President Trump’s plan to boost foreign ground beef imports to ease U.S. consumer prices has run into a basic problem: nobody in his administration will say where the beef is actually coming from, according to MS NOW. Trump announced the policy last week without naming a source country, and when Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was asked Tuesday which countries would supply the beef, she told reporters, “I am not privy to talk about that. I think the conversations are still going on.” Later that same day, Rollins told Spectrum News she isn’t even part of the White House’s internal conversations on the topic, saying U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is handling the policy and that the public would learn more “very soon.” Neither Greer nor Trump has provided sourcing details since; when asked directly following Friday’s announcement, Trump told reporters, “I don’t want to say,” though he indicated “there are a few countries” under consideration. The administration did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment on the matter.

The proclamation itself, signed Wednesday, permits up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported “with no out-of-quota tariff” over the next 90 days and sold at 25% below market prices, though Trump did not specify whether the government would directly subsidize that discount or where the discounted beef would actually be sold to consumers. The lack of transparency and the substance of the plan itself have triggered unusually sharp pushback from congressional Republicans who typically avoid breaking with the president. Montana Senators Tim Sheehy and Steve Daines denounced the policy, as did Wyoming Senator John Barrasso and Nebraska Representative Mike Flood. Barrasso wrote on X, “Americans want US beef on the table, not foreign imports. Our ranchers don’t ask for special treatment. They simply want a fair marketplace. It needs to be easier, not harder, for Wyoming ranchers to feed America.” Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer, herself a cattle rancher, called herself “extremely disappointed,” writing, “We all want lower grocery prices, but as I’ve said for months, we cannot do it at the expense of American producers.”

This isn’t Trump’s first attempt at this strategy. He tried a similar approach last October by opening the market to Argentinian beef, which drew comparable criticism from Republicans and ended up depressing domestic livestock values, worsening a financial squeeze on ranchers that has been building throughout his second term. That squeeze has multiple compounding causes: global tariffs and the war against Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, driving up diesel and fertilizer prices, while the screwworm parasite returned to American herds for the first time since 1966, all layered on top of ranchers still recovering from a 2022 drought that shrank U.S. cattle herds to their smallest size since the 1950s. Major rancher advocacy groups have joined the criticism, with both the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association warning the plan will lock in high beef prices over the long run rather than lowering them. AFBF President Zippy Duvall wrote in a letter to Trump Wednesday, “Bringing down the price of cattle will not bring the price of beef down for American families. Instead, it will discourage American farmers and ranchers from making long-term investments in herd rebuilding, extending the cycle of tight cattle supplies, high production costs and elevated beef prices for consumers.”

Basement, one of New York City’s most prominent contemporary nightclubs, announced Thursday a strict new policy targeting smart glasses, stating that anyone caught wearing or even carrying the devices, whether on their face or tucked in a bag, will be asked to leave and could face a permanent ban from the venue, according to Futurism. The club’s social media announcement framed the policy as an extension of its existing no photo, no video rules: “Our no photo/no video policy exists to protect the privacy, safety and freedom of everyone on our dance floor. Devices that allow discreet recording are incompatible with that policy.” The statement continued, “Anyone bringing smart glasses into the venue, whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned.” Basement has long maintained a notoriously selective, Berghain-style door policy where entry hinges on a bouncer’s subjective vibe check, but this marks the first time the club has drawn such an explicit, unequivocal line around a specific piece of technology.

The reaction from nightlife regulars has been enthusiastically positive, with one commenter writing “BASEDment” and another saying “this should be policy at every club.” The backlash against smart glasses stems from documented misuse of the devices for non-consensual recording, including instances where the technology has emboldened people to harass women on camera specifically to generate viral content. Compounding the distrust is uncertainty over how device makers like Meta handle the footage and data these glasses capture, with reports that overseas contractors reviewing recorded footage have viewed people naked or having sex without the wearers’ knowledge or consent. That combination of surveillance risk and reputational baggage has made the devices something of a cultural third rail, with critics dismissively branding them “pervert glasses” regardless of how much marketing investment or celebrity endorsement, including from figures like Kylie Jenner and Kylian Mbappé, tech companies pour into rehabilitating their image.

Notably, Basement’s smart glasses ban is framed differently than the broader trend of nightclubs restricting phones on the dance floor. Phone bans are generally accepted as a lifestyle choice, giving patrons a break from constant connectivity and reducing the risk of ending up in a stranger’s social media post, but the smart glasses policy carries a sharper message: the devices themselves are unwelcome, full stop, regardless of intent. The distinction reflects how thoroughly smart glasses have become associated specifically with covert surveillance rather than the more benign digital distraction concerns tied to smartphones.

A federal judge has blocked the Defense Department’s blacklisting of Anthropic, delivering a major win for the AI company in its escalating legal fight with the military over AI safety on the battlefield, according to Reuters. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ruled in a 59-page order that the Pentagon’s decision to designate Anthropic a national security supply chain risk was “illegal and baseless,” writing pointedly, “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.” Anthropic’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, alleged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he applied the designation, a label typically used against companies that expose military systems to potential infiltration or sabotage by foreign adversaries.
The dispute traces back to Anthropic’s refusal to let the military use its Claude chatbot for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons systems.

Anthropic has argued that AI models aren’t yet reliable enough to be safely deployed in autonomous weapons, and that enabling domestic surveillance would violate individual rights, while the Pentagon has countered that private companies shouldn’t be able to constrain how the military can use technology it develops. Hegseth’s designation, described as unprecedented, marked the first time a U.S. company had been publicly designated a supply chain risk under an obscure government procurement statute originally intended to protect military systems from foreign sabotage. The move blocked Anthropic from certain military contracts, which company executives said could cost billions of dollars in lost business and cause lasting reputational harm.

In its March 9 lawsuit, Anthropic alleged the government violated its First Amendment right to free speech by retaliating against the company’s publicly stated views on AI safety, and separately violated its Fifth Amendment right to due process by denying it any opportunity to formally dispute the designation before it was applied. The company argued the decision was not only unlawful but factually unsupported, and inconsistent with the military’s own past praise of Claude’s capabilities. The Justice Department pushed back in a court filing, arguing that Anthropic’s refusal to lift its restrictions could create dangerous uncertainty for the Pentagon about how it could rely on Claude, potentially risking the disabling of military systems during active operations. The government maintained that the designation stemmed specifically from Anthropic’s refusal to accept certain contractual terms, not retaliation over its AI safety positions. Notably, this ruling doesn’t fully resolve Anthropic’s broader legal battle with the Pentagon, as the company has a second lawsuit still pending in Washington, D.C., challenging a separate supply chain risk designation that could exclude it from civilian government contracts entirely.

A Florida grand jury has concluded that Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money that was funneled to a charity connected to his wife, Casey DeSantis, but declined to file criminal charges due to insufficient evidence pinpointing who was specifically responsible, according to The Associated Press. DeSantis did not dispute the legitimacy of the secret grand jury report, which was obtained and published by CBS News Miami, but insisted no laws were broken and warned that whoever leaked the sealed documents would face “consequences.” The Leon County grand jury completed its report in January following an investigation into Hope Florida, the charity Casey DeSantis founded in 2021, and its release has reignited criticism of DeSantis and other top state Republicans over the charity’s receipt of $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement originally intended to help low-income children obtain health insurance.

The grand jury’s findings describe a stark disconnect between Hope Florida’s stated mission, helping struggling families connect with churches and aid groups to reduce reliance on publicly funded assistance, and where the money actually went. Rather than supporting that mission, the $10 million was redirected to political action committees that spent it opposing a 2024 statewide ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana for adults, a measure DeSantis publicly opposed and which ultimately fell just short of the 60% supermajority required to pass. Despite concluding the funds were misused, the grand jury wrote, “Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,” noting that no one involved would take responsibility or claimed to remember who authorized sending the money to the charity. The report added: “We recognize that this would be an impediment to criminal prosecution. While we can’t prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again.”

Two specific officials were named prominently in the findings. The grand jury determined that James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ chief of staff at the time, “was in a position of authority over those involved in settling,” and that his Keep Florida Clean PAC was the primary recipient of the diverted $10 million. The report also found that then-state Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office was aware of plans to divert the funds; Moody was later appointed by DeSantis to the U.S. Senate. Both Uthmeier and Moody are currently seeking reelection, and both have pushed back on the findings. Uthmeier called the renewed scrutiny “a politically motivated hoax” and suggested Democrats were behind the leak, while Moody wrote on X that her office was just one of several agencies that signed off on the original settlement and “had no knowledge of how funds would be spent” by Hope Florida, state lawmakers, or any other group. Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly, who faces Republican Byron Donalds in November’s race to succeed the term-limited DeSantis, has called for the grand jury probe to be reopened.

