News

Friday 2026-05-22

05:00 AM

AI Fabricated Quotes In A Book About AI Undermining Truth. The Author Says This Proves His Point. [Techdirt]

Last week I read this excerpt of Steven Rosenbaum’s new book in Wired. His book is titled “The Future of Truth” and the Wired article has the attention grabbing headline: “Gen Z Is Pioneering a New Understanding of Truth.” I debated writing about the article, because it read to me like pretty typical “older generation whines about the kids these days and how their newfangled tech is melting their brains.”

We’ve seen this moral panic before.

And nothing has yet convinced me that “the kids these days” are any worse off than any previous generation. Yes, the technology is new, but like every generation, they tend to actually figure out the pros and cons of new technology way before their parents do.

To be fair, the Wired excerpt presents Rosenbaum’s argument as somewhat more nuanced than a standard “kids are dumb now” panic — he’s describing how Gen Z has developed different epistemic habits, relying on emotional cues and communal verification through social networks rather than traditional institutional gatekeepers. Some of that uncovers a real phenomenon that might be worth discussing. And yet, something about the framing still felt off to me — as if “different” was being dressed up as “broken.”

Also, if you tend to read a lot of AI-generated content, the Wired excerpt has a large number of tells. Plenty of “that’s not x, it’s y” and a bunch of words that AI loves to use (to be clear: that’s not definitive, as a reason why AI tools use those types of words and phrases is because they’re so common in human written communications, and it frustrates me to no end that I now feel the need to consciously limit my own use of certain rhetorical devices I actually liked to use in my past writing).

Speaking of which… a week later, the NY Times reports that Rosenbaum’s book appears to be stuffed with quotes that were made up entirely by whatever AI tool he used to write it. Oops!

The author of a nonfiction book about the effects of artificial intelligence on truth acknowledged on Monday that he had included numerous made-up or misattributed quotes concocted by A.I.

The author, Steven Rosenbaum, whose book “The Future of Truth” was released this month to great fanfare, incorporated more than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes in sections of the book reviewed by The New York Times.

Yes, but the truly astounding bit is buried all the way at the end of the the NY Times article, in which Rosenbaum seeks to judo this total editorial failure into evidence supporting the premise of his book. I only wish I were kidding:

In his statement, Mr. Rosenbaum said that if the episode “serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.”

“These A.I. errors do not, in fact, diminish the larger questions that the book raises about truth, trust and A.I. and its impact on society, democracy and editorial,” he added.

Dude. No. Just… no.

You don’t get to write an entire book fretting about how the kids these days don’t understand truth because of AI… and then when its exposed that you didn’t even check the quotes AI gave you, claim that this just proves your point.

That’s not how any of this works.

This is a book called “The Future of Truth.” It seems like you should at least grapple with the fact that part of the “future of truth” is that your own book is spreading false information because you didn’t… actually write parts of it.

If anything, it seems likely that kids are learning whatever lesson there is to be learned here way better than the adults. The widespread disdain many kids have for AI is, in part, a direct response to all the bullshit ways adults are using it. I will continue to argue that LLMs are a tool that, when properly used, can be quite empowering. But the absolute worst way to use these tools is to let them do your primary work for you. They can help assist you, but anyone who is relying on them as a lazy way of doing the deeper work you need to do will run into problems.

But I don’t think any of that has to do with how “the kids these days” “understand truth.” A lot of it has to do with how adults are rushing around looking for shortcuts and schemes to get away from doing the actual work. But apparently there’s no book deal or Wired feature story in “the kids these days are probably figuring it out just fine.”

Daily Deal: The Modern No-Code Development Bundle [Techdirt]

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Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

03:00 AM

10,000 Court Decisions Can’t Be Wrong, Even If Trump Thinks Otherwise [Techdirt]

It’s absolutely amazing how wrong this administration has been when it comes to immigration enforcement. That some people still think the Supreme Court is in the best position to resolve this is insane. This isn’t a circuit split in need of mending. This is pretty much the entirety of the court system coming to the same conclusion.

You can look at this two ways: it’s either a resounding rejection of this administration’s anti-migrant actions or it’s evidence of the futility of the system of checks and balances. Either way, someone’s definitely keeping an eye on this and that someone is Kyle Cheney of Politico, who’s been tracking immigration-related lawsuits ever since Trump returned to office. Here’s the good news/bad news:

More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece of Trump’s immigration agenda.

Trump’s unprecedented detention policy, which is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court, infuriated lower courts in ways no other modern issue has. It ruptured the relationship between the Justice Department and the judiciary; pitted the administration against itself; and upended innumerable lives — not just of the people swept up by immigration agents, but of their spouses and children, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

You’d think that 10,000 adverse rulings by judges whose appointments have spanned multiple administrations would clearly signal that the current administration’s actions are wrong. But that’s undercut by the opening of the second paragraph, which delivers the bad news no one who supports constitutional rights wants to hear.

This shouldn’t be headed to the Supreme Court — the court most likely to give Trump what he wants, no matter what that means for what’s left of our rights. Just because an extremely small minority of judges have ruled in favor of unjustified detentions doesn’t make it an unsettled matter of law. If we had something approaching 10,000 rulings in favor of this administration’s actions, that might mean we need someone to make the final call.

One way or another, it will end up there, if only because the Trump administration has the unlimited budget to ensure this happens. It can appeal every single one of these 10,000 adverse rulings in perpetuity because it doesn’t have to worry about keeping its lawyers paid. The plaintiffs in these cases, however, have to deal with private sector reality day in and day out and know the least sympathetic court in the land is also the most powerful.

The administration was given the chance to address this reality. And, of course, it chose to respond like a petulant child, rather than attempting to be the adult in the room:

Trump administration officials shrug off the one-sided rebuke from the courts, attributing their losses to “the left and their activist proxies on the judiciary” and predicting that they will prevail at the Supreme Court.

“The law is not a popularity contest among judges,” a Justice Department spokesperson said.

This response is insane. It’s one thing to respond to a judicial aberration with a partisan shrug. It’s quite another to pretend 10,000 rulings from more than 400 judges is nothing more than “judicial activism” by “the left.” Reality (and, hopefully, history) is not on the side of Trump. The only thing left for it to do is hope that the court Trump stacked is similarly willing to pretend thousands of adverse rulings are nothing more than liberals trying to impose their will on the nation.

Pretending is all this administration has. Behold this “activist proxy” of “the left:”

“This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, a Trump appointee based in New York, in the case of a man whose lawful status was revoked after ICE arrested him. “Unquestionably, the laws of human decency condemn such villainy.”

What’s left of the DOJ is more beholden to Trump than his own judicial appointees. Anyone willing to speak on record does so with all the personal conviction of someone hoping to avoid the next political purge:

Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassare, asked about the more than 10,000 rulings against the administration, replied: “That’s great, now the American people can see how judges are putting personal policy preferences ahead of proper interpretations of the law.”

You know what the people are actually going to see? They’re going to see that this administration has repeatedly violated the law and is resorting to accusing Trump’s own judicial appointees of being partisan hacks. That’s not going to play well with people who actually pay attention to these things. And it won’t budge the needle at all with the Trump faithful who either can’t or won’t keep up with the autocratic overtures being pitched by their own personal Jesus.

Unfortunately, the Trump loyalists in the Supreme Court are just as willing to be deliberately ignorant of the law when the administration asks them to rule in its favor. We don’t expect average Americans to grasp the intricacies of decades of precedential rulings. But we should expect the nation’s highest court to comprehend that 400+ judges and 10,000+ rulings might add up to something it shouldn’t ignore, no matter how much the conservative majority might want to please the person they now seem to view as a king, rather than a president.

