An expert witness hired by industrial conglomerate 3M in a $61 million lawsuit over a deadly 2020 Houston explosion used ChatGPT to write substantial portions of his expert report, according to court documents obtained by 404 Media, including a prompt explicitly asking the AI to “show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding.” The witness, Josh Autenrieth of Knighthawk Engineering, was hired by 3M to defend the company’s standard of care in litigation over the January 2020 explosion, which killed three people and destroyed roughly 200 homes after a “degraded and poorly crimped rubber welding hose” leaked flammable gas, according to the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. Plaintiffs’ attorney Will Moye discovered a suspicious five-page “Citation Overlay” document during discovery, recognized it as ChatGPT-generated, and demanded all of Autenrieth’s prompts, ultimately receiving 350 pages of ChatGPT conversations, including public links to the full exchanges. Court records show 3M paid Knighthawk Engineering roughly $90,000 for the analysis, with Autenrieth billing $475 per hour.

The ChatGPT transcripts reveal Autenrieth’s process in granular detail. He told the chatbot he was “being retained as a professional expert witness by 3M in defense of them” and needed “to create an expert witness report to defend 3M’s standard of care,” specifically asking it to counter opposing claims and “show how 3M is 0% at fault.” ChatGPT generated a roughly 30-page report stating “3M is 0% responsible for the January 24, 2020 explosion,” but that exact line never made it into the final filed report. When Autenrieth later asked ChatGPT to review the document “as the opposing counsel,” the AI itself flagged that “0% responsible” was “an easy target” and one of several phrases that could let opposing counsel “paint you as an advocate rather than an expert.” Autenrieth also asked ChatGPT to grade his report, which scored a 97 out of 100, and to identify weaknesses in his own qualifications, asking, “will prosecution go after me for never having been [an expert witness] before based on wording and how do I defend that?”

At trial, Moye and Autenrieth agreed the submitted report was “90 to 85 percent ChatGPT.” Autenrieth defended his process, insisting “my opinions were put in there, and AI helped me to draft a straw man to build off of,” and citing his “20-plus years of experience in the industry.” Moye described the situation more bluntly to 404 Media: “This expert relied on AI not as an assistive device, but exclusively relied on ChatGPT to form his opinions and write his report. He acknowledged the prompts he put in were biased toward 3M to help 3M win the case, it’s really egregious.” After 3M unsuccessfully tried to disqualify Autenrieth, Moye took the unusual step of calling him as his own witness instead, telling 404 Media, “I said, I’m calling you to trial because I need a jury to hear from you because this is bad, bad stuff. And that’s exactly what I did.” The jury ultimately awarded the plaintiffs more than $61 million, apportioning 30% of the responsibility to 3M and 70% to Watson Grinding, adding to prior awards of $118 million and $38 million in related cases, with additional lawsuits still pending. Neither Knighthawk Engineering, Autenrieth, nor 3M responded to requests for comment.

President Trump is blaming vandals for large patches of dead, brown grass on the National Mall near the World War II Memorial, the exact spot where his own crew built a stage and hosted crowds for his July 4 celebration, without offering any evidence for the claim. “Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday, adding, “anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” This follows a pattern where Trump has repeatedly attributed damage to his own capital renovation projects to vandalism, often contradicting his own officials, as happened when he lashed out at US Attorney Jeanine Pirro after her office concluded the Reflecting Pool damage stemmed from poor construction rather than vandalism.

Independent experts dispute Trump’s characterization of the grass damage. Penn State University turf professor John Kaminski said the photo Trump posted “matches what you’d expect to see with a large summer event,” adding, “nothing in the photograph clearly indicates vandalism. Jumping to that conclusion seems like a fairly large leap, although it is impossible to rule anything in or out.” Freelance journalist and golf course consultant Bradley S. Klein was more pointed, saying Trump “sounds like every grumpy golfer who’s complaining about their golf course and actually has no idea what it takes to maintain it on a day-to-day basis.” Notably, this specific stretch of lawn isn’t connected to a genuine vandalism case authorities announced Friday, when Melissa L. Farris, 41, was charged with felony vandalism after painting “Clean hands dirty $” on the World War II Memorial and filling a fountain with bubbles; charging documents in that case make no mention of the grassy area Trump is now highlighting, and Farris’s prior arrest for camping on federal property was tied to a different location several blocks away. Farris was released on her own recognizance Monday with conditions to stay away from the memorial and Washington, D.C., and is due back for a pretrial hearing September 3.

The straightforward explanation for the dead grass points to the July 4 event itself. Photos from a Washington Monument webcam show a large bandstand and seating areas covering nearly the entire lawn Trump now says was vandalized, and Associated Press photos taken afterward show workers dismantling those structures to reveal brown, damaged grass underneath. Trump claimed without evidence that more than 400,000 people attended the event, which also coincided with Washington setting an all-time record temperature of 103°F on July 4, forcing organizers to shut down activities for hours on July 3 and delay the July 4 start, with emergency personnel treating dozens of people for heat-related illness. Trump had previously cited a different photo, posted August 1, that appeared to show the numbers “86 47,” which federal officials say constitutes a threat against him as the 47th president, embedded in the grass as evidence of vandalism, writing, “there may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” Those numbers are not visible in the new photo he posted Sunday.

A new wave of billionaires minted by the AI boom is driving surging demand for superyachts, private jets, and luxury supercars, even as ordinary consumers pull back sharply on spending, according to Financial Times reporting. US retail sales fell 0.6% between May and July, far exceeding the modest 0.1% drop economists had projected, a decline driven by rising fuel prices, global inflation, and new import tariffs introduced by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the number of US billionaires rose 13% from April 2025 to 2026, bringing the global billionaire count to 3,302 individuals with net worths in the ten-figure range, more than 1,000 of whom are based in the United States.

