Surveillance......

Police Are Spending Opioid Settlement Funds on Flock Cameras

Historic opioid settlements were supposed to be a lifeline for underserved communities. But much of that money is flowing to law enforcement.

Schuyler Mitchell

More than a dozen local law enforcement agencies across the country have used opioid settlement money to procure Flock cameras and other AI-powered automated license plate readers (ALPRs), an investigation by Mother Jones has found.

Settlement funds began flowing to states and localities in 2022, after major pharmaceutical companies agreed to resolve thousands of lawsuits over the industry’s role in the opioid crisis. Altogether, state and local governments secured more than $50 billion in funds, to be paid out over 18 years, from the various manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies accused of fueling the deadly epidemic.

Public health advocates hoped the settlements would provide lifesaving resources for historically underserved communities ravaged by opioid addiction. But as the money has been disbursed, local officials have come under fire for putting crucial dollars toward policing instead of prioritizing addiction prevention, recovery, treatment, and harm reduction services: KFF Health News found that police spent settlement money on Tasers, firearm silencers, drones, and more; in West Virginia, some rural counties used the funds to pay off their jail bills.

“Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

But little attention has been paid to how police departments have used those opioid funds to build out AI-powered surveillance networks like Flock, whose ALPRs have become increasingly popular with police even as they’ve drawn intense bipartisan pushback in the communities where they’ve been deployed. A review of meeting minutes, local reporting, state opioid expenditure disclosures, and invoices obtained via public records requests reveals that at least twelve sheriffs’ offices and police departments have since 2024 spent their opioid funds on Flock cameras. Another seven law enforcement agencies used the money to purchase similar ALPR technology from competitors Motorola, Axon, and Verkada.

In sum, Mother Jones found that 19 agencies in ten different states spent more than $920,000 in opioid funds on Flock and other ALPRs, a likely undercount given the inconsistency with which opioid settlement expenditures are tracked and disclosed across states and local jurisdictions.

In city council and county commission meetings, police sought to convince local officials that the cameras were a good use of the opioid money because they would help catch drug traffickers and reduce drug-related crimes. But Robyn Oster, director of policy at the nonprofit Partnership to End Addiction, said that this type of spending doesn’t honor the spirit of the settlements.

“It’s just really not the way to make the most impact in addressing addiction,” said Oster. “While $50 billion may seem like a lot of funds, once it’s divided up over 18 years and thousands of localities, a lot of places really aren’t getting that much, particularly given the scope of the crisis…Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

At a June 2025 meeting in Sunnyside, Washington—an agricultural hub where roughly one in five people live in poverty—council members were thrilled by the prospect of spending their opioid settlement money on a Flock camera. Around $200,000 had been sitting, untouched, in the city’s coffers since 2022, even as the area faced a dire need for expanded treatment services: Yakima County lacks a medical detox center and has one of the highest overdose death rates in Washington state.

“We’ve had several people … in that strip mall next to the hotel … that have complained about drug use and things like that behind their business, and they’ve asked us to place a trailer there,” the Sunnyside police chief told city councilmembers. He requested the approval of $24,000 in opioid settlement funds to go to a one-year lease for a mobile Flock security trailer, which would integrate with the city’s existing Flock surveillance system.

“I was trying to find creative ways to pay for one because $24,000 wasn’t in our budget this year,” he added, “but we’ve got this opioid settlement money, and if we’re tying it to the drug use problem we’re having at these hotels, I think we can justify the expenditure there.”

The city council unanimously voted to approve the police chief’s request. “Can we afford two of them?” one councilmember asked with enthusiasm.

Thousands of miles away, in Ohio County, West Virginia, county commissioners also voted unanimously in favor of spending opioid money on Flock cameras. In September 2025, the commission approved the sheriff’s office’s request for six Flock ALPRs, totaling $57,900 for the first three years. According to meeting minutes, Chief Deputy Kent Lewis “said a representative from the company is able to come and give a presentation,” and “added that Walmart and Lowe’s use FLOCK, so we may be able to tie into their system as well.” When one commissioner asked whether the cameras were an appropriate use of the funds, the deputy sheriff responded that they would “[help] track drugs coming into our area.”

Three months later, Sheriff H. Nelson Croft Jr. gave an update on Flock to the commissioners. According to meeting minutes, the system logged 28,000 license plate readings on Black Friday alone. Ohio County has a population of around 40,000.

The surveillance industry has taken notice, explicitly encouraging cops to spend opioid money on the technology. A December blog post from the multinational security firm Leonardo called opioid settlement funds “a major new opportunity” for law enforcement to invest in license plate readers.

“Eligible spending categories vary by state,” the blog post noted, but approved uses often include “LPR technology due to its role in detecting vehicles tied to drug trafficking, overdose events, and fugitive recovery.” In June, 404 Media reported that Leonardo planned to add sensors to its ALPRs that “would also sweep up unique identifiers of mobile phones, wearables, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices” in passing cars, enabling the cameras to track not just cars but “the location of particular people.”

“The funds that are supposed to go to the public to help build back and reverse the nightmare that we lived through are being appropriated to use artificial intelligence to surveil us.”

Mother Jones identified four additional locations where local officials explored using opioid money to pay for Flock cameras but ultimately funded them through other parts of city or county budgets. In Green, Ohio, for instance, the city council approved the purchase of 14 Flock cameras in 2024, and the mayor stated at the time that the city could use $20,000 of opioid money to offset the cost. But Shelley Goodrich, Green’s director of finance, told me the city ultimately paid for the first two years of the contract using a different funding source. “We were planning to use Drug Task Force funds beginning in 2026; however, we have not made any payments in 2026,” she wrote. This month, the Green City Council voted against renewing its contract with Flock, citing concerns about privacy and oversight.

In Etowah County, Alabama, commissioners authorized two disbursements from the opioid settlement fund to pay for ten Flock cameras in August 2024 and March 2025, totaling $42,267. But minutes from October 2025 show that the sheriff department’s budget was increased by $42,267, “to reimburse the Opioid Settlement fund for the FY 2024 and FY 2025 annual contract for the Flock safety cameras.” The Etowah County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to questions about why it reimbursed the funds or whether it plans to use opioid money for future renewals of the Flock contract.

Opioid spending on police surveillance technology isn’t limited to ALPRs. Mother Jones also identified six locations that have used opioid settlement money to fund contracts with Peregrine Technologies, an AI-powered software platform that integrates law enforcement surveillance data from a variety of sources.

In October, the city of Campbell, California, approved a three-year, $71,500 annual contract with Peregrine using opioid settlement funds. A publicly accessible copy of the contract states that “the initial Customer Data sources and systems” integrated into Peregrine would include both Flock and Axon ALPRs, as well as Axon body cameras, police records, and the Axon Fusus intelligence platform. Two months later, the city council in Chicopee, Massachusetts, approved a five-year, $837,500 contract with Peregrine, to be paid using opioid funds.

Chicopee was among the western Massachusetts cities hit hardest by the opioid crisis, and in 2024, it still had the second-highest overdose rate in Hampden County. In meeting minutes, the Chicopee mayor noted there was “quite a bit of money in the opioid agreement account” and said that the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office supported increasing the Peregrine contract from three years to five years.

Peregrine itself has been proud to announce “new partnerships” with police departments in Cranston and South Kingstown, Rhode Island. “Both agencies leveraged opioid settlement funds to invest in their communities by strengthening interagency collaboration, operational awareness, and investigative workflows through Peregrine,” stated a July LinkedIn post from the company.

Revelations that local governments spent residents’ opioid money on Flock cameras has stoked furor in both Pensacola, Florida, and Monongalia County, West Virginia. In Pensacola, the mayor approved a two-year, $108,000 contract for 18 Flock cameras using opioid funds. After seven months of public backlash, the Pensacola City Council announced in June that it would no longer allow opioid money to be spent on Flock cameras when the contract next came up for renewal.

In Morgantown, West Virginia, constituents have shown up at the Monongalia County Courthouse every Wednesday morning to speak out against local officials’ support for Flock. In November, the Monongalia County Commission approved the sheriff’s request to use up to $180,000 of settlement funds to install 20 Flock cameras across the county. To some people in the area, this use of the opioid money felt like salt in an all-too-fresh wound.

“As somebody who has had family members directly affected by the opioid crisis, I find the use of these funds absolutely disgusting,” said Harrison York, a 25-year-old electrical engineering student at West Virginia University in Morgantown. “The thing that got my family members clean were methadone services, and that’s what this opioid settlement money should be used for.” He pointed to research showing that criminalization does little to help people struggling with drug addiction, and contended that further policing “would punish the poor and the working class, who are victims” of the opioid epidemic.