02:00 AM

12:00 AM

Kanji of the Day: 灯 [Kanji of the Day]

灯

✍6

小4

lamp, a light, light, counter for lights

トウ

ひ　ほ-　ともしび　とも.す　あかり

点灯   (てんとう)   —   lighting (a lamp)
灯油   (とうゆ)   —   kerosene
灯台   (とうだい)   —   lighthouse
蛍光灯   (けいこうとう)   —   fluorescent lamp
提灯   (ちょうちん)   —   paper lantern
街灯   (がいとう)   —   street light
灯籠   (とうろう)   —   garden lantern
灯り   (あかり)   —   lamp
懐中電灯   (かいちゅうでんとう)   —   torch
消灯   (しょうとう)   —   putting out the lights

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Thursday 2026-05-21

11:00 PM

Trump FCC Using False Claims Of Immigrant Fraud To Drive Up Costs Of Broadband For Everyone [Techdirt]

Back in February the Trump FCC announced it was launching new “reforms” of a major bipartisan FCC program that helps poor people afford broadband. Dubbed Lifeline, the program provides a modest $9.25 stipend to help low-income Americans afford either broadband or phone service.

Lifeline, developed and supported as a popular bipartisan initiative, is one of countless government programs being gutted by the Trump administration under the pretense of reform and cost savings. Earlier this year, FCC boss Brendan Carr falsely claimed that the “reform” (read: destruction) of the program was necessary due to a bunch of fraud by immigrants. From his original press statement:

“Lifeline providers received nearly $5 million in federal dollars to provide phone or Internet service to more than 116,000 dead people in the three optout states. Over 80% of those scams took place in California alone. That type of waste, fraud, and abuse is completely unacceptable.”

This was, you’ll be surprised to learn, a lie. One that mirrors similarly racist claims made by the Trump administration as it targets what’s left of the U.S. social safety net. It didn’t take long for Carr’s lie that “California immigrants are stealing taxpayer dollars” to bounce around the right wing propagandaverse.

But as the California Public Utilities Commission noted shortly thereafter, the 116,000 people cited died while on the program. There was no fraud. There’s not even coherent evidence they were immigrants (as if that would matter one way or the other):

The Trump FCC reforms aren’t finalized yet. There’s first a public comment period where Brendan Carr will pretend to listen to outside parties and the public. So groups like Public Knowledge and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) recently filed their complaints about the proposed changes with the FCC (spotted first by Light Reading).

They make several excellent points, one being that historically, most of the fraud occurring in the Lifeline program has been at the hands of private companies:

“The Q-Link case in 2025, the Armstrong Group in 2024, and the 2022 San Francisco whistleblower complaint each illustrate that providers, not eligible and subscribing Lifeline households, are the primary entities engaging in fraud and abuse concerns within USF programs.”

Brendan Carr’s policies generally involve a strange fusion of racism and gutting oversight of corporations. U.S. broadband wouldn’t be so expensive if regulators like Brendan Carr actually believed in holding regional monopolies accountable. Instead, Carr’s policies generally involve mindless deregulation of industry, resulting in muted competition, high prices, spotty access, and poor customer service.

Groups say Carr’s goal of imposing new Lifeline restrictions are particularly problematic because only somewhere between 19 and 22 percent of all eligible homes sign up for the program, suggesting it could benefit from improved outreach and education, not cumbersome new barriers to participation.

The groups also stated they were “extremely concerned” about the potential that data collected will be used to harass minority Americans:

“For a program that garnered bipartisan support and cooperation for decades, it is difficult to ignore the timing of this proposal alongside expanded federal data-sharing initiatives targeting immigrant communities among other anti-immigrant strategies deployed by the Trump Administration.”

The Trump administration attacks on Lifeline mirror other simultaneous efforts to make broadband less affordable for everyone, whether they’re fresh immigrants or Trump supporters in the deepest red state. In just the last year or two, Republicans and the Trump administration have:

You can probably see why Brendan Carr and Donald Trump would want misinformed voters focused on “immigrant fraud.”

08:00 PM

Value creation, bullshit jobs and the future of work [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

We create a job whenever someone with the authority to hire decides the value created is greater than the wages paid.

In my lifetime, we’ve invented 7 billion or more jobs, which is great news. Great for the people who were able to earn a living, and productive for everyone who experienced some of the value created.

“Value” doesn’t always mean profit.

David Graeber defined a bullshit job as “A form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence, even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”

But over time, there are no pointless jobs. It might be that the value created is hard to measure, creates status for the boss, or is part of a larger system. It might seem pointless to the employee, but someone gets value out of it. Boats have ballast to keep them steady, and many big company jobs serve a similar purpose. Sailing a boat without ballast is difficult, regardless of how pointless carrying dead weight seems to be.

The person who pays for the job is the one who decides if it’s valuable. Calling it pointless from the outside is just substituting your judgment for theirs.

Graeber was right that doing a job that feels pointless is enervating. Even if it has a point, the more obviously connected we are to the creation of value, the more purpose we can find in our work.

And now, here comes AI.

It’s already good enough at many tasks that it’s cheaper and faster and perhaps more reliable to have an AI do those tasks instead of a person.

But we’ve seen this before. The Luddites weren’t anti-technologists. They were defending their livelihoods, a specific job: weavers. People who created clothing.

Today, around the world, we’re all clothed, but it’s quite unlikely you know a weaver. The cost of truly handmade clothing is so high that no one buys it. A handmade t-shirt might cost $500 if you could find one. Machines replaced skilled labor, and all of the weaving jobs disappeared, because the machines created more value per dollar invested.

It took a generation or two for the weaving workforce to fade out. That sort of labor change is now happening in months or years, not decades.

Most people reading this post have a job that didn’t exist a hundred years ago. Some of these jobs create easily measured and obvious forms of value, some less so. And all of these jobs will change as a result of AI.

Jevons Paradox is worth understanding. When the efficiency of coal combustion increased, it didn’t lead to a drop in coal use; instead, more uses were found for coal power, and consumption went up. This will likely happen, at least for a while, in many uses of AI. If it’s easier for programmers to write useful code using AI, then more programmers will show up and write more code, solve more problems, and create more value.

We keep building machines, and the machines give people chances to add value. But that value creation is more likely to happen when people use the machines for leverage, not when they try to do the work that the machine can do.

Bullshit jobs will disappear, especially as the meme of corporations with less ballast catches on. More status will be earned by having a smaller workforce, not a larger one. CFOs will get more value (for a while) from laying people off than from hiring them. The turmoil is certain, the human costs will be real, but the likely outcome is more value created by more people, over time. That’s not much solace for someone who has invested and trained to create value under the old rules, but consumers of value don’t often care about that.

The best plan is resilience. Find a way to create value, more each day. Consider enrolling in the bumpy ride that change brings, because holding on tight to the job we have today is probably going to be insufficient.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Figure out who is seeking value and create it for them.

      

07:00 PM

Hollywood Secures Broad “Omnibus” Pirate Site Blocking Order in UK High Court [TorrentFreak]

ukflagThe Motion Picture Association (MPA) has been the driving force behind pirate site blocking around the world for more than fifteen years.

With blocking powers in more than 50 countries, the group sees the enforcement option as a key anti-piracy tool that it hopes the United States will also adopt soon.

Last year, for example, the MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President Karyn Temple discussed an overview of site-blocking ‘best practices’ at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Among other things, this includes the inclusion of dynamic blocking, automated processes, all with proper safeguards.

For the upcoming 18th WIPO session next month, the MPA has also prepared a presentation on site blocking. Delfos Visser’s contribution discusses the role of intermediaries. This includes the gradually expanding role of ISPs, search engines, VPNs, DNS resolvers, domain name registrars, and content delivery networks.

