the world, is worth an estimated $139.5 billion, according to Forbes.

Forbes previously estimated in March that Shanahan received roughly $390 million in Alphabet shares from Brin based on the then-estimated value of shares that were likely transferred to her. Their divorce records are not public. Forbes tried to piece together what Shanahan may have received from her husband of three years based on Brin's public disclosures about his stake in Alphabet.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year on rumors that Shanahan had an affair with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a claim both have denied. The Times, citing three sources, reported that the affair happened after both of them took ketamine at a Miami party in late 2021 and that she told Brin about it.

Brin and Shanahan reportedly separated weeks later, and Brin filed for divorce in early 2022.

Shanahan has used her wealth to help Kennedy's campaign, donating $10 million to a pro-Kennedy super PAC. Her $2 million donation helped the group, American Values 2024, secure a Super Bowl ad that compared Kennedy to his father, RFK, and his presidential uncle, JFK. Other Kennedys did not appreciate his allies blatantly using the family's image to boost his campaign.

Kennedy, according to The Times, initially eyed Jets Quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura before settling on Shanahan as his running mate. Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has also claimed to have had conversations with Kennedy about being his vice president but has said to shift her focus to trying to join former President Donald Trump's ticket.

Rodgers told reporters on Tuesday that he wasn't quite ready to retire from the NFL to enter politics.

"I love Bobby," Rodgers said. "We had a couple of really nice conversations. But there were really two options: It was retire and be his VP or keep playing."

Kennedy's largest focus at the moment is trying to make next month's debate between President Joe Biden and Trump. The unprecedented early debate does offer him a narrow path to get on the stage, but it's unclear if he can meet both the polling and ballot access thresholds in time. A third-party presidential candidate hasn't debated alongside the two major nominees since Texas businessman Ross Perot in 1992.