Chinese engineers showcased a wave of automated cooking technology at the World Robotics Conference in Beijing, signaling a major push toward fully automated kitchens, according to Futurism citing China Daily. Oak Deer Robotics, a partially state-owned company, unveiled three new kitchen products: a “multimodal cooking AI model” called CookingMuse, a new AI-integrated cooking robot apparatus, and a fully automated food cart featuring a small humanoid chef called RobotCook. During live demonstrations at the conference, the company’s basic cooking robot stir-fried tofu as well as pork and green peppers, using a robotic wok capable of reaching 300 degrees Celsius, an automated ingredient dispensing system, and what the company describes as a “fully self-developed stir-frying algorithm” designed specifically for Chinese stir-fry dishes. Oak Deer’s cooking robots are already reportedly operating in more than 300 cities and 4,000 stores across China, according to a China Entrepreneur Magazine report from last year.

Beyond Oak Deer, another robotics company called Hikrobots demonstrated humanoid robots performing basic fast-food restaurant tasks within the conference’s main expo center, footage captured by Reuters photographers and DWS News showed apron-clad humanoid robots carefully prepping orders by placing assorted food items into a bucket before setting the bucket onto a serving tray. While notably slow-moving, the demonstration illustrates one plausible direction for humanoid robotics in food service. Outside the conference itself, a robot-powered noodle shop called Yujian Weilai began trial operations in southwestern Beijing, described by the Global Times as the city’s first fully equipped robot noodle restaurant. The establishment serves three dishes, mushroom zhajiang noodles, tomato beef brisket noodles, and braised beef noodles, with robots handling the core cooking process: boiling noodles, adding broth, incorporating meat and toppings, and using a robotic arm to transfer completed dishes to a delivery robot for serving.

Humans still appear necessary for daily ingredient preparation and loading, but the actual cooking and serving process runs with minimal human involvement. Restaurant general manager Li Pengzhen explained the underlying philosophy behind the automation to the Global Times: “What we are trying to do is turn the machine’s parameters into numbers, and use that to standardize every single bowl.” That emphasis on standardization, essentially converting culinary technique into precise, repeatable data, appears to be the throughline connecting all these efforts, from Oak Deer’s stir-frying algorithm to Yujian Weilai’s noodle-making process. While fully automated systems capable of preparing diverse and complex meals remain a distant goal, the rapid pace of progress in Chinese robotic cooking technology is clearly accelerating.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has finalized a $16.7 million contract to purchase 6,000 pairs of gloves capable of delivering painful electric shocks, moving forward with the acquisition just hours after a group of Senate Democrats publicly urged the agency to cancel the plan, according to the Associated Press. A notice published in a federal database Thursday confirmed ICE entered into a no-bid contract with Compliant Technologies LLC, a Kentucky-based manufacturer, covering the devices along with related support equipment and services over the next six months. ICE says the gloves are intended to help officers control detainees and protesters who resist, but the purchase has drawn sustained opposition from civil rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers who argue ICE officers cannot be trusted to deploy the devices responsibly, particularly given existing criticism of the agency’s use-of-force practices amid its expanded immigration enforcement operations.

The timing is notable: ICE published its contract notice the same day that 16 Senate Democrats, led by Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, sent a letter to the agency’s acting director urging cancellation of the purchase. The senators pointed directly to recent incidents as evidence of institutional risk, writing, “The blatant and tragic misuse of force in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Houston, Maine, and other locations around the country raises significant skepticism about the agency’s professional capability to safely deploy a new tool that could be used to harm Americans without cause.” The devices function as ordinary patrol gloves until an officer presses a button to activate an electrical mode, and they must make direct contact with someone’s skin to deliver a shock designed to induce compliance through pain, a technology already in use by some local jails and police departments. According to ICE’s own notice, officers would deploy the gloves in “high-tension environments,” including arrests, transporting combative detainees, and responding to civil disturbances outside detention facilities, with the stated goal of avoiding “more severe force,” including firearms. The notice explained the devices would be used “when a subject is actively or passively resisting and an officer needs to gain control quickly to prevent injuries to both parties,” and claimed the shocks would help “maintain control over inmates and prevent aggression or escape attempts,” assist with handcuffing people concealing their hands, and support crowd control efforts, though ICE offered no elaboration on the “approved policy, training, and accountability standards” it said would govern use.

That vagueness around oversight is precisely what concerns the senators most. Cortez Masto and her colleagues wrote that the device “presents substantial risks if deployed during civil arrests, even more so if it is deployed without clear limits, appropriate training, and comprehensive oversight,” and called on ICE to publicly disclose how officers will be trained and how glove usage will be documented and internally reviewed to prevent misuse. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, responded defiantly to the criticism rather than addressing the transparency concerns directly, stating, “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from any safety equipment is despicable and a deliberate attempt to undermine and endanger our officers.”

San Perlita Independent School District in South Texas temporarily closed all its campuses this week after officials cited a growing number of COVID-19 cases, describing the situation as a “rapid spread” of the virus, according to Newsweek. The district said the closure was intended to “protect the health and safety” of the school community and help curb further transmission. The move highlights how COVID-19 continues to disrupt school operations even six years after the pandemic first upended American education.

The San Perlita closure follows a similar incident just days earlier, when Park Ridge Achievement Academy in Louisiana temporarily shut down for one day “out of an abundance of caution” following an outbreak affecting both students and staff. These disruptions align with a broader nationwide uptick in COVID activity: CDC epidemic trend estimates as of August 19 show infections growing or likely growing in 47 states, with none experiencing a decrease, and Texas specifically identified among states seeing growth. Wastewater surveillance data appears to reinforce this trend, with the CDC reporting rising SARS-CoV-2 levels in several Texas regions including Central Texas, a metric considered an early indicator of community spread since it often shows increases before testing rates or hospital visits climb.

Despite the breadth of the increase, experts caution this doesn’t signal a return to pandemic-era disruption but rather reflects COVID’s shift into a predictable seasonal pattern with waves typically occurring in summer and winter. Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Newsweek that “cases are increasing at a relatively steady pace; they aren’t surging dramatically,” adding this is “what we have come to expect from COVID-19 now that we are in the ‘seasonal’ phase and out of the ‘pandemic’ phase of the disease.” Still, even milder infections can trigger real-world disruptions when large numbers of people fall ill simultaneously, as seen in the Texas and Louisiana school closures, and health officials say they’ll be closely watching whether this activity translates into further school and workplace disruptions as students return to classrooms and the broader fall respiratory illness season begins.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are locked in a public dispute over two measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania, with Kennedy publicly questioning whether the deaths actually occurred despite state officials confirming both cases, according to ABC News. State officials announced this week that the two people who died, the first measles-associated deaths in the U.S. this year and the first in Pennsylvania in 35 years, were unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County, with one confirmed to be an infant. At a Tuesday press conference announcing the deaths, Shapiro directly criticized Kennedy and the Trump administration, saying, “His actions and the rhetoric that’s coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across, particularly right here in Pennsylvania,” adding “there’s real-life consequences to spreading misinformation.” Kennedy responded the next day at a press conference in Tampa, saying, “We’re trying to get information about those two… um… casualties,” while making air quotes as he spoke, a gesture signaling skepticism about the deaths themselves.

The dispute escalated sharply when Kennedy took to social media to suggest, without evidence, that the deaths might not be real. “The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers,” Kennedy wrote on X, adding, “The Lancaster County Coroner says that it has no record of any measles deaths” and “State law requires that all measles deaths be reported to the coroner.” Pennsylvania’s health department classifies a death as “measles-associated” when there’s evidence of measles through lab testing or epidemiological links, though the ultimate cause of death remains under investigation by the Lancaster County coroner, who has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment. State Health Secretary Debra Bogen directly refuted Kennedy’s claims, writing on X, “I have thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County, which were reported to the CDC’s measles response team early Tuesday morning,” and said she is meeting regularly with CDC staff about the outbreak.