The involvement of these intermediaries is regularly discussed, both in and outside of courts. However, the MPA’s presentation also includes a notable new site-blocking angle that has not been covered in the press, until now.

UK’s New ‘Omnibus’ Blocking Order

In his contribution, Delfos Visser highlights a new UK High Court ruling that has not yet been published publicly on BAILII or the National Archives. The case, Columbia Pictures and others v British Telecommunications and others, was filed in December 2025, seeking broader site-blocking powers in the UK.

The MPA notes that this case resulted in a new judgment on May 7, which will reportedly allow rightsholders to better respond to evolving piracy threats.

In the MPA’s framing, the ruling represents a new generation of UK blocking orders. Traditional applications under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 required studios to identify specific pirate sites by domain name and ask the court to order the major UK ISPs to block them.

A 2022 ruling by Mr. Justice Meade extended that to also include orders covering “pirate brands,” which allowed rightsholders to also target mirror and copycat domains with similar names.

The new order goes even further. According to the MPA, it allows Hollywood studios to seek blocking of any “structurally infringing audiovisual piracy services that meet defined criteria, without having to bring a fresh court application for each new domain or site name available in the future.”

From the MPA contribution

flexorder

The order remains in place for six months, with the option to request an extension. To qualify for a renewal, the studios are required to submit reports on the implementation and effectiveness to the court.

Shapeshifting & Agentic-AI-Powered Pirate Sites

The MPA presentation notes that these expanded blocking capabilities are much needed to be able to handle the ever-evolving piracy threats. Delfos Visser notes that this could include AI-amplified piracy tools in the future.

“While fully autonomous “agentic AI” systems are not yet known to be widely used in the piracy ecosystem, several technological developments are already materially lowering the barriers to large-scale domain hopping and evasive schemes,” Delfos Visser writes.

The submission points out that services such as bulk registration APIs can make it easier for pirates to counter blockades. Operators can rapidly deploy new streaming sites and rotate through networks of new and non-brand-related domain names to evade standard blocking orders, the MPA writes.

“As a result, infringing services increasingly operate through rotating networks of domains, including generic or non-brand-related names specifically designed to evade traditional domain-specific or brand-based blocking measures,” Delfos Visser writes.

This framing matters, as traditional s.97A orders and the more recent pirate-brand orders both require some link between a target domain and a previously identified pirate operation. The new order, as suggested by the MPA, breaks that link. Sites can be added to the blocklist based on whether they meet structural-infringement criteria, not whether they share a name or branding with an existing target.

Limited Transparency

While this does indeed read like a significant court order, the full text remains unavailable. We reached out to Delfos Visser and Wiggin, the law firm that represented the studios in this case, but neither responded to our inquiry. None of the targeted ISPs have publicly mentioned the order either.

The ruling will eventually be published online, and we will update this article accordingly when that happens. However, going forward, it would be welcome to have more transparency from the get-go.

Questions also remain about the transparency of these types of court orders. TorrentFreak has previously documented how dynamic blocking orders are quietly updated to add new domains. This makes it hard for outsiders to check the accuracy of these measures.

This transparency concern will be further elevated when rights holders can add new domains to existing orders that seemingly have no link to the domains that were initially targeted.

The MPA does not address the transparency angle in its WIPO submission. Last year, however, the group told the same forum that it is “of paramount importance that site blocking injunctions are rendered in the most transparent way possible.” For now, the new UK order falls short of that standard.

—

A copy of the MPA’s WIPO contribution, WIPO/ACE/18/26: Involvement of Intermediary Services in Site Blocking, is available here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

04:00 PM

New Release: Tails 7.8 [Tor Project blog]

Changes and updates

  • Update Tor Browser to 15.0.14.

  • Remove Thunderbird.

    You can still install Thunderbird as additional software.

    If you have both the Thunderbird Email Client and Additional Software features of the Persistent Storage turned on, Tails automatically adds Thunderbird to your list of additional software.

    A new version of Thunderbird is released in Debian shortly after each Tails releases, because both Tails and Thunderbird follow the release calendar of Firefox. As a consequence, until Tails 7.5 (February 2026), the version of Thunderbird in Tails was almost always outdated, with known security vulnerabilities.

    By installing Thunderbird as additional software, the latest version of Thunderbird is installed automatically from your Persistent Storage each time you start Tails.

Fixed problems

  • Fix multiple security vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel and haveged, that could allow an application in Tails to gain administration privileges.

    For example, if an attacker was able to exploit other unknown security vulnerabilities in an application included in Tails, they might then use one of these vulnerabilities to take full control of your Tails and deanonymize you.

For more details, read our changelog.

Get Tails 7.8

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your Persistent Storage

  • Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 7.0 or later to 7.8.

  • If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails 7.8 on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 7.8 directly:

Support and feedback

For support and feedback, visit the Support section on the Tails website.

02:00 PM

New Acting FDA Commissioner: Some Florida Lawyer That Shoots Animals With Don Jr. [Techdirt]

I assume at one point America was a serious big boy country, but we are certainly not that any longer. You can get examples of the unserious nature of our government in spades, of course, but I’m just going to keep hammering on what is going on at HHS and its child agencies as the prime example. With the recent resignation of Marty Makary as FDA Commissioner, the country is left without Senate confirmed commissioners for the FDA, CDC, as well as Surgeon General. This is because of a combination of RFK Jr. being incapable of hiring any normies for those roles combined with the Trump administration’s general apathy towards doing the business of government. It’s a clown show, currently resting on the shoulders of acting commissioners in these roles.

Which isn’t to say that the clownery hasn’t infected those acting commissioner appointments as well. It absolutely has. And you need look no further than the new acting FDA Commissioner to see that.

Soon after Trump posted Makary’s resignation text to Truth Social, Kyle Diamantas, 38, an obscure Florida lawyer who first landed at the FDA in 2025 as director of the human foods program, following his previous role as Don Jr.’s hunting buddy, was named acting FDA commissioner.

In March 2021, Don Jr. and Diamantas posed holding dead Osceola wild turkeys, as I had first reported. Mike Tussey, the founder of the hunting outfit Osceola Outdoors, described the scene on X as: “Don Jr. With his good friend Kyle Diamantas! Kyle’s first Osceola!” A picture of Trump Jr., Diamantas, and Tussey, with a single turkey, is featured on Osceola Outdoors’s website.

While a great deal of attention has been paid to Diamantas’ brief role defending Planned Parenthood in one legal case, which he claims he eventually got out of over his moral objections to the organization, his more salient work history was his legal defense of Abbott Laboratories for selling harmful baby formula and the tobacco industry. He spent a decade doing his lawyerly work before being appointed acting deputy commissioner of human food at the FDA last year. There he dabbled in a little conflict of interest by being in charge of reviewing infant formula safety, given his past legal work defending the industry, and embraced the whole MAHA movement.

So what else qualifies Diamantas for that role, or his new role running the larger FDA? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing at all, other than being Don Jr.’s pal. The real government, it seems, was the friends we made along the way.

And so we have another nepo-appointment in the Trump administration, but this one is responsible for food and drug safety across the entire country. I’m sure there’s nothing that will go wrong as a result.

10:00 AM

Border Patrol Chief Dips Out After Bragging About His Sex Tourism To His Underlings [Techdirt]

I’m not here to kink shame or suggest sex work isn’t work. I’m not here to claim that every sex worker is a victim of sex trafficking. I’m not even here to suggest that government officials shouldn’t be allowed to exchange money for goods and sexual services. If they’re not on the clock, I’m not here to judge their off-duty activities.

The problem here is that this person — the national chief of the Border Patrol — apparently insisted on making everyone aware of his off-duty activities. Those activities apparently included sex tourism. And it’s definitely not a great look when the destinations you’re bragging about are extremely problematic — the sort of places where sex trafficking is common and usually frequented by people looking for stuff that definitely isn’t legal in their home countries.