Adam Menear, a 45-year-old father born and raised in Morgantown, started a petition in March calling on the Monongalia County Commission to halt the installation of Flock cameras that has received more than 1,500 signatures to date.

“There is not a single human being inside the state of West Virginia who was born and raised here who has not been adversely affected by the opioid crisis,” Menear told me. “The new crisis is the fact that the funds that are supposed to go to the public to help build back and reverse the nightmare that we lived through are being appropriated to use artificial intelligence to surveil us.”

Puerto Rico’s worsening water emergency

Empty jugs and dry reservoirs: Inside Puerto Rico’s worsening water emergency

By Ray Sanchez, Isabel Rosales

Milagros Pica Quiñones’ small concrete home is an untamed menagerie of bottles, paint buckets, bleach and laundry detergent jugs.

The 96-year-old grandmother in the impoverished oceanfront town of Loiza, in Puerto Rico’s northeast, sees “the thinnest thread of water” trickling from her faucet most days before service is shut off from 10 p.m. until dawn.

“I drag the buckets away with whatever strength I have and I cover them,” Pica Quiñones said. “Three buckets in the bathroom. One in my kitchen. Outside, I have three, two-gallon buckets. In front of the house: 15 smaller, gallon-sized containers. Next to a wall – 10 large bottles.”

The scramble to find water – collecting it in small vessels and cisterns – is a daily survival routine for hundreds of thousands of other US citizens on the island due to widespread service interruptions. The most vulnerable – the elderly, the sick, low-income people – are forced to bear the heaviest burden.

Billed as a beautiful and vibrant tourist destination, Puerto Rico is home to 3.2 million Americans who face an exhausting daily struggle for necessities like clean, running water. Pica Quiñones, whose showers consist of dipping a red Solo cup into a bucket, thinks about water all the time.

The US territory’s fragile water situation reached a new critical point over the summer – exacerbated by drought and what experts say is mismanagement and aging infrastructure, including a lack of investment and maintenance. On Friday, people living in the capital of San Juan and nearby communities completed their third full week on mandatory water rationing schedules.

Forced to endure up to two days without running water, residents must rely on bucket baths and dry shampoo, use bottled water for cooking and making coffee, paper plates and plastic utensils to eat, and occasionally forgo laundry, housecleaning and toilet flushing. All while their water bills keep coming.

“When you have a drought colliding with an aging infrastructure, that’s more than a drought. That’s a humanitarian crisis, and it’s a crisis which is deep,” said Northeastern University chemistry professor Eugene Smotkin, who lives in Old San Juan with his wife. “It’s not a drought story.”

Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón declared a state of emergency July 31 due to the drought. It’s unknown how long the rationing measures will remain in place, she said.

“This is a situation that we never expected to happen,” the Republican governor told CNN earlier this month, referring to the drought.

The US Department of Agriculture approved a drought disaster declaration on the island, allowing farmers and agricultural producers in 26 municipalities to access emergency loans, the governor’s office announced Wednesday.

The governor told MS NOW this week she was “not ruling out” asking Washington for a national emergency declaration, which would unleash massive federal funding for Puerto Rico. Her government, González-Colón said, need to “exhaust all the local assets, all the resources before asking for a national declaration of emergency.”

“I totally understand the frustration,” she said of island residents who blame the government for the longtime water woes, acknowledging a lack of maintenance to the island’s infrastructure.

Below-normal rainfall could continue until next year

The capital of San Juan recorded its driest month on record in more than 120 years in July, said Emanuel Rodriguez, a hydrologist at National Weather Service in San Juan.

Most of the island archipelago is experiencing moderate to extreme drought conditions, affecting more than 3 million people, according to the US Drought Monitor.

Lakes and streams – some at or near record lows – are losing water amid a rainfall deficit that could last months, Rodriguez said.

“We could stay below normal (rainfall levels) at least until January,” he added.

The water emergency is also a consequence of the deteriorating infrastructure, particularly a series of recent ruptures in the so-called Superaqueduct, a crucial 72-inch pipeline that carries potable water 50 miles along the northern coast to the densely populated San Juan metro area.

Since the pipeline’s rupture in June, the Puerto Rico National Guard and government agencies from throughout the island have been distributing potable water from cistern trucks, according to the governor’s office.

The governor’s office and the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Carlos Pesquera, a civil engineer and former secretary of transportation and head of public works who was appointed by the governor as an advisor on the water crisis, said the drought “is the immediate trigger” of the current emergency, “but it does not fully explain the vulnerability” of the water system.

“Puerto Rico has aging infrastructure, significant water losses and areas where greater redundancy and resilience are needed,” Pesquera, a member of the pro-statehood governing party, told CNN via email.

Before the recent ruptures, nearly 60% of water treated by the aqueduct and sewer authority was lost mostly due to “inaccurate meters, unauthorized water consumption, or water main leaks,” according to a 2019 report on the island’s infrastructure by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Stints of waterless days for years

Hilda Rodríguez, the 58-year-old executive director of a San Juan nonprofit, has been keeping a log of waterless days at her home in the Monteflores neighborhood in the Santurce section of the capital. She started it five years ago, using a water droplet emoji 💧 to track on her cell phone the days without water.

This year, the log shows more than 200 days without water.

In 2025, there were 175 days. The previous year: 142 days. In 2023, 100 days. And 136 days in 2022. A year earlier, 22 days.

“I needed to write all this down because no one would believe me,” she said with a laugh. “In Puerto Rico, we make a joke of everything. It’s the best way to survive all the things that happen to us – one way to escape as we keep going.”

This crisis is no joke.

“It’s one stumble after another,” said Rodríguez, who has also been tracking every phone complaint she’s made to the water utility over the years. “Just when you think you’re finally getting back up, something else happens.”

In another Santurce neighborhood, a group known as “Exigimos Agua” (We Demand Water) has also kept an online log of days without water or electrical power since 2024, when 57 waterless days and 58 days without power were tracked by the Machuchal residents. So far this year, the group says there have been more than 140 days with no water and at least 24 days without electricity.

Puerto Ricans, including the more than 2 million living in the San Juan metro area, have long endured major droughts made worse by the aging water system.

Severe droughts caused water restrictions, affecting more than a million people, from 2014-2016, and more recently in 2020.

“The water problem in the San Juan area has been with us for years,” Rodriguez said. “Every year it gets worse. It’s draining, a constant state of worry. It is no way to live.”

During a 1994 drought, rationing left the San Juan metro area with water available only every second or third day, according to a 2020 report commissioned by the American Society of Civil Engineers. On days when water was available, the pressure in some communities would arrive after midnight and fade by dawn, the report said.

In 1995, with water service only two or three days a week, Rodriguez purchased and paid to install a 600-gallon cistern for about $1,000. If she were to do it now, she said it would cost her more than twice as much.

At the time, the island’s water utility responded to the 1994 drought by vowing to end shortages with the $1 billion construction of the Superaqueduct and its interconnections, as well as dredging the main source of water for the San Juan area, the Carraízo reservoir.

With a capacity of 75 million gallons of water per day, the Superaqueduct went into service in 2000.

After more than a quarter century of service, the Superaqueduct’s recent breaks exposed a key weakness in Puerto Rico’s water system: The heavy reliance on a single, long-distance transmission line without an equivalent backup during a major interruption requires sustained attention and investment, according to Pesquera.

He was appointed as a special advisor for water infrastructure after last year’s rupture and prepared a report for the government on improvements to alleviate the island’s water problems.

“The Superaqueduct was originally designed as a complimentary water source. Its purpose was to reinforce existing systems and make the metropolitan (San Juan) network stronger, not to replace traditional water sources,” he wrote in his report.

González-Colón has said at least $7 billion in federal funds had been committed to water infrastructure improvement projects. The lack of maintenance and investment in the water system dates back decades, she said earlier this week, and the destruction of hurricanes Irma and Maria made matters worse.

For Smotkin, the water crisis reflects the island’s history of structural neglect and systemic abandonment by both local and federal authorities. The water woes must be seen in the context of Puerto Rico’s dependency on the United States.

“The enduring image is of people standing with bottles and jugs, spending their lives trying to obtain something as elementary as water because the infrastructure that should have delivered it had failed them,” said Smotkin, who has lived on the island nearly 25 years and works to bring renewable energy sources to Puerto Rico.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Lourdes Tañon, a resident of Trujillo Alto, a municipality southeast of San Juan, was on her way to check the cistern at the home of her mother. Suddenly, it started to rain.

The driver of another car stopped, putting his hands out the window as if to capture the falling droplets, she recalled.

“Getting wet under the first rain of May is a custom here because it supposedly brings good luck,” she said. “People go outside and get wet. That’s what it feels like now when it rains. We’re all praying for more rain.”

