6 – 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.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Kalshi will reportedly ask for employment info for bets in “sensitive” markets.

The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s Kalshi’s latest effort to address insider trading:

Users seeking to make bets in some markets linked to material nonpublic information will be required to submit an online form disclosing where they work, Kalshi said. The changes are set to be rolled out in the coming weeks. Sensitive betting markets related to issues such as company performance and national security, including the war in Iran, are expected to require employment disclosure, according to a Kalshi official.

Apple wants Europe to blink

Apple blames DMA for delaying Siri AI in Europe. The EU says nothing is stopping Apple from launching it.

Robert Hart
Gaby Del Valle
Gaby Del Valle
Is Trump’s $100,000 H-1B fee an illegal tax?

One federal judge certainly thinks so. District Judge Leo Sorokin struck down Trump’s H-1B fee increase, ruling that the “substance and application” of the policy “reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called.”

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Reuters that the administration plans on appealing the ruling.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Apple blames the DMA again for “delayed” Siri AI in the EU.

While Apple is launching Siri AI in English later this year, it wants EU users to have someone to blame for why it won’t be available there immediately on all of its platforms (only macOS, watchOS, and visionOS at first), similar to other EU-delayed Apple Intelligence updates:

Siri AI is private by design and deeply integrated across Apple’s platforms using on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, which extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud. However, under EU regulators’ extreme interpretation of the DMA, Apple would have to give any virtual assistant direct access to users’ private data — and the ability to directly control other installed applications — as soon as Siri AI is made available in the EU, without the essential protections necessary to keep users and their data safe.

Gaby Del Valle
Gaby Del Valle
A federal judge said Trump’s war on legal immigration is driven by “anti-immigrant animus.”

In a 135-page opinion, Judge John J. McConnell, of Rhode Island vacated four Trump administration policies severely restricting legal immigration, including a visa ban affecting nationals of 39 “high risk” countries.McConnell said that US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles legal immigration, implemented the policy “with pre textual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.”

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Sam Bankman-Fried wants a pardon from Trump.

The convicted FTX fraudster serving a 25-year prison sentence now has a formal filing for the presidential pardon he’s been openly seeking, plus a new jailhouse phone interview with Fox Business. He presumably hopes that was seen inside the White House, despite Donald Trump’s comments in January that he had no plan to pardon SBF.

Screenshot of the clemency case finder showing case number P338490 seeking a Pardon after Completion of Sentence for Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried
Screenshot: Office of the Pardon Attorney
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
After buying more than 50 companies, Bending Spoons prepares for an IPO.

If you’ve ever wondered what the hell is going on with Bending Spoons’ “buy, do layoffs, ????” strategy, perhaps the statement it filed Monday with the SEC for a public listing will explain.

Named for the scene in The Matrix, it’s pulled this move with brands including AOL, Vimeo, Meetup, Evernote, Eventbrite, Brightcove, WeTransfer, Filmic, and many others, hoovering up and leveraging their accumulated 500 million users, data, and 9 million monthly paying subscribers to raise more money for more acquisitions.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Another online safety crackdown may be coming to the UK.

British prime minister Keir Starmer is set to announce a new policy next week that will ban children under 16 from accessing social media platforms, following Australia’s precedent. Starmer is also calling for online platforms to introduce device-level controls that prevent children from sending and receiving nude images.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Meta says NSO is still trying to hack WhatsApp users.

Despite last year’s $167 million verdict against NSO Group for its Pegasus software hacking some 1,400 WhatsApp users, Meta says it has detected new spear phishing attacks on its platform from the spyware maker, in violation of the court’s permanent injunction:

We successfully disrupted NSO-linked social engineering attempts, after investigating user reports. They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp, similar to previously reported 1-click phishing campaigns linked to NSO. We also caught them creating test accounts and groups on WhatsApp, which we took down.

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Mayor vs. the Monorail.

The mayor of Shelbyville, Indiana, potential home of a proposed $2 billion data center, says he only sees signs opposed to the project “in shitty houses.” As ever, there’s a Simpsons quote for that.

SteveBigAndTall:

It’s more of a Springfield idea I guess.

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

TC Sottek
TC Sottek
Update: Brendan Carr is still a dummy.

And honestly, at this point, a huge loser. (Before I even tell you what this is about, just buy our tee, it’ll look great on you.) The guy’s latest comments on Scott Pelley’s firing would be contemptible even if he were just a random online troll. So it definitely sucks that he’s the FCC chairman.

TC Sottek
TC Sottek
What are we doing, America?

First reported by Medpage Today, police in New Orleans pushed out medical experts at an American Diabetes Association meeting for the grave crime of… distributing an editorial that was critical of the Trump administration’s war on science. I’ve stopped being able to keep score on the actual censorship happening in this country.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Sam Altman reportedly talked to the Trump administration about taking a stake in OpenAI.