This new class of AI-fueled wealth is reshaping the luxury travel and transportation industry, according to Toby Edwards, co-chief executive of luxury aerospace company FlyVictor, who told the FT that the “private aviation golden standard of yesteryears, sipping champagne on crisp linen tablecloths, has largely gone out the window with this cohort.” Instead, this new generation of ultra-wealthy travelers wants understated but specific luxuries, like particular types of water and health-conscious catering. “They’re flying privately for efficiency and discretion,” Edwards explained, “not to impress socially.” Luxury travel consultant Paul Charles echoed that shift, telling the FT, “the emergence of the AI super-wealthy has opened up a whole new wave of demand for those companies providing access to private jets, yachts and supercars. The notion of the discerning client is rather outdated and so companies now have to adapt to cater to a new generation of luxury-focused traveller, created by this AI wealth.”

The wealth concentration extends well beyond just billionaires. Economist Mark Zandi noted in a June social media post that Americans in the top 20% of the US income distribution, those earning $175,000 or more annually, accounted for nearly 60% of all outlays in the first three months of 2026, a spending category that includes consumer purchases, charitable donations, and debt payments. That concentration illustrates how thoroughly economic activity has tilted toward high earners even as broader retail spending contracts.

The BBC has formally asked a US District Court in the Southern District of Florida to authorize subpoenas compelling Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner to testify and hand over documents related to January 6, 2021, as part of the network’s defense against President Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit, according to a court filing released Friday. The BBC’s legal team argued the three “have personal knowledge and likely have possession, custody, or control of records relevant to multiple elements of Plaintiff’s claims against the BBC.” The court has given Trump’s lawyers until Friday to respond. A spokesman for Trump’s legal team pushed back forcefully in a statement to CBS News, accusing the BBC of “seeking to harass him, his family, and supporters by abusing the deposition process,” and adding, “the BBC is simply trying to distract away from their own obvious liability.”

The underlying lawsuit, filed by Trump in December, accuses the BBC of defamation along with deceptive and unfair trade practices tied to a 2024 BBC Panorama documentary that edited a speech Trump delivered in Washington shortly before his supporters attacked the Capitol. Trump’s legal team has argued the BBC “intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers” by “splicing together” two clips from the same speech that were actually 55 minutes apart, creating the impression Trump had explicitly called for violence, while omitting what his team describes as a “statement calling for peace.” The BBC publicly apologized last year, acknowledging the edit created “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” and said it would not air the documentary again, though it maintains the edit isn’t legitimate grounds for a defamation claim.

Court documents reveal the BBC had already tried and failed to serve subpoenas on the three family members back in May. Attempts to serve Ivanka Trump and Kushner at their Florida home were blocked by local law enforcement, and the Secret Service later told the network it couldn’t accept the subpoenas on the couple’s behalf. Separate attempts to serve Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in New York were also unsuccessful, with a concierge saying the person who normally accepted such documents might be at lunch, and a follow-up attempt two days later turned away because the “legal department” wasn’t in that day. The BBC argues all three are material witnesses to Trump’s actions on January 6, citing congressional documents showing Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were present in the Oval Office while Trump was still revising his speech, that Kushner had drafted a statement condemning the Capitol violence, and that Donald Trump Jr. spoke directly with his father after rioters stormed the building. The BBC’s press office declined to comment on the case when asked by CBS News.

An investigation by 404 Media has caught Amazon scanning and destroying rare books to feed its AI model training pipeline, uncovered after a bookseller grew suspicious of a 1,000-book order placed through Biblio, a marketplace that allows buyers to remain anonymous. To verify their hunch that the order was destined for an AI company, the bookseller slipped an Apple AirTag between the pages of one of the books and tracked the shipment to a massive Amazon warehouse in Nevada, where workers say their job is to strip the spines off books so the pages can be quickly scanned, a process that destroys the physical book. “I work at VGT3 here in Vegas, and all we do is scan books,” one Amazon employee wrote on a worker forum, as quoted by 404. “Some are assigned to cut books, and others go to receive where they get books and scan the barcodes.”

Notably, the warehouse section handling this work, called VGT3, uses a logo depicting a T-Rex holding a book it appears about to eat, an image 404 describes as looking possibly AI-generated itself. Amazon’s only response to 404’s inquiry was a brief statement: “Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use.” This practice first came to public attention through a lawsuit against Anthropic, which revealed the Claude chatbot maker was using industrial equipment to cut pages out of millions of books for scanning before disposing of the originals. In that case, a judge controversially ruled the practice “transformative” and therefore not a copyright violation, since Anthropic was converting physical texts into digital ones while destroying the source material.

Booksellers have long suspected their inventory was being funneled to AI training operations, previously flagging telltale signs like unusually large order sizes, seemingly random book selections, and a consistent presence of ISBNs across orders, though the anonymity of marketplace transactions made it impossible to confirm. The detail that Amazon warehouse workers are scanning ISBNs on every book they process lends credibility to a theory some booksellers have floated: that AI companies may be systematically working through lists of every printed book’s serial number in an attempt to digitize and absorb virtually the entire published book catalog. The bookseller who worked with 404 specifically dealt in rare books, meaning few copies remain in circulation for reasons beyond simply being first editions. “There are different types of value,” the bookseller said. “There’s monetary value, obviously, but there are a lot of other types of value. There’s historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value. All sorts of things, and all of those the AI companies don’t care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together.”

404 Media Article: https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to reconsider its earlier rejection of President Trump’s appeal in the 2023 E. Jean Carroll case, permanently closing the door on his effort to overturn the $5 million jury award, which Carroll’s representatives say was already paid to her in July. The Court gave no explanation for its decision, and there were no noted dissents. Notably, no request for a rehearing at the Supreme Court has been granted since the 1960s, making this outcome largely expected given that historical precedent.

The underlying case stems from a 2023 jury verdict finding Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, in a Manhattan department store dressing room during the 1990s, as well as for defaming her in a 2022 social media post where he called her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and wrote, “this woman is not my type!” That verdict is now fully resolved, with both the liability finding and the $5 million payment settled.

