More: Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.

The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang.

But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia's general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.

It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company's representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia's general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.

The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler's interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident.

It is not clear what led to Mr. Teter's outreach to the department, but the recent revelations about Mr. Huang's acknowledged affair with a Megaspeed executive have only intensified scrutiny of Nvidia's role in influencing policy on chip sales to China. The New York Times reported last month that the U.S. government had concluded that Huang Le, or Alice Huang, a top executive at the firm, was a spy working on behalf of the Chinese government.

Don't forget that he "accidentally" posted it last week too. Has boaz been a bot account the whole time?

What good are subpoenas if DOJ won't act on referrals for prosecution from Congress? We're headed for a constitutional crisis next year.

Because progressives like you fled your utopia's to move some where nice, and than begin to destroy it.

Unnecessary apostrophe, utopias would have been correct.

Somewhere is one word.

Then, not than.

In North Carolina, we could add, Tar Heels rose dramatically to defeat a loathsome 16-year Republican war on constitutional democracy - a crusade aimed at crushing the poor and the marginalized and lionizing the wealthy and the white. Our Democrats, and their compatriots, delivered a new U.S. Senator, a massively altered and dominant congressional caucus, an inspiring NC Supreme Court justice, a politically balanced state senate and, astonishingly, a boldly Democratic state house. I can barely type the words.

It is easy, these days, to look past Roy Cooper - so marvelously he has performed. Almost as if we had a right to expect it. I have great affection for Cooper, in part because he is so different than I am. Cooper is calm, steady, trusted, strong, measured, unflappable, and perpetually committed to the people of North Carolina. Even more important, as governor he saved us, for eight years, from some of the most extreme cruelties and transgressions of Republican lawmakers. Now he has wrested a senate seat from a hack of the worst sort.

Anita Earls is the most highly regarded state supreme court justice in the United States. Beyond that, Earls is so profoundly committed to a lifelong service to the people of North Carolina that she has campaigned from Murphy to Manteo as if she were a 20-year old prairie populist. Never has there been such a chasm, on the merits, between a judge and her electoral opponent. Even in a Paul Newby era, she gives hope to the rule of law.

A new crew of congresspersons stretches our imagination, and our prospects. Gov. Josh Stein is newly empowered. Robert Reives will become the speaker. Sydney Batch can't be far behind. The literally indefatigable Anderson Clayton has made it exciting to be a Tar Heel Democrat. Black North Carolinians have again taught our Republican adversaries that race discrimination can bite you. Latinos, apparently, haven't warmed to having their loved ones beaten and murdered on the streets. A gale force wind has swept across our politics. And, as we've always hoped, it blows from the South.

So you just accidentally pasted a headline, pasted a link and a description too and then hit submit on two different pages? OK.

We've had a voter ID requirement since 2018.

Weird that you didn't mention our new Democrat US Senator or the 5 (more likely 6 but we'll have to wait for the recount in the 5th district next week) US House seats Republicans lost? Or that the Dems now have a majority in the State House and might even split the Senate after the counting is done.

More: Although Montana's measure was the first to reach voters directly, the state is the second overall to try the maneuver " after Hawaii, where the governor signed similar legislation in May. Rather than directly restricting political spending, both versions would remove that power from the state corporate statutes that authorize companies, trade associations, and other "artificial persons" to operate in the first place.

Supporters say the strategy is crafted to avoid clashing with the Citizens United v. FEC ruling, which held that corporate election spending is protected by the First Amendment. But business groups, GOP politicians, and other opponents insist it will crash into the "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine, which prevents states from hinging the exercise of one right on the surrender of another.

NC's gerrymandering this year totally backfired. In both national and state level elections. I assume there will be a recount because the race was very close but as it stands currently that hag Virginia Foxx AKA "Satan's Meemaw" has lost her race. They tried to dilute Greensboro's blue voters with a bunch of red Appalachian counties and instead Greensboro may have just helped liberate the mountains.

The good new just keeps on coming:

"A day after Democrats won the House majority, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told his staff in a phone call this morning he will not stay on as Republican leader in the new Congress, according to four sources on the call."

More: Promises to improve the cost of living, protect Medicaid, deport only "the worst of the worst" and end foreign conflicts were not kept. Instead, masked federal agents terrorized our cities and killed innocent people, millions of Americans have lost health care coverage, and tariffs coupled with a needless war have made our economy worse.

Now, a historic Election Night has shown just how much they overplayed their hand. Even before midnight, it was clear that the midterms were a bloodbath for Republicans everywhere " an overwhelming repudiation of Trump and the party who has explicitly and implicitly supported him along the way. It was a blue tsunami, beyond Democrats' wildest dreams and Republicans' worst nightmares.

More: In a 50-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled that ICE repeatedly violated an existing court order governing warrantless immigration arrests in the Beaver State, with inaccurate reports, missing records and accounts that did not match what actually happened.

The judge's loss of confidence in the agency was so pronounced that he withdrew the usual presumption that government officials have properly performed their duties.

"This presumption no longer holds for defendants," Kasubhai wrote. "Defendants are held to the same expectation as any other litigant before this court. One must earn credibility by acting with integrity."

The ruling means ICE must now provide plaintiffs challenging its arrest practices with a much broader collection of records, including administrative arrest warrants, supporting evidence, documents given to detainees and body-camera footage from civil immigration arrests conducted since Sept. 1. The agency must also turn over previously disclosed material without redactions and repeat the court's instructions to relevant employees every 30 days.

Voted weeks ago. We could see historic change in NC today.

Not gonna hold my breath waiting for it though.

...but could it be because no one was looking for it the reason we are find it now?

I certainly won't mourn the loss of any Trump voters from the electorate.

Good news if true but I'm pretty sure we'll never hear a word about this again after the election is over.

More: It didn't take long after Trump's second win for Leyva to realize that he had been duped. First, he said, Trump seemed to obstruct the release of the Epstein files, which didn't live up to the MAGA-sphere hype when some of them were finally made public. Then the president did something he had said he wasn't going to do: start a war. Leyva now spends nearly twice as much on gas as he did last year"sometimes it costs him $300 a week. I ran into him outside a home-improvement store in Scottsdale, where voters will decide one of the nation's competitive congressional races. I asked whether he was planning to vote. "Hell no. I don't think it matters," he told me as he loaded blinds into his gleaming Toyota pickup. Trump was supposed to be different, Leyva said, but it turns out that he's just as bad as every other politician. Leyva doesn't think that he'll ever vote again.

Go team algae!

I'd bet on a private company getting there before any nation. So much money to be made out there eventually.

Hardly. We'll see a manned mission sometime in the next 20-30 years. Mars is the stepping stone to the riches of the asteroid belt.

Nice Freudian slip headline.

More: "Veterans know what real leadership looks like: you take care of the people under your command and you keep politics out of the mission," said Jose Vasquez, U.S. Army veteran and executive director of Common Defense. "Right now, nearly 8-in-10 veterans and military families say they're being left behind, and active-duty troops are telling us that politicization is pushing them toward the exit. That's not a talking point; it's a readiness crisis."

And service members have not been shy about admitting which leaders they blame. According to the poll, "Roughly 50 percent of veterans and active-duty service members said they disapproved of Trump as commander-in-chief, while 47 percent said they approved of him. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had a similar approval rating. Roughly 45 percent of respondents said they approved of him, while 50 percent said they disapproved. Another 56 percent said they approved of senior uniformed military commanders, such as top generals and admirals, while 27 percent said they disapproved."

Of course he'd have tried to bomb Saigon. Fyucking idiot.