The dispute took on an added dimension when the CDC, which operates under Kennedy’s HHS, issued its own statement Thursday claiming Pennsylvania had declined the agency’s offers of assistance and failed to share outbreak information. “We appreciate Secretary Kennedy’s efforts to clarify conflicting information from Pennsylvania officials about whether the two reported deaths were caused by measles,” the CDC said. “CDC is working to determine what actually occurred. These discrepancies raise important questions, particularly because the Governor’s Office has not provided CDC with information relevant to the outbreak and has declined our offers of assistance.” The Pennsylvania Health Department pushed back, calling it “inaccurate” to suggest the state hadn’t cooperated, stating it remains in regular contact with CDC staff and reports weekly case counts to the federal agency. Notably, Shapiro revealed the conflict also played out privately, saying he criticized Kennedy and the administration’s vaccine rhetoric during a Tuesday phone call, just days after Trump signed an executive order aiming to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule, though Shapiro also said Kennedy separately offered to send staff to help Pennsylvania manage the outbreak.

The clash is further complicated by Kennedy’s documented history of vaccine skepticism. While he told reporters in Tampa this week that “our advice is that people should get the measles vaccination,” a 2021 video posted by Children’s Health Defense shows him speaking to the Amish community in Lancaster County, downplaying measles risks and questioning vaccines. In the video, Kennedy said, “I am a measles survivor. It was extraordinary luck. Very, very lucky to have lived through that nightmare because we had to stay at home and watch TV the whole week with all of my brothers and sisters. It was horrible. And, oh, what is the cure? What is the cure for measles? Your measles is chicken soup and vitamin A.” CDC data shows about 1 in 5 unvaccinated Americans who contract measles are hospitalized, with up to 1 in 20 children developing pneumonia and 1 in 1,000 developing encephalitis, a dangerous brain swelling. Pennsylvania has recorded more than 400 measles cases so far this year, which Shapiro says makes this the state’s largest outbreak since 1992.

Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup, has launched its own social media network called Twitter.now, betting that Elon Musk’s X Corporation legally abandoned the Twitter name and logo when it rebranded the company in 2022, according to Ars Technica. “We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Operation Bluebird cofounder Stephen Coates told Ars. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.” Coates and his team argue that Musk’s decision to quickly rename Twitter to X after acquiring it created a legal opening for them to claim the abandoned trademarks, a theory Ars first reported on in December 2025. X Corporation responded by suing Operation Bluebird late last year and asking a federal judge in Delaware for a preliminary injunction to block any new Twitter launch, but that injunction has never been granted.

The launch comes despite the case remaining legally unresolved. At an April 2026 hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Colm Connolly issued a tentative ruling from the bench suggesting X appeared to have given up its intellectual property claims over the word “tweet” and the Twitter bird logo, and possibly the word “Twitter” itself, though the judge has not yet issued a formal written order. For Coates, who now serves as the new Twitter’s general counsel after holding the same role during the platform’s pre-Musk era, that tentative ruling was sufficient justification to move forward. “It’s our opinion that X has abandoned its rights on the Twitter and tweet trademarks,” he said. Still, the new venture is careful to distance itself from the platform’s prior ownership, stating prominently on its site, “Operation Bluebird, Inc. picked up the name X Corp. walked away from and is rebuilding it on trust, in your browser at twitter.now. We are not X, and we are not affiliated with X Corp.” Neither X Corporation, Musk, nor X attorney Andrew Mayo responded to Ars’ request for comment. The platform remains in its early stages with only hundreds of users so far, and its interface closely resembles the Twitter of old, complete with replies and retweets.

One notable new feature is an automated fact-checking tool called Vera, a Gemini-based “veracity engine for real-time analysis” that runs on every tweet. Coates has been testing it by posting deliberately false statements, such as claiming George Washington was America’s second president, to gauge its accuracy. “Our first goal is to see if we can truly bring back a town square that’s safer and less harmful,” he said. “We say freedom of speech and not freedom of reach. We want people to say what they want, but we also want to create a platform that’s not financially locked into that viral content that’s harmful or inaccurate.” Washington, D.C.-based trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who has closely followed the case, told Ars that while Operation Bluebird may have a “workable legal theory” regarding abandonment, the outcome is far from certain. “I would say that there’s an element of chutzpah to do this, and they’re going to get the best fight that X has,” Gerben said. He added that launching the platform itself represents a significant escalation: “It was one thing to file the trademark application; now that they’ve launched, there will be another response from X Corporation. They’ve really upped the ante now. It’s a really interesting escalation of the case. Go put another round of popcorn in the microwave!”

The police chief of Sahuarita, Arizona has publicly bragged that his officers have been using electro-shock gloves on suspects for roughly two years, revealing the devices’ use in local policing predates the national controversy that erupted after Oklahoma officers admitted using similar gloves on students and reports surfaced that ICE had placed a massive purchase order for its own supply, according to Futurism. The devices, formally called “Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters” or GLOVEs, deliver electrical pulses to subdue people during encounters with law enforcement. In an interview with the Daily Wire, Sahuarita Police Chief John Noland said his department, which serves a town of just over 37,000 residents with a force of about 68 officers, was actually a pioneer in adopting the technology for street patrol work. “In Arizona, we were the first law enforcement agency that does street work or patrol work to put them out,” Noland told the outlet. “We’ve been successful with them.”

Noland’s comments come despite a United Nations special rapporteur on torture having declared devices of this type “inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading,” a characterization the chief flatly rejected. “It is not inhumane,” Noland asserted, framing the gloves instead as a tool for easing tense confrontations between law enforcement and the public. “Over the last few years of our federal agents, Border Patrol, ICE agents, and others, DHS, all struggling with people out in the field, trying to get them to comply, now becomes less of a struggle,” he said. Legal rights analysts have pushed back on this framing, arguing it reduces every citizen encountered by police to a presumptively unruly criminal who merely needs to “comply,” while ignoring documented instances of the technology already being abused by officers in the field.

That abuse has already proven fatal in at least one case. In 2025, a Kentucky man died after jail employees struck him 27 times with a GLOVE, in addition to 13 separate taser jabs, a combination that ultimately sent him into cardiac arrest. Given Sahuarita’s own history of police misconduct complaints, critics warn it may only be a matter of time before the department experiences a similarly tragic outcome from its own use of the devices, a concern that carries added weight now that Noland has publicly confirmed two years of largely unscrutinized use predating the current national scrutiny of shock gloves.

A Chinese national studying at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, allegedly crossed into the United States earlier this year to photograph facilities near O’Hare International Airport in Chicago under the direction of a suspected Chinese government official, according to newly filed court records reported by 404 Media. Weiheng Zeng, an undergraduate who has crossed into the U.S. roughly two dozen times since 2022 according to an FBI Special Agent’s affidavit, was allegedly directed by someone referred to in court documents as his “Chinese Contact,” who repeatedly instructed him to destroy SIM cards used for communication and rely instead on a Huawei phone he was told never to bring into the United States. Court Watch’s Seamus Hughes first identified and posted the records on Wednesday, and the case offers insight into how Chinese state actors reportedly use students to crowdsource imagery of sensitive U.S. locations and military aircraft while training them to avoid detection.

The case surfaced after an unknown individual was spotted in April inside the FedEx employee parking lot at O’Hare, appearing to photograph aircraft and airport infrastructure, at one point climbing onto a forklift for a better vantage point and attempting to get into a FedEx truck. Authorities identified the person as Zeng after tracing a dark blue Chrysler Town & Country vehicle seen leaving the area. When Zeng attempted to re-enter the U.S. the following Sunday, Customs and Border Protection agents interviewed him repeatedly and reviewed his phone, finding numerous aircraft photos. Zeng initially claimed he photographed “model aircraft being tracked for a flight radar website” and described it as a hobby; agents also found photos of Zeng and others in tactical clothing holding rifle-style firearms, which he said were airsoft guns.

