Multiple Investigations Refuted Trump’s Claims That Fraud Altered the Outcome in 2020; The New York Times, July 16, 2026

 Luke Broadwater, The New York Times ; Multiple Investigations Refuted Trump’s Claims That Fraud Altered the Outcome in 2020

Dozens of investigations, audits, recounts and court proceedings examined the 2020 election. None found the widespread voter fraud that President Trump claimed tilted the vote.

"After he lost the 2020 election, President Trump and his allies promoted a series of conspiracy theories about the integrity of the vote, claiming that the election was stolen from him through widespread voter fraud.

They alleged that China hacked voting machines through thermostats. They floated the notion that Italian satellites were directed to flip votes. They accused election officials of smuggling in votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in suitcases.

Each of these fantastical claims was debunked.

In fact, there were dozens of investigations, audits, recounts and court proceedings at the local, state and federal levels that examined the 2020 election, which experts said may have been the most scrutinized election in U.S. history. None uncovered the extensive voter fraud that Mr. Trump alleged had tilted the outcome of the election.

The Department of Justice and Mr. Trump’s own attorney general, William P. Barr, found the claims lacking. Cybersecurity agencies declared the 2020 election the most secure in history. States undertook audits and hand recounts, with none finding what Mr. Trump was alleging."

HOW THE SMITHSONIAN COULD FALL; The Atlantic, July 16, 2026

 Kelsey Ables, Photographs by Caroline Gutman, The Atlantic ; HOW THE SMITHSONIAN COULD FALL

"The Trump administration wants to control the Smithsonian, but it won’t be so easy."

White House Teleprompter Operator Bet on Trump Speeches, Kalshi Says; The New York Times, July 16, 2026

   Lauren McCarthy, The New York Times; White House Teleprompter Operator Bet on Trump Speeches, Kalshi Says

"A White House teleprompter operator used his position to win around $100,000 by placing bets on the prediction market Kalshi about what President Trump would say in his speeches, the company said on Thursday.

It was the latest accusation that someone had used inside information to make a profit on a prediction market like Kalshi and Polymarket, which have grown rapidly and transformed into cultural phenomena.

In this case, Kalshi said Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant to Mr. Trump, had placed wagers on common words that would appear in the president’s speeches, such as country names and economic terms. In March, when Kalshi’s surveillance systems flagged some of Mr. Perez’s trades, the company froze the funds in his account and referred the case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets."

FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals; ProPublica, July 15, 2026

 Corey G. Johnson , ProPublica; FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals

"Reporting Highlights

• Expensive Gifts: Despite regulating broadcast media, FCC commissioners have accepted pricey tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala from CBS or its parent company, now Paramount.
• 
  
• Conflict of Interest: Ethics experts say that by accepting the gifts, FCC commissioners are compromising the agency’s impartiality and should avoid acting on Paramount’s pending merger.
• 
  
• Mixing Business and Pleasure: After voting for a Paramount merger, Commissioner Olivia Trusty took tickets worth over $12,000. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has accepted tickets worth at least $63,000.
• 
  

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story."

'Copyright trolls' pounce on Hawaiʻi arts social media accounts; Hawai'i Public Radio, July 13, 2026

 Cassie Ordonio, Hawai'i Public Radio; 'Copyright trolls' pounce on Hawaiʻi arts social media accounts

"Porter had signed an agreement with BVIRAL, a Tennessee-based licensing company that helps promote content creators but also monitors the internet to ensure its clients' videos are not being shared without their permission.

What Porter signed up for was not what he expected.

“I was under the impression that I was giving them the rights to use the videos for promoting my artwork on their pages,” he said.

In actuality, Porter gave BVIRAL rights to pursue copyright claims on his behalf.

Now, people who typically support artists by posting those artists' works on social media are getting hit with takedown notices.

The issue illustrates unintended consequences when artists sign contracts with companies like BVIRAL that file copyright claims against businesses that also work with artists."