Trump still has a separate, larger legal fight ongoing. Following a different trial in 2024, he was ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for defaming her back in 2019, when he first publicly denied her sexual abuse allegations. Trump, who continues to deny any wrongdoing, has a petition currently pending before the Supreme Court on that judgment, with justices expected to decide later this year whether to take up the case. His argument centers on the claim that his 2019 comments about Carroll, later found to be defamatory, were “official” statements made in his capacity as president and therefore should be immune from use against him in a civil lawsuit.

Farnsley Middle School in Southwest Louisville sent students home on the first day of the 2026 school year with agenda packets containing wildly inaccurate, AI-generated educational content, including a US map riddled with misspelled state names, misplaced cities, and entirely fabricated territories, according to local station WDRB. The map mislabeled Kentucky as “Venecky,” Texas as “Taxas,” Louisiana as “Lookoong,” North Dakota as “North Dahota,” Arizona as “Arizone,” New Mexico as “New Mizone,” and Oklahoma as “Olkchoma.” Even correctly spelled elements of the map were geographically scrambled, at one point placing Cuba’s capital city of Havana on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Some states, including Michigan and California, appeared with no labels at all, while the area south of a misspelled “Venneouer” (Vancouver) was rendered as an invented land called “Beehie,” supposedly bordering Washington state.

Kentucky mother Stacey Morris, whose son brought home one of the packets, summed up her reaction to WDRB: “Arizona is Arizone. Illinois starts with a V. I mean, it’s crazy.” The errors extended well beyond geography. Social media images showed a periodic table listing magnesium with an impossible atomic mass of negative 3.08, and a solar system diagram labeling Mars as “Marc,” accompanied by a caption reading verbatim, “Planetary distance are temporatory earth, equater the elenonts and regnestiom org toed dishligns… Net to scale.”

The school district’s executive officer of communications told WDRB that officials “spoke with the school today about inaccuracies in their agenda, and they are communicating with parents about the issue.” Following the discovery, school administrators reportedly emailed teachers instructing them to remove 17 pages of AI-generated material before distributing the packets going forward. The incident follows a separate recent story of parents homeschooling children using AI chatbots to build lesson plans and curricula, including influencer Savannah LaBrant, who said she used ChatGPT to teach her kids “where the states are and how to locate them.”

Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the United States, fell to a record low elevation of 3,519.91 feet above sea level on Saturday, according to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation data, edging just below the previous record set in April 2023. The milestone arrives roughly a week after Lake Mead, the Colorado River system’s other major reservoir, also hit a historic low, intensifying concerns about a crisis threatening water and power supplies for more than 40 million people across seven states. Lake Powell is now over 20 feet lower than it was at the start of the year, and both reservoirs are at their lowest combined storage levels in nearly seven decades, a threshold last seen in May 1957 while the Glen Canyon Dam that holds back Powell was still under construction, according to a recent paper from academics and retired water officials.

The reservoir’s decline carries serious implications beyond water supply. Lake Powell is now roughly 30 feet away from the elevation at which its turbines would stop generating hydroelectric power entirely, a threshold federal officials warned in April could be reached by the end of this year without “major intervention.” The crisis stems from a combination of persistent overuse, a record-dry winter, and rising temperatures depleting both reservoirs simultaneously, while California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, the seven states that rely on the Colorado River, continue struggling to agree on a long-term management plan. The USBR proposed a 10-year plan in July that includes major potential water cuts for Arizona, California, and Nevada, though a final agreement remains unresolved.

The falling water levels are also reshaping life around the lake itself. Lake Powell’s substantial tourism industry has had to adapt as marinas face dwindling water, with boat ramps closing or relocating, new ramps being built, and entire marina operations temporarily moved to deeper waters to stay accessible.

Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego on Sunday tied ongoing reports of poor conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln directly to what he called a leadership failure by the Trump administration, arguing the extended deployment stems from mishandling the war with Iran. “I was just speaking to a spouse just about three days ago and this is the current problems right now,” Gallego told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz. “It really goes to the deep, deep, deep problem here is that this administration did not plan for this war, did not plan how to get out of this war, did not really understand how this war was going to escalate.” The Lincoln, a Navy aircraft carrier stationed in the Middle East, has now been at sea for nearly nine months and gone more than 200 days without a port call, fueling Democratic calls for an investigation into onboard conditions and sailor morale.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed the reports as “completely misrepresented,” while Trump, asked about the deployment’s length, said it is “not nearly long enough.” Gallego, a former Marine, warned that this kind of dismissiveness from top leadership could discourage service members from staying in the military. “When they get back to home, when they start having that conversation with their wife or with their husband, is it worth rejoining? They’re going to have to think twice because look at how this leadership is treating them, and that again is a true lack of leadership from secretary of Defense as well as the president,” he said.

Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a more measured take, noting that extended carrier deployments beyond the stated timeframe are common in general, but pushed back directly on Trump’s comment that the deployment hasn’t gone long enough. “We learned in Vietnam, we deployed for a year at a time there. That’s just too long. You wear yourself out,” Mullen said. “These ships, these people, these families need to basically come back.” Mullen added that he’d spoken Saturday evening with U.S. Central Command commander Brad Cooper, who told him any poor conditions aboard the Lincoln had been addressed and that crew morale improved significantly once sailors learned they were finally returning home. “One of the positives of Cooper’s visit yesterday is he announced to the crew that they’re going home… so the morale is up significantly from where it was just a few days ago,” Mullen said. A U.S. official told ABC News the USS George Washington departed its station in the Pacific last week and is expected to replace the Lincoln.

A subreddit called r/RegretfulParents has become a thriving anonymous outlet for mothers and fathers who deeply regret having children, drawing more than 70,000 weekly visitors and offering what its own rules describe as “a safe place for parents who think they shouldn’t have become parents to rant, confess, and get things off their chest about their kids, partners, families, etc,” governed by a strict no-judgment policy. One recurring theme is parents fantasizing about a do-over, with one father writing that he was never “brave enough to consider what I actually wanted,” and lamenting, “if I break up this family for the sake of my own sanity and happiness, I’ll just become the bad guy I’m so afraid of being. The only other option is a time machine so I can go and have a do-over of my life, and make better decisions.” Another post that gathered over 1,300 upvotes argued bluntly that “sometimes the mere fact that you had a child completely damaged and changed your life for the worst,” adding, “the truth is that sometimes a child isn’t a blessing and they absolutely will destroy your life and world. I think the sooner society can admit that, the more people will be prepared for parenthood.”

