You Won’t Believe the New Way You Can Buy Bullets

It may become easier than ever before to lock and load guns in the United States, a country plagued by gun violence, thanks to a small business keen on selling bullets in possibly the simplest way imaginable: a vending machine.

American Rounds LLC currently has its bullet vending machine operations in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas, though the company has plans to expand to several other states. The Dallas-based company claims that its “automated ammo retail machines” utilize artificial intelligence to ensure potential buyers are of legal purchasing age. The one-stop drop shops can be found in eight different supermarkets across the trio of Southern states.

“As a company our team are supporters of law abiding responsible gun ownership,” said Grant Magers, CEO of American Rounds, in an email to Gizmodo. “We believe in the second amendment and that … a safe and secure method to sell ammunition is needed in the market.”

Magers told NPR in a separate statement that the ammo supply company intends to open another vending machine in Colorado this week and has had “requests” to bring their services to Hawaii, Alaska, California, Florida, and “every state in between for the most part.”

“We have currently about 200 grocery stores that we’re working on fulfilling orders on machines for,” Magers told the radio network.

American Rounds is of the belief that its service is safer than the traditional method of ammunition sales, which typically sees boxes stocked on shelves in gun stores or big-box stores, such as Walmart or Cabela’s. But selling just ammunition requires very little government oversight: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives does not require someone to obtain a federal license in order to sell bullets, and only a handful of states have passed laws necessitating background checks for their sale or purchase.

“If you look at the way it is currently sold in our country, we are the safest and most secure method of ammo retail sales on the market today,” Magers said, noting the machines also prevent underage customers from simply stealing boxes of bullets.

Critics of the easy-access machines argue that American Rounds isn’t providing any solutions that aren’t already presented by traditional gun retailers, who have the added ability to research whether someone’s criminal convictions prohibit them from buying ammunition, as well as assess a buyer’s mental and emotional state.

“A vending machine is not going to be able to say, ‘Hey are you OK?’ or ‘Why do you need this ammunition?’” George Tita, a professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine, told NPR.

Against the background of expanding weapons access, gun violence in the United States has become so ubiquitous that it is almost silent. In the first half of the year, 287 mass shootings across the country claimed the lives of 301 people and injured another 1,261, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

While the dam might not yet be breaking, there sure are plenty of leaks: Some Biden aides and operatives overseeing his reelection campaign now see his chances of winning against Trump at zero.

“No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path,” one person working to reelect Biden told NBC News.

Concerns of Biden’s viability have grown following his shockingly bad debate performance in late June. Biden’s campaign at the time brushed aside widespread concerns from Democrats as ephemeral angst from “the bedwetting brigade.” Now it seems even some on his campaign see the writing on the wall, with some aides discussing how best to convince Biden it’s time to sail off into the sunset.

One campaign official who spoke with NBC described a perfect storm of impasses for Biden and concerns about his mental fitness, fundraising, and unfavorable polling, with two-thirds of voters thinking he should step aside.

“We have this window, and the White House is just running out the clock, which is so selfish,” a longtime Democratic presidential campaign strategist told NBC. “We’re all waiting around for Joe Biden to f--- up again, which is not a great position to be in.”

“He needs to drop out,” another Biden campaign official told NBC. “He will never recover from this.”

Since his debate performance two weeks ago, Biden has said multiple times he will not leave the race.

“I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024,” Biden most recently wrote in a letter to Democrats on Monday. But nothing has been able to quell growing calls for Biden to step aside. On Wednesday, Politico reported deep blue New York is on the brink of becoming a swing state thanks to lackluster support for Biden, with local candidates being advised to avoid attaching themselves to him.

“I worry that the symbol of our party is the person who’s running for president and that that does absolutely trickle down to the down ballot races,” one state party chair told NBC News.

Despite those concerns, an internal memo to Biden campaign staff asserting that he still has a shot circulated on Thursday.

“Our internal data and public polling show the same thing: this remains a margin-of-error race in key battleground states,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote. “The movement we have seen, while real, is not a sea-change in the state of the race—while some of this movement was from undecided voters to Trump, much of the movement was driven by historically Democratic constituencies moving to undecided.”