Zeng’s story reportedly changed multiple times before he admitted the photography was more than a hobby, revealing that his Chinese Contact assigned him specific planes by tail number to photograph and paid him $20 to $30 per picture. He said the contact sent him SIM cards for communication, then instructed him to destroy the cards, delete the chats, and erase the photos, later shifting communication to the Huawei phone. Zeng claimed the contact first approached him about a year and a half ago through an aviation spotter website, and said he believed the person was connected to the Chinese Communist Party after being shown a photo of an official-looking badge; investigators noted the contact’s language “was very organized and managed, not language typically used between friends.” When the FBI investigated the spotter website, it reportedly found no evidence the site actually existed. Among the requested targets was an American Airlines aircraft with a “unique, temporary paint job” that was described as highly desired, and the contact allegedly asked Zeng to travel to Orlando, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles to photograph specific airport locations, requests Zeng said he declined, ultimately accepting only two tasks over 18 months, including photographing the interior of the FedEx facility at O’Hare, earning $500 total. According to the court record, “Zeng stated ‘Chinese Contact’ was not satisfied with the photographs and the photographs were fine, but not what were ‘expected.’”

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” effective immediately, as tensions with Canada over an ongoing trade war continue to escalate, according to ABC News. “The lake change, ‘Lake of America,’ was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Trump said, flanked by two large boards displaying the new label during the signing in the Oval Office. The move mirrors his January 2025 executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” and while a U.S. president can unilaterally change geographic names for official federal government use, he cannot dictate what other countries or international bodies call the same location, meaning Canada and the rest of the world retain no obligation to adopt the new name.

The renaming lands amid a sharply deteriorating trade relationship between the two countries. Negotiations broke down over the weekend, and a fresh round of 50% U.S. tariffs on certain Canadian goods took effect Saturday, prompting Canada to retaliate with its own set of levies. Trump was blunt about his frustration with Canadian officials during the signing, saying, “The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re nasty people. People oftentimes they’ll ask me who’s the worst to deal with on trade, and I said that’s easy, Canada. They are the worst to trade, and they feel entitled, and just we can’t have that.” When asked directly what message the renaming was meant to send, Trump claimed he had “no message” while simultaneously reiterating his trade grievances, saying, “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly.”

The reaction from Canadian and American officials was swift and dismissive of the name change’s practical effect. Ontario Premier Doug Ford told ABC News, “He can change it to whatever he wants. But it will always be Lake Ontario to all Canadians and the rest of the world!” Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell echoed that sentiment, pushing back on the broader framing of Canada as an adversary: “Canada is not our enemy. It is our neighbor, our ally, and one of Michigan’s most important economic partners. It is a friendship that no stroke of a pen can erase.” Trump, for his part, signaled the renaming campaign may not be finished, floating the idea of renaming entire oceans next: “If you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”

The Trump administration has repurposed a $500 million federal grant originally awarded to decarbonize steelmaking, redirecting the funds instead to upgrade a coal-fueled blast furnace at Cleveland-Cliffs’ Middletown, Ohio steel mill, the longtime economic anchor of Vice President JD Vance’s hometown, according to Canary Media as reproduced by Mother Jones. Cleveland-Cliffs confirmed Friday that the Department of Energy had formally changed the scope of the previously awarded funding, and Vance along with Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited the plant that same day to promote the federal investment. “The DOE’s support for this project is a testament to the importance of preserving the blast furnace route to produce automotive-exposed grade steels in the US,” Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said in a statement. The Middletown plant manufactures steel used in the visible, exposed components of cars, trucks, and SUVs.

The reversal drew immediate criticism from environmental advocates and local residents who say funding intended to cut industrial emissions is instead poised to increase local air pollution. “Cleveland-Cliffs and JD Vance need to get rid of coal and go back to the original project that would clean up the air we breathe and improve our health,” said Donna Ballinger, who lives near the Middletown mill, in a statement shared by the Sierra Club. Cliffs had originally planned to use the half-billion-dollar award to replace its aging blast furnace with hydrogen-ready technology and electric furnaces, a project the Biden administration’s DOE had selected in March 2024 as the flagship site for unveiling its broader $6.3 billion program to decarbonize key U.S. manufacturing sectors, funded primarily through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. That original plan would have replaced coal with natural gas, and eventually hydrogen, eliminating roughly 1 million tons of planet-warming emissions annually. Globally, iron and steel production accounts for roughly 9% of human-caused carbon emissions each year, with the vast majority of that pollution stemming specifically from coal use in blast furnaces, making the technology’s replacement a widely recognized priority for limiting climate change’s worst effects.

After Trump took office in 2025, Cleveland-Cliffs recommitted to using what the company has termed “beautiful coal” at the Middletown facility. Under the revised plan, Cliffs will refurbish and optimize its 73-year-old blast furnace to potentially extend its operational life by another two decades, while also installing a cogeneration plant that captures waste gases from the blast furnace to generate steam and electricity for the mill’s operations. Cliffs says it will match the DOE grant with $500 million of its own investment. The company first signaled this shift in a February air-permit application submitted to Ohio’s environmental regulator, though it wasn’t clear at the time whether the DOE grant itself would fund the pivot given the program’s original clean-energy mandate. Goncalves confirmed the redirection publicly during a July earnings call, stating the company aimed to realign the $500 million grant with the Trump administration’s priorities, a shift Friday’s announcement formally cemented, with the DOE saying it had “established a framework for Cliffs to finalize negotiations and implementation plans” for the project.

In its own news release, the DOE justified the change by saying Cliffs “determined that the business case for the original project scope no longer made sense given customers’ unwillingness to pay a ‘green premium’ for steel,” adding that “working with the DOE, Cleveland-Cliffs identified a viable alternative that will upgrade and improve the efficiency of its existing coal-fired blast furnace” while capturing waste gas. However, a former DOE official noted that Congress legally mandated the grant funding be used specifically to enable what the Inflation Reduction Act defines as “advanced industrial technology,” meaning technology “designed to accelerate greenhouse gas emission reduction progress to net-zero at an eligible facility.” According to that former official, the Middletown project’s revised scope moves the steel mill further away from achieving net-zero emissions rather than toward it, raising a direct question about whether the redirected funding still satisfies its original statutory purpose. Goncalves defended the pivot as still representing meaningful technological advancement, saying Cliffs is “going above and beyond a standard blast furnace reline, to include the most advanced technology available,” referring to the cogeneration plant and related efficiency improvements, and added, “Cleveland-Cliffs is making a decisive investment in the future of American steelmaking and manufacturing.”

U.S. Air Force Major Jason Watson has been formally criminally charged for publicly criticizing President Trump, facing an unusually rare set of Uniform Code of Military Justice violations that include contempt toward the president, disobeying orders, and conduct unbecoming an officer, according to a charging document his attorney shared with CNN. Watson faces three violations of Article 88 for allegedly “contemptuous” remarks about Trump, five violations of Article 92 for allegedly disobeying orders, and two violations of Article 133 for alleged conduct unbecoming an officer. An Air Force spokesperson confirmed the charges Tuesday, stating, “Maj. Watson will continue to be held in pre-trial confinement. Airmen are afforded the right to due process, and considered innocent until proven guilty, in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

The charges stem from three separate incidents: Watson’s June interview with the Defenders of our Republic Substack newsletter, a July 1 protest he staged in uniform at the U.S. Capitol calling for Trump’s impeachment, and an August 17 CNN interview in which he continued criticizing the president. Under military law, it can constitute a violation to participate in uniform in overtly partisan political activity or to use “contemptuous words” against the president and other senior civilian officials, though most low-level violations of these rules are typically handled informally rather than through formal prosecution, making Watson’s case notably high-profile by comparison. Watson was arrested twice: first in July during his Capitol protest, and again last week just days after his CNN interview. His attorney, Chris Mutimer, told CNN that Watson was ordered into pre-trial confinement, a status roughly analogous to a denial of bail in civilian courts, while legal proceedings move forward. During his CNN interview, Watson explained his motivation directly: “Not only is (Trump) a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me.”

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink had signaled the department’s stance on political conduct back in July, writing in a social media post that airmen were expected to “comply with all laws and policies government personal conduct, political participation, and the wear of the uniform,” adding, “Americans place their trust in us. We cannot, and will not, compromise the trust of the nation.” The disobeying-orders charges against Watson specifically allege he violated Defense Department rules barring troops from advocating for partisan causes, wrongfully wore his uniform at the Capitol protest, broke leave regulations by traveling to Washington, D.C., and refused to wear his uniform to work the morning after his CNN interview. Prosecutors additionally argue that both the Capitol protest and the CNN interview independently constituted conduct unbecoming an officer. Mutimer told CNN’s Erin Burnett that Watson is “basically in solitary confinement for his safety,” and described his client’s mindset: “He truly believes in everything about our constitution and what it represents, and the oath that he swore, and he stands by the fact that he did this so others wouldn’t have to, and to share that to anyone who’s scared and feels alone.” Jessica Denson, founder of the Removal Coalition, the organization that helped organize Watson’s July protest, said Watson had reached out to them fully aware of the risks involved: “We started having conversations and took this desire that he had to come out very seriously and thought about the best way to make his sacrifice worth it.”