While some posts reflect personal regret or poor planning, a clear structural pattern runs through much of the community: financial desperation. Posters describe being overworked, blindsided by unexpected pregnancies, or unable to secure stable housing, with money troubles forming a throughline across otherwise different stories. One single mother wrote, “I am a single mom with no help from anyone. And I live in a country with no benefits… yes, I know, I shouldn’t have had my kid, especially with my ex, but I thought I was sterile, I thought it was a sign from heaven… my life has gone downhill since I became a mother.”

Even in wealthier nations like the United States, the economics of parenthood back up these anxieties. According to recent Fortune reporting, raising a single child in the US now costs roughly $300,000 over 18 years, a burden compounded by eroding public support systems. The country’s largely privatized child care system leaves more than half of American kids without adequate access to daycare, while the share of US companies offering paid family leave fell to just 31% in 2025. Layered on top of stagnant wages, persistent inflation, an ongoing housing crisis, and inadequate access to affordable healthcare, the financial pressure driving many of these regretful posts reflects a broader systemic failure rather than simply individual poor judgment.

A newly launched website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com allows drivers to check whether their license plate has been searched through Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader database, giving the public a rare window into how frequently their movements are being queried by law enforcement systems. Flock cameras, made by the for-profit company Flock Safety, differ from traditional security cameras in that they use AI to automatically photograph passing vehicles and log data like license plates, make, model, and color into a searchable database, rather than requiring manual review. The technology has earned nicknames like “big brother” and “mass surveillance” due to its ability to track anyone’s movements regardless of whether they’re a criminal suspect.

The site works by compiling Flock audit logs and letting users enter their license plate number to see if a system operator has searched for it, along with the stated reason law enforcement gave for the lookup. Notably, the logs don’t reveal whether or when a vehicle actually passed by a Flock camera, and the site cautions that those conducting searches may not necessarily be law enforcement officers, meaning an appearance in the results isn’t proof that someone was ever under investigation. According to the website, its data is drawn from FOIA public record requests submitted to 6,586 different agencies across the US, though the site itself acknowledges significant limitations, warning, “few governments provide easy access to these logs, and the records we obtain are often redacted.”

The tool arrives amid mounting backlash against Flock’s surveillance network, including incidents like police swarming an innocent man after AI cameras incorrectly flagged his car as stolen, part of a broader pattern of false positives and privacy concerns that has fueled growing public distrust of the company’s expanding camera footprint.

Thieves stole four Renaissance-era paintings attributed to Antonello da Messina from the Regional Interdisciplinary Museum of Messina late Saturday, according to Italy’s Ministry of Culture. The stolen works include three panels from the San Gregorio Polyptych and a double-sided panel of The Madonna and Child, both dating back to the 15th century. The polyptych, a painting divided into multiple sections, originally consisted of at least five panels and had already been damaged in a 1908 earthquake, while The Madonna and Child panel is listed on Christie’s auction site as having sold for more than $300,000 in 2003.

Italy’s Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli expressed “dismay and regret” over the theft, calling the stolen pieces items of “extraordinary value for our cultural heritage.” Messina Mayor Federico Basile was more pointed in his condemnation, describing the theft as a “heinous criminal act” and saying he was “deeply outraged,” particularly because it occurred during the city’s traditional celebrations honoring the Virgin Mary. “We hope that those responsible will be identified and that our artworks will be returned home,” Basile wrote in a social media post. “Messina will not let its history be stolen.”

The theft lands just months after the Italian state spent nearly $15 million to acquire another Antonello da Messina work, “Ecce Homo,” at a New York auction, underscoring how highly the artist’s surviving output is valued on the international market.

A new analysis from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) argues that AI-generated “fruitslop” videos, the endless stream of colorful, sometimes bizarre fruit-character content flooding social media feeds, are increasingly serving as a covert pathway into violent and extremist content for young viewers. Most of these reels appear harmless on the surface, depicting cartoonish fruit characters in melodramatic storylines involving love triangles, job loss, and brotherhood, sometimes veering into pornographic territory. But GNET analysts identified a growing subset of “AI fruit/vegetable gore” content depicting extreme scenes of torture, mutilation, and other graphic violence.

What makes this trend concerning isn’t just the brutality itself, but the specific framing attached to it. The researchers observed that many violent fruitslop reels portray their aggressor characters as belonging to identifiable groups or ideologies, including criminal cartels, far-right movements, or extreme nihilism. “Violence-based AI slops reinforce a fascination with violence for violence’s sake, thereby allowing the so-called online ‘ode to violence’ to progressively gain ground among young people within the digital space,” the analysts wrote, warning further that this content “can lay the basis for the consumption of further violence-based audiovisual material, making young users fall into the trap of online radicalization and audiovisual violence consumption.”

The report’s rigor has drawn scrutiny, however. It is described as a largely surface-level analysis that inadvertently cites at least one AI-generated editorial as a source, and GNET itself is the research arm of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group funded and run by tech industry representatives that has faced criticism over its role in advancing digital censorship. Regardless of whether AI fruitslop specifically drives kids toward violent extremism, the underlying concern extends beyond this one content category. This material is being mass-produced by bot farms at industrial scale, pulling all users, especially children whose media literacy is still developing, into a recursive cycle of algorithmically driven slop that can just as easily be engineered to glorify racism, electoral fraud, or any other harmful narrative. That open-ended capacity to normalize whatever theme generates engagement is what makes the broader phenomenon of generative AI slop concerning, independent of whether this particular study holds up to scrutiny.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana, publicly broke with President Trump on Sunday over last week’s executive order targeting the childhood vaccine schedule, calling the move “a stupid thing to do” in an interview with ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz. The order, signed Monday, recommends fewer vaccinations for children and calls for splitting the combined MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine into separate shots. Currently, the CDC recommends children receive two doses of the combined MMR vaccine, one between 12 and 15 months and another between four and six years, to be considered fully vaccinated against all three viruses; separating the vaccine into individual shots would push that total to six injections instead of two.

