The first shipments of 300,000 metric tons of tariff-free beef President Trump promised would be sold to U.S. consumers at a discount begin entering the country Tuesday, arriving amid consumer anxiety about food safety and warnings from American ranchers that buying domestic meat matters now more than ever, according to Forbes. Trump announced the plan last week to bolster the American beef supply by waiving tariffs on 100,000 tons of beef per month for three months, with the White House claiming the imported meat will be sold at a 25% discount from the going import price. That framing has fueled consumer worries that “discounted” foreign beef signals reduced food safety oversight or lower quality, concerns amplified by a national spike in food safety issues, even as experts caution the policy is unlikely to meaningfully lower grocery prices while potentially harming American ranchers working to rebuild the domestic cattle supply. The 300,000 metric tons represents only about 2% of America’s overall domestic beef consumption, and what’s actually being imported is lean beef trimmings, not whole cuts, since American cattle tend to produce fattier meat and processors must blend it with very lean beef to make standard ground beef; because domestic lean cattle supplies are at record lows, processors have turned overseas, though Trump has declined to specify which countries are involved, telling reporters only “there are a few countries.”

Consumers looking to verify a product’s origin have several labeling cues to check. “Product of USA” or “Made in the USA” stickers indicate the beef comes exclusively from animals born, raised, slaughtered, and processed domestically, while “Born, Raised, and Harvested in the USA” or “American Grassfed Association (AGA) Certified” labels offer similar assurances, and if beef is imported or blended, the country of origin should appear in small print near the nutrition label. Consumers can also check the oval USDA inspection sticker for an establishment number searchable online to identify the exact processing facility. Notably, labels reading “packed” or “processed” in the U.S. can be misleading since that beef may have been raised and slaughtered elsewhere, and “USDA Prime/Choice/Select” grades have nothing to do with country of origin, they reflect quality based on fat marbling and tenderness, meaning imported beef processed at a USDA-inspected plant can still carry a USDA quality grade sticker.

Agricultural economists are skeptical the imports will translate into meaningfully lower checkout prices. David Anderson of Texas A&M University said meat processors will be able to buy cheaper beef, but those savings likely won’t trickle down to retail shelves, while Glynn Tonsor of Kansas State University said the imports will help somewhat with supply but believes the administration is overstating the pricing benefit. The plan has drawn sharp criticism from within Trump’s own party: Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska warned that flooding the market with foreign imports harms the domestic supply chain, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming said it will make it harder “for Wyoming ranchers to feed America,” and Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana said he’d been warning Trump “against this course of action for a year” and is alienating ranchers who are mostly “MAGA Republicans.” The United States Cattlemen’s Association says food inspection systems can’t handle such an influx on this timeline, and R-CALF USA warns foreign herds face different husbandry, traceability, and environmental standards.

The U.S. Postal Service is on the verge of launching a hastily built, error-prone computer system that could jeopardize mail voting relied upon by roughly one-third of all voters, according to a whistleblower statement released Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, reported by the Associated Press. The system is part of the implementation of President Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, a directive currently halted by a federal judge, with the ruling under appeal and possibly headed to the Supreme Court. According to the unidentified whistleblower, the Postal Service has been scrambling to build a complex system normally requiring a year or more of development in just three months, at times in apparent defiance of court orders halting the work, all in an effort to have it operational before the midterm elections. The disclosure warns that under the new procedures, a single scanning error affecting a batch of tens of thousands of ballot envelopes could prevent the entire batch from reaching voters, and election officials have already cautioned the system couldn’t realistically be ready before North Carolina’s mail ballots begin going out Friday. “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Blumenthal told reporters. “This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework on casting ballots in this country clearly for political reasons.”

Trump’s executive order, signed in March, directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to develop state citizenship lists, then required the Postal Service to send mail ballots only to voters appearing on those lists, with ballot envelopes required to comply with new Postal Service rules and include barcodes. The online portal at the center of the whistleblower complaint is meant to let states submit their verified voter lists to the Postal Service, but according to Blumenthal’s disclosure, development has been anything but smooth. The Postal Service began building the portal on June 15, halted work on June 25 after Judge Indira Talwani issued an initial order blocking implementation, then restarted on July 29, the same time the administration appealed Talwani’s order to the Supreme Court. The high court didn’t lift Talwani’s injunction until August 24. Talwani later found the Postal Service had violated her order by continuing work on the final rule anyway, though she imposed no sanctions, and on Monday she declined to lift a restraining order while allowing the Postal Service to keep developing the portal, provided it wasn’t forcing states to use it.

The whistleblower advocacy group Whistleblower Aid, summarizing the disclosure, said the rushed construction, with a goal of activating the portal by Tuesday, meant it bypassed full testing. “The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk,” the group wrote. “Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.” The disclosure also details what it calls a “zero percent” error tolerance rule, under which any error found in any ballot within a batch submitted by an election office could result in the entire batch being discarded, even if the error affects just one ballot among tens of thousands of legitimate ones. Under the rule, ballots must be handled at a physical post office by an election official, then scanned against the voter database across three layers of checks, with a single apparent mismatch potentially triggering rejection of the whole batch. Neither the Postal Service nor the White House had responded to requests for comment as of Tuesday; the White House has previously described the mail voting provisions as “commonsense measures” necessary to combat fraud.

Trump has long opposed mail voting despite having used it himself repeatedly to cast his own ballot, and has spent years falsely blaming it for his 2020 election loss while spreading conspiracy theories about its integrity. A 2025 Brookings Institution report found mail voting fraud occurred in only about four cases out of every 10 million ballots cast. Since returning to office, Trump has said Republicans should be “taking over” vote counting in Democratic areas and has pursued a broad reinvestigation of the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence he lost fairly to Joe Biden. Mail voting was used roughly equally by both parties until Trump turned against it in 2020, after which it became notably more common among Democratic voters; more than 29% of all voters cast ballots by mail in 2024. Blumenthal expressed cautious optimism that courts would ultimately block the rule: “I have a very strong hope and some faith that our system of justice will strike down this unconstitutional and unconscionable rule.” But he added that if it somehow takes effect in time for the midterms, he would not advise voters to use mail voting at all.

President Trump created widespread confusion Sunday night after posting two AI-generated videos depicting a fictional U.S. strike on Iran’s Kharg Island, forcing a U.S. official to clarify Monday that the attacks shown never actually happened, according to The Independent as reported by Futurism. Kharg Island serves as Iran’s main hub for oil exports. Trump made no attempt to disclose that the videos were AI-generated when he posted them to Truth Social; his first post, shared Sunday night, carried only the caption “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!” Both videos were designed to look as though they were filmed from inside a helicopter as the island erupted in explosions and flames, and Trump posted the second video just one minute after the first. When reporters pressed Vice President JD Vance for an explanation Monday, he offered little clarity: “Well, you know, the president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit,” Vance said, adding that Trump was “sending a message to the Iranians.”