“No one is denying that the debate was a setback,” they wrote. “But Joe Biden and this campaign have made it through setbacks before. We are clear eyed about what we need to do to win. And we will win by moving forward, unified as a party, so that every single day between now and election day we focus on defeating Donald Trump.”

It isn’t just Democrats and the rest of the American public: Diplomats and leaders attending the NATO summit are also worried about President Joe Biden’s mental fitness and the increasing likelihood of Trump winning in November.

“It’s a very weird feeling to be in Europe listening to the president of the United States, and you’re more stressed about whether he will go off script than being excited to listen to the leader of the free world,” one senior European diplomat told Politico.  “You’re worried if he knows which direction he’s going or whether he’s going to fall or what he’s going to forget or if he’ll say ‘North Korea’ when he meant ‘South Korea.’ It’s just a weird experience.”

The diplomats that Politico spoke to expressed concern about Trump returning to the White House and overhauling or even ending the alliance, which the former president and convicted felon has repeatedly promised he will do.

“Everyone’s focusing on Biden’s appearance and less on Trump’s statements about NATO,” a senior European diplomat said, also expressing concern about Trump’s age. “He’s not that much younger.”

Another diplomat was more frank.

“He didn’t look good,” the diplomat said about Biden, speaking on the condition of anonymity along with the rest of Politico’s sources within the visiting delegations.

As heads of state arrived on Wednesday for the summit, many faced questions from the media about their thoughts on whether Biden was in a weaker state following his widely panned debate performance from two weeks ago. None gave any clear praise or defense of Biden, instead dodging questions about the president and saying that they would respect America’s political process.

“I’m not going to comment on this topic,” said Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who walked off after speaking for just a few minutes.

While it’s not a campaign event, the summit has been critical for Biden to demonstrate that he can handle himself on the world stage with international leaders, and can thus reassure the public that he is up to another four years as president. But the visiting members of NATO have other, arguably more important concerns.

“All the Americans are looking for at this summit is the photo op of Biden with allies,” one official said. “We’re really concerned that the world will essentially be leaderless for the next several months, and then we don’t know what comes after that.”

President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are equally embarrassing, a new poll has found.

Both candidates were found cringeworthy by 63 percent of respondents, according to the Pew Research Center poll published Thursday. And respondents weren’t just mortified by the other party’s candidate: They seem to have gotten the ick from the candidate they supported, as well.

Thirty-seven percent of responding Biden supporters said that the president was embarrassing, while 33 percent of responding Trump supporters said that the former president was embarrassing. Egg on both their faces, then.

This newest poll comes just two weeks after Biden’s disastrous debate performance and amid a surge of dissent among the Democratic Party, which has grown desperate for the president to prove his mental fitness and ability to triumph over Trump in November.

While Biden wasn’t polling particularly strongly before, none of this has helped his numbers, which continue to trail behind Trump’s.

According to Pew’s poll, in a matchup between Trump and Biden, Trump was favored at 50 percent, while 47 percent supported Biden.

The Biden campaign is surveying voters about a head-to-head matchup between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, The New York Times reports.

Ever since Biden’s disastrous debate performance two weeks ago, a growing number of Democrats have raised questions about the president’s mental fitness and ability to win November’s election against Trump. This move signals that these questions are even being discussed within the campaign itself.

The Times report doesn’t reveal the results of that poll, but a flurry of outside polling reveals that Harris has a slight advantage over Biden in beating Trump in November.

“In addition to what we believe is a clear pathway ahead for us, there is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump,” a Thursday memo to Biden campaign staff read. “Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and surveys do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter.”

Biden says that he has no intention of stepping down, and is trying to tamp down calls for his replacement. He is holding a news conference on Thursday evening where he hopes to allay concerns about his age and cognitive state. But this news from his campaign suggests that even in his inner circle, those concerns still exist.

In recent days, several Democrats in Congress have called on Biden to drop out of the race, and Democratic leaders aren’t giving Biden their unconditional support, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Timothy Kaine, and even former President Barack Obama. Celebrities who have campaigned and fundraised for Democrats, like George Clooney, have also called on him to drop out from the race. 