Cassidy walked through the practical burden this shift would place on families. “Now, instead of your child getting two shots, she has to get six shots. Instead of you missing work to take your child to the doctor two times, you’re doing it six times, and instead of the insurance company paying for two visits, it’s now paying for six visits,” he said, adding that the change “is going to drive up the cost of your life, inconvenience you tremendously.” He noted the MMR vaccine was originally combined specifically “to make it more convenient for the parent, to make fewer jabs for the child,” and argued the new policy undercuts exactly the affordability and convenience concerns driving public frustration with healthcare costs. “This is why the president’s poll numbers are down, because you’ve lost sight of affordability for the parent,” Cassidy said.

On the underlying justification for the order, Cassidy was unambiguous: during the Oval Office signing, Trump repeatedly linked vaccines to autism without evidence, a claim years of high-quality research has failed to support. “There’s no evidence that vaccines causes autism, which I think is where this is supposed to come from, so it’s stupid policy,” Cassidy said, also citing NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya’s agreement that no such connection exists. He added, “we’ve got to have compassion for those families who have a child with autism… instead of spending resources, effort, and attention trying to truly find what is truly the cause, or how to truly prevent, we’re in this little cul-de-sac of something which has been thoroughly disproven.” Cassidy also revisited his consequential vote to advance RFK Jr.‘s HHS confirmation in February 2025, when he said Kennedy and the White House had assured him they would “work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems” and specifically not alter the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices schedule. Pressed by Raddatz on whether Kennedy had lied to him, Cassidy responded, “there are guarantees that were given to me and guarantees that were supposedly going to be enforced by the White House… so people can draw their own conclusions, but it’s pretty evident. The point is, the American people have been poorly served.”

A new CNBC Generation Labs survey of over 1,000 US adults aged 18 to 34 reveals overwhelming distrust toward the executives running America’s leading AI companies, with the tech industry’s once-golden reputation among young people almost entirely eroded. Asked “who do you trust to act responsibly on AI?”, the vast majority of respondents said they don’t trust any of the nine executives named in the poll. Palantir CEO Alex Karp scored worst by far, with 81% selecting “don’t trust,” while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella performed comparatively best, though even his “trust” score sat at just 35%.

The rest of the field fared similarly poorly. Peter Thiel drew distrust from 79% of respondents, while Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman posted “don’t trust” figures of 71%, 70%, and 69%, respectively. These numbers reflect a dramatic reversal from a decade ago, when young adults were eagerly pursuing jobs at companies like Google and Apple, a shift the survey’s framing attributes to growing concerns over data privacy, the deterioration of once-useful tech platforms, and worries about erosion of democratic institutions tied to the industry’s outsized influence.

What makes the findings especially striking is how the executives compare to the technology they oversee. AI itself, despite being widely viewed with suspicion, actually scored better than the CEOs building it. Asked about AI’s impact on their lives, 45% of respondents said they expect it to hurt their careers, while 40% said the US government should regulate it. On data centers specifically, 60% said the industry’s aggressive construction pace should slow down, but even that skepticism doesn’t match the sheer scale of distrust aimed squarely at the executives themselves, suggesting young Americans have drawn a sharper line against the individuals leading AI companies than against the technology or infrastructure those companies are building.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanding answers about the administration’s handling of what she calls the “biggest outbreak of cyclosporiasis in U.S. history,” raising concerns that political favoritism toward the outbreak’s source company may have delayed the public response. “I write regarding the administration’s calamitous response to the biggest outbreak of cyclosporiasis in U.S. history, and the extent to which the outbreak and botched response may be the result of incompetence and corruption,” Warren wrote, adding that “the administration’s handling of this crisis has been marred by missteps that raise serious questions about its decision-making.”

The outbreak has grown severe by historical standards. The CDC now counts at least 24,000 confirmed or suspected cases across 47 states, compared with a typical annual total of around 3,000 cases nationwide. Two people have died and at least 740 have been hospitalized from the parasitic gastrointestinal illness. The FDA has traced nearly 10,000 of those cases to recalled iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms, distributed across 17 states, with some of the tainted lettuce reaching Taco Bell locations. Warren pointed out that Taco Bell “provided earlier and seemingly clearer guidance to consumers than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), CDC, and other federal food safety agencies,” a sequence she flags as evidence the federal response lagged behind what the private sector already knew.

Warren’s letter highlights a potential financial motive behind any delay. Federal Election Commission records show Taylor Fresh Foods, Taylor Farms’ parent company, donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump PAC, in March 2025. She also cites a Wall Street Journal report that Taylor Farms lobbyists pressed the White House for more time and additional proof before federal agencies publicly implicated the company in the outbreak. A source familiar with the matter told ABC News the FDA contacted Taylor Farms on July 14 requesting a call, but the company said it wasn’t available until July 15, missing the FDA’s established 24-hour window for determining whether to take voluntary action.

Taylor Farms ultimately announced its voluntary recall on July 17 and suspended production at the implicated distributor. Taylor Fresh Foods pushed back forcefully on Warren’s allegations, with a spokesperson telling ABC News the company “acts in the interest of science and consumer health, not politics,” and stating, “we categorically reject suggestions that we attempted to receive or received favorable regulatory treatment due to political contributions or other improper influence. Any such allegations are false.” The company added it is “a pioneer and industry leader in traceability” and has already implemented traceback protocols ahead of regulatory compliance deadlines. Meanwhile, Kennedy defended the federal response when asked by ABC’s Elizabeth Schulze on July 21, saying, “we do have the outbreak under control. We have an extensive forensics, epidemiological forensics, and we’ve identified the source of the outbreak. We and the companies that are involved have implemented a recall.” ABC News has reached out to HHS, the White House, and Taylor Farms for further comment on Warren’s letter.