The timing of the fabricated videos coincided with real military escalation. That same Sunday night, the U.S. launched actual strikes on Iran’s Larak Island, ending a month-long pause in direct attacks, and Iran retaliated by firing missiles at two U.S. air bases in Jordan. The following morning, Trump posted again, calling Iran a “Failed Nation”: “IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency,” he wrote, adding, “The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA.” Hamid Bovard, head of the National Iranian Oil Company, dismissed Trump’s Kharg Island post as “laughable” and told The Independent that conditions on the island were “calm and appropriate.”

Futurism situates the AI video episode within a broader pattern of Trump increasingly relying on fabricated imagery, from AI content mocking political opponents to material glorifying himself, now extending into how he’s managing public perception of a war that has gone badly by most measures. The Iran conflict, according to the piece, has killed thousands of civilians and disrupted the global economy while yielding no tangible concessions for U.S. interests, and what was expected to last only a few weeks is now dragging past six months. The article notes the U.S. has been unable to protect regional allies from Iranian retaliatory strikes and has failed to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz despite Trump’s claim that Iran has “no Navy,” undercutting the narrative of unchallenged American military dominance. Futurism also points out that the White House declared control of the Strait of Hormuz just days earlier, a claim the outlet frames alongside the AI video incident as part of a consistent pattern of the administration presenting a more favorable version of events than what’s actually occurring on the ground.

President Trump forcefully doubled down on his support for data centers Monday, calling on communities nationwide to embrace the controversial infrastructure ahead of the midterm elections, according to ABC News. “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” Trump wrote in a social media post Monday morning. He framed the issue as central to America’s competition with China in AI development, warning, “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!” Data centers house the massive server infrastructure needed to power AI systems, and while they generate significant tax revenue and jobs during construction, they also require enormous amounts of land, water for cooling, and electricity, often straining local power grids while employing relatively few workers on a long-term basis compared to their physical footprint.

The issue has become a genuine flashpoint heading into the midterms, with AI companies pouring millions of dollars into congressional races and primaries tied to artificial intelligence regulation. Asked about Trump’s post and its potential political impact, Vice President JD Vance framed the administration’s position around the underlying economics rather than the technology itself. “What the president said about data centers is they’re an important part of the AI economy. But when people build them, they have to build the power plants along with the data centers,” Vance said. He acknowledged the public backlash directly, attributing it primarily to rising utility costs: “I think probably 99% of the backlash to data centers has come in areas where building a data center means higher utility and higher electricity for the people on the ground. So I think what these companies have to do is take advantage of some of the federal deregulatory efforts that we’ve undertaken. If you build a data center, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out. And if that is happening, I don’t think the data centers are that controversial.”

The political stakes were underscored earlier this month when the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to AI companies operating in Ohio, warning that data center backlash could jeopardize incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s reelection chances. Trump has also directly criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent decision to pause new data center projects pending compliance review, calling the move a “mistake” during a Punchbowl interview earlier this month. “I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers. I think it’s a mistake. And I’m not taking positions, I just think it’s a mistake, because there are other communities that want it. When a community wants it, it means a lot of money is going to come into that community,” Trump said. In that same interview, he argued data centers are “tremendously important for the economics” and predicted they could ultimately be “bigger than oil.”

Oklahoma’s Attorney General’s office has told the city of Claremore it cannot charge a farmer more than $17,000 to access public records and bodycam footage related to his arrest at a city council meeting, ruling the city violated the state’s Open Records Act by failing to properly disclose its fee schedule, according to 404 Media. Farmer Darren Blanchard was arrested in February after attending a meeting about Project Mustang, a proposed 225-acre data center in Claremore, Oklahoma, where he planned to speak in opposition. He left the meeting in handcuffs after the city council had him arrested for exceeding his three-minute speaking limit by 30 seconds, and Claremore subsequently charged him with trespassing, a municipal offense carrying a $200 penalty. Blanchard pleaded not guilty, hired an attorney, and vowed to fight the charges on free speech grounds, filing a public records request for bodycam footage from his arrest and city records related to prior disturbances at public meetings as part of his defense. Claremore told Blanchard’s legal team it would fulfill the request, but only for a fee of $17,125.44.

The bulk of that fee, $16,540.44, was for what Claremore called a legal review of 2,800 records related to Blanchard’s arrest and the city’s relationships with security contractors and Rogers State University, where the meeting was held, which the city said was necessary “to ensure that all information which must be withheld relating to members of the public and the City’s personnel is redacted in order to protect their privacy.” Claremore also sought $585 for a 15-hour records search, roughly the cost of employing a city clerk for two days, arguing that fulfilling the request otherwise would cause “excessive disruption to its essential functions.” In a letter to the Oklahoma Attorney General defending the fees, Claremore’s lawyers suggested Blanchard’s attorney, Katie Griffin, was acting in bad faith by refusing to narrow her request, writing that “her persistence in maintaining an overly onerous request demonstrates that this dispute has nothing to do with transparency and likely has everything to do with causing excessive time/money expense to the City in order to generate public sympathy for her client and negative publicity for the City.” Claremore also argued that any documents released would likely be “subject to wide distribution, including on social media.”

Assistant Attorney General Anthony Sykes rejected the city’s arguments entirely, finding that Oklahoma law only permits public bodies to charge for the direct costs of record copying or mechanical reproduction, and only if those fees are publicly disclosed in advance. “The City has not posted a schedule of fees as required by the Open Records Act. Having failed to give the requisite notice of the fees charged for public access to City records, the City is foreclosed from charging search fees,” Sykes wrote, adding that allowing otherwise “there would be no incentive for public bodies to comply with the statute.” Sykes also noted in a footnote that Claremore never explained how 15 hours of staff time would cause “excessive disruption” to its operations, nor justified using the city clerk’s hourly rate rather than a less expensive staff member for the search. On the more than 10 hours of bodycam footage the city said it needed extensive time to review and redact because it was “taken in a very crowded room and features an incalculable number of people,” Sykes similarly ruled the city didn’t need a lengthy redaction process: “The footage sought here is of a public meeting attended by scores of people. No one in attendance had any reasonable expectation of privacy, and the City has not identified any provision of state or federal law that justifies redaction of any portion of the footage… the City should be able to provide access promptly.” Notably, 404 Media had already obtained and published a portion of the bodycam footage in June. The outlet reported Blanchard’s case is one of several recent incidents involving arrests at public city meetings, including a Kansas high school teacher arrested for clapping during public comment at a data center meeting, later dropped by the city, and a Texas man arrested in his driveway a week after saying “bullshit” during a public meeting. Claremore did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

A new survey from Indeed-owned workplace review site Glassdoor found that employee attitudes toward AI in the workplace have shifted dramatically negative since the technology first began appearing in job reviews, according to Futurism. Mentions of “AI” or “LLMs” in employer reviews have exploded since Glassdoor first started tracking them in 2019, rising 240% from May 2025 to May 2026 alone. Yet as mentions have surged, sentiment has moved sharply in the opposite direction: while 81% of AI-related reviews were positive in 2019, that figure had collapsed to just 43% by 2026, and negative sentiment climbed from 41% in 2025 to 53% earlier this year.

