🌊 Coming Soon to America: A Golden Dome

Days from getting engaged…

A gunman from Chicago killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside a Jewish museum in Washington, DC, last night. The staffers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were 26 and 30. Adding to the tragedy is the fact that they were in a relationship and Yaron had just bought a ring with a plan to propose to Sarah next week.

Our hearts go out to their families and the Jewish community in DC and beyond.

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Golden Dome

President Trump unveiled his “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative and declared it a top national security priority

• The Golden Dome is envisioned as a multi-layered missile defense system, integrating ground-based interceptors with a vast network of space-based sensors and weapons

• The project draws inspiration from Israel's Iron Dome, which the US helped develop, but is much more ambitious in size and intended capabilities

• The initiative is a major part of Trump's broader defense strategy and is included in his proposed budget, which also seeks to extend the 2017 tax cuts and increase border and defense spending

Dig Deeper 

• Trump said the dome would cost around $175B and that he aims to have it completed by the end of his term. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost would be closer to $542B and upwards of $831B, depending on specifics

• Trump named Space Force general Michael Guetlein, a career military officer with experience in missile defense systems, to oversee the effort

• Guetlein testified before Congress this March that the system will “have a lot of complexity to it” and compared it to the Manhattan Project

KEY STORY

Facial Recognition in New Orleans

A Washington Post report revealed that the New Orleans police secretly used a private facial system on cameras throughout the city, the most extensive known use of the technology yet

• Project NOLA is a nonprofit that manages 5,000 surveillance cameras citywide. It is mostly funded by local business owners who want to curb crime in the city

• Per the WaPo report, the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) informally partnered with Project NOLA in 2023 to use its facial recognition software to identify and track suspects

• If true, that would mark the first widespread live use of the technology in a major American city and a violation of an ordinance passed by the city in 2022 that aimed to restrict the use of facial recognition technology to specific circumstances

Dig Deeper 

• A director from the American Civil Liberties Union said, “This is the facial recognition technology nightmare scenario that we have been worried about,” adding, “This is the government giving itself the power to track anyone…as we go about our lives walking around in public”

• NOPD chief Anne Kirkpatrick told the WaPo that the automated alerts from Project NOLA would be turned off until the “app met all the requirements of the law,” although she added, “Can you have the technology without violating and surveilling?…Yes, you can”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

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KEY STORY

Georgia’s Life-Support Baby

A debate is raging around a Georgia woman who is being kept on life support over concerns about complying with Georgia’s fetal heartbeat law

• Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother, was declared brain dead in February after suffering a fatal brain clot while pregnant. Despite her legal death, Emory University Hospital has kept her on life support, citing Georgia's "heartbeat law," which bans most abortions after a heartbeat is detected

• Smith is now 22 weeks into the pregnancy and has been on life support for over 90 days. The baby is expected to be delivered via C-section in August

Dig Deeper

• In 2019, Georgia passed the LIFE Act, which banned abortions in most cases if a fetal heartbeat is detected. The law became enforceable after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022

• Doctors at Emory reportedly told Smith’s family they were not allowed to remove her from life support, citing the LIFE Act. The hospital later released a statement saying, “[Emory Hospital] uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to…[comply] with Georgia’s abortion laws”

• In a statement, though, Georgia’s Republican attorney general said, “There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death”

KEY STORY

OpenAI Hardware?

Former Apple design chief Jony Ive – credited with designing the iPhone – will join OpenAI

• Ive led Apple’s product designs for over two decades, helping create iconic products such as the iPhone, AppleWatch, iPod, and MacBook, along with their respective user interfaces

• Ive left in 2019 to create his own design firm, LoveFrom, where he’s worked with companies like Ferrari and Airbnb. He also leads an AI startup called “io” that is partially owned by OpenAI

• On Wednesday, OpenAI announced it would acquire io and give Ive a major role at OpenAI. The hire indicates an aggressive move by OpenAI into hardware