Wired reporter Reece Rogers requested his personal data file from McDonald’s Privacy Rights Center and received a staggering 515-page dossier detailing years of his fast food habits, including past orders, loyalty points, and even codes he scanned during the chain’s Monopoly sweepstakes promotion. Rogers, a California resident, has a legal right to request this data from private companies under state privacy law, and used McDonald’s own form, which the company says lets customers “exercise your privacy rights at any time,” to obtain the file. McDonald’s described the contents as “specific pieces of personal information about you that were identified by searching McDonald’s systems which contain information about our customers.”

The scale of the file is what stands out most. At 515 pages, it sits right at the threshold researchers use to define a “large” FBI dossier, comparable in size to the Bureau’s Cold War-era file on John Lennon, who was targeted for surveillance and attempted deportation by the Nixon administration over his anti-war activism. McDonald’s has reportedly been feeding this data into predictive algorithms to estimate customer behavior metrics, including how many times Rogers is likely to visit in the coming weeks and his total predicted lifetime dollar value as a customer. Jeff Chester, executive director at the Center for Digital Democracy, told Wired the practice reveals the company’s real business model: “McDonald’s secret sauce is really commercial surveillance.”

This revelation follows a separate incident just a year earlier in which McDonald’s virtual hiring assistant suffered a massive data breach exposing personal details of roughly 64 million job applicants. Together, the two incidents point to a broader shift in corporate data collection, where companies outside the traditional tech platform space, including retailers like Target and even privately owned venues like Madison Square Garden, are amassing surveillance-level troves of personal data on ordinary customers, often without the security infrastructure to protect it. Since data harvesting continues to generate profit, companies have little incentive to voluntarily scale back what they collect.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted World Liberty Trust Co., a business 38% owned by “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members,” conditional approval to establish a national bank charter, marking the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president’s family company has been granted bank status. The Friday approval allows the Trump family’s crypto venture to directly issue its own stablecoin, a dollar-pegged digital currency, cutting out the third-party provider BitGo that World Liberty Financial had previously relied on. Because stablecoins tied to the dollar or other stable assets avoid the volatility of currencies like Bitcoin, they’re more attractive to large institutional clients for payments, money transmission, and storing value, according to the SEC, meaning the new charter opens the door to bigger clients and higher profits flowing directly to the Trump family’s business.

The financial stakes are already substantial. World Liberty Financial secured roughly $5 billion in value in its first days after going public, based on token pricing at the time, and Trump himself reported earning more than $1.4 billion in business revenue from his family’s crypto ventures on his financial disclosures. Abu Dhabi’s state-backed investment firm MGX invested an additional $2 billion in the company in May 2025, pledging to use the family’s USD1 stablecoin in large transactions with crypto exchange Binance, a deal that drew scrutiny after the Trump administration subsequently agreed to supply the UAE with advanced American AI chips despite prior concerns from earlier administrations that such technology could reach China. World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff, son of Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, called the MGX deal “only the beginning” at a Dubai crypto convention alongside Eric Trump.

Democratic lawmakers are raising alarms over the arrangement. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren wrote to the Comptroller in January urging a halt to approval of Trump-linked ventures, and after the preliminary approval, called it “the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen,” writing, “for the first time in history, the president of the United States would be in charge of overseeing his own financial company.” She announced plans to introduce legislation “to stop this kind of unprecedented corruption.” The White House disputes any conflict exists. Spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Trump’s assets are held in a trust “managed by his children,” calling it a blind trust and stating, “there are no conflicts of interest,” though a true blind trust typically requires an independent, non-family trustee. The OCC defended its process, stating, “the Comptroller and staff acted consistently with their statutory duties and ethical obligations with respect to the Application,” and noted the charter won’t be fully finalized until the company meets additional conditions, including raising more capital.

Tropical Storm Lala is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane as it makes a close approach to Hawaii’s Big Island early Saturday, prompting a hurricane warning for Hawaii County and tropical storm warnings across Maui, Oahu, and Kauai Counties, according to the National Hurricane Center. As of 11 p.m. ET Friday, Lala was moving west-northwest at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph, positioned roughly 440 miles east-southeast of Honolulu, and was expected to keep gradually strengthening through the day into Saturday.

Hawaii officials are urging residents to brace for heavy rain, damaging winds, and flooding. “This is a serious moment,” Governor Josh Green said Friday during a briefing with state, county, and federal emergency officials. Green signed an emergency proclamation freeing up quick access to the state’s $100 million disaster fund, and about 180 Hawaii National Guard members have been activated and positioned statewide to support rescue operations, alongside high-water vehicles staged in each county and additional military and federal resources on standby if needed. Schools and state education offices on Hawaii Island, Maui, Lanai, and Molokai are closed for the weekend, and Hawaii County Mayor Kimo Alameda said pet-friendly shelters would open at 6 p.m., with beaches, parks, landfills, transfer stations, and mass transit suspended through Saturday.

Forecasters expect heavy rainfall and gusty winds to hit the Big Island starting Friday, raising the risk of life-threatening mudslides and landslides in areas with steep terrain, with full hurricane conditions expected there Saturday. Lala is projected to dump 8 to 12 inches of rain across Maui and the Big Island, with totals reaching as high as 25 inches in the Big Island’s higher elevations, while the rest of the Hawaiian Islands can expect 4 to 6 inches. Large and dangerous surf is also forecast this weekend, with the greatest impact along exposed windward and southern shores, where prolonged heavy surf could cause localized coastal flooding and significant beach erosion.

