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Judge grants Jack Smith delay in Trump Jan. 6 case – Washington Examiner

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Judge grants Jack Smith delay in Trump Jan. 6 case – Washington Examiner


Judge Tanya Chutkan granted special counsel Jack Smith‘s request on Friday to delay proceedings in his election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

Chutkan postponed a hearing, initially scheduled for next week, until Sept. 5, according to a court order. The judge also pushed out the next deadline for court filings from Friday until the end of August, meaning the first substantive activity in the case likely will not occur until that time.

Both delays came in response to a surprise request from government prosecutors on Thursday to slow proceedings following the Supreme Court thrusting the case into a state of uncertainty with its ruling in July on presidential immunity.

Prior to the ruling, Smith had been eager to move the case along, repeatedly moving to expedite proceedings. At one point last year, for example, Smith asked the high court to step in and rule on immunity before the lower court had made a decision on it, anticipating that Trump would eventually take his argument to the Supreme Court anyways. The justices rejected Smith’s request.

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Prosecutors for Smith wrote Thursday in their postponement request that they are continuing to “assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States … including through consultation with other Department of Justice components.”

The prosecutors said those consultations were “well underway” but that the DOJ had not yet finalized its position on how to proceed with Trump’s case.

Chutkan’s order came as expected after Trump’s defense team signed onto Smith’s request, signaling the parties were in agreement on pushing the dates out.

Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has taken a relatively aggressive approach to the case by rejecting many of Trump’s prior requests and maintaining a pace with deadlines and hearing dates that some have described as a “rocket docket.”

Within 48 hours of receiving the order from the Supreme Court, Chutkan issued several decisions on it. The choice of the first week of September was of the earliest possible dates she could have chosen and signals she is aiming to continue to move the case along as rapidly as possible after it sat dormant for months while the immunity argument was pending before the Supreme Court.

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During the hearing, Chutkan and both parties are set to hammer out a pre-trial schedule, now that the landscape of the case has changed.

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The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling is expected to weaken Smith’s case drastically. The special counsel must now excise key items from his indictment, such as references to Trump’s interactions with his DOJ, so that it aligns with the high court’s decision that certain presidential activities are immune from criminal prosecution and also cannot be used as evidence against Trump.

Smith was supposed to give his first indication on Friday of how he plans to press forward with his charges in the wake of the new complications, but he now has three extra weeks to do this.



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Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury announces she’s pregnant

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Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury announces she’s pregnant


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Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury has announced that she and her husband Matt are expecting a baby in July.

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The couple made the announcement in a video on the Spirit’s social media channels, holding a baby goalkeeper jersey on the pitch at Audi Field.

Kingsbury becomes the most recent Spirit star to go on maternity leave, following defender Casey Krueger, midfielder Andi Sullivan and forward Ashley Hatch.

Sullivan gave birth to daughter Millie in July, while Hatch welcomed her son Leo in January.

Krueger announced she was pregnant with her second child in October.

Kingsbury has served as the Spirit’s starting goalkeeper since 2018, and has been named the NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year twice (2019 and 2021).

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The 34-year-old has two caps with the U.S. women’s national team, and was named to the 2023 World Cup roster.

The club captain will leave a major void for the Spirit, who have finished as NWSL runner-up in back-to-back seasons.

Sandy MacIver and Kaylie Collins are expected to compete for the starting role while Kingsbury is on maternity leave.

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The Spirit kick off their 2026 campaign on March 13 against the Portland Thorns.





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Washington state board awards Yakima $985,600 loan for Sixth Avenue project design

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Washington state board awards Yakima 5,600 loan for Sixth Avenue project design


Yakima could soon take a major step toward redesigning Sixth Avenue after the Washington State Public Works Board awarded the city a $985,600 loan.

The loan was approved for the design engineering phase of the Sixth Avenue project. The funding can also be used along Sixth Avenue for utility replacement and updated ADA use.

The Yakima City Council must decide whether to accept the award. If the council accepts it, the city’s engineering work will move forward with the design of Sixth Avenue.

The cost of installing trolley lines is excluded from the plan. The historic trolleys would need to raise the funds required to add trolley lines.

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The award is scheduled to be discussed during next week’s City Council meeting.



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Microsoft promises more AI investments at University of Washington

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Microsoft promises more AI investments at University of Washington


Microsoft will ramp up its investment in the University of Washington.

Brad Smith, the company’s president, made the announcement at a press conference with University of Washington President Robert Jones on Tuesday.

That means hiring more UW graduates as interns at Microsoft, he said.

And he said all students, faculty, and researchers should have access to free, or at least deeply-discounted, AI.

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“ Some of it is compute that Microsoft is donating, and some of it is pursuant to an agreement where, believe me, we give the University of Washington probably the best pricing that anybody’s gonna find anywhere,” Smith said. He assured the small group of reporters present that it would be “many millions of dollars of additional computational resources.”

The announcement today didn’t include any specific numbers.

But Smith said Microsoft has already invested $165 million in the UW over several decades.

He pointed to Jones’ vision to spur “radical collaborations with businesses and communities to advance positive change,” and eliminate “any artificial barriers between the university and the communities it serves.”

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Microsoft’s goal is for AI to help UW researchers solve some of the world’s biggest problems without introducing new ones.

At Tuesday’s announcement, several research students were present to demonstrate how AI supports their work.

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Amelia Keyser-Gibson is an environmental scientist at the UW. She’s using AI to analyze photographs of vines, to find which adapt best to climate change.

It’s a paradox: AI produces carbon emissions. At the same time, it’s also a new tool to help reduce them.

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So how do those things square for Keyser-Gibson?

“ That’s a great question, and honestly, I don’t know the answer to that,” she said. “I’m highly aware that there’s a lot of environmental impact of using AI, but what I can say is that this has allowed us to make research innovations that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”

“If we had had to manually annotate every single image that would’ve been an undergrad doing that for hours,” Keyser-Gibson continued. “And we didn’t have the budget. We didn’t have the manpower to do that.”

“AI exists. If we don’t use it as researchers, we’re gonna fall behind.”

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Microsoft reports on its own carbon emissions. But like most AI companies, it doesn’t reveal everything.

That’s one reason another UW student named Zhihan Zhang is using AI to estimate how much energy AI is using.



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