Breaking the data down by job type revealed some expected critics alongside genuinely surprising ones. Writers, editors, and journalists, professions widely understood to be directly threatened by generative AI, were critical of the technology in 81% of their AI-related reviews. But accountants, a profession less obviously exposed to AI disruption, were negative 80% of the time, and insurance claims adjusters emerged as the single most critical group by far, with 98% of their AI-related comments expressing dissatisfaction.

The specific complaints varied considerably rather than centering on a single dominant fear. According to Glassdoor, 20% of negative comments between 2025 and 2026 described employers using AI as a “job killer,” while 14% complained their workplaces had become “AI pushers” forcing adoption regardless of employee preference. Another 13% said AI was “distracting” from the core business, and 10% said management was using AI to “alienate” workers through tools like heightened workplace surveillance. Glassdoor’s research team summarized the broader pattern: “It’s not just about the fear being replaced by AI. Workers resent the push to incorporate AI into products, to use tools internally, and when employers use AI to monitor or communicate with them.”

The Supreme Court handed President Trump a significant win Monday, allowing him to proceed indefinitely with construction of his new White House ballroom, according to NBC News. The court, divided 5-4, granted an emergency request from the Trump administration blocking lower court rulings that would have halted the aboveground portion of the project, following a similar interim decision issued by Chief Justice John Roberts on August 21. The legal challenge came from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which argued Trump lacked unilateral authority to move forward with the construction. In its unsigned ruling, the majority sidestepped the underlying legal question entirely, finding instead that the trust likely lacks standing to bring the lawsuit at all: “Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project. We conclude only that, based on the submissions before us, the government is likely to prevail in showing that the Trust lacks… standing to challenge the project in federal court.”

Roberts broke from the conservative majority on this case, joining the court’s three liberal justices in dissent. “Construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year. That construction is likely unlawful,” Roberts wrote. The standing question centered on a declaration from trust member Alison Hoagland, a Washington-based preservationist and board trustee who regularly walks by the White House and said she would “suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic, cultural and historical interests, if a ballroom of the proposed form and scale were constructed.” The majority rejected this basis for standing, stating the court had never previously recognized standing in a comparable situation: “To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury.” Roberts disagreed, arguing Hoagland did have standing since as a historic preservationist she can be “aesthetically injured in a concrete, particularized way by the transformation of a historic building that she frequently enjoys.”

According to court filings, the administration says construction was 65% complete as of August 24, with a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The White House has claimed the $400 million project will be funded entirely through private donations, though that assertion has been widely disputed, and Secret Service funds have already been directed toward covering some of the project’s security enhancements. The broader plan includes an extensive underground component featuring secure locations and medical facilities, which the administration argues are necessary for security purposes. A federal judge had previously ruled in the trust’s favor, allowing underground construction to continue while blocking the ballroom itself from being built while litigation proceeded, a decision the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld on August 7. The trust’s core argument rests on a federal law requiring the “express authority of Congress” to build on federal land in Washington, D.C., while the Trump administration has countered that separate provisions of federal law grant the president authority to make improvements on White House grounds.

THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY, CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently claimed that philanthropy is actually a “net negative on the world” and confirmed he has no intention of donating his fortune to charity, according to Futurism. Armstrong made the comments during an appearance on the right-wing Katie Miller Podcast, framing traditional philanthropic ambitions as misguided at best. “The common view is that philanthropy is a noble cause,” Armstrong said. “And like, Bill Gates after the DoJ thing is like, ‘I’m going to go rehabilitate my image, I’m going to do philanthropy.’” To Armstrong, that kind of reputational rehabilitation through giving is fundamentally flawed, since he argues even well-intentioned charitable efforts inevitably become “captured by ideology.”

He elaborated further on this point: “I guess I have sort of a contrarian view where a lot of charities and philanthropies are actually net negative on the world. And they get captured. It’s actually remarkably hard to find a foundation that has not gotten captured by ideology.” Despite an estimated net worth of roughly $8.7 billion, placing him firmly in the top fraction of the top 1%, Armstrong stated plainly, “so far, I’ve just been like ‘I’m not going to do that.’” His comments stand in sharp contrast to the historical behavior of past American industrial tycoons, who, whatever their personal failings, tended to embrace philanthropy at least partly as a strategic effort to manage public perception and stave off backlash against extreme wealth concentration.

Futurism noted that Andrew Carnegie funded libraries, John D. Rockefeller helped finance research that eventually eradicated hookworm, and JP Morgan donated extensive art and book collections to museums and cultural institutions, all part of a broader tradition among the ultra-wealthy of channeling fortunes into public-facing giving. Today’s wealthiest tech and finance figures appear far less inclined toward that kind of giving, with figures like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, despite his own controversies, increasingly becoming the exception rather than the rule among the ultra-wealthy, according to Futurism’s reporting.

A Michigan man named Stanley Kpenkann was charged $418 after using what appeared to be a public EV charger at a Hyundai dealership, only to discover afterward he’d been billed $5 per kilowatt-hour and $5 per minute, roughly 31 times the standard rate, according to The Drive citing local news outlet WXYZ. Kpenkann told WXYZ he was driving a rented Chevrolet Bolt, which has a 65-kWh battery pack, and was extremely low on charge, estimating he had only about 20 minutes of driving range left, when he used the EVgo app to locate a charger at a Hyundai dealership on Hall Road in Macomb Township, appearing to be Elder Hyundai, which listed a ChargePoint charging station. Kpenkann said he never saw the pricing before starting his 44-minute charging session, even though it was apparently displayed on the charger’s screen, and the session ran through EVgo and ChargePoint’s roaming agreement, which allows EVgo users to access ChargePoint’s charging network.

After receiving the bill, Kpenkann contacted EVgo assuming it was an error, but the company confirmed the charge was accurate. Only after what The Drive describes as significant back-and-forth did EVgo issue what it called a “goodwill refund” of $405, leaving Kpenkann to pay $13.27, the amount he actually should have owed under his EVgo subscription plan, meaning he initially paid 31 times what the session should have cost under his normal rate. According to the dealer’s explanation to WXYZ, the charger was “reserved for its own customers and vehicles” and had been deliberately priced at an exorbitant rate specifically to discourage public use.