The Washington Times — which is generally very pro-conservative — first broke the news about national Border Patrol chief Michael Banks and his alleged fondness for overseas sex workers.

Banks “bragged” to colleagues while in his previous management role at Border Patrol about paying for sex with prostitutes while traveling in Colombia and Thailand over the course of a decade. 

Colombia has long been perceived to be under the control of drug cartels — the sort of thing that suggests a lot of sex work isn’t necessarily consensual. On top of that, it’s hardly the sort of place someone in a leadership position in the Border Patrol should be visiting for non-work-related reasons. That alone creates an “appearance of impropriety” that people smarter than Chief Banks would do well to avoid.

Thailand also has a reputation when it comes to sex work… and it’s the kind that should encourage people in government positions to steer far clear of it, even during their off-duty hours.

So, when a guy starts bragging about paying for sex in Colombia and Thailand, certain assumptions are made. And even if those assumptions are just assumptions, it’s impossible to avoid the uncomfortable fact that someone ostensibly in the business of deterring sex trafficking is spending his time and money in places where it’s likely to fund sex trafficking.

“He would tell people that’s why he was going on these trips — he would go there to engage in activities with prostitutes,” a second person said. “So I think those stories are out everywhere, and you can’t put them away or not give it attention because he was the one telling people about these trips.

“In our line of work, part of what we do is try to combat the trafficking of females, that is part of our job,” the same person said. “It’s counter to what we do or what we should be standing for. If you’re partaking in those activities, you’re supporting the trafficking and exploitation of women.”

The bragging Banks did drew the attention of Border Patrol oversight. According to the information provided to the Washington Times, Banks had actually been investigated more than once for his sex tourism.

But the second investigation into Banks and his sex tourism notably came to halt once Donald Trump returned to office and appointed one of his MAGA loyalists to head the DHS:

[T]he investigation ended abruptly while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in office, leading to more questions.

And while there are always going to be people who will say this is nothing more than a handful of anonymous assertions, Banks’ actions speak louder than these unattributed words:

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks abruptly resigned Thursday, telling Fox News, “It’s just time.”

Banks reportedly told Fox News that he “got the ship back on course” during his tenure.

Hmm. Those don’t seem like the actions of someone who believes they’ve been wrongly accused by their subordinates. Those are the actions of someone who wants to be gone before more information comes to light. After all, the last time Banks resigned was because his disagreed with President Biden’s border policies. Trump’s return to office resulted in Banks being appointed to his former position — one that he is now abandoning and it cannot possibly be for the same reasons he exited office the first time.

Despite the cloud hanging over his head, the Trump administration has lionized his truncated second act, making it appear as though it would be more than willing to erect a statue of Banks being blown by underage Thai sex workers to honor his second coming as national Border Patrol chief:

 “We thank U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks for his decades of service to this country and congratulate him on his second retirement after returning to serve during one of the most challenging periods for border security,” said U.S. Customs & Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott in a statement.

Imagine being applauded for quitting twice. That’s the Trump meritocracy in action. Banks abandoned the job once because it conflicted with his bigoted “principles.” He’s leaving for a second time because he doesn’t actually appear to have anything that could be considered “principles.” The CBP statement wishes Banks and his family well, but I can only imagine there are a million places Banks would rather be than back at home with his family. Assuming his visa is still valid, he’ll probably seek “comfort” overseas as soon as possible.

08:00 AM

It’s Not Just Separate Money Grabs. It’s A Whole Profit Machine. [The Status Kuo]

Image courtesy of Axios

Even by the standards of Trump Season 2, the headlines out of Washington are staggering. This week brought three new horrors, any one of which would have ended any other presidency.

First, the Justice Department has proposed a nearly $2 billion dollar slush fund using taxpayer money to compensate people allegedly persecuted by the Biden administration. It was created without congressional approval, with no mechanism for judicial or other oversight, and no defined standard for what “weaponization” means.

Second, buried in a hyperlink to a Monday DOJ press release, a separate document purports to permanently bar the IRS from investigating Trump, his family or his businesses for any tax returns filed before this week. Call it a get-out-of-audit-free card.

Third, federal ethics disclosures released last week revealed that Trump’s personal brokerage account executed more than 3,600 individual stock trades in the first three months of 2026 alone. That’s roughly 60 trades per day, often in companies he was simultaneously regulating, his family was contracting with, or he was publicly hyping on social media and in speeches.

The corruption can feel overwhelming, and that’s partly the point. There’s so much grift and flouting of norms and the law, spread across so many agencies, legal filings and financial disclosures, that it’s hard to name the scheme clearly enough to attack it. Is it corruption? Insider trading? Self-dealing? A protection racket?

Yes, to all of the above. But to better understand what we’re truly seeing, let’s climb out of the flood zone and get a view from higher ground.

Trump 2.0 isn’t a regime that just grabs whatever comes along. It’s best understood as a slick and corrupt profit machine—one that uses government power to rig the system, shield itself from accountability, enrich and reward allies and loyalists, and actively extract wealth from the public.

Every story this week is a different gear turning in that machine’s engine.

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Rigging the system and shielding the machine

Let’s start with the structure of the proposed settlement, because it is genuinely without precedent.

Trump, as a private citizen, sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in January, alleging that a former contractor had improperly leaked his tax returns—along with hundreds of thousands of others—back in 2020. He then became president again in 2025, taking control of the very agencies he was suing. His Justice Department, now somehow answerable only to him, negotiated a “settlement” with his personal legal team.

The settlement Trump’s own DOJ cut on his behalf established a $1.776 billion fund to compensate alleged victims of government “lawfare.” It also arranged for Trump to drop not only his case against the IRS but also two civil claims related to the Russia investigation and the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.

In other words, Trump surrendered a meritless lawsuit against the IRS and two equally meritless civil claims, and in return received control over $1.776 billion in taxpayer funds.

Then came Tuesday’s addendum, added quietly after acting AG Todd Blanche testified before Congress without mentioning it. Under the settlement’s terms, the IRS is now “FOREVER BARRED” from pursuing any audit or tax examination of Trump, his family members, or any of his affiliated businesses for returns filed before the effective date. A 2024 New York Times/ProPublica report had estimated that a long-running Trump tax audit could result in a bill exceeding $100 million. That bill is now, by executive fiat, permanently void.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted the corrupt arrangement: “He sued the government he runs, had his own DOJ settle the case and pocketed the prize: special IRS protection for the Trump family. That is self-dealing with a government seal.”

Critically, the deal was structured to resolve before court deadlines that would have required the White House to justify whether the lawsuit had merit, given that Trump now controls the very agencies he had sued. A judge never got to ask whether a president can essentially sue himself before the “settlement” took effect.

There may be one complication Trump didn’t fully anticipate. As Joyce Vance noted in her Civil Discourse newsletter, the presiding judge, Obama appointee Kathleen M. Williams, issued an order observing that because Trump’s dismissal notice made no reference to any settlement, there is “no settlement of record.” That’s a “hit pause” moment from a judge who had already appointed outside lawyers to scrutinize the deal and determine whether it was bogus. Whether she acts on it remains to be seen, but the settlement is not yet beyond judicial reach.

Enriching and rewarding Trump loyalists

Think of this new “anti-weaponization fund” as a key new reward mechanism. Its genius, from Trump’s perspective, is that it launders loyalty payments through the language of victimhood. Anyone who believes they were “politically targeted” by a prior administration can apply. There are no defined eligibility standards. The five-member commission that will adjudicate claims has not been named but will be chosen by the Acting AG. And the fund will operate without judicial oversight—a key distinction from the court-supervised Obama-era “tribal fund” Blanche cited as precedent during his testimony.