‘This is now our daily life’

In 2017, Hurricane Maria struck nine days before the grand opening of Hector Rosa’s restaurant, Rosa Cocina Libre, in San Juan’s Cupey district. The opening was delayed for five months.

Now he finds himself confronting another crisis, one he believes could have been prevented. His mornings begin by turning on the faucets to see if water is running.

If there is no water, Rosa scrambles to figure out where to get it and how quickly. The restaurant has a cistern and two additional mobile tanks, with a combined capacity of about 2,000 gallons. He must fill up the three tanks at least once a day to keep the restaurant running. He often questions how much longer he can keep operating in Puerto Rico, Rosa said.

“I love my island and I love to be here in Puerto Rico,” he said. “I want to be part of the island but it’s like having your hands tied every single year — every single month it’s something.”

The water crisis has become impossible to ignore anywhere Eduardo Caldazo goes.

At his apartment in Isla Verde, one of the island’s busiest tourist areas, and at his restaurant-bar, Calle Sin Salida in San Juan, there is no warning about when the water will vanish or return.

He relies on a 400-gallon water tank to keep his restaurant operating four days a week but keeping it filled is a full-time job.

“This is now our daily life,” he said. “I know it won’t be fixed.”

Rafael Cabrera, a 64-year-old university professor, lives in a 30-apartment condominium complex in Monteflores, just south of Machuchal. In 2022, residents raised nearly $100,000 to purchase a pump and cistern to remedy intermittent water service problems. The cistern, which holds nearly 4,000 gallons, went unused until last year, when residents were issued the required water utility permits to activate it, Cabrera said.

“The hardest part is lacking hope about a problem that seems to have no solution,” he said.

Some residents said hope is elusive given the island’s litany of miseries – from natural disasters to a bankrupt government to a financial control board that manages funding for infrastructure.

“The frustration is understandable, but it is also important to recognize how complex it is to restore a water distribution system after an extended interruption,” Pesquera told CNN when asked about residents’ criticism. “Residents and businesses need the most realistic information possible about when service will actually reach their area.”

In Loiza, Pica Quiñones’ great-granddaughter, Modesta Irizarry, drives around helping elderly neighbors. She collects water from cistern trucks, distributes donated packs of bottled water and food, and leads water truck drivers to the homes of the bedridden. Almost every day, she makes time to check on her great-grandmother.

“I find many older adults alone in subhuman conditions with no one to care for them,” she lamented, her voice fading.

Irizarry has helped her community in the aftermath of hurricanes, during the Covid-19 pandemic, and other emergencies. The despair over the water crisis, she said, is similar to life after Hurricane Maria.

“I wish I had more hands. There are people who, no matter how much they need it, won’t ask for help. They won’t let you in because of shame. The suffering is so great.”

Her great-grandmother, meanwhile, spends part of her days filling up her menagerie of bottles and containers.

“Whenever we have water, I fill every bottle and bucket I can find. I’ve never had to live like this – not even after the worst storms,” Pica Quiñones said.

So.... What the fuck did the orange shit accomplish????

Six months on, Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ risks igniting crises far beyond the Middle East

Analysis by Ivana Kottasová, Brad Lendon

When US President Donald Trump launched his war against Iran, he called it an “excursion” that would take just a few weeks. Six months later, the conflict has become a nightmare for almost everyone even remotely involved in it.

It’s been a disaster for the Iranian people, for the millions living elsewhere across the Middle East, and for consumers around the world who are struggling with higher costs.

Yet Trump’s war goals remain unfulfilled, even though the goalposts keep shifting: from initially demanding a complete Iranian surrender, regime change and the abandoning of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions, to more recently simply demanding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and putting the brakes on Tehran’s nuclear program.

But the war’s unintended consequences have spread far beyond the Middle East, affecting global security, diminishing America’s global standing, and potentially providing its adversaries with an opportunity to expand their influence.

As the Trump administration focuses all its energy on trying to get out of the self-inflicted crisis in Iran, it has taken the eye off the ball of other potential global flashpoints the US has long been involved in, including Ukraine, Taiwan and the South China Sea, and the Koreas.

From Trump’s decision to scale back the annual joint military exercises with South Korea and pulling out the only US aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific, to the critical shortages of ballistic missile interceptors in Ukraine, many of the war’s most consequential geopolitical and security effects may ultimately be felt far beyond the Middle East, and have yet to materialize.

Emily Harding, a vice president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US-based think tank, said that while none of the potential flashpoints have developed into a full-scale crisis yet, there is good reason to be worried.

“This is the kind of thing where the global adversaries are going to be taking note of the situation and learning more about how the US reacts in certain moments and then folding that into their planning. But we haven’t seen anybody take advantage of it yet,” she said.

“It’s more that some foundations are being weakened, not that we’re actually seeing the building start to shake.”

Ukraine and Russia

The US-Israeli attacks have sparked a furious retaliation from Tehran. Iranian drones, ballistic missiles and other projectiles have been raining down on US bases and allies across the Middle East.

As the US and its allies burned through their weapons stockpiles, some ammunition originally slated for Ukraine had been redirected.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN this month that his country had only a tenth of the interceptor missiles it urgently needed to stop surging Russian ballistic missile attacks.

The shortages are having devastating consequences for the Ukrainians: This summer has been the deadliest period for civilians since May 2022.

The global oil crisis caused by Iran’s decision to effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz has also undermined the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign against Moscow. Faced with the rising cost of gasoline at US pumps, Trump took the controversial decision to lift some sanctions on Russian oil exports to cool the market. In doing so, the US effectively helped Russia earn more cash to fund the war effort in Ukraine.

The global disruption to oil, gas and fertilizer trade caused by the closure of the strait has also helped Russia make inroads on finding new customers.

Alexander Gabuev, the director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said this was demonstrated when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the leaders of Southeast Asian countries in the Russian city of Kazan in June.

“The turnout in Kazan was impressive: Nine of 11 heads of state from ASEAN were present, along with the Indonesian foreign minister and a special representative from Myanmar. Above all, these men decided to make the long journey to Russia because of US and Israeli attacks on Iran causing higher prices for energy and fertilizer,” he said.

In some ways, the Iran war has benefited Ukraine. It has made the rest of the world realize that the more than four years of war have turned Kyiv into a drone superpower and led to an array of security cooperation agreements and ammunition promises with a number of nations.

The Koreas

The Iran war is now casting a shadow over another potential flashpoint: the Korean Peninsula, which has technically been at war for more than seven decades in the absence of a peace deal following the 1950-1953 conflict South and North Korea.

The US has been deeply involved in the region, with some 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. But the decades-long relationship suffered a hiccup this year when Trump sharply curtailed the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercises with Seoul, partly citing South Korea’s lack of support for the Iran war.

The US president has also signaled openness for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has been overseeing a steady increase in his country’s nuclear arsenal and regular missile launches.

Analysts said the consequences of cutting military exercises impacts readiness if war were to resume on the Korean Peninsula in the short term, and its more distant effects include lengthening the time needed for Seoul to assume wartime control of its troops, something sought by both the South Koreans and the US.

South Korean officials said this week that a second exercise, for amphibious landings scheduled for September, was canceled in June. Those exercises were to have involved US Marines stationed in the Japanese island of Okinawa, units of which were involved in the blockade of Iranian ports.

There is also the question of supplies and logistics, including the reallocations of some US missile interceptors from South Korea to the Middle East during the fighting. The Pentagon hasn’t revealed how much of the interceptor inventory was moved, but analysts say possible long-term shortages of key interceptors like the Patriot system are likely.

Taiwan and the South China Sea

The deployment of the Japan-based aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the Arabian Sea to relieve the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln leaves the US without any aircraft carriers in the Pacific for an indeterminate time should the need for one arise.

The US has had a continuous presence in the Pacific for more than two decades with the exception of a gap of several weeks in 2024.

That lack of a carrier in the US 7th Fleet’s area of responsibility raises questions for other regional allies.

The Philippines will be particularly worried given the increasing Chinese activity in the South China Sea, around disputed features like Scarborough Shoal, which lies in the Philippines exclusive economic zone but is effectively controlled by Beijing.

Tensions between Manila and Beijing extend to Second Thomas Shoal which, like Scarborough, is in the Spratly Islands. Both have seen at-sea clashes between Filipino and Chinese personnel.

The US and the Philippines have a mutual defense treaty, and if the tensions with China were to escalate, not having a carrier in the region could put US forces at a distinct disadvantage, especially given the current issues with munition stockpiles.

“The big thing that I’m worried about is what it looks like for the US in a potential conflict with China,” Harding said. “We’re not seeing that turn up anytime soon … but if there were to be a conflict with China, we would be in a state of ammunition shortage, specifically the ones that we’re going to need for that conflict.”