For context on just how extreme the pricing was, the average per-kilowatt-hour rate for a Level 3 DC fast charger nationwide is $0.53, according to Qmerit, meaning the electricity itself was roughly ten times more expensive than typical, before even factoring in the additional per-minute fee stacked on top. The Drive noted the dealership could have simply blocked public access to the charger through other means, or at minimum attached a clear disclaimer warning users about the pricing before they began a session, and suggested this particular charging terminal likely shouldn’t be listed on EVgo or any public charging map at all given its intended restriction to dealership customers only.

A nationwide wave of protests, vandalism, and government pushback has hit Flock Safety’s automated license plate-recognition cameras, with more than 50 cities and counties canceling or deactivating the devices this year alone, according to ABC News citing Politico data. The backlash has taken dramatic forms, including a man dressed as Darth Vader mockingly praising the cameras at a San Diego city council meeting last week, saying “we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum,” and cameras being vandalized in at least 36 states, with some individuals sawing the devices down or shooting at them with guns, according to NPR. On Monday, Florida’s state transportation office revoked local law enforcement’s ability to install license plate readers on state highways. More than 135,000 automated license plate-recognition cameras have been identified nationwide, with roughly four out of every five made by Flock Safety, according to crowdsourced data from DeFlock.org, and the company says its cameras now operate in 49 states. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, called it unprecedented: “This is the biggest, most grassroots privacy backlash that I’ve ever seen in more than 20 years working on these issues. It just shows people don’t like mass surveillance.”

The backlash has been fueled significantly by documented cases of police officers abusing the technology to track ex-partners and other personal targets. A Kentucky police officer was arrested last week after authorities alleged he used Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend more than 2,000 times, and in Savannah, Georgia, six police department employees were fired in August over alleged abuse of the cameras, according to local ABC affiliate WJCL. The libertarian law firm Institute for Justice says it has identified more than 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, including stalking and wrongful stops. Evan Greer, director of the advocacy group Fight for the Future, connected these incidents to broader public anxiety about surveillance infrastructure: “People have a sense, ‘I wouldn’t want someone following me around in a car; and I wouldn’t want them doing it with a camera.’ Then when these stories come out about law enforcement officers using it to stalk their exes, it reminds people once you build a surveillance apparatus like this, it can and will be abused.” Concerns about artificial intelligence embedded in the cameras have deepened the unease, with Stanley noting, “These companies are not just recording that you were on this street at this time on this day; they’re also allowing law enforcement to run algorithms to decide whether your movement patterns are ‘suspicious.’”

Flock Safety and law enforcement experts, meanwhile, have defended the technology’s crime-fighting value. The company says its cameras helped locate more than 10,000 missing people last year, over 27 per day, and supported roughly 1 million criminal investigations in 2025. Flock cameras also helped identify the vehicle belonging to a suspect in the murder of a Brown University professor last year, according to Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez, though the suspect died by suicide before being located. Kenneth Gray, a lecturer in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of New Haven, said the cameras can fill investigative gaps by mapping a vehicle’s movement patterns over time, but acknowledged the tradeoff: “The Flock system is building a database without any allegation of criminal activity. It’s useful to law enforcement after the fact, but it’s also gathering up information on many people that have committed no crime.” In response to the backlash, Flock Safety announced new safeguards earlier this month, including shortening its default data-retention period from 30 days to seven and introducing an “Evidence Mode” for preserving data tied to active investigations. The company did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment for this story.

Critics have called for stronger legal protections, with Greer advocating for an outright nationwide ban, arguing “there are certain types of weapons we’ve decided as a society are too dangerous to sit in the basement of your local police department.” Torin Monahan, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor specializing in surveillance, argued police should need a judicial warrant to access Flock camera data, a position Gray also endorsed, saying “a warrant for the information from the database would protect the public from misuse.” The controversy has drawn bipartisan political attention. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott paused state funding of Flock cameras last week, while Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he’d welcome a bipartisan bill banning the cameras in his state. Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley announced an investigation into Flock Safety on Friday, writing in an open letter to the company requesting internal documents: “I want law enforcement to have tools to catch offenders and keep the public safe. But Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church.”

Colorado-based Horizon Organic Dairy has recalled more than 53,000 cases of chocolate milk sold in boxed cartons due to a seal issue that could cause the product to spoil before its printed expiration date, according to USA Today. The company initiated the voluntary recall in early August for 53,760 cases of 1% low-fat chocolate milk, sold in 8-fluid-ounce cartons packaged in either 12-count or 18-count boxes. Horizon’s head of quality and food safety, Kendra Harrison, told USA Today the defect “may cause the product packaging to appear bloated or be prone to leakage, and the contents may be subject to premature spoilage,” and emphasized the recall is unrelated to any allergen, microorganism, or pathogen contamination.
The company said it has not received any reports of illnesses or hospitalizations tied to the affected milk.

The recall breaks down into two batches, both sold in red packaging. The larger batch covers 34,524 cases of 12-count boxes of 8-ounce 1% chocolate milk with best-by dates of Jan. 28, 2027, Jan. 30, 2027, Jan. 31, 2027, Feb. 1, 2027, Feb. 2, 2027, or Feb. 3, 2027, while the second batch covers 19,236 cases of 18-count boxes with best-by dates of Jan. 31, 2027, Feb. 1, 2027, or Feb. 2, 2027. The recall was formally initiated on Aug. 7, 2026, and posted to the FDA’s website, though as of Aug. 31 the FDA had not yet classified the recall, according to Horizon. USA Today reached out to the company to confirm which retailers carried the affected products; chains including Target, Walmart, Whole Foods, and Kroger currently list a variety of Horizon Organic milk products on their websites.

Horizon Organic Dairy advises customers not to consume any of the recalled chocolate milk. Affected customers should hold onto the packaging and contact the company’s customer relations line at 1-888-494-3020 to arrange a refund, with representatives available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time.

The AI industry is losing an extraordinary amount of public goodwill, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has openly acknowledged the shift, according to Futurism. Once viewed as exciting technology poised to improve everyday life, AI’s massive data center buildout has soured public sentiment considerably, with protesters now organizing against $130 billion in data center investments, arguing the projects primarily benefit a small group of wealthy individuals while threatening local water supplies, driving up living costs, and generating enormous pollution. Altman conceded the mood shift directly in a new Time interview: “Clearly, people hate data centers — right now, at least. People are pretty negative on AI.” That backlash has coalesced into a genuinely bipartisan movement, leaving AI executives caught between appealing to lawmakers for favorable regulation and trying to win back a public that increasingly wants little to do with them; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded by painting an optimistic vision of an AI-enabled future of leisure, while Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian is attempting the difficult task of directly selling the public on data centers despite the scale of the backlash.

