North Dakota House lawmakers passed three bills Friday that would restrict transgender people’s access to bathrooms, remove sexually explicit materials from the children’s section of libraries, and expand child care assistance in the hopes of combating the state’s workforce shortage. The trans bill and sexual materials bill passed the House and Senate with veto-proof majorities, so the bills could become law without Republican Gov. Doug Burgum’s approval.

The U.S. military is embracing artificial intelligence as a tool for quickly digesting data and helping leaders make the right decision – and not to make those decisions for the humans in charge, according to two top AI advisors in U.S. Central Command. CENTCOM, which is tasked with safeguarding U.S. national security in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, just hired Dr. Andrew Moore as its first AI advisor.

Two U.S. Representatives from the state of Florida, Reps. Gus Bilirakis and Michael Waltz, have endorsed former President Donald Trump over their own state’s governor to be the next President of the United States. On Thursday, Rep. Bilirakis, R-Fla., released a statement calling Trump “the right leader” to best reverse the “disastrous policies of the Biden administration.

The Republican Party will hold its second presidential primary debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, according to Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. “I firmly believe that our next president will be on that stage,” McDaniel said Thursday, after announcing the library would host the debate.

Connecticut has paused granting prison commutations in the wake of an uproar over a drastic rise in the number of inmates having their sentences reduced, the governor announced Thursday. Conservative lawmakers and victims’ rights advocates had called for the suspension of commutations and a review of the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles policies after it was revealed that 71 commutations were granted in 2022. Just three were approved between 2017 and 2021.

A former CIA official testified that then-Biden campaign senior advisor, now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “played a role in the inception” of the public statement signed by current and past intelligence officials that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.