Global chokepoints

There could be other devastating consequences of the war – for example if other players try to weaponize other international shipping chokepoints.

“We’re not yet seeing this, but if it got to a point later on where one of those countries wanted to, they could certainly point to this as a (precedent),” Harding said.

She added that the severity of the war’s impact will depend chiefly on how long the US keeps fighting it.

“The Trump administration has to decide what’s good enough for an outcome here and if the only thing that’s good enough is a complete destruction of the nuclear program and, what Israel wants, which is an Iran that’s internally broken and divided, then that is a long commitment of both blood and treasure and the world economy is going to feel the consequences of that long term,” she said.

But Trump could also decide that it could be enough to make the nuclear program “unusable,” she added – something he suggested could be done by keeping the key sites, currently destroyed and under the rubble, inaccessible to Iran by striking whenever Tehran tries to access them.

“That’s not a great solution, but it’s a workable solution. And if that’s enough, and if (Iran’s) weakened proxy network is enough, then what you really have to deal with is the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s hard and a little bit expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as what (the US is) doing right now,” she said.

“From the Iranian perspective, all they have to do is survive, and they’re doing that. So they can kind of keep this going for as long as they want.”

AG to look into ‘aggressive’ behavior

Republican governor asks his AG to look into ‘aggressive’ behavior by Trump admin’s election monitors

By Kaanita Iyer

Wyoming’s Republican Gov. Mark Gordon voiced concerns about the Justice Department election monitors who observed the primary election in his state last week, saying he’s asked his attorney general to look into their “aggressive” behavior.

The Justice Department sent two Civil Rights Division attorneys to Laramie County, Wyoming, which includes the state capital of Cheyenne. But some officials, including the state attorney general, weren’t made aware of the move in advance, Gordon said at a state canvassing board meeting Wednesday.

“It sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive,” Gordon said, adding, “It just was irregular and, and I have asked the attorney general to start looking into … the nature of the visits and all that sort of stuff.”

The DOJ, when reached for comment, pointed CNN to an August 18 statement from Wyoming US Attorney Darin Smith: “Voters deserve absolute confidence that their ballots are secure and their voices are heard without interference…. We are working alongside local officials to ensure every lawful vote is protected.”

CNN has reached out to the governor’s office for comment.

The DOJ said it has sent more than 80 monitors to seven states so far this year for primary elections, as of Tuesday. The department has said it would send about 1,000 monitors to polling sites in November.

Gordon’s criticism comes as President Donald Trump continues to sow doubt about elections. Earlier this year, he baselessly alleged there was cheating in the Los Angeles mayoral primary election before the DOJ sent a prosecutor to observe ballot processing. The president also still claims, without evidence, that the 2020 election he lost to former President Joe Biden was rigged.

Democrats and voting rights activists raised concerns last year, ahead of the off-year elections, that the monitors could be used to undermine the voting process or as a precursor to sow doubts about the election. But the Trump administration had insisted monitors are being sent out in line with decadeslong federal monitoring practices.

Gordon said he isn’t against the idea of election monitors, but raised concerns that the “behavior” of the ones deployed to Wyoming “seemed to exceed what the authority that Congress had given them was.”

“I’m not saying anything went wrong or anything else, and I certainly think that the conduct of this election was phenomenal,” Gordon said. But, he added, “I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes.”

Blocked again and again..........

Judge blocks Trump’s mail-in voting plan, again

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani paused the Trump administration’s plan to use the Postal Service to limit the delivery of ballots.

By Kyle Cheney

The Trump administration’s bid to overhaul mail-in voting ahead of the midterms is on hold once again.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled late Thursday that the administration’s plan to use the Postal Service to limit mail-in voting would impose onerous new requirements on states without enough time to implement them — potentially disenfranchising large numbers of voters.

The Massachusetts-based Obama appointee barred the Postal Service from continuing to implement its plan for at least the next two weeks, calling it “a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections, now little more than two months away.”

The Trump administration is certain to appeal Talwani’s decision. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court swept aside an earlier lawsuit aimed at blocking the Postal Service plan, concluding that it had been filed prematurely — in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump — and didn’t give the administration a chance to attempt to implement it.

But that changed last week, when the Postal Service finalized its regulation governing mail-in ballots, triggering a new wave of lawsuits aimed at stopping the plan, and giving Talwani another chance to weigh in on whether it could be implemented this year.

The lawsuits, filed by a coalition of blue-state attorneys general and voting rights organizations, contended that the effort to quickly impose new requirements for mail-in ballots would hamper states’ efforts to administer the 2026 elections.

Earlier Thursday, the administration urged Talwani to refrain from blocking the Postal Service’s plan, saying it was a key step in preventing fraud and establishing a uniform system for mail-in ballots. In her order, Talwani noted, “the record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting.”

“The Postal Service will not determine voter eligibility, ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” the Justice Department contended. “The Rule does not displace a single State election law. And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”

RFK Jr. is a stupid scum-cum-sucking prick.......

Shapiro won’t say who died of measles. RFK Jr. is exploiting it.

The Health secretary suggested the Pennsylvania governor is hiding something about the deaths’ cause. Shapiro says he can’t say more.

By Carmen Paun

The death of two Pennsylvanians with measles has sparked a social media row between the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The dispute has also reprised a Covid 19-era debate: How much does it matter whether someone died from a disease or just died with a disease?

Pennsylvania health authorities strongly implied that the two died from measles in announcing their deaths Tuesday but also left some wiggle room in describing the deaths as “measles-associated.”

Shapiro then criticized Kennedy — a longtime vaccine skeptic — for his rhetoric around vaccines, which the governor said hasn’t helped stem the measles epidemic that has driven cases in the U.S. to a 35-year high. But Shapiro’s refusal to release further details about the deaths, citing patient privacy, has given Kennedy room to argue he is hiding something — or fabricating the deaths outright.

Vaccination advocates told POLITICO they’re worried Shapiro and Pennsylvania health officials’ secrecy has given Kennedy an opportunity to again cast the public health establishment as villains, just as he did during the pandemic, when he said officials were inflating the death toll by counting people who died of another disease but had also tested positive for Covid. The result has been a hardening of the positions dividing partisans in the fight over the latest infectious disease scourge.

“The anti-vaccine movement, they thrive when there’s an information vacuum or when there’s lack of clarity and communication,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor who practices in the Pittsburgh area and teaches at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Kennedy suggested Wednesday that a Shapiro aide had fabricated the deaths to blame the Health secretary and accused him of trotting out tactics Democrats used during the pandemic to rebut critics and to steer people toward getting vaccinated.

“The performance was a replay of the Democrats’ COVID playbook: fearmongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain,” Kennedy wrote on social media platform X.

Shapiro has said it’s Kennedy spreading misinformation — such as that the measles vaccine contains the remnants of aborted fetuses. While some vaccines, including measles, involve growing viruses in human cell cultures originally developed from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s, no fetal tissue remains in the vaccines produced today, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Shapiro and his health department have argued they’re not releasing more information to respect patient privacy. They have said the people who died were unvaccinated.

At a press conference Tuesday, Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen declined to say more.

“We are protecting people’s privacy and confidentiality,” she said in a response to a reporter’s question about the ages of the people who died.

Shapiro also declined to say whether either of the two were Amish, nodding to the same privacy concerns. Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, where state officials said the two people who died resided, is home to the country’s oldest Amish community, in which many refuse vaccination.

Kennedy has argued the measles outbreak in the U.S. has been mainly confined to members of religious communities who refuse vaccination and that his questioning of vaccine safety wasn’t to blame for the spread of the outbreak. He blames the drop in vaccination rates against measles on Covid vaccine mandates that many Americans opposed.

Nearly 2,800 measles cases have been reported in the U.S. this year, the most since the early 1990s.

Adalja said he didn’t fault Shapiro for declining to say whether the deaths were in the Amish community, because that could stigmatize it.

But he argued Shapiro could have shared more about the deceased’s ages and the state’s investigation of the deaths. Adalja said that Shapiro followed a very narrow interpretation of state patient privacy rules.

Shapiro talked Tuesday about how deaths from measles were preventable, suggesting that measles caused the deaths in his state.

But the state’s health department clarified in a statement Wednesday that measles might not have been “the immediate cause of death.”

In response to Kennedy’s suggestion that a Shapiro aide may have made up the deaths, Bogen said in a statement late Wednesday that she had “thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information” and “could confirm the two measles-related deaths.” She said the state reported the information to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s measles response team on Tuesday.