For Altman, the tension has become deeply personal. Earlier this year, a man threw a Molotov cocktail at his house just days before it was struck by gunfire, with the man accused in the firebombing incident reportedly having repeatedly warned that AI will “exterminate humankind” and having ties to PauseAI, a political movement calling for greater AI safety oversight. “It has been a painful personal experience,” Altman told Time. Beyond the personal toll, OpenAI is facing mounting institutional pressure: the company faces steep competition from rivals like Anthropic, and its leadership has seen a revolving door of departures, most recently a central figure overseeing the company’s data center buildouts, according to the Wall Street Journal, a departure that signals continued turbulence as OpenAI tries to win over both the public and cautious investors ahead of its planned IPO. Despite the backlash, OpenAI remains committed to heavy compute investment, having signed several major infrastructure contracts across the country to secure computing power, a scarce and highly valuable resource amid the ongoing AI boom, a commitment that could make Altman’s efforts to rebuild public trust even more difficult.

Altman appears acutely aware of how his reputation has shifted since ChatGPT’s early runaway success first put OpenAI at the forefront of the industry. Earlier this month, the company slowed development of its latest models, citing safety concerns, after a group of its AI models were caught having infiltrated Hugging Face’s systems, alarming experts in the field. “Getting AI safety right is more important than any company’s momentum,” Altman told Time. Still, it remains uncertain whether that approach will meaningfully repair his public image, especially as new data centers continue breaking ground nationwide. Altman pushed back on how he believes he’s perceived: “Look, I think there is this caricature of me, which is I don’t care about AI safety, and I’m just trying to make revenue go up, and, you know, just a YOLO CEO.” Futurism’s own reporting, however, suggests that characterization may be closer to reality than Altman would like to admit, given what the company’s rapid rise required to reach its current position.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has resigned from his role amid growing tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to a U.S. official who spoke with ABC News, with President Trump accepting his resignation Monday evening. The White House offered warm praise for Driscoll’s tenure in a statement, with spokesperson Anna Kelly saying, “Secretary Driscoll has been highly effective in advancing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Strong Again at the Department of the Army by providing outstanding leadership during historic military operations, restoring an emphasis on readiness and lethality, assisting with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and more. The United States Army is more powerful than ever thanks to his work alongside the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War.”

According to various U.S. officials, Driscoll and Hegseth had disagreed on several matters since both took over their roles in 2025, with the most significant friction centering on Hegseth’s decision to fire or sideline multiple senior officers who were up for promotion to general. Most notably, Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the former Army Chief of Staff, in April without offering an explanation. Driscoll reportedly had a close working relationship with George, and told a congressional hearing at the time that he did not know why George had been removed from his position, a comment that publicly underscored the growing distance between the two men.

Driscoll had carved out an unusually prominent role for an Army secretary, whose duties typically center on overseeing the training and equipping of the service. Notably, Trump tapped Driscoll last fall to lead a diplomatic initiative aimed at restarting Ukraine-Russia peace talks, an assignment well outside the traditional scope of a service secretary’s responsibilities. Driscoll was also well regarded on Capitol Hill and maintained direct access to the White House, partly through his prior relationship with Vice President JD Vance, whom he met at Yale Law School after serving as a cavalry officer in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division.

MapQuest’s mobile app has soared to the top of the U.S. App Store’s navigation category after the company publicly refused to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” despite President Trump’s executive order directing the change, according to TechCrunch. The company, which calls itself the “OG of online mapping,” announced Thursday it would keep the lake’s traditional name on its maps, and the decision sent its iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store’s overall Top Charts (excluding games) as of Monday morning Eastern time, No. 8 overall across both apps and games, and No. 1 among navigation apps specifically. The app also climbed to No. 2 overall in Canada’s App Store as of Sunday evening. MapQuest said it received “hundreds of thousands” of new downloads following its decision, with app usage climbing to 50 times above normal levels.

Third-party data from Sensor Tower confirms the scale of the surge, showing MapQuest recorded 184,000 global downloads and 162,000 U.S. downloads during the week beginning August 24, each representing more than a 10x increase week-over-week, with U.S. daily downloads up 128% day-over-day between August 26 and August 30. Doug Berger, MapQuest’s general manager, framed the move as consistent with the company’s past approach: “We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they’re familiar with. Hundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right by downloading our app.” MapQuest also released an online tool letting users jokingly rename Lake Ontario to anything they choose and share the results on social media, mirroring a similar tool it launched last year after Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Trump’s renaming decision arrived amid escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada, after negotiations broke down and the U.S. imposed new 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, with Canada preparing retaliatory measures. Unlike MapQuest, Google Maps announced Saturday it would comply with the name change, explaining it updates its maps to reflect official government sources, in this case the Geographic Names Information System, though the updated name will only display for U.S. users, while Canadian users will continue seeing Lake Ontario and users elsewhere will see both names. Both Apple Maps and Google Maps had similarly renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America last year following Trump’s earlier executive order on that body of water, but as of Monday morning, Apple Maps had not yet renamed Lake Ontario and had not issued any statement on its plans. MapQuest, meanwhile, has changed ownership multiple times over the years, moving from AOL to Verizon and eventually being sold to internet advertising company System1 in 2019; Sensor Tower estimates the app has been downloaded 687,000 times worldwide so far this year, up 29% year-over-year, and 24.4 million times total since 2012, with 97% of those installs coming from the United States.

The Florida Department of Transportation is revoking permits for automated license plate readers on roads within the state highway system, ordering the devices removed within 30 days of a memo issued Monday, according to Business Insider. The move adds Florida to a growing list of jurisdictions cutting ties with Flock Safety amid mounting backlash against its ALPR cameras, which are deployed in thousands of towns nationwide, typically along roads or at intersections, to capture and store license plate data for law enforcement investigations. Beyond broader data privacy and surveillance concerns, Flock has faced specific scrutiny for misreading plates and contributing to wrongful arrests, prompting residents across the country to demand removal of the cameras, with some vandals taking matters into their own hands by tearing cameras down or covering them with trash bags or paint.

Following the state’s decision, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters announced his office would end license plate reader use throughout Duval County, citing both the state memo and community concerns. “LPR technology has proven to be an enormously valuable investigative tool, assisting our agency in solving serious crimes and locating missing and vulnerable individuals,” Waters said in a statement. “However, given the decision made at the state level and the concerns expressed by members of our community, I have determined that discontinuing the use of this technology is the appropriate course of action at this time.” Several other Florida sheriff’s offices followed suit, including in Franklin County, Liberty County, and Putnam County, all announcing they would discontinue Flock camera use in response to the state’s action.

Florida’s move fits into a broader national pattern of jurisdictions distancing themselves from Flock. Last week, Tempe, Arizona, announced it would shut down its network of 33 Flock cameras, citing risk of misuse and the need to maintain community trust, while the Los Angeles Police Department allowed its Flock contract to expire back in July without renewal. Flock did not respond to a request for comment on Florida’s decision.