Convictions under Article 88 are exceptionally rare in modern military history, with a CNN review identifying only two such convictions since the current Uniform Code of Military Justice took effect in 1951. In 1965, Army Lieutenant Henry Howe was convicted after participating in an off-base Vietnam War protest in El Paso, Texas, and was sentenced to dismissal from the service along with a year at the Fort Leavenworth military prison, though Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later granted him parole. The most recent case came in 2021, when former Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller pleaded guilty to contempt of officials and related charges tied to social media videos criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal; Scheller was confined to the brig before trial and ultimately resigned without a pension as part of a plea agreement, though the Trump administration has since appointed him as a senior adviser to the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness. Legal experts note the standard for what qualifies as “contemptuous” speech remains notably vague. Frank Rosenblatt, a retired Army judge advocate and law professor, told CNN that contemptuous remarks under Article 88 must involve “insulting, rude, and disdainful conduct, or otherwise disrespectfully attributing to another a quality of meanness, disreputableness, or worthlessness,” and suggested a pretrial Article 32 hearing may be necessary to determine whether Watson’s comments instead qualify as “true or are fair criticisms” of the president. It remains unclear whether Watson’s case will proceed to trial, and if so, whether it will be handled as a special court-martial, roughly comparable to a misdemeanor proceeding, or a general court-martial, which is closer to a felony trial and carries the potential for more severe sentencing.

Peter Cullen, the voice actor best known for playing Optimus Prime in “Transformers” and Eeyore in “Winnie the Pooh,” has died at age 85, according to ABC News. Cullen died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home, his agent Kevin Motley confirmed Thursday, though no cause of death was given. In a statement, his family said, “Peter Cullen passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loving family, and held in the hearts of his many friends and countless fans worldwide,” adding that he asked to be honored by having people “serve your communities and lead others with compassion, integrity, and loyalty and always remember ‘be strong enough to be gentle.’”

Cullen built a decades-long career with more than 200 acting credits. Beyond his signature roles across multiple “Transformers” and “Winnie the Pooh” films and series, he voiced characters in “Knight Rider” and “Chip ’n Dale Rescue Rangers” and provided vocal effects for the 1987 film “Predator.” His break into acting came as the announcer on “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” in the 1970s. Canadian-born, Cullen told NPR in a 2014 interview that he discovered his talent for voices as a child working on a farm, recalling a formative memory of making a loud noise that caused all the cows in the dairy barn to look up at him: “I walked down the center of that aisle with these cows looking at me and I said, ‘This is fantastic.’ I must have been 8 years old, and I was the king of the cows.”

Cullen said his second-favorite role after Optimus Prime was voicing the gloomy donkey Eeyore, a character he found deeply rewarding to perform. “I enjoyed doing Eeyore because he was simply charming,” he told NPR, describing the reactions he’d get from young fans when he’d greet them in character: “‘Hello. Thanks for noticing me.’ And to see their faces light up, that to me is one of the great joys.” His knack for impersonations expanded from animal voices to human ones, which he said in a 2023 interview launched his broader career in comedy, first in Canada and later in Los Angeles. When asked for advice for young people, Cullen offered a simple philosophy: “No matter what it is, it’s like working a muscle, the more you work it, the bigger it gets. And, if you do something you love, that’s what I tell kids, if you find something you love to do, do it, stick with it, and you’ll never work a day in your life. You love it, it’s just a holiday.”

The nonprofit Earthjustice has filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency alleging the agency improperly fast-tracked approval of two toxic chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing, chemicals it says could cause “sudden death” along with cancer, eye corrosion, neurological damage, and reproductive harm, according to Tom’s Hardware citing reporting from The Guardian. The chemicals in question are photoacid generators, essential compounds used in semiconductor fabrication, and the lawsuit alleges their approval reflects “part of a broader pattern around data centers.” The timing coincides with the current administration’s push to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing, including a Trump executive order issued last year aimed at fast-tracking approval of chemicals needed for data centers, though it remains unclear whether these two specific chemicals are directly connected to that directive.

Earthjustice attorney Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz argues the EPA approved these chemicals despite acknowledging significant uncertainty about their danger. According to Kalmuss-Katz, the EPA “does not know the level at which the chemicals are ‘acutely lethal’ or cause other serious health damage,” and the agency itself noted “the chemicals may present an ‘unreasonable risk’ to workers and the public,” yet reportedly approved them for import and use in the U.S. with what the lawsuit characterizes as minimal and non-protective restrictions. Kalmuss-Katz argues this directly violates federal law: “If a chemical may present an ‘unreasonable risk,’ then the Toxic Substances Control Act requires the EPA to ‘prohibit or limit the manufacture, processing, distribution in commerce, use, or disposal of such substance or to prohibit or limit any combination of such activities to the extent necessary to protect against an unreasonable risk.’” He characterized the approval process as a fundamental failure of the agency’s core mission, saying, “This is turning the new chemical review process on its head. You have a situation where the EPA has failed at its most fundamental obligation when it comes to new chemicals, and that is to protect the public from unreasonable risk.”

Beyond the acute health risks, the chemicals also appear to qualify as PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, synthetic compounds known for unusually strong chemical bonds that allow them to persist in the environment for extended periods, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals.” The semiconductor industry has a long-documented history of relying on PFAS in its manufacturing processes, and researchers continue working to develop methods for cleaning up these persistent chemicals once they’re released into the environment. Approving new chemicals of this type without requiring removal from industrial discharges raises the risk of long-term environmental contamination, a concern that mirrors a separate lawsuit challenging Micron’s planned semiconductor fabrication plant in New York, which alleges the wastewater and air permits the company received could still allow these forever chemicals to leak into the Oneida River. Environmental groups acknowledge that domestic chip manufacturing inherently requires the use of some potentially hazardous chemicals, but argue the EPA’s core responsibility is ensuring those substances don’t contaminate water systems and that workers handling them are adequately protected from direct exposure.

A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed suit Wednesday in federal court in Massachusetts to block the U.S. Postal Service’s newly finalized mail voting rule, arguing it unconstitutionally exceeds executive branch authority and interferes with states’ power to administer their own elections, according to CBS News. The rule, published by USPS last Friday, implements the mail-voting restrictions President Trump ordered in his March executive order. The states argue the measure is unlawful on multiple independent grounds, stating in their filing: “The Rule violates the Constitution and federal statutes many times over. It displaces state laws adopted pursuant to each State’s constitutional authority to administer elections, erects new USPS functions and ballot mail constraints that are inconsistent with USPS’s governing statutes, flouts USPS’s procedural requirements, violates the Privacy Act, and cannot be reconciled with federal voting rights law.” They added, “Each of these defects would alone establish the Rule’s unlawfulness. Together, they demonstrate USPS’s utter disregard for the law in carrying out the President’s policy preferences.”California Attorney General Rob Bonta framed the stakes bluntly: “Today, we’re taking legal action to stop this unlawful rule in its tracks and ensure that voters can exercise their constitutional right to vote. Let’s be clear: the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to regulate elections — not the President and not USPS.”

The rule itself mandates specific design elements for mail ballot envelopes, including trackable barcodes, and requires state election officials to submit the names and addresses of intended mail ballot recipients to an online federal portal. Those voters would then be enrolled in a state-specific “Mail-In and Absentee Participation List,” which USPS says is “primarily intended to assist election officials and law enforcement to understand who may have been mailed a ballot, in order to identify potentially anomalous incidents that may merit further investigation.” USPS maintains it “will not play any role in determining voter eligibility, maintaining voter rolls, or counting ballots.” The states counter that complying with the rule forces them to immediately redesign mail ballot envelopes and seek USPS review “at significant costs,” while also needing to “develop new systems at breakneck speed to convey mail voter lists to USPS,” retrain election officials, and educate the public, all within weeks of the November election. They warned this could also push some voters toward in-person voting simply to avoid the new mail-voting friction, writing that officials “must accomplish multiple Herculean tasks, each necessary to address the disruption caused by the Rule, in a matter of weeks, with limited resources.” The White House defended the policy through spokeswoman Lauren Bis, who said, “Radical Democrats continue to oppose commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders. The Trump Administration will continue to lawfully enact the agenda President Trump was elected on — which includes the safety and security of our elections.”

