Policy – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Policy

Tech is reshaping the world — and not always for the better. Whether it’s the rules for Apple’s App Store or Facebook’s plan for fighting misinformation, tech platform policies can have enormous ripple effects on the rest of society. They’re so powerful that, increasingly, companies aren’t setting them alone but sharing the fight with government regulators, civil society groups, and internal standards bodies like Meta’s Oversight Board. The result is an ongoing political struggle over harassment, free speech, copyright, and dozens of other issues, all mediated through some of the largest and most chaotic electronic spaces the world has ever seen.

The Iranian women Trump ‘saved’ from execution are simultaneously real and AI-manipulated

He also probably didn’t save them from execution.

Sarah Jeong
AI failure could trigger the next financial crisis, warns Elizabeth Warren

“The first big stumble will have everyone running for the exits.”

Lauren Feiner

Latest In Policy

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
Kalshi fined and banned three political candidates for insider trading.

The prediction market took action against a handful of congressional candidates: Ezekiel Enriquez (a Republican running in Texas); Mark Moran (an Independent in Virginia, who says he meant to get caught); and Matt Klein (a Democrat in Minnesota) for betting in markets related to their political races. Each was banned from the platform for five years and fined modest amounts ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars.

Nilay Patel
Nilay Patel
Even the fancy lawyers are getting pantsed by AI.

Sullivan and Cromwell, the law firm representing President Trump in many of his cases and which handled the SpaceX and xAI merger, was just forced to apologize to a federal judge for filing documents full of fake case citations hallucinated by AI. The list of errors ran three pages long, the NYT reports. Just the latest in the legal profession forgetting that language is not actually intelligence.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
US lawmakers call on TikTok to add age verification.

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) have written a letter to TikTok USDS CEO Adam Presser, urging the platform to estimate users’ age using their account activity or require parents to confirm their child’s age. The lawmakers also suggest that TikTok works with OS-makers like Apple and Google to implement age verification:

For example, if a user is designated as a child in their iCloud account, meaning they are under 13, Apple could share that information with TikTok and the user therefore would not be able to create a TikTok account.

Correction, April 22nd: The name is Josh Gottheimer, not John.

The Republican Navy Seal who couldn’t survive a flamewar

Dan Crenshaw was supposed to be the future of the GOP. Instead, he proved politicians really can be too online.

Tina Nguyen
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Sun sets on Trump crypto alliance.

Once championed by the Trump family after heavily bankrolling their crypto ambitions, Justin Sun is now unhappy with his chosen bedfellows. Suing Trump-linked World Liberty Financial, Sun alleges in a federal lawsuit that his former allies maliciously froze his $75 million investment, denouncing the platform as “World Tyranny.”

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Two more states announced settlements with Roblox.

Following Nevada’s settlement on Friday, West Virginia and Alabama have settled with company to address alleged child safety issues, as reported by Bloomberg. Last week, Roblox announced a bunch of new safety updates, including dedicated Kids accounts with increased restrictions.

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
Illinois tightens rules around insider trading.

Governor JB Pritzker signed an executive order today dealing specifically with prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. State employees were already barred from using insider information for personal gain, but this executive order specifically bans them from using it to make bets on prediction markets.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
Are we headed for the Butlerian Jihad?

I wrote about that — and other Catholic concerns — at my friend Rusty’s newsletter while he took the day off.

Papal Bull

[Today in Tabs]

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
“I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’”

President Donald Trump had some interesting words to say on Truth Social about Tim Cook’s announced departure, claiming the Apple CEO personally requested his aid on several occasions during his presidency. “He makes these calls to me, I help him out (but not always, because he will, on occasion, be too aggressive in his ask!).”

A screenshot from Truth Social showing US President Donald Trump praising Tim Cook.
Even amid the flattery of Cook’s career, this is all about DJT.
Image: Truth Social / The Verge
Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Two juries have found Uber liable for passenger claims of sexual assault.

Uber lost the first of thousands of cases seeking to hold it responsible for sexual misconduct tied to its services. Similar to ongoing social media trials, these cases are bellwethers that could later inform a broader settlement. Uber spokesperson Matt Kallman told The Times it has “strong grounds for appeal.”

Gaby Del Valle
Gaby Del Valle
I promise you Nick Fuentes has enough money.

The Washington Post analyzed more than 1,400 of the far-right provocateur’s streams and found that he’s generating more than $400,000 in revenue. Much of those donations are coming from people who are struggling economically, including one 57-year-old Air Force veteran who told the Post she thought he was struggling financially — and who is struggling herself.

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
No big bets on Tiny Desk.

NPR issued prediction market guidance to staff, according to media reporter Ben Mullin, banning employees from betting on news events as well as NPR-related topics (like future Tiny Desk guests — yes, there’s a small market for that).