Survivors of a deadly flash flood that swept through the floor of the Grand Canyon over the weekend described a harrowing escape through rising, muddy water as they raced to reach higher ground, according to ABC News. Gabriel Bergemann and David Gregory told ABC News they were backpacking together at the bottom of the national park Saturday afternoon when park rangers ordered them to run across a footbridge spanning a raging creek to safety. Bergemann said that just 10 minutes after they crossed, a wall of water tore through and destroyed the bridge entirely. “If they hadn’t told us to evacuate when they did, I think a lot of people wouldn’t have made it,” he said. Gregory recalled watching the creek’s water level climb rapidly as they crossed: “I was just thinking that if someone fell into the creek, I don’t know how they would be able to get out.”

Grand Canyon National Park Service officials confirmed Monday that a second body had been recovered from the flooded area, while search efforts continue for 14 people still missing or unaccounted for. One of those missing, identified by his wife in a Facebook post, is Dr. John Guisti, a New York chiropractor and partner at Whipple City Family Chiropractic, who was with a hiking group when the flood struck their campsite; his wife described him as a “deeply loved husband, father and pillar of our family.” More than 60 people, mostly hikers and campers, were air evacuated from the park’s Phantom Ranch and lower North Kaibab Trail area on Saturday. The flood struck around 2:30 p.m. local time in the Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch areas amid a monsoonal downpour that officials described as “a significant flash-flood event.”

Erica Viola and her husband, Scott Svedin, were camping at Bright Angel Campground when they were told to evacuate immediately. “This was something out of a movie,” Svedin said, describing his struggle through knee-high water and mud to reach safety. Viola recalled the chaos of the moment: “We just heard people yell, ‘Run, Run, Run.’ And there’s 40 of us running through this deep muddy water trying to make it to the bridge.” Once they crossed, the footbridge was destroyed behind them by the surging floodwater. “Once we got to the bridge, that’s when this 15-foot wall of water came through the campground at Phantom Ranch and just wiped out all the bridges in the creek,” Viola said, adding that she lost most of her belongings in the flooding.

The Grand Canyon National Park Service said in a Sunday statement that the flooding caused extensive damage to infrastructure throughout the inner canyon, including the Transcanyon Waterline, which supplies water from the canyon for use throughout the park. “The flash flood resulted in significant impacts to infrastructure throughout Bright Angel Canyon. Nearly all footbridges spanning Bright Angel Creek were destroyed, eliminating hiker access across the creek,” the park service said. With the waterline currently non-operational, the entire park is now facing limited water reserves, prompting officials to halt all overnight guest lodging and concessions inside the park.

Prediction market platform Kalshi announced Monday it has permanently banned former Republican Rep. George Santos after concluding he likely engaged in insider trading by profiting from bets against his own attendance at the State of the Union address, according to the Associated Press. Kalshi’s compliance department said it established reasonable cause to believe Santos manipulated speculation over whether he’d attend the address before earning a $17,839 profit when he ultimately did not show up. Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana confirmed this marks the first permanent ban in the company’s history, while four other individuals named in separate enforcement actions announced the same day received only temporary bans because they cooperated with the compliance investigation. The lifetime ban took effect last Friday, barring Santos from accessing the platform directly or indirectly, and Kalshi also imposed a $71,356 penalty against him.

The circumstances leading up to the ban were notably brazen. Santos had repeatedly discussed his intention to attend the State of the Union, delivered just four months after Trump granted him clemency in a fraud case that had led to his expulsion from the House, and on the eve of the speech, Kalshi had the odds of Santos attending at close to 75%. Then, minutes into the address, Santos posted on X claiming he’d been waylaid at the airport, prompting immediate accusations from social media users that he was running another scheme. Kalshi’s compliance department found Santos was barred from trading in that specific market because he had direct ability to influence the outcome, yet he placed a series of large bets between February 2 and February 25 on whether he’d attend, then made public statements about his plans specifically to move the betting price in his favor. “Some of these included false or misleading statements,” the compliance department said. Santos responded defiantly on X, calling Kalshi “an unserious company” and the ban “frivolous nonsense,” adding in a separate post, “thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform… Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for.”

This isn’t Santos’s first regulatory reckoning over the trades. A month earlier, he agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a separate federal investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the same conduct, and that federal probe had already prompted rival prediction platform Polymarket to cut ties with him back in June. Santos had previously brushed off attendance complaints on his podcast in March, saying, “I guess people lost money. Some people made unexpected money. That’s to show you how fragile these markets are.” Santos, who originally won office by fabricating a persona as a Wall Street dealmaker, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud and identity theft in 2024, but was released by Trump after serving just 84 days, with Trump calling him a “rogue” while arguing he didn’t deserve a harsh sentence and should get credit for voting Republican.

Kalshi’s other Monday enforcement actions targeted political candidates who bet on their own races. Retired Col. Laurie Buckhout, a Republican congressional candidate in a competitive North Carolina district against Democratic Rep. Don Davis, received a $2,589 fine after admitting she placed bets under $1,000 on her own campaign, though Kalshi noted she cooperated fully with the investigation. “I bet on myself. Literally. It was a dumb mistake, and as soon as I learned there was an issue, I worked to make it right,” Buckhout said. “Safe to say my career as a Kalshi trader was short-lived.” Kalshi also handed three-year suspensions to Stephen Cloobeck, a timeshare mogul who briefly ran for California governor and allegedly bought $10,000 in contracts on his own candidacy, and Ben Midgley, a businessman who briefly sought the GOP nomination for Maine governor and bet under $1,000 on his own race; neither could immediately be reached for comment.

A bombshell Mother Jones investigation found that police departments across the country are using opioid crisis settlement money, originally intended to help communities devastated by the epidemic, to instead fund Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance cameras, according to Futurism. The publication identified 19 agencies across ten different states that spent nearly $1 million combined in opioid settlement funds on ALPR systems from companies including Flock and Axon, though Mother Jones notes that figure is almost certainly an undercount given the scale of the broader trend. The pipeline works like this: after major pharmaceutical companies agreed to pay a combined $50 billion for their role in fueling the opioid crisis, state agencies tasked with distributing those funds decided police departments would be an efficient recipient, and law enforcement agencies, which already claim one of the largest shares of municipal budgets nationally, pitched themselves as capable of using the money to buy new equipment and crack down on drug dealers.

The problem, as Futurism notes, is that license plate readers have repeatedly proven far more useful for surveilling and harassing ordinary civilians than for meaningfully fighting crime, and they’re arguably one of the least suited tools imaginable for actually addressing opioid addiction. Robyn Oster, director of policy at the Partnership to End Addiction, explained the scale mismatch to Mother Jones: “While $50 billion may seem like a lot of funds, once it’s divided up over 18 years and thousands of localities, a lot of places really aren’t getting that much, particularly given the scope of the crisis.” She added plainly: “Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

Rather than funding state-run rehab clinics or harm reduction campaigns, that settlement money is instead being funneled into AI surveillance infrastructure that, in practice, tends to catch people for minor infractions like legally purchasing marijuana or picking up small amounts of cash, rather than dismantling the systems actually driving the opioid epidemic. Oster summarized the core issue bluntly: “It’s just really not the way to make the most impact in addressing addiction.”