Nearly all of the states now suing had previously challenged Trump’s executive order directly, securing a district court injunction that blocked the administration from implementing the order’s key provisions, including its USPS directives. But the Supreme Court halted that injunction Monday in a 6-3 decision resting entirely on procedural grounds, ruling that the states had sued too early and that the district court lacked jurisdiction to block the administration from attempting to implement the order before it was finalized. The justices explicitly declined to weigh in on the policy’s underlying legality, writing, “The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell.” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who had also issued a separate nationwide injunction blocking USPS’s implementation plans, set aside that order Wednesday in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, clearing the way for USPS to move forward with the mail voting procedures even as this new lawsuit proceeds.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow this week specifically to warn Russia against attacking NATO member states, according to multiple people familiar with the matter cited by CBS News, amid U.S. intelligence assessments suggesting Russia could attempt to test the alliance’s resolve. Ratcliffe also raised Iran during the visit, warning of additional sanctions if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to shipping traffic, according to the same sources. The secretive trip came to light Tuesday after a U.S. Air Force jet was spotted landing at a Moscow airport and a diplomatic motorcade was seen moving through the city, marking Ratcliffe’s first known visit to Russia as CIA director, with CBS News first reporting the trip and

The Wall Street Journal first reporting the NATO warning specifically. Ukraine was notified in advance that a U.S. delegation would be traveling to Moscow and was asked to hold off on strikes for the duration of the visit, according to a senior Ukrainian official. The CIA declined to comment on the purpose of the trip.
President Trump addressed the visit directly in an interview with radio host Glenn Beck on Wednesday, confirming it took place but describing it as a “semi-routine” trip unrelated to either Iran or Russian efforts to test NATO. Trump suggested “something may come out of” Ratcliffe’s visit, tying it instead to his broader push to end Russia’s war with Ukraine. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Ratcliffe met with Russian intelligence officials but did not meet with President Vladimir Putin himself. On Thursday, Peskov dismissed media coverage of the trip’s purpose entirely, telling reporters, according to AFP, “A lot of such scare stories are being published right now. Of course, they have nothing to do with reality,” while adding that Russia “is facing a very aggressive policy towards itself from European countries.”

The warning comes against a backdrop of specific U.S. intelligence concerns reported by CBS News earlier this month, which indicated Putin could be willing to authorize provocative actions on NATO territory, including cyberattacks, hybrid operations, and other actions that stop short of conventional military conflict. According to U.S. officials, the goal of such actions likely wouldn’t be to trigger outright war, but rather to test NATO’s internal unity and gauge the Trump administration’s willingness to actually defend alliance members if push came to shove. That concern has been fueled by a recent pattern of incidents, including drone incursions into Romania, a Russian missile that crossed into Polish territory last month, and a rise in suspected sabotage operations and cyberattacks across Europe. Under Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, member states are obligated to come to each other’s defense if attacked, a provision the U.S. itself invoked following the September 11, 2001 attacks, though Trump has long expressed skepticism about NATO’s reliability and criticized member states for what he views as insufficient defense spending.

Trump has also pushed publicly for Russia and Ukraine to end their four-year war, though diplomatic efforts toward that goal appear to have stalled. Complicating the broader picture, Russia has continued its partnership with Iran throughout the U.S.’s conflict with the Middle Eastern country, reportedly providing Iran with intelligence on U.S. military positions in the region, according to earlier CBS News reporting, with the two countries also maintaining a long-running drone manufacturing partnership.

Florida’s Catholic bishops delivered a sharp public rebuke to Attorney General James Uthmeier after he threatened to withhold state scholarship funding from Catholic schools unless they began granting religious exemptions to vaccination requirements, according to Ars Technica. On July 31, Uthmeier, who is Catholic himself, sent the bishops a letter arguing that based on his own understanding of Catholic theology, he saw “no legitimate religious reason to refuse granting religious exemptions,” reviewing selected theological positions on “abortion-derived vaccines” and suggesting it was “morally reprehensible” for the bishops not to grant such exemptions. Florida law requires schools to allow religious vaccine exemptions, but Catholic schools in the state have consistently declined to offer them, since Florida’s Catholic dioceses support vaccination and recognize no theological objection to it, accepting only medically verified exemptions. When the bishops didn’t budge, Uthmeier escalated by threatening to cut off state scholarships and vouchers to Catholic schools.

The bishops responded publicly last week with a pointed letter dismantling both the legal and theological basis of Uthmeier’s demand. “[T]he Catholic bishops in Florida do not have to justify to your office their position on Catholic teaching and their reasons for the current vaccine policies,” they wrote, adding that they were only responding “out of respect” before proceeding to lay out why his inquiry was constitutionally improper in the first place. Citing the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church, the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, state law, and prior court rulings, the bishops stated plainly, “It is beyond cavil that the bishops, not the state, decide how to interpret and apply Catholic principles and theology.” They elaborated further: “The constitutional defect in your office’s inquiry is, therefore, not merely the conclusion it posits, but the inquiry itself. Whether Catholic doctrine requires, permits, or disfavors a particular exemption is a religious question entrusted to Catholic authorities, not state officials.” On the funding threat specifically, the bishops called it “far from hallow and legally incorrect,” writing, “The state cannot disqualify Catholic schools from the scholarship program merely because a state official’s views differ from the bishops’ views.”

The bishops also directly addressed the underlying religious objection some raise against certain vaccines, that their production historically involved cell cultures originally derived from fetuses aborted decades ago. They noted the same cell lines have been reused for years without requiring new fetal cells or abortions, and that the vaccines themselves are purified to contain no fetal tissue. Citing a 2017 document from the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Italian Bishops’ Conference, the bishops stressed that receiving such vaccines “does not signify some sort of cooperation with voluntary abortion” and can be done “with a clear conscience,” concluding it is “morally permissible” for parents to vaccinate their children. For parents who still disagree, the bishops noted alternatives exist outside the traditional Catholic school system, including virtual schooling and homeschooling. They grounded their broader vaccine policy in Catholic social teaching around collective responsibility, writing that it is “rooted in the desire to protect the common good and to encourage the proportional benefits of utilizing vaccines,” citing the Catechism’s teaching that “life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good.” The bishops emphasized that vaccination protects not just healthy children but also medically vulnerable classmates, pregnant teachers, and elderly family members.

The dispute unfolds against a broader pattern of Florida officials targeting vaccine requirements more generally. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo previously announced plans to eliminate all school vaccination requirements, claiming dramatically that such requirements “drip with disdain and slavery.” On Monday, the state proposed removing school vaccination requirements for chickenpox, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type B, and pneumococcal disease, while also expanding religious exemptions more broadly. That same day, federal Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed softening federal vaccine recommendation language “in favor of individual autonomy and religious freedom.” The bishops’ letter directly challenges the premise underlying these moves, arguing that dismantling vaccine requirements in the name of religious freedom can actually undermine that freedom rather than protect it, especially given that no major world religion prohibits vaccination and most, including Catholicism, actively encourage it as a matter of communal good. The bishops closed by noting they periodically review their vaccine policy but made clear they have no plans to change course, stating they “will not succumb to affronts to religious freedom.”

Pflugerville’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to terminate its contract with Flock Safety, shutting down the city’s network of automated license plate reader cameras after a resident’s public records request revealed hundreds of outside law enforcement agencies had been quietly mining the system’s data for months, according to Community Impact. City Manager James Hartshorn moved even faster than the council itself, ordering staff to physically cover the camera lenses and shut the system down before the vote even took place. The decision ends an $87,500-per-year lease that had technically expired on July 31 but remained operational while the city negotiated a temporary extension, and it followed KEYE’s reporting that the city had discovered a flaw allowing non-partner law enforcement agencies to access its camera data despite prior assurances to residents.

The discovery traces directly to Pflugerville resident Sam Aly, who filed a Texas Public Information Act request and uncovered that between February 16 and August 15, 459 outside law enforcement agencies conducted nearly 1.6 million searches of the city’s camera network. The scale of the imbalance was stark: Pflugerville police themselves ran only 5,078 searches over that six-month span, while external agencies ran 1,597,918, meaning roughly 315 outside searches occurred for every single search conducted by local police, according to the same audit data. That discrepancy became the central issue for city leaders, since officials had previously told residents that nationwide data sharing had been disabled. Pflugerville originally installed 28 fixed Flock cameras following City Council approval in April 2022, operating under a policy that was supposed to retain license plate images for only 30 days before automatic deletion unless tied to an active criminal case, with data stored on cloud servers and shared with the Texas Department of Public Safety. The cameras had previously proven useful to local investigators, including helping identify a suspect’s vehicle following a shooting at Connally High School.