Current and former employees sue Meta, alleging discrimination in using AI to conduct layoffs; CNBC, July 14, 2026

 Jonathan Vanian, CNBC ; Current and former employees sue Meta, alleging discrimination in using AI to conduct layoffs

"A coalition of current and former Meta employees have sued the social media giant, alleging that the company used artificial intelligence in its latest round of layoffs in a way that was discriminatory.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, plaintiffs allege that Meta violated various protected-leave laws and discrimination acts related to pregnancies and disabilities, among others, and said they wish to pursue their claims individually in arbitration."

City Bar Urges Senate Judiciary Committee to Reject Todd Blanche as U.S. Attorney General; New York City Bar, July 13, 2026

 New York City Bar; City Bar Urges Senate Judiciary Committee to Reject Todd Blanche as U.S. Attorney General

"In a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the New York City Bar Association urges the Committee to reject the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General of the United States.

“Mr. Blanche has taken actions that we believe make him unfit to lead an ethical and independent department of justice that is essential to our nation’s democracy,” the City Bar writes. “Mr. Blanche’s record – particularly the actions he has undertaken as Deputy Attorney General and Acting Attorney General – conclusively demonstrates his lack of commitment to the integrity, professionalism and independence that the Senate should require and the American people should expect of the highest law enforcement official in the land.”

The City Bar writes that despite Mr. Blanche’s formal credentials, his actions, both as Deputy Attorney General and as Acting Attorney General, have “repeatedly demonstrated that his primary loyalty is not to the United States Constitution or the rule of law but to President Donald J. Trump, whom Mr. Blanche previously represented as a private attorney and whose personal interests he has continued to protect. As a result, his actions have been detrimental to the Department of Justice and the rule of law. Specifically, Mr. Blanche has compromised the integrity and independence of the Department he has been nominated to lead.”"

Book publishers sue Google for copyright infringement over Gemini AI training; The Guardian, July 14, 2026

 Emma Loffhagen , The Guardian; Book publishers sue Google for copyright infringement over Gemini AI training

Group of major publishers accuses the tech giant of ‘one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history’

"A group of major publishers have filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of illegally using millions of copyrighted books to help build its Gemini artificial intelligence models, in “one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history”.

The case, filed in federal court in New York, has been brought by three publishers – Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier – and bestselling American author Scott Turow.

The publishers argue that Google repurposed books that had been supplied for limited services such as Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar. Those services allowed Google to use the works in specific ways – for example, to display searchable snippets or sell ebooks – but not, the lawsuit claims, to copy them for training commercial AI products."

'The Trojan Teddy Bear': The promise and peril of childhood in the age of AI; NPR, July 14, 2026

 Greg Rosalsky, NPR; 'The Trojan Teddy Bear': The promise and peril of childhood in the age of AI

"What happens when kids grow up with AI?

AI is already a part of childhood. Recommendation algorithms curate what many kids watch and listen to. Chatbots stand ready to answer questions like, "Are monsters real?" or "Why is the sky blue?" They can help with homework, tell bedtime stories, or even feel like a friend. And companies are racing to embed AI into toys, nurseries, classrooms, and eventually robots that live alongside families.

In a new book, Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI, author Dana Suskind grapples with what the rising tide of artificial intelligence means for raising kids. On the one hand, she acknowledges that the technology offers promise as, for example, a productivity enhancer and time saver for parents, a monitoring and research tool that can give parents and scientists valuable data on child development, and an interactive tutor that might help some kids learn.

But Suskind worries about what happens if AI begins replacing the kinds of human interactions that young brains evolved to learn from.

In fact, Suskind says, her original, working title for the book was, "The Trojan Teddy Bear," a warning that AI companions may seem cute and cuddly — but they carry hidden risks for child development. She ultimately went with Human Raised because she wanted to emphasize the positive — and irreplaceable — role that parents, teachers, and caregivers play in molding young ones.

"If we want children to be able to continue to connect with each other and with other human beings, to be able to think critically, to be able to navigate the human world, we're gonna need to make sure that kids have a distinctly human-raised early childhood," Suskind says."