In contrast, Trump and those in his orbit, such as his imprisoned former adviser Steve Bannon, want Biden to stay in the race because they think he is an easier opponent. Some conservative activists are even preparing legal strategies to keep Biden on the ballot in battleground states. At the same time, the Trump team has also put together a playbook in the event Harris does become the Democratic nominee for president.

The poll from the Biden-Harris campaign could be the first step in Harris replacing Biden on the ticket. Some Democrats have already suggested who could be Harris’s running mate. In the end, though, nothing will happen without Biden’s agreement, even as the calls for him to step down grow louder and louder.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin announced Thursday that the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to conduct a review of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, arguing that “Congress cannot turn a blind eye to it.” But the meeting won’t happen until September.

“During this upcoming hearing, we will examine the breadth of future misconduct that may be immunized from prosecution, consider the unprecedented nature of this immunity in American history, and discuss legislative solutions to the dangers of this decision,” Durbin, the committee chairman, said in a statement obtained by HuffPost.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee will not tolerate these justices cherry-picking their way through text and history to impose their own extreme vision of presidential power on the American people,” he said.

Details on the event are scant. The hearing does not yet have a specific date, and names of potential witnesses have not been revealed. It’s unclear what—if any—influence the September hearing will have on the judicial ruling, or if it will even happen in time to have any effect.

The announcement follows a groundswell of calls for increased checks and balances for the nation’s highest court, which has a history of ethics violations and has most recently made several dangerous rulings, stripping executive agencies of their authority and expanding the definition of presidential immunity. That new definition has effectively killed any criminal charges against Donald Trump related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, and for his involvement in stoking the January 6 attack his supporters led on the U.S. Capitol.

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday introduced impeachment articles against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both of whom have a recorded affinity for accepting lavish gifts from Republican billionaires. The articles include counts for failing to disclose financial income and gifts, as well counts for refusing to recuse themselves from cases that concerned either their spouse’s legal or financial benefits or their own.

In an incredibly literal interpretation of “fake it till you make it,” several fake electors will serve as delegates at the Republican National Convention next week, CNN reported Thursday. The fake electors—some of whom currently face criminal charges for their efforts to upend the 2020 presidential election results in support of Donald Trump—will serve as delegates for their state as part of the formal nomination process to confirm Trump as the Republican nominee.

Arizona’s delegation includes three people charged for their participation in a fake elector scheme, including state Senator Jake Hoffman, who pleaded not guilty last month to several felony charges alleging his participation in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results. Hoffman will serve on the Republican National Committee, which oversees the convention, alongside Georgia’s Amy Kremer, who helped organize the election-denialist rally at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, ahead of the Capitol riot.

Michigan’s delegation includes four people facing charges, including fake electors Matthew DePerno and former Michigan GOP Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock. DePerno is facing charges for breaching a voting machine in 2020, and Maddock pleaded not guilty in April to eight felony charges stemming from her alleged participation in a fake elector scheme. Pennsylvania is also sending three fake electors as delegates, according to documents reviewed by CNN.

CNN notes that prior to charges being dismissed against fake electors in Nevada, five of the state’s six fake electors were chosen by the Republican Party to attend the RNC. Pam Travis, a fake elector in Wisconsin, is also a delegate for the state, with fellow fake elector Robert Spindell serving as an alternate. Travis and Spindell are both prohibited from serving as electors in future elections as part of a settlement agreement brought against fake electors in Wisconsin.

“Election denialism is like the price of entry now,” former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger said. “These people that were in the fake elector scheme, or got a mugshot, they’re now the heroes of the movement, and they’ve taken over the party.”

RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly dismissed concerns, telling CNN, “State delegations are made up of delegates elected by their peers at the state party level.”

“This kind of far-right MAGA extremism on full display in today’s GOP is exactly why voters will reject Trump this November,” DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd told CNN.

An estimated 2,429 delegates will be attending the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, where they are expected to formally confirm Trump’s nomination as the Republican candidate for president. Trump needs 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican Party’s nomination, and received 2,243 in the primaries. Nikki Haley, who received 97 delegates before dropping out, released her delegates this week, directing them to choose Trump.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was one of 204 Republicans who voted for a (failed) resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for refusing to release audio tapes of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden—when just days earlier, he’d tried to stop the vote from happening altogether.

