After teasing some kind of alien-related disclosure, the White House rolled out… a map of ICE arrests touting 3.1 million encounters. It’s the same great replacement talking points as always — they’re being imported, elites facilitated the “invasion,” etc. etc. — with some X-Files-esque music playing in the background. And the numbers aren’t even right. I can only imagine the glee with which some groyper vibecoded this.
As Deadline reports, ABC filed early renewal applications for its broadcast licenses “under protest” on Thursday, along with a letter condemning the FCC’s demand for the premature license renewal. ABC called it “unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional,” stating:
Simultaneously forcing every station in a media company’s portfolio to file premature license renewal applications is not a regulatory tool. It is an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices, which sends a clear warning to every broadcaster in America. This is a threat to the First Amendment that this Commission and this proceeding must not be permitted to normalize.
In a brief order, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Texas to move forward with implementing its App Store Accountability Act while the case seeking to block it plays out. It’s an early test of a method that is being considered across several states, and in Congress.
[Bloomberg Law]
Governor JB Pritzker says he plans to sign a bill passed Wednesday by the state legislature, which would require independent audits and whistleblower protections at AI companies. Those features go beyond recently passed AI safety laws in New York and California, according to NBC News, while also including similar protections.
A bipartisan group of attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders that passing the House’s KIDS Act — which includes a weakened version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — would preempt state laws and “insulate Big Tech from appropriate oversight and accountability and imperil the young people it purports to protect.”
[Tennessee Attorney General’s Office]
A document posted to the federal register shows the administration is considering a new non-disclosure agreement barring government workers from sharing confidential information. It’s unclear what it would actually change, and agencies would have discretion to adopt it. If you’re a federal worker who wants to chat anonymously, I’m on Signal at laurenfeiner.64.
[The Washington Post]
The New York Times reports the CIA and the NSA lack the computing capacity to run the latest AI models. The White House has approved a request for $9 billion to buy cutting-edge chips and build infrastructure to support Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell superchip. But Congress needs to approve the funds.
The Department of Homeland Security announced the new policy in a post on X. Per the Daily Caller, people applying for permanent residency will soon be required to leave the US and apply for immigrant visas through the Department of State, rather than applying for a change of status from inside the country.
While the administration’s announcement focused on asylum seekers, this change will likely also affect H-1B holders who apply for permanent residency.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has been known for banning “visible homelessness” — moving tents off the street and dropping more people in jail since he hasn’t expanded the homeless shelters like he promised he would in his campaign. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that his brother is a real estate broker who services the tech elite, and that their home valuations are skyrocketing. Alexander “Lurie estimates that by the end of May, he’ll have sold more than $100 million worth of real estate, about his entire total for all of 2025, which was, to be clear, a very good year itself.“
[The Information]