The crucial medical question that AI can’t answer; Stars and Stripes, July 13, 2026

 JAMES N. WEINSTEIN AND OGAN GUREL, Stars and Stripes; The crucial medical question that AI can’t answer

"In our research on AI and clinical decision-making, we’ve studied what happens when systems are trained to optimize medical outcomes but are blind to human values. In plain English, today’s AI is very good at telling you what usually works for people like you with similar demographics and medical histories. It is far less capable of understanding what you are trying to protect, avoid or prioritize."

White House Directed Patel to Oversee Investigation Involving Times Reporting; The New York Times, July 11, 2026

 Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times ; White House Directed Patel to Oversee Investigation Involving Times Reporting

The F.B.I. director spent about eight hours at the White House Friday focused on the effort, which led to the subpoenaing of several Times reporters who wrote about the security of Air Force One.

"The White House directed Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, to oversee a leak investigation into reporting by The New York Times about security issues with the new Air Force One, leading to a flurry of subpoenas to several Times reporters Friday night, according to people with knowledge of the situation."

Justice Department Subpoenas New York Times Journalists Who Reported About Trump's New Plane; Reason, July 13, 2026

 JOE LANCASTER , Reason; Justice Department Subpoenas New York Times Journalists Who Reported About Trump's New Plane

The government says the reporters are not targets of the investigation, but such subpoenas can still have a chilling effect on the press.

"Officials are often overly aggressive in pursuing leaks of classified information, but President Donald Trump remains in a league of his own.

"The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times," Michael M. Grynbaum wrote Saturday for the paper, "after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump's new Qatari-donated Air Force One."

The subpoenas—which "in some cases" were "delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters' homes"—"seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday," Grynbaum added. The summonses were issued by Jay Clayton, who currently serves as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and has been nominated as the next director of national intelligence.

"The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects," New York Times deputy general counsel David McCraw said in a statement. "This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.""

Publishers, Authors File Class Action Lawsuit Against Google; Publishers Weekly, July 13, 2026

 Jim Milliot , Publishers Weekly; Publishers, Authors File Class Action Lawsuit Against Google

"Publisher Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, as well as author Scott Turow, are the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and the claims are being brought on behalf of themselves and a proposed class of authors and publishers. The suit follows an attempt by HBG and Cengage to join the Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation lawsuit first brought by a group of illustrators and writers in 2023, and which Google has been challenging the right for the publishers to participate.

With the new lawsuit, Cengage and HBG have withdrawn their motion to take part in the 2023 suit, observing that Google could assert that a three-year statute of limitations pertains to the class member claims. In light of that possibility, Hachette and Cengage “determined that they must take action to protect claims that appear to be outside the putative class in this action,” according to the motion to withdraw from the original suit.

Among the highlights in the new lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, are that Google executives knew publishers would consider some of its plans to copy books as illegal, and despite facing huge potential monetary damages (a Google document notes the company “faced $10Bs-$100Bs” in potential fines) but went ahead and made copies anyway.

Publishers are especially annoyed that Google is using books that publishers provided the company to build its Google Books search service as part of an agreement to settle a long-running legal battle, per the complaint. While Google can use the books to provide “snippets,” the complaint states, “publishers and authors never authorized Google to copy the works they received for Google Books for the completely separate purpose of training its AI models and building a multi-billion dollar competing business.” The suit also goes after books that are part of Google Play Books for authorize resale and Google Scholar for research."

The New York nurses replaced by AI: ‘It should concern every patient who cares about quality of care’; The Guardian, July 13, 2026

 Michael Sainato, The Guardian; The New York nurses replaced by AI: ‘It should concern every patient who cares about quality of care’

"After nearly four decades in her job, Shuler is one of 12 nurses who was laid off Sunday after being replaced with AI-powered software, according to the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), which represents nurses at the hospital...

National Nurses United (NNU), the parent union of NYSNA, has been raising the alarm about the effects AI will have on nurses. Shuler’s case would be one of the first AI-related layoffs handled by the union.

The union developed an AI bill of rights for patients and nurses, has been pushing for protections and guardrails in contracts and through legislation, and protested against employers using untested AI in patient care settings."

Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats; The New York Times, July 13, 2026

 Ben Casselman, The New York Times; Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats

A letter calls for policymakers to do more to understand and respond to potential disruptions from artificial intelligence.

"Artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology, and policymakers must move equally quickly to figure out how to respond, a group of economists and researchers are warning...

The statement, titled “We Must Act Now,” was signed by nearly 200 people, including 15 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of two of the leading A.I. labs, Open AI and Anthropic. Other notable signatories include Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist.

Tech industry leaders have been warning for several years that as A.I. grows more powerful, it could quickly take over a large share of human work, leading to widespread joblessness."

One of sci-fi’s most difficult questions about AI is becoming real; The Washington Post, July 13, 2026

 Gerrit De Vynck, The Washington Post; One of sci-fi’s most difficult questions about AI is becoming real

"Since the days of Isaac Asimov in the 1950s, science fiction has tackled the question of whether artificial intelligences and the companies that create them can be held liable for crimes. With the rapid spread of AI chatbots and agents today, the debate has reached the real world.

Over the past year, lawsuits have been piling up against AI companies in courts across the United States and abroad, alleging that chatbots encouraged people to harm themselves or provided advice on how to commit crimes. Now, as the AI industry moves from selling chatbots to providing agents that can complete complex tasks autonomously over long periods of time, the question of who should be held responsible when something goes wrong is only becoming more urgent."

Meta Pulls Instagram AI Update After Everyone Said They Didn't Want to Be Deepfaked; CNET, July 13, 2026

 Katelyn Chedraoui, CNET; Meta Pulls Instagram AI Update After Everyone Said They Didn't Want to Be Deepfaked

"After intense backlash last week, Meta pulled the most troubling part of its newest AI update on Instagram. You will no longer be easily able to create deepfakes of other Instagram users.

"We've heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it's no longer available," Meta wrote on Friday in an update to its announcement blog post.

Last week, in an attempt to prove that Meta's billion-dollar leap into generative AI had purpose, the company brought its newest AI image model to Instagram. It came with a new ability to "tag" any public Instagram accounts and include those people in photorealistic AI images -- essentially creating deepfakes."

AI Bots Stole My Music; Philadelphia Magazine, July 10, 2026

 Owen Lyman-Schmidt, Philadelphia Magazine; AI Bots Stole My Music

One West Philly musician’s surreal, unsettling journey into the world of fake artists, bot listeners, and the streaming industry that’s failing creators. 

"The fear that Carey Dupont would replace us wasn’t just some abstract notion; in the year before we found it, the tracks on Blue Road had been listened to close to 50,000 times each. By contrast, many of the original recordings had only 1,000 to 2,000 listens despite being released four years earlier. Someone was using our music to play the streaming game and was massively outperforming us."

Getting campaign text messages ahead of midterms? There could be an AI bot behind it; NPR, July 12, 2026

 Maham Javaid, NPR; Getting campaign text messages ahead of midterms? There could be an AI bot behind it

"AI-powered platforms are training bots to sound like political candidates in text messages, holding personalized conversations with thousands of potential voters simultaneously. The bots are also gathering data, learning what each voter wants from their representatives and using that information to shape future campaign messaging."

White House Directed Patel to Oversee Investigation Involving Times Reporting; The New York Times, July 11, 2026

 Devlin BarrettGlenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times ; White House Directed Patel to Oversee Investigation Involving Times Reporting

"The White House directed Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, to oversee a leak investigation into reporting by The New York Times about security issues with the new Air Force One, leading to a flurry of subpoenas to several Times reporters Friday night, according to people with knowledge of the situation."

Meta Removes A.I. Feature on Instagram After Days of Backlash; The New York Times, July 10, 2026

 Eli Tan, The New York Times; Meta Removes A.I. Feature on Instagram After Days of Backlash

Users and Hollywood agencies raised privacy and copyright concerns about the new tool, Muse Image.

[Kip Currier: Another example that if enough people speak up about a controversial technology issue that really matters to them, tech companies like Meta will -- sometimes -- back off.