Dig Deeper

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who reportedly helped recruit Ive, has long said he wants the company to move from pure research into consumer products. The merger with oi is expected to work on bridging the gap between software and hardware in the AI space, which could reshape how consumers physically interact with AI

• Following the announcement, Ive said in a statement, “Everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment.” He also said during an interview with Altman they will create “amazing products that elevate humanity”

• Altman added, “We’ve been waiting for the next big thing for 20 years…we want to bring people something beyond the legacy products we’ve been using for so long”

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

📉 Target reported a 3.8% drop in its quarterly sales, attributing the loss to political boycotts

₿ Bitcoin reached a new record high of $109,481, surpassing its previous peak from January

🇺🇦 A former top Ukrainian official was killed outside a school in Madrid, Spain

✈️ The US officially accepted the Boeing 747 jet from Qatar for potential conversion into a new Air Force One

🇿🇦 During a tense Oval Office meeting, President Trump criticized South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over the alleged killings of the country’s white farmers

⚖️ A federal judge ruled that while he determines whether the deportations were lawful, US officials must keep custody of migrants who were deported to South Sudan

What does Roca Nation think?

🧠 Yesterday’s Question: What’s your favorite restaurant? What’s your order there?

🧐 Today’s Question: Is it unseasonably cold where you live right now? Thoughts?

Reply to this email with your thoughts!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🔫 Not Gonna Say What Kind of Man…: A Florida man was arrested for allegedly shooting his neighbor’s cow five times after it wandered onto his property

🦘 Gotta Bounce!: Irwin, a pet red kangaroo in Durango, Colorado, escaped his home for the second time in less than a year

🚘 Bug-eyed EV: Japanese automaker Nissan unveiled a sixth-generation Micra car that looks like it has “bug eyes”

🔴 Red Planet Photo Bomb: NASA’s Perseverance rover took a selfie that unexpectedly featured a Martian dust devil in the background

🇮🇷 Spooning Champion: An Iranian man broke a Guinness World Record by balancing 96 spoons on his body

ROCA WRAP
No New Citizens

Italy

This country’s government will no longer give Italian Americans citizenship.

Italy, a Mediterranean nation with a rich cultural heritage, has historically maintained strong ties with its diaspora around the world. The country experienced massive waves of emigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s, particularly to the Americas, creating an Italian diaspora that numbers in the tens of millions. For decades, Italy has offered generous citizenship rules that allowed descendants of emigrants to reclaim their Italian heritage through citizenship by descent.

This week, though, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government enacted a new law restricting eligibility criteria for Italian citizenship to only children and grandchildren of Italian nationals. Previously, any direct descendant of citizens who lived in Italy as far back as 1861 could obtain an Italian passport. The change came after authorities claimed the system was overloaded with a backlog of 60,000 applications from overseas.

The move sparked backlash around the world, particularly in the US, where many of the country’s 20M Italian Americans had long touted the option of taking Italian and therefore EU citizenship.

Italian-American lawmakers warned Rome that the move "risked alienating" tens of thousands of Italian Americans who had "invested significant time, effort and financial resources" in preparing citizenship applications, while the co-chairs of the Italian American Congressional Delegation wrote in a letter, “At a time when the transatlantic relationship is under new pressures, the reassuring voices of 20M Italian Americans serve as bridges between our nations.”

Italy’s foreign minister defended the decision as a necessary response to a surge in Latin Americans obtaining Italian passports not to migrate to Italy, but to travel to the US and Europe without a visa.

"The granting of citizenship is a serious matter," he stated. "It must not be a tool to go on trips to Miami or other places with a European passport."

For the Italians in Miami, that’s a sad thing to hear.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Correction: In yesterday’s newsletter, we stated that prostate cancer screenings are “routine” for people over 70 in our story about allegations of a Biden cancer coverup. This was incorrect — they are not routine for people over 70. We apologize for this mistake.

Thank you to the doctors who wrote in to highlight this error. Have a great day!

–Max and Max