The amount isn’t arbitrary. As Heather Cox Richardson notes, $1.776 billion is a deliberate signal. 1776 is the same number January 6 rioters were shouting as they stormed the Capitol. The amount is a dog whistle to insurrectionists indicating who the money is really for.

The structure of the deal makes that reading hard to dismiss. The settlement was signed on behalf of the United States not by Blanche, but by Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the U.S. associate attorney general. Woodward was previously the defense attorney for key people in Trump’s orbit: Kash Patel, Peter Navarro, Walt Nauta and multiple January 6 defendants. In short, the lawyer who negotiated the government’s side of a deal against Trump had previously been paid to defend Trump’s allies.

Blanche, in his first congressional testimony since taking over from the fired Pam Bondi, also declined to rule out payouts to people convicted of violence on January 6. Vice President JD Vance even suggested Hunter Biden could apply for funds, framing it as evidence that the fund was not partisan.

No one seriously doubts who the primary beneficiaries will be: the network of pardoned January 6 defendants, Trump-adjacent figures who faced federal charges, and allies who can claim, however tenuously, that Biden’s DOJ looked at them sideways.

Even some Republicans found it hard to defend. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said he was “not a big fan” of the fund, adding “I don’t see a purpose for it.” Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who recently lost his Republican primary and has begun to push back harder on the Trump agenda, called it a “slush fund,” adding: “We are a nation of laws. You can’t just make up things.”

Extracting all it can

With the system rigged and the loyalists bought off, Trump is free to rake in huge sums for himself. Over in the financial markets, something else was happening that made Trump stand apart from all his predecessors.

Ever since then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson helped establish the modern presidential blind trust in 1963, presidents have generally placed personal assets in a trust managed by independent trustees, invested in index funds and Treasuries or in President Jimmy Carter’s case, a peanut farm into a blind trust. No modern president has actively traded individual securities while sitting in the Oval Office.

Trump is doing something categorically different. Financial disclosures filed May 14 with the Office of Government Ethics show 3,642 individual trades executed through an account in his name during the first quarter of 2026. That represents a volume of $220 million to $750 million, across an average of roughly 60 trades per day. The White House says the account is managed by independent financial institutions with no direction from Trump. But the timing of his trades tells a different story.

The account bought Nvidia stock on January 6, a week before the Commerce Department approved the sale of Nvidia chips to China. It bought Nvidia again on February 10, a week before Nvidia announced a major deal with Meta. It accumulated Palantir shares in March, just as the Pentagon and DHS were awarding the company billion-dollar contracts. Then Trump publicly praised Palantir on Truth Social with its ticker symbol in April, and the stock jumped. On April 30, he posted on Truth Social that “Intel stock continues to rise”—and Intel gained 3 percent after hours. The administration holds a 10 percent stake in the company.

Most telling of all: On the morning of March 23, Trump posted an all-caps Truth Social message announcing that the U.S. and Iran had been having “very good and productive conversations” and extending the deadline for a ceasefire deal with Iran by five days. Crude oil plunged nearly 11 percent. Energy stocks sold off sharply. The account in Trump’s name spent that same day buying Phillips 66, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron—along with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, the companies that profit from an ongoing war. The president had both the information that would move those markets and the power to move them himself. His account bought accordingly.

Former White House ethics counsel Richard Painter reviewed the financial history of every preceding chief executive. “I don’t think we’ve had any president trade in the stock market,” he told Fortune. The 113-page disclosure, he cautioned, is also only partial; it captures trades in Trump’s personal account, not those of the dozens of LLCs and corporations he controls.

The machine, assembled

Taken together, these three stories—the IRS “settlement,” the weaponization fund for the insurrectionists, and Trump’s stock trades—are not separate scandals. They are the three core functions of a single system. So let’s put the puzzle pieces together.

The IRS “settlement” is the Trump profit machine’s rigging mechanism, tilting the system in its favor and shielding itself from accountability. A sham case produced a sham settlement—one that permanently immunizes Trump and his family from financial scrutiny of the past. This is happening at precisely the moment Trump has disclosed, as he must by law, that he has executed hundreds of millions in trades that might themselves carry substantial tax implications.

The weaponization fund is the reward mechanism. It converts taxpayer dollars to loyalty payments, flowing to Trump’s network of pardoned allies, January 6 defendants and Trump-adjacent figures who form the political base of his power. The fund requires no congressional appropriation, answers to no judge, and operates on eligibility criteria that exist only in the minds of a commission staffed by Trump’s own administration. This will bind more people greedy for payouts to his side.

The stock trades are the extraction mechanism. It uses information available only to a sitting president—regulatory decisions, diplomatic signals, contract awards, his own Truth Social posts—to execute trades that no other market participant could make in the same position. This is not a president who happens to have investments. This is an investor who happens to be president, and who has arranged the two roles to be mutually self-reinforcing.

These are only the stories from this week. They sit alongside the $400 million Qatari jet, the $TRUMP meme coin that has generated hundreds of millions in revenue from foreign investors blatantly purchasing access to the president, and the crypto deregulation that the administration rolled out while Trump’s own digital asset empire was actively expanding. The Center for American Progress “Trump’s Take” tracker estimates his fortune has grown from roughly $2.4 billion at the start of 2024 to $6.3 billion as of April 2026. That represents a near tripling of his wealth, driven overwhelmingly by ventures tied directly to the exercise of his presidential powers.

Can it be unwound?

The natural question is what can be done, and the honest answer is: right now, not much, if the judge allows the settlement to move forward. Still, the weaponization fund will draw lawsuits, and nearly 100 House Democrats have signed onto a brief urging Judge Williams to block it.

The stock trades are generally legal under current law because presidents are not banned from owning or trading individual securities. Trump’s team has a ready answer to the questions of volume and insider trading allegations: independent brokers manage his account.

Accountability requires 2026 voters to pay serious attention. Democrats are already using the stock trade disclosures in midterm messaging. The corruption argument is no longer abstract; it is timestamped and tied to recognizable companies. Every Truth Social post praising a stock Trump holds is another brick that could weigh down his party, which is already drowning ahead of the midterms.

A future administration—with a functioning DOJ and a Congress willing to act—would have substantial material to work with. That includes potential violations of the Domestic Emoluments Clause, the statute prohibiting executive branch interference in IRS audits, and securities laws that, while currently unenforced, do not cease to exist simply because the current president finds them inconvenient. Even the settlement that “FOREVER BARS” IRS enforcement was signed by an acting attorney general who may not be in that job permanently.

For now, the most useful response is not outrage at any individual story but pattern recognition. The machine doesn’t just grift; it rigs and shields, distributes rewards and extracts value. Understanding that it is a whole system, and not just a series of money grabs, is the first step toward eventually shutting the entire machine down.

07:00 AM

Trump Sued Himself And Walked Away With A $100 Million Tax Debt Erased [Techdirt]

There were two rumors last week regarding the supposed “settlement” of Donald Trump’s ridiculously problematic lawsuit against his own IRS, asking for $10 billion. The first was that he was going to get an agreement to drop all audits of his taxes (and the taxes of his family members and businesses). The second was that he was going to create a $1.776 billion fund to pay off January 6th insurrectionists. The first of those came true on Monday. The second came true on Tuesday.

US tax authorities will be barred from pursuing claims against Donald Trump, his eldest sons and the Trump Organization under an agreement to halt the president’s $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

Just like Monday’s news, the framing of this is absolute bullshit. There is no “agreement to halt the lawsuit.” The lawsuit was about to be drop kicked out of court by a judge who pointed out that there is no “cause or controversy” here because Donald Trump was suing himself and had full control over both parties in the lawsuit. You can’t “come to an agreement” with yourself to give yourself a tremendous benefit from the United States government.

