Policy

Platforms could soon have to display tobacco-like warning labels, and include links to mental health resources. It’s a concept former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy pushed for on the federal level and that many states backed. It heads to Gov. Tim Walz (D), but VP of litigation Kathleen Farley at tech industry group Chamber of Progress warns signing it would enact “a clear First Amendment violation, and Minnesota would waste millions defending it in court.”

I couldn’t possibly single out the best of many perfect lines in Kerry Howley’s detailed and morbidly funny exposé of chaos at the Pentagon, where Signalgate was just the tip of the iceberg. But this part is pretty good:

Ten more states joined the suit filed today against President Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Congress recently voted to revoke EPA waivers that allow California to set tougher air pollution standards for vehicles than the nation as a whole, in what the plaintiffs allege was an unlawful use of the Congressional Review Act.

Astute AI copyright observer Michael Weinberg raises some good questions about the Common Pile, an AI training dataset billed as being composed of only “openly licensed text”:

As of 3 PM PT today, SAG-AFTRA will officially suspend the strike against the signatory companies of the interactive media agreement. With this suspension, the nearly year-long voice performer strike against video game companies including Take-Two Interactive, Activision Publishing and more will be tentatively over.

This saga has spanned several administrations since President Obama first tried to enact limits on greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Donald Trump tried to replace those rules with his own, weaker standards, only to be stymied by Joe Biden changing course.

Climate.gov will soon stop publishing new content after most of the people maintaining the website saw their contacts terminated, the Guardian reports. We don’t know yet if the website will continue to be accessible to the public.

That’s what UK regulator Ofcom is investigating under Online Safety Act rules, alongside complaints about “the potential for illegal content and activity” on the platform. Anyone familiar with the controversial web forum could have this probe wrapped up by lunch, but let’s see how long it takes them.

Democrat Alvaro Bedoya will formally step down, while continuing the legal battle against President Donald Trump’s attempted firings of him and fellow Democratic Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. Trump’s dismissals broke with Supreme Court precedent saying presidents can’t fire independent agency members without cause. Bedoya says while serving as a commissioner has been his “dream job,” he has to take care of his family by seeking a source of income, without breaking federal ethics rules.

At least five of Alphabet’s autonomous cars have been set on fire, according to the New York Times, as protesters rage against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. “We will not be serving any rides in the protest area until it is deemed safe,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

The National Guard arrived in Los Angeles earlier today in a move that hasn’t been seen since 1965, and protests are stretching into the evening. There’s a Bluesky starter pack of LA-based independent journalists providing text and photo updates, plus news outlets and streamer Hasan Piker live on the ground. And demonstrations in several cities are planned for tomorrow, pushing for the release of union leader David Huerta, arrested during the recent aggressive ICE raids.

An update on how the extremely public political breakup is going today, as protestors face off with federal immigration agents in Los Angeles.

Almost every single thing in Friday’s executive order is about uplifting the drone industry and cutting through red tape (at the potential expense of safety), not about cracking down on the China-based leading manufacturer of drones. But as I noted last week, Trump doesn’t need to lift a finger. The ban on future DJI products happens automatically unless he steps in.

”It’s a huge giveaway to Big Tech,” the Missouri Republican and longtime foe of the tech giants, tells The New York Times. His concerns: tech companies would be able to issue their own stablecoins that would compete with the U.S. dollar, and it would incentivize these companies to collect more of their customers’ financial data. “It allows these tech companies to issue stablecoins without any kind of controls. I don’t see why we would do that.”

Yesterday I wrote about Elon Musk’s fall from power. Today he is beefing with the president on X, instead of picking up his phone to make a call. Hm!

Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO, writes in The New York Times that though he understands the motivations behind the proposal, “a 10-year moratorium is far too blunt an instrument. A.I. is advancing too head-spinningly fast.”