Paxton alleges that Meta can access WhatsApp messages despite Meta’s claims that they are end-to-end encrypted. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone says that WhatsApp “cannot access people’s encrypted communications and any suggestion to the contrary is false.”
It’s been a busy couple days for Paxton; my colleague Lauren Feiner just posted about a lawsuit he filed against Discord.
The Director of National Intelligence confirmed her resignation on X Friday afternoon, saying, “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.” Trump announced Aaron Lukas will take over as Acting Director.
Gabbard, a former US Representative who reversed her previous stand against warrantless wiretapping before taking the post, was reportedly “largely sidelined” from national security operations in Venezuela and Iran, while Reuters reports a source claiming the White House forced her to resign.
YouTuber Coffeezilla first reported the leak of customer details, now apparently fixed. Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien has now confirmed to The Verge there was a breach, which he blames on “a third-party platform provider.”
“The impacted information appears to be limited to certain customer details, including names, email addresses, mailing addresses, order identifiers and mobile phone numbers.
Out of an abundance of caution, our third-party platform provider has implemented additional safeguards and enhanced monitoring measures while the matter continues to be investigated.”
Update: Added comment from Trump Mobile’s CEO.
As Politico reports, Trump postponed signing an executive order on government oversight and access to AI at the last minute on Thursday, saying it “could have been a blocker” for the jobs and “tremendous good” he claims AI is creating. Trump also said China was a factor:
We’re leading China. We’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that.
A Brooklyn courthouse unsealed criminal complaints against two men who allegedly posted “thousands” of nonconsensual intimate AI deepfakes, according to the US Attorney’s Office. The Take It Down Act’s criminal prohibitions have been in place for a year, but platforms’ obligation to remove such deepfakes just came into force yesterday.
[U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York]
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
Update: Added NYT article about NextEra’s proposed deal to acquire Dominion Energy.
ICE raids are the most visible attack on undocumented communities, but Trump has quietly wielded bureaucracy on legal immigrants, too.
Kevin O’Leary wants to cover 40,000 acres. Residents say, ‘Not in my backyard.’
The state became the first to enact a ban on prediction markets, but a lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is trying to keep it from taking effect, arguing it’s the domain of the federal government, NPR reports.