That’s not a thing. That’s just theft.

And while it may not be the full $10 billion he sought, it’s still a massive theft from the United States treasury. As you’ll recall, Donald Trump has insisted for years that he couldn’t release his tax returns like every single President since Richard Nixon had done, because they were being audited. But that’s also bullshit. When Nixon released his tax returns, they were being audited. And, indeed, the IRS code requires it to audit both the President and Vice President’s taxes every year.

Reporting from a few years ago found that an audit of Trump’s taxes suggested he owed over $100 million to the US Treasury because of earlier tax fraud.

The issues around Mr. Trump’s case were novel enough that, during his presidency, the I.R.S. undertook a high-level legal review before pursuing it. The Times and ProPublica, in consultation with tax experts, calculated that the revision sought by the I.R.S. would create a new tax bill of more than $100 million, plus interest and potential penalties.

So agreeing to drop the audit entirely is, at minimum, a $100 million gift from the American taxpayer directly to Donald Trump. As a reward for tax fraud.

That seems… very bad. It’s extraordinarily, shockingly corrupt. And it’s probably not even the most corrupt thing he’s done this week.

The actual agreement from the DOJ is hilariously stupid. It’s just three paragraphs long and claims it’s part of the “settlement” of the lawsuit (which, again, cannot be “settled” because there’s only one party). The main part is this:

The United States RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES each of the Plaintiffs from, and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, appeals, or requests for any relief, including injunctive relief, monetary relief, damages, examinations or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney’s fees, expenses, and/or interest, whether presently known or unknown, that as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement-have been or could have been asserted by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals (including, without limitation, family or others filing jointly), or parties including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries, by reason of, with respect to, in connection with, or which arise out of (1) any matters that were raised or could have been raised in the Case or the Pending Agency Claims; (2) Lawfare and/or Weaponization; or (3) any matters currently pending or that could be pending (including tax returns filed before the Effective Date) before Defendants or other agencies or departments.

Basically: clean slate for what appears to be many, many years of tax fraud. So he defrauded the American government, then used his role as the President to just wipe out any ability to hold him accountable for it.

And it’s not like everyone inside the government just went along with it. Reporting says that IRS officials were horrified by the lawsuit and pushed the DOJ to fight back against it.

I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. That memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, and it is unclear if they passed it along to its intended recipients at the Justice Department, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal government deliberations.

And then, on Monday, just as this brazenly corrupt deal was being finalized, the Treasury Department’s top lawyer (hired by Trump) resigned, apparently in protest.

The Treasury Department’s top lawyer resigned Monday as the government announced a controversial settlement with President Trump, according to people familiar with his departure.

Brian Morrissey joined the Trump administration last year as the president’s pick to be Treasury Department’s general counsel, after previously serving at the agency and at the Justice Department during Trump’s first term. A former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, Morrissey didn’t respond to a request for comment late Monday. 

MAGA world has long since baked in the idea that Trump will rob the American taxpayer blind any way he can. Most people just assumed that came with the territory. Probably fewer assumed “the territory” included filing a $10 billion lawsuit against yourself, having the judge almost throw it out because you’re suing yourself, then “settling” with yourself — and somehow walking away with a clean slate on what appears to be over $100 million in fraud-based tax debt. If this were written up as a movie, no one would make it, as the corruption is simply too over the top and out in the open. And yet, it’s real.

05:00 AM

Tennessee Book Ban Update: State Jumps The Shark By Banning ‘Roots’ [Techdirt]

When I was in high school, part of the mandatory social studies curriculum included watching the miniseries Roots in class over the course of several days. I remember it fondly, though I did get myself into a bit of trouble in the process. Apparently shouting things like “Hey, where is Geordi La Forge’s visor?” and “Oh, look, it’s the owner of McDowell’s!” is not appropriate fodder when watching what is indeed an important cultural touchstone for American history.

The miniseries was based on a book by Alex Haley, which follows generations of African slaves descending from slave Kunta Kinte, and highlights parts of what slave life was like in that shameful part of American history. The book won a Pulitzer in 1977, while the miniseries collected 9 Emmys and a Peabody award. And one county in the state of Tennessee just banned the book in public schools.

“Roots,” the renowned 1976 novel by Alex Haley that spurred a broad awakening in African American genealogy and history, has been banned by Knox County Schools.

“Prior to its release, the impact of slavery was easy to diminish or deny by those that benefited the most from that system,” said Annastasia Williams, bookshop director at The Bottom bookstore and cultural organization.

“‘Roots’ created an opening to reengage with how the history of slavery is taught in American schools and to the American public. Haley’s work showcased the violence, brutality, and aftermath of slavery, but it also showcased the resilience and resistance of Black people and families that spans generations. Both the book and subsequent TV miniseries were cultural phenomenons that started conversations, shifted perspectives, and contributed to a collective empathy that the U.S. had not seen or heard before.”

Knox County is apparently up to 119 total book titles banned from school libraries at this point. Nearly all of them are works that in some way engage in conversation about sexual experiences, race relations, or LGBTQ+ content. All of it is ridiculous, of course, as well as an attempt at infantilizing Tennessee children. Children, I’d be willing to wager, who are far more mature about such subjects than the dewy-eyed cretins cosplaying as functioning adults who are banning these books.

And this has to be a jump the shark moment when it comes to banning books. Roots is incredibly important as a major cultural moment in race relations and the historical understanding of slavery in America. Banning it isn’t about protecting children from inappropriate content. It isn’t about saving children from misinformation about American history. I would love to hear from anyone who wants to argue that the content portrayed in Roots is historically inaccurate. Go for it. I always enjoy someone who wants to demonstrate just how wrong they can be about something public.

This is about trying to bury the very real history of our country. Why? Because it makes some people feel bad? It makes it a bit harder to stand for the National Anthem at the University of Tennessee football game? Or maybe because a certain segment of the population would very much like to rewind the clock back to the 1800s?

Haley lived in Tennessee. There is a fucking statue of him in Morningside Park in Knoxville, within Knox County. So Knox County banned a book in schools that was written by an author who is celebrated with a statue in that same county. A statue for what?

It seems that in the future, students in the county won’t be able to tell you the answer to that question.

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04:00 AM

Federal Judge Lays Into DOJ For Lying And Cheating In Support Of Trump’s Anti-Trans Agenda [Techdirt]

Puerile, vindictive, and hateful is no way to run a government. That’s how Trump is running his, however. And that means his DOJ cannot possibly hope to stay on the good side of judges, not when it’s actively engaged in appeasing an autocratic megalomaniac and his enablers.

The lawyers currently staffing the DOJ cannot be excused for their actions. They have been called out time and time again for eroding the trust the DOJ has earned over the years by engaging in vindictive prosecutions, arguing in favor of blatant rights violations, and otherwise pursuing the corrupted version of lawfare that is the hallmark of this administration.

There are only two options at this point, considering the thousands of adverse rulings Trump’s DOJ has racked up. Either the remaining prosecutors are no more honorable or ethical than the man in the White House, or they’re so bereft of morals and ethics that it means nothing to sacrifice what’s left of these traits on the altar of MAGA.

Here’s more from the DOJ that’s nothing more than a blunt force object of oppression, completely beholden to this American version of fascism. To understand what has lead to a federal judge ripping into the DOJ (something that’s now as common as the administration pretending it’s fine to be openly racist again), you have to backtrack a little. Chris Geidner, a.k.a. Law Dork, has the background:

The Trump administration is apparently shifting tactics to advance its stated policy to “reduce or eliminate gender-related care to minors“ by using the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas to try and get invasive information from medical providers about transgender minor patients obtaining gender-affirming medical care.