In a statement Thursday, the CDC said it’s “working to determine what actually occurred” and touted Kennedy’s “efforts to clarify conflicting information from Pennsylvania officials about whether the two reported deaths were caused by measles.”

The agency noted that Shapiro has declined the CDC’s offer of assistance. The Pennsylvania governor said Tuesday the state’s health department was able to manage the local outbreak.

“Accuracy is critical to reliable national data, transparency, and public trust,” the CDC statement continued. “During COVID-19, concerns arose about deaths being attributed as caused by the disease when individuals instead died from other causes,” it said.

Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and former Harvard scholar who’s currently a chief medical officer at a biotech company working on infectious diseases, wrote on X Wednesday that he was “increasingly perplexed” why more information wasn’t being provided on the two deaths.

“If the link is weak between measles and the deaths, state it. If the link is strong between measles and the deaths, state it,” he wrote.

Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons, a Republican, accused Shapiro and state health officials of deception over the lack of clarity on the two deaths.

Parsons said the county coroner did not have any cases of people dying from measles but the coroner has provided information about a baby born at home who died soon after birth with measles but not because of it. The Pennsylvania health department said Wednesday that the infant was one of the two cases it was referring to.

Parsons emphasized in an X post Thursday that the baby could not have been vaccinated against measles because children typically aren’t vaccinated until they are a year old. Shapiro and Bogen had suggested the people who died were unvaccinated by choice, Parsons argued.

He then added that state authorities have not released any more information about the second death.

The governor’s office referred to Bogen’s Wednesday statement when asked for comment on Parsons’ accusation.

Adalja said more clarity from Pennsylvania would help.

“It’s going to be very hard for them to recover because there’s lots of people who have been saying that they don’t trust public health authorities after COVID,” he said. “This is like a textbook example of why that sentiment exists.”

Anthropic blacklisting is illegal

Judge rules Trump administration’s Anthropic blacklisting is illegal

California-based U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said that the Trump administration’s actions amounted to “unlawful retaliation” in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

By Christine Mui

A federal judge in California Thursday found that Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth broke the law when he designated Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, who ruled in March to pause the unprecedented label, wrote that the Trump administration’s actions amounted to “unlawful retaliation” in violation of the First Amendment and that Anthropic was denied due process as required under the Fifth Amendment.

“Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless,” she said in a 59-page order that largely ruled in Anthropic’s favor.

The company sued the government in March, alleging directives and public disparagement by Trump administration officials violated its free speech and due process rights, among a range of other claims.

Those directives, including the supply chain risk designation, were issued after Anthropic asserted that its technology should not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance. Trump administration officials have argued the U.S. military must have unrestricted access to artificial intelligence for “all lawful purposes.”

In her order, Lin also found that the Department of Defense violated the Administrative Procedure Act and formally overturned Hegseth’s directive that all other Pentagon contractors stop doing business with Anthropic.

“We welcome the court’s ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”

The Pentagon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment to the ruling.

A second lawsuit that Anthropic filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit remains ongoing.

Introducing a bill to nullify Trump’s executive order

House Democrat moves to reverse Trump’s ‘Lake America’ order

Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell is introducing a bill to nullify Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario.

Riley Rogerson

A House Democrat is already pushing back on President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.”

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said in an interview hours after Trump’s announcement that she plans to introduce a bill Monday that would nullify the name change. The one-page bill is titled the “Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act.”

“People do not understand how intertwined our two countries are,” Dingell said “And this is insane, this naming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.’”

The name change is Trump’s latest escalation in a rapidly spiraling trade war between the U.S. and Canada. The White House imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion in Canadian imports earlier this week, inviting retaliatory levies from Ottawa.

Trump said in a Truth Social post Canada has been “Ripping Off” the U.S. for decades and that Canada is “easily the most difficult and unreasonable” country he deals with.

Trump’s renaming Lake Ontario throws another controversy into one of the country’s most consequential states ahead of the midterms. Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has already attacked his Republican opponent Mike Rogers over the move.

Dingell said she has been working with Democratic leaders on a response to the tariffs, and separately collecting signatures on a letter to Trump that urges “your Administration to change its diplomatic approach with our closest ally, Canada, and recognize the importance of the United States-Canada relationship.” She said she has about 100 signatures from fellow House Democrats.

“I grew up in a small town called St. Clair, and when I got up and looked out my bedroom window every day, I didn’t see America. I saw Canada,” Dingell said. “We lived that close. Canada was as close to us as [the Cannon House Office Building] is to the Capitol.”

What a tiny dick move........

Trump signs executive order renaming Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’

The name change is Trump's latest attack on Canada as the two countries engage in a rapidly spiraling trade war.

By Ashley Ahn

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America” amid an intensifying trade war with Canada.

“Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly, even the military,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We defend Canada for nothing.”

The text of the executive order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to ensure all federal agencies and the Geographic Names Information System, which records official names of U.S. geographic features, refer to the lake using its new name.

The announcement came two days after the president threatened to change the name of the 13th-largest lake in the world, which borders New York and the Canadian province of Ontario. (The province is named after the lake.)

The executive order states that the United States claims most of the lake’s volume, “with the deepest parts of the Lake’s waters lying within United States territory.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on X that Canadians will never stop calling the body of water Lake Ontario, whose name predates the United States and Canada and originates from the Wendat word “Ontari’io,” meaning beautiful, big lake.

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” he said. “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”

And in a social media post responding to the White House, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York — the only state bordering the lake — said “New York won’t be calling it that.”

Her statement comes one day after she decried Trump’s threats to rename the lake as “absurd” at the New York State Fair, where she spoke with farmers affected by the tariff war with Canada.

Hochul said the Trump administration “should be focusing on ways to mend relationships with Canada so our farmers and our consumers and our families do not continue suffering from this inane war over tariffs.”

Stashing Lake Ontario’s name is Trump’s latest attack on Canada as the two countries exchange verbal punches and threats over tariffs.

“The Canadian officials have treated us very badly,” Trump said, calling them “nasty people.”

The two countries are in a rapidly spiraling trade war, after talks for a deal broke down over the weekend. Trump has spent the week belittling Canada, calling the country’s leaders “easily the most difficult and unreasonable.”

Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has needled Canada, saying it did not need independence and should become America’s “51st state.” His relationship with Carney has deteriorated, with Carney seeking closer ties to Europe and calling for countries to adapt to a new global order that is not built on the assumption that America is a reliable ally.

The lake’s name change is the latest in Trump’s efforts to alter the names of global landmarks across the country, changing the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and Alaska’s Denali — the highest mountain peak in North America — to Mount McKinley at the beginning of his second term.

While Trump’s name change dictates government policy, it cannot immediately compel cultural or international change. The Associated Press, for example, said it would use Mount McKinley in its widely used style guide — but not “Gulf of America” because of its international nature.

In a video posted on Truth Social Thursday, the president crossed out Lake Ontario on a map with a black marker and wrote “Lake America” in all caps.

“We have a gulf and a lake,” Trump said in the Oval Office after signing the executive order. “Now all we need is an ocean.”

Lawsuits over Grok deepfakes mount

Musk’s AI company sues its users as victim lawsuits over Grok deepfakes mount

As alleged victims sue the company over AI-generated child sexual abuse material, xAI takes the legal fight to its own users.

By Hassan Ali Kanu

Elon Musk’s xAI has adopted an unusual and aggressive strategy to fend off lawsuits over child sexual abuse material allegedly created by its AI chatbot, Grok.

The company recently sued two of its users, saying they violated X’s terms of service by using Grok to create explicit images of children. xAI is the parent company of the social media platform X, where Grok is housed.

Both of the men xAI has sued are also facing criminal charges.

The company’s lawsuits seek to hold those users responsible for “all reasonable expenses” xAI incurs defending itself against lawsuits their alleged victims file against the company, including damages for “reputational harm.”

Late last month, xAI sued Russell Bloodworth, an Arkansas photographer who is facing more than 100 criminal charges for allegedly using Grok to alter his professional photos of children into child sexual abuse material. Bloodworth has pleaded not guilty.

“[Bloodworth’s] actions were a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff’s tool for criminal ends, exposing real victims to profound and lasting harm, while exposing Plaintiff to significant legal risk and reputational damage,” xAI wrote in its complaint.

The company is being sued by alleged victims of Bloodworth over images he’s accused of creating with Grok. It asked the court to rule that Bloodworth should have to cover its legal fees in that litigation because Bloodworth violated X’s terms of service to create the allegedly unlawful and abusive images.

Even in instances of criminal conduct, it’s extremely rare for businesses to enforce their terms of service by suing a user.

“It’s not something you really see any other companies doing,” said John Coyle, a law professor at the University of North Carolina and an expert on business contracts and corporate litigation. “The reason why most companies don’t engage in this kind of behavior is because, first, it’s not great for their brand.”