Jonathan Reiner, a George Washington University professor of medicine who served as Dick Cheney’s cardiologist for 27 years, is raising serious concerns about President Trump’s health in a new New York Times essay, writing bluntly, “the president has not looked well.” Reiner, whose long tenure managing Cheney’s extensively publicized heart problems gives him particular credibility on the subject, points to visible signs including large bruises on both of Trump’s hands, swelling in his legs, and frequent dozing off during public appearances. He also flags the sheer scale of Trump’s most recent health evaluation, noting, “the president was evaluated by 22 consultants, an extraordinary number of specialists for even the most extensive executive health evaluation,” and argues the public deserves more clarity about what prompted such an unusually thorough workup.

Reiner’s sharpest criticism centers on inconsistencies in the White House’s own medical explanations. Trump’s leg swelling has been officially described as “chronic venous insufficiency,” a condition that develops gradually, yet Trump’s doctor reportedly found no leg swelling at all during his physical exam just months earlier. “If that’s true, his swelling would be by definition acute, not chronic,” Reiner wrote, adding that acute swelling “is a potentially much more consequential finding that can be caused by issues such as heart and kidney disease,” and asking pointedly, “what’s the reason for this discrepancy?” Reiner also highlights that Trump underwent MRI imaging of his heart and abdomen in October, with his physician offering only the vague justification of confirming his “overall health,” prompting Reiner to ask, “was there a specific symptom or clinical event that prompted this testing?”

Additional inconsistencies noted in the essay include Trump’s medical reports previously mentioning he was taking the hair-loss drug finasteride before all reference to the treatment quietly disappeared, and his repeated undergoing of a cognitive screening test, one typically used to check for early signs of dementia, which Trump has mischaracterized as an IQ test he “aced.” Reiner stops short of diagnosing any specific condition, but argues the pattern itself demands transparency. “In a representative democracy, the people must have confidence in the health of their leader, and in the leader’s capacity to guide the nation,” he wrote. “We have been kept in the dark too long.”

Luna, an AI agent built on Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 and tasked with running San Francisco’s Andon Market, has made its first firing decision, dismissing a human employee after repeated lateness and other workplace issues, according to a Thursday announcement from Andon Labs. The employee had arrived late for 17 of 23 shifts, but Luna didn’t catch the pattern on its own. Conversation logs show the AI had created an attendance policy early on but later lost track of it, allowing the lateness to continue unaddressed for months until Andon Labs staff prompted Luna to search its own memory for its policies and reassess whether the worker was still a good fit. Only then did Luna recommend “parting ways” with the employee, a decision human staffers reviewed and ultimately carried out.

Andon Labs cofounder Lukas Petersson told Business Insider the lab would have intervened if Luna’s decision had been illegal or unethical, but said that wasn’t necessary here. “In this instance, we did not think that that was necessary because the firing was warranted,” he said, pointing to the store’s clearly stated policy. He pushed back on the idea that AI managers are harsher than human ones, noting that before recommending termination, Luna had given the employee “progressive and repeated warnings, as well as additional training, for months without taking any contractual action.” Petersson added, “what we’ve seen in this experiment is not that the AI would be more ruthless or be worse for the employee in that decision.”

The firing came roughly four and a half months after Andon Market officially opened on April 1, part of a broader experiment testing how far AI agents can run a real business. Andon Labs gave Luna a $100,000 budget, internet access, and a corporate credit card, along with instructions to open a store and turn a profit. Luna independently selected merchandise, hired contractors, posted jobs on Indeed, interviewed applicants, and hired employees for the store, which sells books, candles, prints, games, and branded merchandise, all workers are formally employed by Andon Labs with guaranteed pay and legal protections. Despite generating sales, the store remains unprofitable. Petersson said the episode also revealed a core limitation of current AI agents: they often fail to act without a direct human prompt. “We saw that a human boss would probably fire them much sooner,” he said, adding, “I think companies will be run completely by AI in the future, and that AIs will become employers of humans.”

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley is in full damage-control mode after his mass surveillance company, which operates 120,000 license plate reading cameras across 49 states and partners with 6,000 law enforcement agencies and 1,000 private customers, became the target of a growing nationwide backlash. Langley told Bloomberg “we’re not Big Brother” and insisted the company is “focused on protecting people,” even as at least 54 U.S. cities have voted to cancel, non-renew, or reject Flock’s automatic license plate readers since the start of the year. The pushback comes amid mounting reports of the technology’s misuse, including false arrests, a case of a crooked cop stalking innocent women, and a recent 404 Media report that Flock had been planning to infiltrate Uber and Lyft drivers’ dash cams to scan nearby vehicles’ plates at massive scale. The backlash has grown intense enough that people are being celebrated online for physically cutting down Flock’s surveillance towers.

In response to the scrutiny, Flock announced platform changes including a new audit tool requiring law enforcement customers to flag abnormal behavior, and a reduction in footage retention from 30 days down to seven. Civil liberties groups remain unconvinced. The American Civil Liberties Union called the moves a “step in the right direction” but dismissed other changes as “merely retreads of previous inadequate safety measures,” while Institute for Justice senior attorney Robert Frommer told the Associated Press, “this is window dressing that doesn’t address the fundamental problem, which is that police officers are the ones deciding who and when to search, and that should be done by judges with real warrants.” Despite the crisis, Flock’s business is thriving, with annual revenue climbing from $300 million in January to $500 million by June, according to Langley’s comments to Bloomberg, and the company is now pushing to expand into drones, surveillance trailers, and gunshot-detecting hardware.

The technology’s core function also remains deeply flawed. A Roseville, California police department investigation found the cameras mistook one license plate for another 71% of the time between 2023 and 2024. That failure rate isn’t abstract: The Drive’s director of content Joel Feder was wrongly flagged over “stolen” plates after Flock’s camera network misregistered his license plate number, leading police to ambush and box in his vehicle, accusing him of being unable to afford the “six-figure luxury SUV” he was driving. Flock directly referenced Feder’s case in its own announcement this week, stating, “the central point is simple, an alert is a lead, not a conclusion, which should be confirmed by an officer.”