The apparent shift came after more than a half-dozen federal judges across the nation have blocked the effort to obtain patient information through administrative subpoenas; following a hearing in multistate litigation against the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies; and in the midst of a sprawling dispute over the Justice Department’s effort to enforce one of the administrative subpoenas — issued last year against Rhode Island Hospital — in the same district in Texas.

Why is the DOJ using a Texas court to enforce a subpoena issued to a Rhode Island hospital? The answer is obvious. This is forum shopping by the administration, hoping to find courts more disposed to harming trans people than those found on the East Coast. If nothing else, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court tends to be receptive of the DOJ’s advances now that Trump’s in charge, which means the rare adverse ruling might be immediately reversed or stayed once it’s appealed.

That didn’t work here, however. The case got sent to the proper jurisdiction. And, upon arrival, it has found an extremely unreceptive audience in the form of Judge Mary McElroy, who ended up with the case currently being deliberately and deceptively handled by the DOJ.

Judge McElroy wastes no time attacking the DOJ for its behavior and actions in furtherance of Trump’s hateful anti-trans agenda. These are the opening two paragraphs of her ruling [PDF], copy-pasted here verbatim:

The United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) possesses immense prosecutorial authority and discretion. As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary.

DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (the “Texas court”). It did so in an obvious effort to shield it’s recent investigative tactics—previously rejected by every other court to review them—from this Court’s review, in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions. Its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts. It has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position. And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their
conduct, the senior attorney—who was present at many of the events that took place in this case—sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ’s blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations.

The bold sentences are stinging. But even the last sentence is damning. It says the DOJ attorney with the most experience refused to defend the government’s positions in what appears to be an act of abject cowardice. Instead, the senior attorney sent a junior attorney with less than six months experience to face the justifiable wrath of the court.

Underneath everything here is the ugly truth of the case: the DOJ is demanding hospitals turn over the names, social security numbers, addresses, clinical histories, and family information of any minors seeking gender-affirming care. The government should not have this information because it’s clear it intends to harm both the minors and their care providers for reasons it can’t actually justify under existing law.

That’s why it went forum shopping in Texas. And that’s why it deliberately withheld information from those challenging the subpoena and, indeed, the court itself.

The DOJ won’t play fair because if it does, it can’t hope to win. That much is clear, and is stated clearly by Judge McElroy. Here’s just one of several footnotes detailing the DOJ’s dishonesty.

It is well established that counsel are responsible for working in a cooperative, rather than an adversarial manner, and to confer in good faith when negotiating the parameters of a subpoena. The parties had done so up until DOJ’s about face on April 30, when it repaired to the Texas court and presented RIH with a fait-accompli motion to enforce (after it had submitted it), followed a few hours later by an order granting that motion. The Child Advocate learned of the subpoena and motion that targeted its children’s private information by a DOJ press release the next day.

Here’s more on that, from the body of the order:

This representation that the communication with RIH had ceased as of February 4, 2026, was clearly misleading, if not utterly false. At the hearing on this Motion, DOJ’s attorney attempted to justify the glaring omission by saying that the February 4, 2026 email was the last “such” communication. This is patently untrue because, just the day before filing the declaration containing this representation the attorneys for RIH had sent an email in response to DOJ’s request for a conference to discuss the terms provided in the February 4th email. This reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is appalling.

Leading the charge in lying to the court was none other than Lisa Hsiao, who currently serves as the head of the DOJ’s “Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation” office.

Ms. Hsiao also represented that requests regarding “patient-level clinical practices and drug safety” (Requests 11–15) were necessary because “without this information, DOJ cannot fully determine the scope of the violations, identify patterns of misbranding or fraudulent billing, or assess whether the conduct was undertaken with intent to defraud or mislead, as required for felony liability under 21 U.S.C. § 333(a)(2).” But Ms. Hsiao neglected to inform the Texas court that DOJ had agreed to anonymized data in several other jurisdictions. Her assertion that DOJ needed this information was therefore, at best, deceptive, if not intentionally and knowingly false.

There’s a footnote attached to this paragraph that shows this a pattern and practice of Ms. Hsiao when it comes to trying to destroy the lives of transgender minors.

This is not the first time Ms. Hsiao and her subordinates have, in their crusade to obtain transgender children’s medical records, acted in ways that appear to deviate from the norms of professional conduct expected of attorneys representing the United States.

The order notes that the DOJ’s forum shopping in Texas (despite seeking records from an entity located in Rhode Island on behalf of an investigation instigated in Washington D.C.) worked…. right up until it didn’t. The district court granted the government’s request to enforce the subpoena following an ex parte submission by the DOJ that cut RIH out of the loop. And the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court refused to stay this enforcement order pending appeal with a one-sentence denial.

In the end, the DOJ loses. The Rhode Island court quashes the administrative subpoena (i.e., self-issued) because it seeks information that is protected by state law and the US Constitution itself. It does not have the jurisdiction to block the Texas court’s enforcement order, but that ultimately doesn’t matter because the subpoena is no longer usable.

In signing off on the decision, the judge again points out this iteration of the DOJ is an embarrassment to every iteration that came before it.

[T]he discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling. The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that “[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word—with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes—no longer holds.” United States v. Oregon, No. 6:25-CV-01666-MTK, 2026 WL 318402, at *11 (D. Or. Feb. 5, 2026). It is regrettable that this is now the case.

Without a doubt, Trump’s DOJ will continue to shit all over the presumption of regulatory, overseen by equally evil people who will oversee those too spineless or devoid of morality to refuse to do Donald’s dirty work. But even if the DOJ manages to avoid being laughed out of court every time it engages in a case, it will never be able to erase the blighted legacy it’s leaving behind.

02:00 AM

12:00 AM

Paramount Already ‘Informally’ Considering Scaling Back Bari Weiss’ Role At CBS [Techdirt]

When right wing billionaire Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby kid David) hired trolling blogger Bari Weiss to run CBS News, Weiss arrived with the promise of “balanced, fact-based news,” “independent, principled journalism,” and a unique “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” that would completely modernize the network and reach the “everyday Americans” she claimed were being “ignored by mainstream media.”

In reality, she was hired by the billionaire to take what she did at her weird little troll blog (troll people for clicks, coddle the extraction class, punch left) and weave it into CBS News in a way that would get ratings and go viral on social media. She wasn’t hired to do journalism, she was hired to do attention-grabbing class and race agitprop.

The problem (for Weiss) is her role in that regard has been an abject failure, resulting in all sorts of internal chaos and the lowest ratings in a quarter century. She’s clumsily tried to censor stories critical of Trump, set up softball interviews for Benjamin Netanyahu, fired a bunch of people she worried were too “woke,” shuttered CBS radio (with a disregard for archives), and has caused generalized mayhem and a mass staff exodus, all while sporting a security detail costing the company $10,000 to $15,000 per day.

So, unsurprisingly, leaks are starting to emerge that Paramount is getting tired of the failures, and is starting to have “informal” conversations about scaling back Weiss’ role at CBS (and any planned oversight she might have if the Ellisons can pull off their acquisition of Warner Brothers and CNN). From the paywalled Puck report and this non-paywalled alternative:

“Bari would likely cede day-to-day control over Evening News, CBS Mornings, and 60 Minutes to this more experienced, as-yet-unnamed executive, shifting her focus to the news division’s digital growth while maintaining broad editorial influence across all the company’s platforms.”

Weiss, who was a trolling New York Times opinion columnist before she was the trolling editor in chief at Free Press, had no meaningful journalism or major news org management experience. That’s shown up repeatedly at CBS with all sorts of gaffes, like last-second impromptu edits made to the nightly newscast teleprompter in a way that easily confused her chosen nightly news host Tony Dokoupil. Or in the way Dokoupil couldn’t get the basic paperwork to properly cover the president’s trip to China.