Generally, xAI has enforced X’s terms of service through suspensions, terminating accounts and making legally required reports of suspected child sex abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The company has made nearly 74,000 such reports in 2026 alone, resulting in more than 240 arrests, it said in court filings.

xAI has not said why it’s turning to litigation in certain cases or how it decides when to do so. The company did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

About two weeks before suing Bloodworth, xAI sued Terry Wayne Harwood, a South Carolina man also accused of using Grok to create CSAM. Harwood has also been criminally charged with sexual exploitation of a minor. The lawsuit makes the same allegations of breach of contract and uses language included verbatim in the later complaint against Bloodworth.

xAI is defending itself in multiple lawsuits over nude or explicit images generated by Grok without the subject’s consent, including the creation of child sexual abuse material.

One class action includes a plaintiff, referred to as South Carolina Roe, who claims that the perpetrator who used Grok to “nudify” images of her as a child was her father.

South Carolina Roe’s attorney, Sophia Rios, told POLITICO that xAI’s lawsuit against Harwood is “too little, too late.” The number of reports regarding Grok-created child sexual abuse material “indicates to me that the actual problem is with their product, which they should fix to prevent this conduct from happening in the first place,” she said.

xAI says in its complaints that the company “builds in technological safeguards to prevent bad actors from engaging in illegal, harmful, or abusive conduct, or otherwise attempting to violate its rules.”

The company is facing at least two other class actions regarding nudification. The company is also defending against at least four individual suits based on Bloodworth’s alleged crimes, with more expected, according to Derek Potts, an attorney representing alleged victims of Bloodworth. All of the cases essentially claim that xAI fails to use industry-standard safeguards used by other AI businesses to prevent the creation of sexualized, non-consensual deepfakes.

Potts told POLITICO the company’s lawsuits against the alleged perpetrators are an attempt to “try to point the finger elsewhere,” adding that he doubts the company can recover a significant sum from Bloodworth and Harwood.

Europe wants in.

The US got Meta to change Instagram and Facebook.  Europe wants in.

The European Commission may be looking for bigger changes than Meta agreed to with 47 U.S. states.

By Eliza Gkritsi

The United States just made Meta change how it treats kids. The pressure's now on for Europe to prove its tougher tech laws can do the same — or go even further.

Forty-seven U.S. states settled a landmark lawsuit with Meta for $18 billion on Wednesday, agreeing with the tech giant to set guardrails on its addictive design to better protect teenagers from harm. It is the culmination of a yearslong battle in one of the largest consumer protection settlements in U.S. history.

From Brussels’ vantage point, it’s both a win for online safety and a loss of face for the European regulator, which has tried to get the social media giant to change its ways for years. 

The settlement on Wednesday details a series of changes that Meta needs to make to Facebook and Instagram over the next 10 years, including limiting daily time for minors on the platform, checking ages of users more rigorously and disabling cosmetic filters for teens.  

It has upped the ante for Brussels’ social media regulators.

“Ironically, 9 measures out of 12 are covered by the [Digital Services Act], our law since 2023. U.S. courts are going faster than the EU Commission. We must ENFORCE DSA NOW!” former European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who negotiated and enforced the EU's social media rulebook up to 2024, wrote on X after the news of the settlement.

German center-right lawmaker Andreas Schwab told POLITICO that Meta in the U.S. now "has even to go beyond what it offers to the European consumers.” Schwab, an architect of one of the EU’s Big Tech laws, the Digital Markets Act, called for Meta's policies in the two jurisdictions to be aligned. 

The European Commission in July accused Meta of breaching EU rules under the Digital Services Act by running addictive design features on Facebook and Instagram. In April, it accused Meta of breaking the same rules for not doing enough to keep under-13s off its platforms. The EU's investigation into addictive design and minors is more than two years old but has yet to yield concessions from the company or penalties for non-compliance.

Spanish center-left European Parliament lawmaker Laura Ballarín Cereza asked the Commission on Thursday why Meta has committed to making changes only for U.S. users while it is in a discussion with EU authorities over the same issues. How will the Commission “ensure that EU citizens are not left with weaker protections than those in the US,” she wrote. 

Thomas Regnier, spokesperson for digital policy at the European Commission, said in a statement that it “is in continuous dialogue with Meta, who still has the possibility to offer commitments in the EU.”  

Meta has said it disagrees with the Commission's April and July findings. If it doesn't make changes to the EU's satisfaction, the firm risks facing a fine of up to 6 percent of its annual global revenue, which would amount to a maximum of $12 billion. Even if the full fine is imposed, which is highly unlikely, it's well under the $18 billion it settled for in the U.S.  

Europe wants more 

However, the changes Meta has pledged to make in the U.S. may not be as far-reaching as they seem — or meet the EU executive's demands.

The Commission wants Meta to change, or at least offer users by default, a way out of the core addictive design features of its platforms — such as autoplay, infinite scroll and highly personalized feeds. The EU also demands remedies that limit time spent on the app and has previously dismissed Meta's time management and parental controls as not good enough.

The settlement's proposed changes are "business as usual,” Jessica Galissaire, senior policy researcher at think tank Interface, told POLITICO about the EU's investigation. The Commission is asking for more far-reaching changes to the addictive design of the service, rather than just curtailing access to it, she said.

“The platforms are starting to be scared of litigations," said Galissare. "It’s some steps in the in the right direction” but "we shouldn't settle for the lightweight changes that Meta is suggesting.”  

The settlement focuses on limiting access to the app at certain times as a default setting, and in many of these areas, teens or parents will be able to switch from these settings to less restrictive ones. Senior Commission officials have previously criticized Meta's parental controls for their complexity.

But Meta will only give users the option to turn off the features most closely associated with engagement maximization, like autoplay and personalized feeds, instead of making them the default for every child, said Francesca Pisanu, senior policy officer at child rights group Eurochild.

“The U.S. settlement establishes a combination of strong defaults, usage restrictions and parental controls, while the Commission’s preliminary approach more explicitly challenges the underlying engagement-maximising architecture of the platforms themselves,” said Pisanu. 

Leanda Barrington-Leach, executive director at the child rights group 5Rights Foundation, said: "Changes which focus on limiting children's access will not prevent continued exploitation and harm to children.”

For now, Meta has held back from committing to roll out the changes it will make in the U.S. to users worldwide. It has said it will monitor how these changes are working in the U.S. and continue to engage with other governments. That's despite officials' explicit requests to do so in the U.K., South Korea and elsewhere.

On Wednesday night, the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Pat McFadden, told Sky News he expected Meta to extend the changes to the U.K., saying the government didn’t want “a situation where young people in America have got a higher rate of protection than young people in the U.K.”

Get their jobs back?

Fired Stars and Stripes journalists sue Pentagon to get their jobs back

The ousted publisher, editor-in-chief and a senior reporter say their firings violated their free speech rights as well as a law regulating government administrative policies.

By Jalen Beckford

Three fired staffers of Stars and Stripes are suing the government to get their jobs back, arguing they were illegally dismissed over coverage of deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in an outlet that has historically provided independent coverage of the military.

In the suit, filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, the ousted publisher, along with the editor-in-chief and a reporter, say their firings last week violated their free speech rights under the First Amendment, as well as a law regulating government administrative policies.

Included as defendants in the suit are Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell and the Department of Defense, which provides funding to the publication that has long maintained editorial independence from the government.

Four legal organizations filed the suit on behalf of the ousted staffers.

“The Pentagon is trying to punish journalists for defending the established mission of Stars and Stripes,” Taryn Wilgus Null, senior counsel at Democracy Defenders Fund, one of the organizations, said in a statement. “Service members and their families need reporting that is independent of the officials it covers and is unafraid to criticize them when they deserve it.”

Publisher Max Lederer, Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte were dismissed on Aug. 21 over what the Pentagon characterized as insubordination stemming from an interview in which the journalist and her editor defended the editorial independence at the publication.

Slavin and Korte, a former reporter with POLITICO, said they were expressing their personal opinions in the July 5 interview with CBS News, and that the statements aligned with the Defense Department’s “own longstanding insistence” on the independence of Stars and Stripes.

They also noted the timing of their firings, which occurred weeks after the CBS interview but shortly after their outlet’s critical reporting on the Lincoln, where conditions for service members have allegedly deteriorated during a record-breaking Middle East deployment.

Lederer says he was directed by the Pentagon to fire Korte and Slavin a day after an Aug. 11 story on the Lincoln was published by the paper. The longtime publisher refused and decided to retire, later expressing in an interview with Stars and Stripes his concerns about the direction of the publication.

A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Slavin and Korte ask in the suit to be reinstated to their positions.

