Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges from a superseding indictment released earlier this month, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.

Driving the news: U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert set a trial date for Santos for Sept. 9, 2024, according to the attorney's office.

The big picture: The superseding indictment included 10 charges against the embattled Republican, including conspiracy, wire fraud, false statement, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud.

A group of New York freshman House Republicans on Thursday forced a vote on a resolution to expel Santos from the House after he has repeatedly refused calls to resign.

Bankman-Fried testified Friday that he knew “basically nothing” about crypto before starting Alameda Research.

“I had absolutely no idea how they worked…I just knew they were things you could trade.”

When asked by his defense counsel why he founded Alameda Research in the fall of 2017, he said that at the time, “there was a ton of excitement, a ton of demand…” but not a lot of infrastructure for large trading firms.

SBF thought there was an 80% chance FTX would fail

Bankman-Fried testified Friday that he initially envisioned quickly selling FTX to cryptocurrency exchange Binance, since he "had no idea how we would get customers."

However, Binance ended up using an internal team to build out its own exchange platform. And the more he thought about it, Bankman-Fried said, the more he became convinced that he could grow FTX despite the challenge of attracting customers.

It began to feel "less hopeless, like maybe we could figure it out," SBF said.

"I thought there was maybe a 20% chance of success," and an 80% chance it would shut down after a few months, he told jurors. “Even that 20% chance was a huge opportunity, given that the biggest exchanges at the time were multibillion-dollar companies."

https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/sbf-testimony-before-jurors-ftx-fraud-trial/h_29fa4d4fed95a973853f0601067e32e0

To spend time around Dean Phillips, as I have since his first campaign for Congress in 2018, is to encounter someone so earnest as to be utterly suspicious. He speaks constantly of joy and beauty and inspiration, beaming at the prospect of entertaining some new perspective. He allows himself to be interrupted often—by friends, family, staffers—but rarely interrupts them, listening patiently with a politeness that almost feels aggravating. With the practiced manners of one raised with great privilege—boasting a net worth he estimates at $50 million—the gentleman from Minnesota is exactly that.

But that courtly disposition cracks, I’ve noticed, when he’s convinced that someone is lying. Maybe it’s because at six months old he lost his father in a helicopter crash that his family believes the military covered up, in a war in Vietnam that was sold to the public with tricks and subterfuge. I can hear the anger in his voice as he talks about the treachery that led to January 6, recalling his frantic search for some sort of weapon—he found only a sharpened pencil—with which to defend himself against the violent masses who were sacking the U.S. Capitol. I can see it in his eyes when Phillips, who is Jewish, remarks that some of his Democratic colleagues have recently spread falsehoods about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and others in the party have refused to condemn blatant anti-Semitism.

Deception is a part of politics. Phillips acknowledges that. But some deceptions are more insidious than others. On the third Saturday of October, as we sat inside the small, sun-drenched living room of his rural-Virginia farmhouse, Phillips told me he was about to do something out of character: He was going to upset some people. He was going to upset some people because he was going to run for president. And he was going to run for president, Phillips explained, because there is one deception he can no longer perpetuate.

“My grave concern,” the congressman said, “is I just don’t think President Biden will beat Donald Trump next November.”

This isn’t some fringe viewpoint within the Democratic Party. In a year’s worth of conversations with other party leaders, Phillips told me, “everybody, without exception,” shares his fear about Joe Biden’s fragility—political and otherwise—as he seeks a second term. This might be hyperbole, but not by much: In my own recent conversations with party officials, it was hard to find anyone who wasn’t jittery about Biden. Phillips’s problem is that they refuse to say so on the record. Democrats claim to view Trump as a singular threat to the republic, the congressman complains, but for reasons of protocol and self-preservation they have been unwilling to go public with their concerns about Biden, making it all the more likely, in Phillips’s view, that the former president will return to office.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/10/dean-phillips-joe-biden-2024-primary/675784/

Elon Musk wants X to be the center of your financial world, handling anything in your life that deals with money. He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, he told X employees during an all-hands call on Thursday, saying that people will be surprised with “just how powerful it is.”

“When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “If it involves money. It’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the company sees this becoming a “full opportunity” in 2024. “It would blow my mind if we don’t have that rolled out by the end of next year,” Musk said.

The company is currently working on locking down money transmission licenses across the US so that it can offer financial services. Musk told employees Thursday that he hopes to get the others X needs in “the next few months.”

Taylor Swift has another accolade to add to her lengthy resume this year: America’s favorite pop star is now a billionaire, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

The outlet, which runs the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, said Swift’s total net worth is now at $1.1 billion, thanks to a record-breaking Eras tour that helped boost the US economy this summer.

Bloomberg said Swift is one of the few entertainers to reach that status based on just her music and performance.

Chris Leyden, director of growth marketing at SeatGeek, previously told CNN that “Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour is rewriting the playbook of entertainment economics.”

Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota has decided to challenge President Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and will launch his 2024 campaign on Friday in New Hampshire, where he will file to appear on the state's primary ballot.

"I am. I have to," Phillips told CBS News chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa in an exclusive interview for "CBS Mornings" that will air on Friday, when asked whether he is making a late entry into the Democratic race.

In the interview, Phillips, 54, said he admires Mr. Biden, 80, but believes it is time for a new generation of Democrats to lead the party, especially with former President Donald Trump poised to potentially be the Republican presidential nominee.

Phillips said he has studied polling data and is alarmed about the prospect of Trump beating Mr. Biden, should the 2024 election end up becoming rematch of the 2020 race.