Johnson’s spinelessness was ultimately for nothing, as MAGA Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s “inherent contempt” resolution failed 204–210, with 19 members not voting.

If the resolution had passed, Garland would’ve been fined $10,000 for every day he did not comply with Republicans’ demands to turn over the audio recording, an attempt by the House GOP to turn up the heat on the attorney general, whom they voted to hold in contempt last month. When Biden asserted executive privilege over the recording to block Garland from releasing it, Republicans sued Garland to force his hand.

A total of four Republicans split with the rest of their party. Among them was Representative David Joyce, who also broke the party line in Garland’s contempt vote last month. This time, he was joined by Representatives Tom McClintock, John Duarte, and Mike Turner.

Despite the fact that House Republicans have already received transcripts of the interview, they have continued to demand its full audio. In reality, it appears that Republicans have been ceaselessly targeting Garland as part of their political retribution against the Department of Justice on behalf of Donald Trump.

Earlier this week, Johnson reportedly urged Luna to hold off on calling for a vote on her resolution. While Johnson said he was also concerned about Garland, he believed the House’s lawsuit to enforce their congressional subpoena was enough.

Obviously, Luna didn’t see things that way.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Luna claimed that the vote had failed due to Republican absences and said she had already refiled and planned to call a vote again when Congress returns to session.

While President Joe Biden meets with NATO members in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Donald Trump is having a foreign tête-à-tête of his own—albeit with a member of a starkly different crowd.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is scheduled to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Florida home, just days after the autocratic leader held private meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

The agenda of Trump and Orbán’s meeting is not entirely clear, though the war in Ukraine will likely be a topic of discussion, according to three sources that spoke with Reuters.

The visit will add fuel to growing concerns that Orbán is serving as a proxy between Trump and Putin, reported Bloomberg, and will likely upset a cohort of NATO allies who fear that Orbán’s meeting with the Russian ruler legitimized the country’s claim to the land it has invaded in Ukraine since the war began in 2022.

Foreign policy and national security analyst David Rothkopf slammed Trump’s meeting with Orbán. “Trump meeting Orban opposite NATO Summit immediately following Orban mtg w Putin and Xi is the sort of betrayal of the US that would’ve led to Congressional investigations or worse in the past,” Rothkopf wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Orbán, who was found earlier this year by the European Court of Justice to have violated the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of refugees*, was described by the late Senator John McCain as a “neofascist dictator.” He’s also curried a certain level of idolatry from the contemporary American right, and has become one of Trump’s strongest international allies.

*This article has been amended to clarify the Geneva Conventions that Orban violated.

Donald Trump claims that he has nothing to do with Project 2025 and has never heard of it, but a shocking number of his administration staffers and Cabinet secretaries played a part in putting together the political manifesto, CNN reports. 

At least 140 people who worked for Trump while he was president were involved in putting together the 900-page playbook, including six members of his Cabinet and four of his ambassadors. The first 20 pages of the document were written by his first deputy chief of staff.

More than half of the authors, editors, and contributors to the project’s manifesto on overhauling the executive branch titled “Mandate for Leadership” were Trump administration staffers, according to CNN’s investigation. Plus, several of the groups advising Project 2025 employ former Trump officials and staffers, including Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

CNN combed through the online biographies, LinkedIn profiles, and news articles for over 1,000 people listed in the directories for the 110 organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, in addition to the more than 200 names attached to the “Mandate for Leadership.” In total, almost 240 people have ties to both Trump and Project 2025.

The Project 2025 planning document outlines a dramatic overhaul of the federal government in line with Trump’s authoritarian aspirations, opening the floodgates for extreme policies to be enacted. The former president and convicted felon keeps trying to distance himself from the effort despite his many connections to it, giving Democrats easy lines of attack to point out his lies.

Trump seems to see associating with Project 2025 as bad for his presidential campaign even though it overlaps with his campaign promises. This could backfire on him because his repeated denials are alienating some of his most ardent supporters. The objective truth is that Project 2025 is not just a conservative wish list but also Trump’s, and he isn’t fooling anyone.