The case marks just the latest dispute between the Defense Department and the press corps under President Donald Trump. Since Hegseth took over the department, restrictive press guidelines led journalists from dozens of organizations to give up their Pentagon press credentials. The department has since offered credentials to a new group of mostly right-wing outlets.

In June, the Pentagon deemed its press office a classified space and off-limits to journalists, ostensibly to make room for speechwriters.

“The Defense Department’s move to control Stars and Stripes is in step with its move against the Pentagon Press Corps,” David Schulz, director of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, one of the organizations that filed the suit, said in a statement.

“This Administration does not want an effective or independent press,” Schulz said. Its crackdown means the public today has less information about our military’s plans, purposes, actions, or accomplishments than at any point in modern history, even as active combat operations are being pursued in multiple arenas across the globe.”

Need to raise rates

In closely watched speech, Warsh signals Fed may need to raise rates

Any move to increase borrowing costs in September will likely invoke the frustration of President Donald Trump.

By Victoria Guida

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh on Friday laid the groundwork for a possible interest rate hike in the coming months, arguing that the economy is strong and the labor market is at full employment, while inflation is concerning.

“Inflation is running above our 2 percent target. So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices,” Warsh said in remarks at the Fed’s annual conference in Grand Teton National Park. While inflation numbers have recently been better than expected, “they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

“Market prices show confidence that we will deliver price stability,” he added. “And I can assure you, they’re right.”

Warsh, who took the helm of the central bank in May, has been under growing pressure to take a firmer stance on the Fed’s readiness to fight inflation. His words could help allay worries in financial markets, where global investors have been pushing up longer-term rates out of concern that elevated consumer prices will persist. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over the past couple of weeks has made extraordinary moves to stem the run-up in bond yields, which also reflects fears that the U.S. will fail to rein in fiscal deficits and that massive borrowing by artificial intelligence businesses will put further upward pressure on rates.

Any move to raise borrowing costs in September will likely invoke the frustration of President Donald Trump, although he has spoken warmly of his new central bank chief and might give him more leeway than Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell. Powell, who remains a Fed board member, was a frequent target of the president’s anger for resisting rate cuts.

But Warsh also had plenty of good things to say about Trump’s economy.

“For my part, today I am impressed by the overall performance of the economy, which appears to have strengthened,” he said. “One indicator of strength is how well an economy holds up to shocks. On that score, both Main Street and Wall Street have been remarkably resilient.”

“Certain sectors — like housing and agriculture — are showing strains,” he said, but added that rates overall did not seem to be dragging down economic activity.

And while he said recent graduates might be having some trouble finding work, which is an area of concern, “labor markets are consistent with full employment” — meaning generally that those who want a job can find one.

The speech, his first official address in his new role, diverges from his early practice of providing almost no opinion on the state of the U.S. economy, although he still did not employ typical central banker speak in signaling when an interest rate hike might come.

Instead, he said a “good majority” of his colleagues, as well as him, judged in July that it was better to have several more weeks of data “before deciding whether a change in interest rate policy was advisable.”

“And we expressed our joint readiness to act as circumstances might require,” he said.

Markets are now judging that a rate hike next month is more likely than not, according to CME’s Fed Watch Tool.

Omair Sharif, president of Inflation Insights, said in a note to clients that Warsh’s speech “gave the markets what they wanted, which was more detail on his views about the current data, particularly inflation.”

And the Fed chair was able to maintain his commitment to avoiding so-called forward guidance, where the Fed directly telegraphs its rate plans. Warsh has long criticized that practice, saying that markets should make their own assessments on the direction of the economy, and did so again Friday.

But how he handles September will affect how the world continues to judge the credibility of his commitment to getting inflation back down, said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, on the sidelines of the conference.

“Chairman Warsh was very clear that he views the labor market as being at full employment, and that he views inflation as being stuck considerably above target,” Strain said. “That suggests a standard policy response, which is to raise interest rates.”

“Markets are looking for clarity, and it remains to be seen whether this speech will provide additional clarity or additional confusion,” he added. “We’ll have to wait till September.”

Mulls further troop cuts

US probes NATO allies over military support as it mulls further troop cuts

The U.S. will examine European defense spending and military access as part of its review of American forces in Europe, said deputy Pentagon chief Elbridge Colby.

August 28, 2026 10:28 am CET

By Victor Jack

Deputy Pentagon chief Elbridge Colby on Thursday sounded out the support of NATO countries for key U.S. defense objectives, in a first test ahead of a critical review of American forces in Europe.

The rare visit by a senior U.S. official marks another step in the U.S. campaign to make Europe and Canada spend more on their own defense. Washington also wants to probe their loyalty after several NATO countries curbed access to their airspace and to American bases linked to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Overall, the review “will encourage, enable, and impel a transition to a more durable and powerful European-led conventional defense of the continent,” Colby told NATO’s 32 ambassadors, according to his published remarks.

Some NATO allies have bridled at the approach. Earlier this month the U.S. sent out a questionnaire, according to two European defense officials, asking allies to detail their views on subjects ranging from defense spending to U.S. foreign policy.

It’s a “scary exercise,” said a NATO diplomat, describing the survey as an attempt to get allies to “pledge their allegiance to the king.”

Colby on Thursday said the questionnaire wasn’t aimed at “dictating” terms nor at obtaining “a complete carte blanche” on U.S. military access, and praised countries for “rebuilding their military strength for collective defense.”

But, he added: “We need to be able to have the ability to operate effectively; we need predictability,” affirming that access to American bases in Europe is a key criterion in Washington’s six-month review of its military presence on the continent.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the review in June partly in response to the airspace and basing restrictions imposed by countries including France, Italy and Spain. President Donald Trump threatened to leave NATO over the constraints earlier this year. 

As part of its review, the U.S. sent a “terms of reference” document to allies this month, arguing it would examine issues like defense spending and expanded military access in Europe, according to a person familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity to speak freely. Reuters first reported the document.

The review process is also raising fears that allies will compete for a U.S. presence on their territory.

During the meeting with envoys on Thursday, “allies entered in a ‘beauty contest’,” said one NATO diplomat, “with everyone highlighting his [or] her country’s implementation of NATO 3.0” — a reference to the U.S.-led effort to make Europe take responsibility for its conventional defense.

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski told POLITICO that Warsaw was “ready to propose” different locations, “financing” and “logistics required” for a proposal to permanently station U.S. troops in the country. However, he insisted, “this review is based not on beauty offers, but on common interests.”

NATO ambassadors didn’t make specific offers to Colby in Thursday’s meeting but highlighted their progress on alliance military capability targets, defense spending and their offers to substitute U.S. forces as part of alliance war plans, the two NATO diplomats said. One described the meeting, overall, as “very constructive.”

U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who commands American troops in Europe, is set to present Colby with military recommendations for the review next month, said the person familiar with the matter, ahead of a more formal decision on the review’s outcome by Hegseth in November.

Summons US ambassador

Belgium summons US ambassador again over jibe at health minister

This is not the first time the US ambassador has made controversial personal attacks against Belgian politicians.

By Daria Zakharova

Belgium’s Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot has summoned U.S. Ambassador Bill White for a second time this year, after he posted an Instagram story mocking the country’s Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke.

“Who’s the biggest LOSER in Belgium?” asked U.S. President Donald Trump’s appointee in Brussels on social media, above a seemingly AI-generated picture of Vandenbroucke on a cigar box. In an apparent mockery of the minister’s push to change health warnings used in alcohol advertising, the box reads: “Damages every form of joy in life.”

“It is unacceptable that an ambassador uses such insulting language against a member of government,” Prévot said in a statement to POLITICO. The foreign ministry confirmed the summoning, which was first reported by news agency Belga.

A spokesperson for Belgium’s health ministry declined to comment.

A trade association for Belgian brewers are campaigning this week against a March law proposed by Vandenbroucke, which would change the health warning on alcohol advertisements — from “alcohol abuse causes health damage” to “alcohol causes health damage.”

White was previously summoned in February after he accused Brussels of antisemitism over a probe into three Jewish mohels in Antwerp suspected of performing circumcisions without the required medical qualifications. White called the investigation “ridiculous” and pressured Vandenbroucke to intervene, prompting the Belgian government to accuse him of interfering in the country’s domestic and judicial affairs.

Conner Rousseau, the leader of Vandenbroucke’s party Vooruit, also responded to White’s post on Instagram. The ambassador “knows nothing about healthcare” and “only follows what daddy Trump says,” Rousseau said.

The U.S. embassy in Brussels did not reply to a request for comment.

Delivers 8th straight blow

Appeals court delivers 8th straight blow to ICE’s mandatory detention policy

The 3rd Circuit said the Trump administration misinterpreted federal law.