The specter of more copyright infringement litigation was also a significant incentive for Meta to "pause" the availability of the AI tool Muse Image on Instagram. Muse Image enables users to create new images by using content accessed via Instagram accounts as "raw material" for generating AI-generated pictures.]

"Meta on Friday paused a new artificial intelligence feature on Instagram that allowed users to generate images based on people’s public accounts, citing widespread criticism.

The feature, which Meta unveiled on Tuesday, automatically opted in any Instagram user with a public account. As a result, countless people’s likenesses were used in A.I. images without their consent. Users complained about privacy and copyright concerns."

The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work; The New York Times, July 10, 2026

 Lora Kelley , The New York Times; The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work

"Every day, Mercor, a start-up that sells training data to artificial intelligence companies, pays 30,000 contractors more than $4 million to help make their jobs, and those of their colleagues, obsolete.

It’s gig work, but for professionals with rarefied skills. One recent Mercor posting offered $225 an hour for a voice actor able to maintain a customer service persona in fluent Hebrew. Another sought a Ph.D. physicist with a specialization in general relativity, astrophysics or cosmology. A third listing wanted a physician with more than three years of experience in the Rwandan primary care medical system.

Mercor and a handful of similar start-ups are the primary middlemen in a supply chain of “human data” that may power the next generation of A.I. As OpenAI, Anthropic and other major ventures compete to become the industry’s dominant platform, the market for premium data that has been vetted by experts is exploding.

No longer do the A.I. companies need armies of low-paid workers, often overseas, to do rote tasks like tag images of cars or transcribe audio. They need mathematicians to annotate proofs, lawyers to mark up briefs and professors to grade essays. That’s what Mercor and its rivals supply. To use the parlance of the industry, data labeling has moved up the “value chain,” and the start-ups that offer this service have become some of the fastest growing in Silicon Valley."

Apple accuses OpenAI of using stolen trade secrets to create its upcoming AI gadgets in new lawsuit; CNN, July 10, 2026

 Lisa Eadicicco, Hadas Gold, CNN ; Apple accuses OpenAI of using stolen trade secrets to create its upcoming AI gadgets in new lawsuit

"Apple sued OpenAI on Friday, alleging the AI company has stolen the iPhone maker’s trade secrets to develop its own yet-to-be-unveiled AI gadgets.

In the suit, filed in the District Court of Northern California, Apple accuses OpenAI of trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract.

OpenAI last year announced it has been working with Apple’s former design chief on a hush-hush project to build devices meant to bring smartphone users into the age of AI.

The device is expected to be unveiled later this year – but the lawsuit could throw a wrench into those plans. The suit could also complicate OpenAI’s plans to go public soon in a massive, hotly anticipated IPO."

OpenAI may have made a fatal misstep in copyright fight with news orgs; Ars Technica, July 9, 2026

 ASHLEY BELANGER  , Ars Technica; OpenAI may have made a fatal misstep in copyright fight with news orgs

"OpenAI is facing calls for “serious sanctions” after fighting to keep news organizations from snooping through millions of logs to find evidence of users skirting their paywalls by prompting ChatGPT to regurgitate their articles.

This evidence is considered among the most important to both sides, potentially either dooming OpenAI as an infringer or exonerating its chatbot technology as a transformative fair use of news sites’ content."

Meta Now Lets Anyone Use Your Instagram Photos in AI Images—Unless You Opt Out; Wired, July 7, 2026

 Reece Rogers, Wired; Meta Now Lets Anyone Use Your Instagram Photos in AI Images—Unless You Opt Out

"META LAUNCHED ITS inaugural AI image model from the Meta Superintelligence Labs on Tuesday, its effort to compete with the likes of OpenAI’s GPT Images 2.0and Google’s Nano Banana 2 in the AI image generation race.

The new model, called Muse Image, rolled out with deep integrations woven into the Instagram app. As part of this update, public Instagram profiles are now automatically opted into being fodder for generative AI remixes. All someone has to do is tag your account’s profile in a prompt—if it’s public—and they can use Meta AI to generate an image using your likeness."