I reported last week that newsrooms are adding prediction market-specific rules to their code of ethics, even as some of those same news outlets partner with platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.

Gaby Del Valle
Gaby Del Valle
The FISA fight isn’t over yet.

Over the weekend, Congress voted to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — for 10 days. President Trump has demanded a clean renewal of the controversial wiretapping authority, but he’s been stymied by Republicans who want to include reforms, including closing a loophole that lets the government spy on Americans without a warrant.

The new deadline is April 30th.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Live Nation agrees to pay $9.9 million to settle deceptive ticket pricing allegations.

Fresh off the loss of its antitrust trial, the company settled with the DC attorney general over claims it “hid the true price of tickets” before checkout. The AG says Ticketmaster has since changed the practice. The settlement is similar to one between StubHub and the Federal Trade Commission.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
The NSA reportedly has access to Anthropic’s Mythos despite being labeled a supply-chain risk.

Sources told Axios that the agency was among the roughly 40 organizations granted access. This, despite the Pentagon arguing that Anthropic is a threat to national security. The NSA has reportedly been using it primarily to identify vulnerabilities in its own network, but considering its track record, it’s understandable if you’re wary.

The future of local TV news has taken a Trumpian turn

The schemes and shenanigans behind the Nexstar-Tegna deal.

Tina Nguyen
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Pro-Trump AI influencers are flooding social media.

The New York Times has found hundreds of fake accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook that appear to be a pre-midterm push to get conservative voters to the polls in support of Trump’s agenda. The accounts often use the same captions and awkward phrasing.

It’s not clear who created the A.I. accounts, and determining whether they are the product of a hired content farm, a foreign influence operation, an experiment or something else is difficult, experts said. They all agree, however, that creating such avatars is becoming easier, especially for contractors and marketing companies that now specialize in developing and dispatching A.I. avatars in bulk for increasingly low prices.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
The FAA is mad pilots are getting catty.

Pilots have apparently been meowing and barking at each other over air traffic control radio, but the Federal Aviation Administration isn’t amused by the bit. Some in the industry fear pilots will tune out the jokes and miss timely safety information, according to CNN.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Bernie Sanders rallies with labor leaders for AI protections and tells oligarchs, ‘Go to hell.’

Union leaders across industries joined the Vermont senator to push for jobs protections as the technology quickly evolves. Sanders has called for a pause on data center construction and warned that left unchecked, within ten years, “the idea of a manufacturing job will no longer exist.”

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Some Pennsylvania poll workers will be barred from prediction market election betting.

Delaware County is updating poll workers’ oath to bar election bets on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, Spotlight PA reports. “I think they’re a pernicious, horrible factor and I don’t think elections should be bet on in one shape or form,” the county’s elections director Jim Allen said.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Google is reportedly in talks to let the Pentagon use Gemini in clasified settings.

The company is apparently reversing course in its approach to military dealings. Google currently has a contract that allows the DOD to use Gemini for “all lawful purposes,” but only in unclassified settings. According to The Information:

Google’s proposed contract language appears to mirror the terms OpenAI secured in an agreement it struck with the Pentagon over the use of its AI earlier this year… However, lawyers also said at the time that language in OpenAI’s contract that seemed to preclude the use of its AI for fully autonomous lethal weapons and mass domestic surveillance wouldn’t necessarily prevent those applications because OpenAI also agreed that its technology could be used for “all lawful purposes.”

Age verification is a mess but we’re doing it anyway

The push for online child safety is forcing platforms to adopt a narrow set of privacy-encroaching age verification options.

Emma Roth
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Someone made over $300,000 betting on Biden pardons.

A Polymarket user with a curiously perfect track record made $316,346 betting on Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons, including the preemptive pardons of his brother Jim, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, and Adam Kinzinger. It’s yet another example of potential insider trading on Polymarket. According to NPR:

The trades linked to Biden’s pardons show that individuals could have been profiting from confidential government information before President Trump returned to office, when prescient bets related federal policy and military strikes on sites like Polymarket started to draw intense scrutiny.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
The EU isn’t happy with WhatsApp’s AI fee.

The European Commission says it will order Meta to roll back its policy to only allow rival AI assistants on WhatsApp for a year if they pay an access fee, which appears to violate EU competition rules. Meta’s conduct “risks blocking competitors from entering or expanding in the rapidly growing market for AI assistants,” according to the Commission.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Altman attack suspect proposed “Luigi’ing some tech CEOs.”

The message was shared by Daniel Moreno-Gama in an online chat in January, months before he was arrested for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at the OpenAI CEO’s home. Moreno-Gama added that his words shouldn’t be taken literally, but he’s one of many that have venerated the United Healthcare CEO murder.