By Kyle Cheney

ICE’s losing streak continued Friday as an eighth straight federal appeals court rejected the agency’s massive expansion of detention for immigrants with long-term roots in the U.S.

A divided panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that ICE’s novel interpretation of mandatory detention laws distorted a 30-year-old statute that was generally meant to require detention for people who recently crossed the border.

The panel also concluded that ICE detainees with extensive ties to the U.S. have a constitutional due process right to a bond hearing.

The issue is almost certainly destined for Supreme Court resolution. Though eight appeals courts have rejected ICE’s position, two have endorsed the administration’s approach. The Justice Department and ACLU have asked the justices to take up the matter in its next term, which begins in October.

Under ICE’s new view of the law, people who have lived inside the U.S. for years could still be treated as “seeking admission” to the country and therefore subject to mandatory detention without bond. That shift in ICE’s approach threatened millions of people — many of whom have U.S. citizen spouses and children — with abrupt arrest and detention, even though the vast majority have no criminal records.

And it has led to an extraordinary flood of emergency lawsuits from people detained by ICE under the new policy. A POLITICO analysis indicates that judges have rejected ICE’s new position more than 90 percent of the time, in more than 13,000 cases challenging the new policy. In the meantime, the policy has wreaked havoc on tens of thousands of lives and subjected people to months of detention that courts later determined was illegal.

Like the other circuits that rejected ICE’s policy, the 3rd Circuit majority — Obama appointee Patty Shwartz and Clinton appointee Theodore McKee — said that Congress’ immigration reforms in 1996 did not contemplate mandatory detention for millions of people, and in fact no prior administration believed such a mandate existed.

Trump appointee Jennifer Mascott dissented from the ruling, contending that the majority’s interpretation would create a perverse result: Those who presented themselves for inspection at the border would be subject to mandatory detention while those who evaded detection and remained in the U.S. illegally would be afforded bond hearings.

But the overwhelming majority of courts to consider the question have rejected that assessment, suggesting Congress may have intended to ensure that those with deep ties to the country — who had planted roots and become members of their community — were not abruptly shunted into detention facilities without at least a chance to secure bond.

The best evidence, they say, is that no previous administration, even Trump’s first, had claimed such a sweeping mandatory detention existed. And even the Supreme Court had previously suggested that bond hearings were the norm for people residing in the interior of the country.

Only one appeals court — the Richmond-based 4th Circuit — has yet to weigh in on the policy.

Already nervous

Republicans were already nervous about November. Then Trump restarted his trade war.

The president's actions are set to reverberate especially hard in a handful of states crucial to the party’s hopes of keeping their Senate majority.

By Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy

Republicans were already struggling to defuse simmering voter frustrations over the cost of living ahead of the midterms. Then President Donald Trump rekindled his trade wars.

Trump’s latest actions — especially his decision to impose 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, inviting retaliatory duties from America’s No. 2 trading partner — has sparked new pushback from GOP lawmakers and candidates.

His moves are set to reverberate especially hard in a handful of states crucial to the party’s hopes of keeping their Senate majority. That includes northern border states, such as Maine and Michigan, as well as agriculture-heavy battlegrounds like Iowa and North Carolina that have been buffeted for more than a year by Trump’s embrace of hardball trade tactics.

“We’ve got 71 days, and right now we don’t have a positive message to tell farm country,” said retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, whose North Carolina seat is at risk of flipping into Democrats’ hands in November.

Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Canada is creating “tension,” Tillis added, and that “the party that owns that tension is the party that will probably suffer the consequences in November.”

Even the president’s latest bid to ease price pressures on Americans has generated unease among Republicans. While he touted his decision last week to temporarily allow the duty-free import of 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef as a win for consumers, the announcement was met with little praise from GOP lawmakers, who instead worry the bigger political impact will be to alienate key constituencies in rural states hosting competitive House and Senate races.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said in an interview Tuesday he’d spoken this week with the small farmers and ranchers who would bear the brunt of Trump’s beef import holiday.

“I think it could hurt us at the polls,” he said. “That’s a very strong group.”

The beef imports have jolted races in Iowa, where GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running to succeed retiring Sen. Joni Ernst, said in a social media post that the imports were “a bad idea” that would create “more uncertainty and instability for our farmers.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Zach Nunn, another Republican who is seeking reelection, said Friday at the Iowa State Fair alongside Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that Trump is “right” that “we want to make sure that people can afford to eat” but that “we don’t do it on the backs of our cattlemen.”

But it’s the hefty Canada tariffs that could create the bigger problem for the GOP. Four border states — Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire and Alaska — as well as manufacturing-heavy Ohio are on the front lines of both the midterms and Trump’s North American trade war.

The economy is consistently the top issue for voters of both parties. Fifty-six percent of U.S. adults said cost-of-living concerns are among the top issues facing the country in a recent POLITICO Poll.

A notable share of Trump’s own voters hold negative views about the current state of the economy — and how he is trying to improve it. A 33 percent plurality of Trump’s 2024 voters said rising prices are among the biggest failures of Trump’s second term, according to the survey conducted earlier this month by London-based Public First. Just 16 percent pointed to improving the cost of living as one of his biggest successes.

Among Trump voters who said things are less affordable now than a year ago, most blamed the Iran war (52 percent), but a sizable share (42 percent) blamed Trump’s tariffs on imported goods.

Vice President JD Vance defended the Canada tariffs Monday during a stop in Maine, saying Trump was taking long-overdue action to address unfair trade practices. But Sen. Susan Collins, who did not appear at the Vance event citing a scheduling conflict, told reporters over the weekend that she believed the Canada tariffs were a “mistake.”

“We produce a lot in Maine — our blueberries, our potatoes, our lobster, our lumber — that is processed across the border,” said Collins, who voted to undo prior Trump levies targeting Canada. “If it comes back with a huge tariff on it … that increases the cost of eating, building homes.”

Former Republican Sen. John Sununu, who is running to recapture his New Hampshire Senate seat this fall, said in a statement to POLITICO Tuesday that “it makes no sense to start a trade war with our closest neighbor” as Democratic nominee Rep. Chris Pappassuggested Sununu “stands with Trump.”

“Canada is an important and valued trading partner for New Hampshire,” Sununu added. “As Senator, I’d encourage both sides to continue to negotiate and keep trade flowing between our countries.”

In Alaska, a group aligned with Senate Democrats has been hammering GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan with ads for months related to “raising costs” and tariffs as Democrats have sought to put in play a state Trump won handily three times. Multiple political forecasters now view the Alaska Senate race as a tossup between Sullivan and former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola.

Campaign representatives for Sullivan and for former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is the GOP Senate nominee in Michigan, did not respond to requests for comment about the Canada tariffs.

The fallout from a trade war with Canada could also impact Republicans’ affordability message as they attempt to hold onto the House.

“The president picked an unnecessary fight with a friend,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in a text message Tuesday. “The trade war will hurt both Americans and Canadians and for no good reason.”

The latest trade anxiety is landing amid broader economic woes that can be traced in large part to energy price spikes associated with the Trump-initiated war with Iran — a conflict that has dragged on for months longer than many GOP lawmakers privately hoped. Democrats, in turn, have spent months using those price spikes and voters’ dissatisfaction with the war as ammunition to sink Republicans in key states that could hand them majorities in both the House and Senate.

Republicans have taken comfort in the Democratic infighting that has marked primary season and the ascendance of hard-left nominees in many races — including in Michigan, where the GOP hopes to flip the seat being relinquished by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. The new Canadian tariffs, however, threaten to distract from Rogers’ campaign to paint Democratic opponent, Abdul el-Sayed, as too extreme for the state.

“Americans are paying more for everything because GOP Senate candidates have served as a rubber stamp for Trump’s chaotic tariffs at the expense of their states,” DSCC spokesperson Tommy Garcia said in a statement Tuesday. “Come November, voters will hold them accountable for making life more expensive.”

Senate Republicans decamped to their home states earlier this month hoping that they would be able to use the August recess to focus on selling last year’s GOP tax cuts and a growing economy as they try to convince voters to overlook their cost-of-living concerns.

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who is seeking reelection in the reliably red agriculture state of South Dakota, said he thought his party is “in pretty good shape” to keep the majority. He added, though, that Republicans will need to “work hard” and “focus on what voters back home care about, which is the price of gas, price of groceries, making sure that in our ag economy we’re focused on helping to bring prices up for our commodity products.”

Others in the GOP have put voters’ affordability concerns in less rosy terms, including Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.).

“I’ve been the voice that’s been saying, ‘You people are living in a cave if you don’t see that folks out there … are hurting,’” Justice told reporters last week. “And we need to absolutely be more in tune with them.”