ORIGINAL MOTHER JONES ARTICLE: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/police-opioid-funding-flock-alpr-camera-surveillance-tech/

Anti-scam investigators Erin West and Paul Raffile traveled to Nigeria and successfully tracked down a scammer to his doorstep after posing as a potential sextortion victim online, according to 404 Media. West founded Operation Shamrock, an organization dedicated to disrupting scam operations, while Raffile is a longtime cybercrime researcher focused specifically on sextortion, a scheme in which scammers assume the identity of a young person, approach American teenagers on apps like Instagram, coax them into recording explicit videos, then reveal the deception and threaten to release the footage to the victim’s friends and family unless paid. The scheme is widespread across U.S. social media, and Raffile noted at least dozens of young boys have died by suicide after being targeted. “Sextortion is ‘targeting youth. It’s surging,’” Raffile said, describing the motivation behind the trip: “I wonder, can we hatch a plan where we put ourselves out there as a target, create our own fake account, get scammed by these criminals, and then trace the criminal back to their home turf?”

The pair created fake Instagram and Snapchat accounts posing as a young person, and suspicious direct messages arrived within days, with West saying she was “flabbergasted” at how quickly they came in. The scammers, posing as young women using photos stolen from OnlyFans models, eventually demanded payment in Bitcoin and directed the pair to a website to claim their supposed payout, a site West and Raffile had actually built to capture the scammers’ IP addresses. That tool revealed the scammers were operating out of Lagos, Nigeria, prompting the two to book a flight, giving themselves roughly six days on the ground to identify a specific scammer given the financial constraints of an extended stay. After deploying the IP-grabbing tool again, one scammer granted the tool expanded browser permissions, which allowed it to pinpoint his exact location and activate his camera, capturing his face. A separate breakthrough came when another scammer asked to move the conversation from Instagram to WhatsApp, inadvertently revealing his phone number, which the pair’s local fixer ran through TrueCaller, an app that aggregates people’s phone contacts to make numbers searchable, surfacing the name “Big Dollar.” West shared the number with additional contacts and worked with another expert who uncovered the scammer’s real identity along with other social media accounts, including a TikTok profile that had posted actual blackmail messages, ultimately yielding GPS coordinates for his likely location.

West and Raffile then drove to Big Dollar’s village, though he ultimately refused to meet with them in person. West instead confronted him by phone, telling him directly that they knew his identity and location and warning that the next step would be handing that information over to the FBI. Shortly afterward, Big Dollar’s social media accounts went dark. West reflected on the significance of the confrontation: “It was an interesting opportunity to really put some fear in a class of people who aren’t really afraid of being arrested.” Along the way, the investigation also brought the pair into unexpected territory, at one point accompanying a scammer to a rural hut outside Lagos to witness a baba lao, a local spiritual leader, perform a ritual intended to bring the scammer more financial luck in his manipulation of a victim overseas, a ceremony involving grinding herbs, creating talismans, and an animal sacrifice that lasted roughly two and a half hours.

The Pentagon announced Monday it has added Starshield AI’s Grok for Government and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to its AI platform for unclassified military use, expanding the roster of AI assistants available to Department of Defense personnel, according to The Hill. The department said Grok for Government will deliver “immediate productivity gains, stronger knowledge continuity and more secure and efficient collaboration,” giving DOD personnel access to “advanced capabilities, including deep-thinking inference, adaptive reasoning modes (Auto, Fast, and Expert), customizable workspaces, persistent projects and reusable ‘playbooks’ that capture and scale institutional knowledge.” The department framed Grok’s practical value in operational terms, stating it “enables the Joint Force to execute missions faster and with greater precision across numerous operational contexts, ranging from market research analysis for acquisition professionals to supply chain management for logisticians.” Separately, ChatGPT Mil is designed to support “document-heavy unclassified work across the Department, including planning, policy, logistics, and administration,” and is built to scale for more than 3 million Pentagon personnel.

Both models will be available through the Pentagon’s GenAI.mil platform, which launched last December offering only Google’s Gemini for Government before expanding, and which now counts more than 1.7 million users. This expansion follows deals reached months earlier by Elon Musk’s xAI and OpenAI with the Pentagon to deploy their models in classified settings as well. The timing is notable given the department’s ongoing conflict with Anthropic: in February, the Pentagon moved to ban Anthropic’s products after the company sought guarantees that its Claude model wouldn’t be used in fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance, designating the company a national security supply chain risk. A federal judge struck down that designation just last week, ruling the department’s actions against Anthropic were “illegal and baseless.” Despite the ruling, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, Emil Michael, said at a Breitbart News event last week that the department intends to fully remove Anthropic’s platforms by the end of September regardless.

Grok’s inclusion comes despite ongoing controversy surrounding the model’s safety and reliability, particularly regarding its responses and image generation capabilities, though the DOD has consistently promoted it as a national security asset. The Pentagon’s chief digital and AI officer, Cameron Stanley, wrote in a court filing earlier this year that Grok enabled U.S. forces to deploy more than 2,000 munitions to 2,000 targets within 96 hours during the Iran war. Grok’s footprint extends beyond the Pentagon as well, with a General Services Administration deal allowing civil agencies to purchase xAI’s Grok models for just 42 cents through March 2027.

President Trump vowed Sunday to report NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker to the FCC for “rebuke or punishment” over a comment she made about his political endorsement record, according to Deadline. In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House… How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.” He went on to claim his endorsement record is “without question, the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics.” Notably, Welker’s comment wasn’t even made on Meet the Press itself, but during a separate appearance on local Washington, D.C. affiliate WRC-TV, where she said, “He’s going to loom large over these midterms… He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries. He’s had some mixed results, but most recently, his pick of Senator Darline Graham… was successful in her primary battle.”

Welker’s underlying claim appears factually accurate, and would likely form NBC’s core defense if a formal complaint is ever filed. While Graham did win her South Carolina primary last week, several other high-profile Trump endorsees have recently lost their races, including Mike Lindell, who lost the GOP primary for Minnesota governor to Lisa Demuth, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, who lost his reelection bid to primary challenger Charlie Hatcher, Rep. Randy Feenstra, who lost the GOP primary for Iowa governor to Zach Lahn, and Burt Jones, who lost the Republican primary for Georgia governor to Rick Jackson. NBC News defended its anchor directly, stating, “Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her.”