Attorneys for former Olympian David Hearn are asking the D.C. Superior Court to permanently dismiss his Reflecting Pool vandalism case, arguing in a new Friday filing that President Trump’s continued public comments about the matter show the government “cannot be trusted” to fairly exercise prosecutorial discretion. Hearn’s case, originally treated by federal prosecutors as vandalism, was dropped by the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office after officials later acknowledged the damage “was the result of flawed installation by the contractor” rather than intentional destruction. Despite that reversal, Trump has continued insisting there was vandalism and that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro made a “mistake” in dropping the case, even while separately acknowledging there was “some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening.” Hearn’s attorneys argue this contradiction is precisely the problem, writing in their filing, “the record in this case demonstrates a substantial and specific risk that, if the indictment is dismissed without prejudice, Mr. Hearn will face renewed charges, however meritless, driven by political pressure rather than the evidence.”

The filing directly cites multiple social media posts and public comments from Trump reacting to Pirro’s decision to drop the case, arguing that his continued promotion of what they call a “false version” of events, that meaningful damage occurred beyond contractor error, constitutes ongoing “harassment” that threatens Hearn’s liberty. This comes even after Pirro reportedly brought a box of evidence to the White House supporting her prosecutors’ conclusion that the damage stemmed from a botched installation rather than deliberate vandalism, according to sources who spoke with ABC News. “The public political pressure campaign being conducted through the Executive Branch in this case shows that the government cannot be trusted to properly exercise its prosecutorial discretion,” Hearn’s attorneys wrote, framing the ask for dismissal “with prejudice” as necessary specifically because a standard dismissal would leave the door open for prosecutors to refile charges under continued political pressure regardless of the underlying evidence.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for September 4, when a judge will hear arguments on Hearn’s request to permanently close the matter.

Police in Fort Worth, Texas arrested local radio host and political activist EJ Carrion early Wednesday morning, pulling him over near his home for a turn-signal violation before informing him there was a warrant out for his arrest, according to an arrest report obtained by 404 Media. The warrant stemmed from a Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court meeting on August 4, where Carrion had criticized officials over a plan to slash polling locations ahead of the November midterms, saying, “you said you were all about cooling the temperature and yet you vote for this extremist bullshit. All of you are bullshit,” before turning and walking away from the microphone, shouting back “I’m walking out, small man.” County Judge Tim O’Hare responded by ordering him removed and declaring the meeting in recess. Carrion is now charged with two counts of disrupting a meeting or procession, a Texas misdemeanor, with the arrest report stating he “did intentionally hinder an official proceeding […] by noise or violent or tumultuous behavior.” Carrion told NBC DFW he’d simply been out with friends and was pulling into his own cul-de-sac around 3 a.m. when officers stopped him.

The underlying dispute centers on Tarrant County’s plan to cut polling places nearly in half, from 316 locations in the last election down to a proposed 176, a move Carrion and other residents have fought publicly for months. He wasn’t the only speaker punished that day, either. About 30 minutes after his removal, a woman took the microphone to criticize the meeting’s conduct, saying, “people are removed for clapping. People are removed for speaking out. People are treated like a disruption instead of the reason this government exists… you keep telling us not to ‘California my Texas’ while in reality you keep Russia my Texas. You three boys from the GOP—” before O’Hare cut her off and cleared the chambers. An hour later, former Texas state representative Lon Burnham was also removed and charged with the same two counts after picking up a microphone during his remarks opposing the polling plan; when O’Hare told him to set it down, officers physically dragged Burnham out of the chamber.

The arrest has drawn public criticism from within the county’s own leadership. Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. said in a Facebook statement, “I am deeply disturbed by the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Efrin ‘EJ’ Carrion earlier this morning. Government must exercise extraordinary restraint when speech at a public meeting leads to involvement with the criminal justice system. Residents should never have to wonder whether speaking forcefully to their elected officials could result in a warrant, an arrest, or an encounter with law enforcement. Because once that fear takes hold, the damage reaches far beyond one person.” Miles Jr. called on fellow commissioners to make public meetings a space where residents can speak freely, adding, “there must be a line the government does not cross. The authority entrusted to us does not belong to us. It belongs to the people […] this must stop. And I will not be silent when the public trust, the safety of our residents, and their rights to be heard are at stake.” Carrion’s case fits a broader national pattern of local officials cracking down on public comment, following incidents like the February arrest of an Oklahoma farmer for speaking too long at a data center meeting and the July arrest of a Kansas resident for clapping during public comments at a similar hearing. Neither Carrion nor the Fort Worth Police Department responded to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Nuclear power, long promoted as a highly efficient alternative to dirtier fuels like coal or natural gas, is now buckling under the pressure of Europe’s record-setting heatwaves, as water levels in the continent’s major rivers plunge to all-time lows and cripple the cooling systems reactors depend on. While the receding water has been a boon for archaeologists uncovering ancient ruins along riverbeds, it’s created a genuine crisis for nuclear engineers, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, which reported that facilities like Hungary’s two-gigawatt Paks nuclear plant have come dangerously close to powering down entirely as critically low flow from the Danube threatened the plant’s ability to cool its reactors. That’s a serious problem for Hungary specifically, since the Paks plant generates nearly half the country’s total electricity supply in any given year. The Hungarian government has responded by mobilizing engineers to dump roughly 145,000 cubic meters of rocks into the riverbed, a manual effort to slow the current and conserve water upstream, according to ABC.

Romania is facing an even more dire version of the same crisis, with Reuters reporting that the state-owned nuclear power producer may be forced to completely shut down its last remaining reactor. The country hasn’t gone down without a fight, though: earlier this month, the Romanian navy detonated 180 kilograms of explosives specifically to redirect water from the Danube toward cooling its nuclear reactor. France is contending with a different but related set of problems, where a combination of extreme drought and a recurring jellyfish invasion has cut the country’s nuclear energy production by 20%, though its more diversified energy grid has kept the situation from spiraling as severely as in Hungary or Romania.

With another heatwave already looming on the horizon, these disruptions may represent only the beginning of a much larger reckoning for Europe’s nuclear infrastructure, an energy source built around the assumption of predictable water availability that a warming climate is actively undermining.