All of these things would be fine if Weiss was getting ad attention and making money, but she isn’t. In part because she seems to have no understanding of modern media, and no idea of how to convert her weird troll blog aesthetic to a massive TV news organization. Despite all of her promises of media revolution, Weiss effectively has the brain of a 90-year old conservative man.

So it seems unlikely that Weiss will have much success managing CBS’ “digital growth” either. Ultimately that means the Ellisons will, after they’ve had enough time to try and justify the $150 million they paid for Bari’s troll blog, find someone worse who can try to get the network the attention it craves. Weiss, as is the case with all brunchlords, will somehow find a way to fail upward. It’s physics.

The problem for everyone involved is that the Paramount and Warner Brothers mergers have saddled the new giant company with an ocean of debt. Debt that historically only gets paid off one way: by hiking prices, firing workers, and cutting corners in a way that degrades product quality. That’s rocky terrain for a broadcast TV network already struggling with dying broadcast viewership and sagging relevance.

Good night and good luck.

Kanji of the Day: 末 [Kanji of the Day]

末

✍5

小4

end, close, tip, powder, posterity

マツ　バツ

すえ　うら　うれ

末に   (すえに)   —   finally
週末   (しゅうまつ)   —   weekend
年末   (ねんまつ)   —   end-of-year
端末   (たんまつ)   —   terminal
結末   (けつまつ)   —   end
年度末   (ねんどまつ)   —   end of the fiscal year
月末   (げつまつ)   —   end of the month
幕末   (ばくまつ)   —   Bakumatsu period
末期   (まっき)   —   last years
始末   (しまつ)   —   management

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 鎮 [Kanji of the Day]

鎮

✍18

中学

tranquilize, ancient peace-preservation centers

チン

しず.める　しず.まる　おさえ

鎮魂   (たましずめ)   —   ceremony for the repose of a departed soul
重鎮   (じゅうちん)   —   leader
鎮痛剤   (ちんつうざい)   —   analgesic
鎮火   (ちんか)   —   extinguishing
鎮圧   (ちんあつ)   —   suppression (of a riot, revolt, etc.)
鎮座   (ちんざ)   —   enshrinement
鎮静   (ちんせい)   —   calm
地鎮祭   (じちんさい)   —   ceremony for purifying a building site (before building commences)
鎮める   (しずめる)   —   to quiet (a child, crowd, etc.)
鎮魂歌   (ちんこんか)   —   requiem

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Explore the Night Sky with OsmAnd Astronomy [OsmAnd Blog]

Far from city lights, the sky looks different. In the Namib Desert, darkness comes quickly and the stars appear all at once, filling the entire horizon. At first, it feels simple. A guide points to a few constellations, maybe a bright planet. You follow along, recognising some shapes. But after a moment, you lose track. There are more stars than you expected, and it is hard to tell them apart.

This is where OsmAnd Astronomy changes the experience. Instead of guessing, you can explore the sky the same way you explore a map — step by step, with clear orientation, useful context, and the ability to plan what to look for next.

Namib Desert

Orient Yourself in the Sky​

Start by opening the Star map in OsmAnd (Astronomy is available as a paid plugin in OsmAnd for Android and is currently not supported on iOS). The screen switches from the Earth map to the sky, showing stars, constellations, planets, and the paths of the Sun and Moon for your current location. The view is aligned with the compass, so you can drag the sky to explore it or enable compass mode and move your phone to follow your direction.

At the bottom of the screen, you can change the time to see how the sky looks later in the night or return to the present moment. If there are too many stars, adjust the magnitude filter to focus on the brightest ones.

To simplify the view further, open Configure view. Here you can choose what to display — for example, keep Solar system and Constellations visible while hiding Stars or Deep sky objects. You can also switch between 2D and 3D views or turn on the red filter to preserve your night vision while observing.

At this point, the sky stops feeling random. You are no longer just looking at it — you are navigating it.

Star Map Red Filter

Find What’s Visible Tonight​

Once you understand where you are looking, the next step is deciding what to look for. Tap Search on the Star map. Instead of scanning the entire sky, you get a structured list of celestial objects — planets, stars, constellations, and more.

At the top, the Watch now section highlights objects that are visible at your current location and time. It works as a simple guide, showing what is already above the horizon or will be visible tonight. Select any object from the list, and the map centers on it. From there, you can see where it is in the sky and start observing without guessing.

Get Details About Objects​

Pick any point in the sky that catches your eye and tap it. The map highlights it, and a panel opens with everything you need to know. Instead of a nameless light, you now see a clear label — a star, a planet, or part of a constellation — along with a few key details. How bright it is, where it sits in the sky, and when it rises or sets. Enough to understand what you are looking at without digging into complex data.

Around the object, a subtle hour ring shows how it moves across the sky throughout the day. It adds a sense of motion, turning a static point into something you can follow.

From here, you can keep it simple or go further — center the object, save it, or use Direction to help you find it in the sky. So, what felt like a random point a moment ago now becomes something you can recognise, track, and return to.

Context Menu

Choose the Right Moment​

Some moments are easier to remember under an open sky. In a place like the Namib Desert, where the horizon is wide and the night is clear, timing matters just as much as location. Not every object is visible all night. Some rise later, others stay low near the horizon, and a few reach their best position only for a short time. Instead of waiting and hoping, you can check this in advance.

Open the Visibility tab for any object. The graph shows how it moves across the sky over the course of a day, including when it rises, reaches its highest point, and sets. The higher it is above the horizon, the easier it is to see.

If you are planning ahead, switch to the Schedule tab. It shows how visibility changes over the next days, so you can choose the right evening without guessing. With this, the sky becomes part of the plan. You are not just stepping outside and looking up — you know when to be there.

Visibility Schedule

Follow the Sky in Real Time​

Switch to camera mode and lift your phone toward the sky. You see the real sky on your screen with a transparent overlay aligned to your position and direction.

Move your phone slowly across the horizon. As objects enter your field of view, they are highlighted, making them easier to recognise. You are no longer matching shapes or guessing positions — the sky and the map align directly in front of you.

If something feels too faint or difficult to spot, this is where it becomes clearer. Adjust your position slightly, and the object appears exactly where it should be. Tap any highlighted object to see its details.

Simplify the Sky and Explore Anywhere​

As you continue exploring, you may notice that sometimes there is simply too much to see. In dense star fields, it helps to narrow things down. Use filters in Search to focus only on what matters right now. You can show only objects visible tonight, sort them by brightness, or limit the list to those visible to the naked eye. This turns a long list into a small set of clear options.

If you want to go further, open Catalogs to explore entire groups of objects — from well-known stars to deep sky objects. It is a different way of navigating the sky, more structured and less dependent on chance.

And all of this works even without a connection. The Astronomy plugin uses offline catalogs, so whether you are in the city or far out in the desert, the sky remains fully accessible.

Catalogs Catalogs

Stargazing Challenge​

Ready to test your new stargazing skills? For a deeper dive into all the features, feel free to explore our full Astronomy Plugin documentation. Once you are ready, take this quick interactive quiz to see how well you can navigate the night sky!

Out there, under a sky like in the Namib Desert, you no longer lose track after the first few constellations. You stay with it a little longer — and start to see more.

We appreciate your interest in us and thank you for taking the time to read this article. Join us on social media to keep up to date with the latest news and share your experiences. Your opinion is important to us.

Follow OsmAnd on Facebook, TikTok, X (Twitter), Reddit, and Instagram!

Join us at our groups of Telegram (OsmAnd News channel), (EN), (IT), (FR), (DE), (UA), (ES), (BR-PT), (PL), (AR), (TR).

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