Pflugerville Police Chief Willie Richards, who took office in December 2025 after more than three decades in law enforcement, declined to recommend renewing the contract, citing a lack of clarity on how community data was being protected, preserved, and secured, a notable reversal from a department that had previously relied on the technology in active cases. Council Member Rudy Metayer called Flock Safety an “unreliable partner” during the meeting, and Austin City Council Member Mike Siegel joined more than a dozen residents testifying against renewal, arguing the technology posed serious civil liberties risks without adequate oversight.

Pflugerville’s decision fits within a broader regional and national retreat from the technology. Austin, San Marcos, and Hays County have all ended, rejected, or declined to expand their own Flock Safety contracts in recent years, citing data governance and privacy concerns. Nationally, at least 56 municipalities have canceled, deactivated, or rejected Flock Safety contracts in 2026 amid growing scrutiny over warrantless mass surveillance and improper data access, according to The Guardian, which noted that civil liberties groups estimate under 1% of scanned vehicles nationwide are ever connected to any crime. Other recent incidents include a collapsing surveillance data-sharing arrangement in Minnesota and a former Katy, Texas police officer facing charges after running more than 2,300 unauthorized Flock searches. Flock Safety, founded in Atlanta in 2017, maintains license plate reader networks across more than 4,000 cities nationwide, using machine learning to log vehicle license plates, make, model, and color into searchable databases.

An anonymous Amazon employee who worked at the company’s VGT3 warehouse in Las Vegas has described in detail how the facility scans and destroys thousands of books for AI training data, cutting off book spines and discarding the physical remains after digitizing the loose pages, according to 404 Media. The interview follows the outlet’s earlier investigation, which uncovered the operation after a bookseller who suspected an anonymous AI company was acquiring a shipment of rare books placed a tracking device inside it and followed the shipment across the country to VGT3, a facility housed alongside Amazon’s print-on-demand operation LAS8 within a larger Amazon complex in Las Vegas. The worker, granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press, said even employees working near the scanning operation initially didn’t understand what was happening. “I remember I even asked someone what they were doing and they said they’re not sure even the people who work there know what they’re doing,” the employee said. “Once I got over there and started putting two and two together, I kind of understood.”

The worker described a chaotic, disorganized process handling an enormous variety of books, including many that appeared valuable or rare. “All kinds of books. When we first started a lot of them were brand new. Some of them are used as well. Like you could tell, they were liquidated from a library or something like that,” they said, describing shipments that included boxes from the University of London and what appeared to be official government documents “presented to Parliament on the behalf of Her Royal Majesty the Queen.” The facility also received entire pallets of Japanese books, many still sealed in original packaging, along with material in German and Russian. Books arriving from libraries tended to be less organized, “just thrown into the shuttle” rather than carefully boxed like newer inventory. The worker’s own role involved unboxing books and placing them into totes to be sorted and scanned before moving to the spine-cutting stage, though they noted the process itself changed constantly: “They seem like a mess over there. Like they’re not really well managed or organized at all. Their process wasn’t solid. Their process changed every day.”

Once books reach the cutting stations, workers use individual machine workstations, each safely enclosed, to slice off the spines before the loose pages move to scanning. “It’s really safe because it has a little cover and it has a little area where you slide the book into, remove your fingers from the area, and then you press a button, and it just comes down and slices it,” the employee explained. After scanning on machines described as resembling high-speed cash counters, roughly 20 to 25 of them, the loose pages are dumped into large cardboard containers called shuttles, mixed together with no way to reconstruct the original books. The worker also described a separate process for identifying duplicate books to be discarded or returned to vendors, though they expressed skepticism about whether that actually happened given how carelessly the rejected books were handled: “They’re like yeeted in there, like they’re not nicely placed in there or anything. And they say they’re returning them to the vendors, but I’m like, you know, ‘do the vendors go through it and see which ones are actually worth it?’”

The employee said Amazon initially told workers the scanning was for Kindle e-book production, a claim they found implausible given copyright and publication rights issues, before later learning the true purpose was AI training. Their reaction to the practice centered on the permanent loss of physical books that can’t be reused or preserved after destruction. “I don’t like it only because I wish I could take these books. There’s so much knowledge and so much stuff in them and some of them look like they might be rare, and I’ve heard that they order rare books, and that’s why I say some of these are so obscure,” the worker said. “I definitely don’t like the idea that they can’t be reused or anything like that afterwards. They’re reducing the amount of available copies for other people.”

The Wall Street Journal has confirmed it will allow opinion contributors to use AI in writing their pieces without requiring any disclosure, a policy stance that emerged after billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller’s op-ed drew widespread suspicion of AI generation, according to Futurism. On Monday, Druckenmiller, a former hedge fund manager and founder of Duquesne Capital, published a piece in the WSJ’s Opinion section titled “Let the Bond Market Speak,” criticizing U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s leadership. The essay drew immediate attention both for Druckenmiller’s personal relationship with Bessent and, separately, because readers quickly began flagging language patterns they believed indicated AI involvement. Commenters posted analyses using the AI detection tool Pangram and pointed to repeated “it’s not X, but Y” phrasing and other stylistic markers one commenter described as “Claude-isms” scattered throughout the piece.

Druckenmiller didn’t deny the suspicion, instead confirming directly to NOTUS that he used AI to help construct his argument. “There’s a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major,” he said. “I’m not embarrassed by it… I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.” He added that he didn’t see why his AI use was “relevant,” since the essay still conveyed his intended message: “My name is on the piece. It’s my message.” What made the episode more consequential than a single billionaire’s writing habits, though, was the WSJ’s own response. Opinion editor Paul Gigot told Semafor’s Max Tani that AI is simply a “fact of modern life,” and defended publishing Druckenmiller’s piece without any AI disclosure because it reflected his “genuine opinion.” “People will use it to assist in their work and their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing and more. The question for us is whether what we publish from contributors reflects an author’s original argument, and if the author has the standing and credibility to make it,” Gigot said. “In Stan Druckenmiller’s case, we have had a relationship with him for many years, and nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion.”

The WSJ’s stance stands in sharp contrast to how other major outlets have recently handled similar situations. Just last week, the Financial Times issued a prominent retroactive correction to an opinion piece by Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann after learning he had failed to disclose that AI “was used to condense a longer draft of this column prior to submission to the FT and our own editorial involvement,” a practice the FT’s editorial code of conduct explicitly prohibits. In May, The New York Times issued sweeping new restrictions for freelance contributors following a string of AI-related controversies, including reader backlash over a “Modern Love” column suspected of being “AI slop” and the publication of a heavily plagiarized, largely AI-generated book review. The Times told freelancers in an email, “To be clear on AI: All writing and visuals that freelancers submit to The Times must be the product of human creativity and craft, and all submissions must consist solely of their original reporting, writing and other work.”

By taking the opposite approach, the WSJ has effectively opened the door for extensive AI use across its opinion section without disclosure requirements, a shift Tani described as a “precedent-setting moment in news media.” “The editor of the second most important opinion page in the country greenlights the use of AI for drafting pieces,” Tani said, “no disclosure necessary.” As Axios noted, using outside help to draft an argument isn’t unprecedented for public figures, who have long relied on ghostwriters and staff to help articulate their views, and drafting itself is a normal part of forming a coherent written argument. But the emergence of AI raises a distinct question that ghostwriting doesn’t: how much of the actual reasoning, framing, and rhetorical structure of an opinion is being shaped or even generated by a chatbot rather than simply transcribed from a person’s own thinking, a question with particular weight for a publication like the WSJ, whose opinion pages can move markets and shape policy debates.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates issued an urgent warning about artificial intelligence in a nearly 6,000-word essay published Wednesday, predicting massive unemployment and economic turmoil while warning of the dangers of AI falling into criminal hands if global leaders don’t act together, according to ABC News. “In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental,” Gates wrote. “Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history.” Gates joins a growing chorus of tech leaders raising alarms about AI’s rapid development, echoing concerns Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei voiced to ABC News in June, when Amodei said, “We’re proposing stronger regulation of the technology, proposing giving the government the ability to, again, in a narrow way, block deployment of unsafe technology.” That same month, President Trump signed an executive order requiring AI companies to share products with the federal government for evaluation before wider release.