This threat arrives as the FCC is already defending itself in a separate but related lawsuit filed by ABC earlier this month, which alleges on First Amendment grounds that some of the agency’s regulatory actions amount to retaliation by the Trump administration over ABC’s news coverage. That lawsuit specifically cites Trump’s Truth Social threats, among other actions, as evidence, and points to the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr ordering ABC’s eight owned stations to submit their broadcast licenses for early renewal. The FCC responded to that suit by stating, “All broadcasters have a legal obligation to operate in the public interest—even Disney. The FCC has been examining claims that Disney engaged in illegal DEI discrimination for over a year.” A judge is scheduled to hear arguments in October on ABC’s request for a temporary restraining order to halt the early license renewal process. Trump closed his post targeting Welker by adding, “The Press is a Disgrace to our Nation, and I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously,” and separately posted about polling: “THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT. FCC TO THE RESCUE!” Anna Gomez, the FCC’s sole Democratic commissioner, pushed back sharply: “As I’ve said many times, the FCC has no authority to punish journalists this administration doesn’t like. These threats to press freedom are dangerous. They undermine the foundation of our democracy, and they have no place in it.”

Notably, the FCC’s own stated policy undercuts the basis for Trump’s threat. The agency maintains a news distortion policy but explicitly describes its authority as “narrow,” stating on its website that it “is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press,” and that any investigation should focus only on claims that a news report “was deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners.” The agency further clarifies, “The FCC does not investigate claims of collateral inaccuracy in news reports or differences of opinion over the truth or validity of aspects of a news program,” a standard that appears to describe exactly the kind of characterization dispute at the center of Welker’s comment.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered all state agencies to stop funding Flock Safety’s AI surveillance camera network, issuing the directive Thursday night as opposition to the company grows across the political spectrum, according to Mashable. The order landed just as The Texas Tribune was preparing to publish a report revealing that Texas had spent at least $30 million in grants to help local agencies acquire Flock cameras, with that funding drawn from a higher fee Texas lawmakers imposed on residents’ car insurance policies. The timing is notable given that just days before Abbott’s order, his Democratic gubernatorial challenger, Gina Hinojosa, released a campaign ad specifically attacking him over the issue, warning Texans there are “10,000 Flock cameras reading your [license] plate, logging where you sleep and pray” with “no warrant needed” in “Greg Abbott’s Texas.”

The backlash against Flock extends well beyond Texas and cuts across party lines. Numerous reports have surfaced nationally documenting law enforcement officers misusing Flock cameras and the data they collect to stalk and harass individuals, concerns significant enough to spawn tools like the website Have I Been Flocked?, which lets users check whether their license plate has been captured by one of the company’s cameras. Similar political fights are playing out in other states as well: candidates from both parties in Michigan and Pennsylvania have campaigned on anti-surveillance platforms, criticizing opponents for supporting the policies that enabled Flock installations in their states. In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has gone so far as to nickname his Republican opponent Mike Rogers “Mass Surveillance Mike” over the issue.

The bipartisan nature of this pushback is itself a notable political development, since AI surveillance and privacy concerns have found common ground among Republicans, who traditionally emphasize limited government intrusion, and Democrats, who have long raised civil liberties concerns about mass data collection. Abbott’s abrupt reversal, despite being a Republican who had previously overseen the state funding that built out Flock’s Texas footprint, suggests the political cost of continued association with the company had grown too steep to ignore, particularly with a gubernatorial race underway and a critical funding report about to become public.

Google announced Saturday it has begun rolling out changes to display Lake Ontario as “Lake America” on maps shown to U.S. users, following an executive order President Trump signed last week renaming the lake amid an escalating trade dispute with Canada, according to CBS News. The lake sits between Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, and New York state, and Trump’s order followed threats he made earlier in the week as tensions between the two historically allied nations came to a head. Google clarified how the name will actually appear depending on location: “People in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America’ on their maps, while in Canada, they will see ‘Lake Ontario.’” Users outside both countries will see both names displayed, with “Lake America” appearing in parentheses. Google explained the change follows standard company policy: “These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.”

The renaming arrives amid a genuinely tense standoff between the U.S. and Canada after trade negotiators failed to reach an agreement to end their dispute. Earlier this month, the U.S. began imposing 50% tariffs on hundreds of Canadian goods, prompting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to announce that Canada will impose matching tariffs of up to 50% on billions of dollars of U.S. goods starting next month. Trump’s executive order came after he publicly sparred with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and through the order he directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the Geographic Names Information System, the federal database that works with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to standardize geographic names for federal use. Google said its maps reflect the change specifically because it follows the formal name change under that federal system, noting its maps update “to reflect name changes in official government sources.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has used this mechanism to rename a body of water for political effect; he similarly renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” earlier in his term, a change likewise applied only to federal references and not binding on other nations, who aren’t required to recognize it. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung celebrated the Lake Ontario change Sunday on X, writing, “It’s official! LAKE AMERICA on Google Maps.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed back firmly after Trump signed the order last week, stating plainly, “New York won’t be calling it that.”

Tim Cook marked his final day as Apple CEO with an emotional memo sent to employees Monday morning, obtained and published by 9to5Mac, reflecting on his tenure and expressing deep gratitude to the team he’s led as John Ternus prepares to take over the role Tuesday. Cook opened the memo with clear emotional weight around the transition: “Today is my last day as CEO of Apple. This is a moment I always knew would come one day, and yet it is still hard to believe it has arrived and I am writing these words. I love this company and the team behind it, and I couldn’t let this day pass without sending a note to you, to tell you how grateful I am for the outpouring of affection you’ve sent my way, for the way you’ve shown up each and every day, and most of all, for the privilege of a lifetime serving as your leader.” He credited employees directly for his success, writing, “The truth is, whatever there is to say about my success, I know it is all because of you. You have brought out the best in me. In all my life, I have never seen or been with such an extraordinary team of people before.”

Much of the memo focused on Apple’s internal culture rather than business metrics, with Cook describing intangible qualities he felt an annual report could never capture. “This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything,” he wrote. “We share a belief that what we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it.” He invoked Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’s famous phrase in describing the collective impact of the team: “We have made it possible to leave our ‘dent in the universe,’ as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world. How fortunate we are. How fortunate I am.”

Cook clarified that he isn’t leaving Apple entirely, only stepping down from the CEO role, and expressed strong confidence in his successor. “As you know, I am not leaving Apple. But I am stepping away from a role that I have loved deeply. I will miss this work in ways I can only begin to imagine, even as I remain completely at peace with my decision,” he wrote. “I will miss leading you and being with you for every step, even as I take enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John. Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership.” He closed by encouraging employees to stay proud of Apple and signed off warmly: “With all I have and all I am, I am always Yours, Tim.” Cook also shared a shorter farewell message publicly on social media, writing: “Sending lots of love to the Apple community on my last day as CEO. My title changes tomorrow, but the love I have for the Apple community never will. Thank you for being a constant source of inspiration. My gratitude is endless, and I’m excited for the next chapter!”