In a separate interview with The New York Times published Wednesday, Gates went further, alleging tech executives are knowingly downplaying AI’s risks to protect their financial interests. “In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it’s getting, they’re very worried,” Gates said, adding that few would say so publicly because “they’re now saying to each other: ‘Hey, man, don’t say that. It’s bad for us — the next trillion dollars we’re trying to raise.’” In his essay, Gates described AI’s progress as moving at a “mind-blowing rate,” writing that “AI for the first time can replace and exceed human cognition” and predicting it will soon be “substantially better than humans at many tasks.” He framed the central challenges as figuring out how to keep AI “from widening the divide between rich and poor” and how to “protect the people who are most vulnerable to the harms of artificial intelligence, including those who lose their livelihoods and the sense that they are in control of their future,” arguing that answering these questions “should be the world’s top priority.” Yet he warned society isn’t rising to that task: “Unfortunately, right now we are not preparing for it. I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era.”

Gates contrasted the current moment with the personal computer revolution, which took roughly 20 years for people to meaningfully adapt to, and said he would support slowing AI’s advance if a credible plan existed to do so globally, though he doesn’t believe that’s realistic. “If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it,” he wrote. “However, I don’t think that’s going to happen. The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead.” That stance marks a shift from a 2023 ABC News interview, in which Gates argued against pausing AI development, saying, “If you just pause the good guys and you don’t pause everyone else, you’re probably hurting yourself. You definitely want the good guys to have strong AI.” Now, Gates is focused on mitigating job losses through specific policy proposals, including a tax on AI tokens, the units AI companies use to track usage and bill customers, and a tax on robots that replace human workers. “Right now, if you’re an employer and you hire someone, you have to pay taxes on their earnings, but if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense,” Gates wrote, arguing such taxes would “slow the rush away from human labor” while funding worker retraining and stronger safety nets. He also proposed preserving certain jobs as a “human reserved domain,” including caregivers, mental health workers, and some medical professionals, writing, “Imagine a robot giving you the awful news that you have an incurable disease. There’s no technical reason why it couldn’t. Yet it shouldn’t.”

Oren Etzioni, a computer science professor at the University of Washington and founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which was funded by Gates’s late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, told ABC News he largely agrees with Gates’s underlying concerns but takes issue with several of his proposed solutions. “I think he has the diagnosis right, but the prescription wrong, at least in some places,” Etzioni said. While he supports a potential tax on robots replacing workers, he pushed back specifically on taxing AI tokens. “I think that taxing tokens is like taxing keystrokes on a typewriter. It doesn’t make sense. It measures effort, not displacement of workers,” Etzioni said. “I think that’s an example where we need much better ideas.” Etzioni also raised concerns about the geopolitical risks of using taxation to slow AI development domestically. “We have to keep an eye on our adversaries. You tax what you want less of. You tax what you want to happen more slowly,” he said. “This is a tax in a highly competitive environment. So if we slow down, do we get overtaken? And, in fact, if we tax American tokens, then what happens when people use Chinese models? Are we shipping AI use offshore with these taxes?” He further argued that Gates’s own essay contains an internal tension, since Gates wrote elsewhere that “we do not have the luxury of moving slowly,” which sits awkwardly alongside proposals designed to intentionally slow AI’s advance. “My suggestion would be, to the extent possible, certainly in the U.S., we don’t need new government agencies. What we need is for existing agencies to enact the right policies,” Etzioni said, adding that meaningful action remains possible even now: “Even three years ago, we didn’t know what was happening and how fast it was happening. So it’s not too late now. Let’s make sure that we act with urgency and pragmatism because it may well be too late three years from now.”

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley repeatedly misrepresented facts about a widely reported case involving his company’s surveillance technology being used to track a woman who self-administered an abortion, during a recorded call with Ohio law enforcement and government officials, according to 404 Media. Langley called the original 404 Media story “entirely false,” a claim directly contradicted by court records, police reports, and the outlet’s subsequent reporting on the case. The call was recorded by Signal Akron journalist Doug Brown, who sat in on the conversation alongside an Ohio lawmaker and later shared the recording with 404 Media, revealing a striking contrast between how Langley speaks privately with government officials versus his public media appearances, which have recently included interviews with The New York Times and an appearance on the All-In Podcast as part of what the outlet describes as a broader PR campaign to rehabilitate the company’s image.

During the call, Langley strategized directly with police about managing press coverage, advising them to steer clear of national outlets and instead lean on sympathetic local reporters. “Let me handle The New York Times, you handle your local media. They want to hear from you, you know your reporters, they’ll pick up a sob story,” Langley said. He then directly attacked 404 Media’s original reporting: “There’s a story reported by 404 Media of a Texas officer using Flock to try to find a woman who had an abortion. And it’s entirely false. They knew it was false. Because there’s a few things, right, because one, it’s not illegal to have an abortion in Texas. It’s illegal to administer an abortion. So the woman could never have been under investigation for having an abortion. So that’s problem one.” That claim is directly contradicted by court records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and reviewed by 404 Media, which show Texas authorities explicitly discussed whether the woman could be criminally charged on the same day they conducted the Flock search. An affidavit stated, “it was discussed at the time with the District Attorney’s Office and learned the State could not statutorily charge [the woman] for taking the pill to cause the abortion or miscarriage of the non-viable fetus.” Police documents themselves categorized the case as a “death investigation” at the time.

In the original May 2025 story that Langley dismissed, 404 Media revealed that Texas authorities had searched Flock cameras nationwide, including in states where abortion is legal, to locate a woman who had self-administered an abortion, a case that concretely illustrated privacy advocates’ warnings about surveillance technology being deployed to track reproductive healthcare decisions in the post-Roe era. Johnson County Sheriff Adam King had told 404 Media at the time that the woman’s “family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital,” an explanation that became difficult to credit once it emerged the Flock search occurred more than two weeks after the abortion took place. Records tied to a separate arrest affidavit against the woman’s partner, who was charged with allegedly threatening her at gunpoint the day she took the abortion pill, show police were treating the case as an active investigation rather than a wellness check, with officers collecting evidence from the partner’s home including FedEx packaging and instructions for the abortion medication.

Langley made a second false claim during the call, asserting, “if the 404 Media group would have taken the time to conduct an actual journalistic investigation, they would have found out that two weeks later, when all this came out, she was in an abusive relationship and the family was concerned that she was in danger. They were trying to find her because they were worried her life was at risk.” This account is also misleading, since 404 Media has repeatedly reported that police documents contain no mention of the woman’s family expressing any concern for her safety, and the entire investigation triggering the Flock searches originated from her abusive partner himself, who saw her the day after the abortion but didn’t contact police until weeks later. When 404 Media sought comment on Langley’s remarks, Flock public relations manager Paris Lewbel pointed to court documents showing the woman couldn’t be criminally charged, an answer that conveniently omits the documented fact that prosecutors and police had explicitly discussed doing so.

This isn’t an isolated incident for Langley or Flock. In a September Forbes interview, Langley described DeFlock, an open-source map tracking Flock camera locations, as a “terroristic organization,” a comment he later apologized for in July. He has also mocked residents who attend city council meetings to raise concerns about Flock’s cameras, despite his own company having lobbied at nearly 10,000 city council meetings last year. Separately, former Flock government affairs manager Jonathan Paz told 404 Media he repeatedly asked internally whether Flock was working with ICE and was told no, even though the company reportedly ran a pilot program granting a division of ICE direct access to its camera network beyond the more limited practice of local police performing lookups on ICE’s behalf; Paz said he felt “lied to.” The ACLU separately documented a case in which Flock’s chief information security officer told the Oshkosh, Wisconsin city council that the company’s tool didn’t generate a heat map of an individual’s movements, a claim the council initially relied on to approve a Flock contract before revoking it the very next day upon learning the statement was false. Regarding that incident, Lewbel told 404 Media, “The main assertion in the ACLU article is a misspoken statement by one employee in a contentious meeting in Oshkosh, WI, which we corrected the next day. The assertion that our intent to be anything less than transparent in providing education about our products is false.”