The CEO pitched the idea as a way to bring economic benefits from AI to the public, according to NOTUS, which added that Altman first pitched the idea to President Donald Trump early last year.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
New York passes a bill that would bar AI chatbots from acting like companions to kids.

State lawmakers passed a bill that, if signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, would restrict AI companies from letting teens use chatbots that suggest they’re human. It comes after some AI companies have faced lawsuits (some of which have settled) over allegations their chatbots coaxed teen users toward suicide or self-harm.

If you or anyone you know is considering self-harm or needs to talk, contact the following people who want to help: In the US, text or call 988. Outside the US, contact https://www.iasp.info/.

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
Polymarket’s CMO sent thousands to influencers like Nick Shirley and Riley Gaines.

Polymarket’s chief marketing officer Matthew Modabber used his personal PayPal account to send at least $350,000 to content creators who hyped the prediction market platform, Politico reports. Shirley and others who were paid promoted Polymarket on X with no paid content disclosures. Influencer content is a huge part of prediction markets’ media strategy — often hiding in plain sight.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
NYT report reveals how Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube grabbed kids’ attention in school.

Internal documents, which were disclosed as part of a wave of child safety lawsuits filed by school districts across the US, showed:

Snapchat sent phone alerts to adolescents during school hours, urging them to share what was going on in their classrooms.

Meta paid “teen ambassadors” to promote Instagram and hand out swag to their friends at school.

TikTok gave the National PTA millions of dollars, in part to throw school events about online safety and provide favorable comments to journalists.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Republicans want the FBI to probe whether foreign adversaries are stoking US data center backlash.

Following a report from a bitcoin policy think tank and claims from Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, three Republican lawmakers asked the Trump administration to brief them about investigations into alleged foreign influence campaigns. The lawmakers are concerned that adversaries are pushing anti-AI sentiment to slow US infrastructure development.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
A new bipartisan framework could preempt state AI laws for three years.

Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA) are releasing a highly anticipated 269-page draft bill as a launching pad for discussion about federal AI regulation, Politico reported. In a Bloomberg Law op-ed, the lawmakers said a national standard is necessary to extend protections across state lines.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Supreme Court backs FCC process that let it fine carriers over location sharing.

In an 8-1 ruling, the justices found that the Federal Communications Commission’s in-house process to levy fines doesn’t violate companies’ right to a jury trial. The case involved AT&T and Verizon’s challenges to fines they faced during the Biden administration over allegations they illegally shared customers’ location without consent.

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
SpaceX gets a Terafab tax break.

Grimes County, Texas, awarded the company a property tax exemption for its planned $55 billion Terafab semiconductor plant. Local residents seem to feel the same way about the project as many do about data centers, and this tax break won’t help. As local landowner Rhonda Nesloney put it in court:

“Elon was on the news bragging he’s about to be a trillionaire . . . and you want to consider giving him a tax abatement.”

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
This week in the big AI data center buildout.

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:

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Survey shows two-thirds of Americans are gamers now.

The ESA / YouGov data unsurprisingly shows that an estimated 212 million Americans play games, with gaming at least one hour a week most prevalent among young people, including over 80 percent of Gen Alpha and Gen Z.

Older Americans are playing games, too, though, including 50 percent of Boomers, the only generation where more women play games than men.

A chart showing the percentage of Americans in each generation who report playing video games
A chart showing the percentage of men and women of each generation who report playing video games
1/2Image: Entertainment Software Assocation
Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Trump library claims it doesn’t have records of the President’s Twitter DMs.

The library, tasked with preserving White House records, told The Washington Post it didn’t have responsive records to its Freedom of Information Request, despite evidence cited in legal filings of his DMs. Failing to preserve Trump’s messages while in office could violate the Presidential Records Act, according to The Post.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Meta’s Marketplace evades the EU’s Big Tech crackdown.

The EU’s General Court said the European Commission’s decision to designate Facebook Marketplace as a gatekeeper service under Digital Markets Act rules “lacks sufficient reasoning,” and that it should be exempt from the regulation. Meta also tried to appeal Messenger’s designation, but that decision stands firm.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Shrinking Kevin O’Leary’s mammoth Utah data center project.

Utah Senate president J. Stuart Adams is calling for a 75 percent reduction, bringing the project from 40,000 acres to approximately 10,000, alongside demands for greater transparency and stronger conservation commitments. O’Leary says the reduced proposal is like “selling you a house, and you get to live in the upstairs toilet.”

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
NPR reports the feds are investigating George Santos for allegedly betting on his own SOTU attendance.

The former Republican congressman claimed in a video on X that he would be at the State of the Union in February, but didn’t show up. Now, according to NPR reporter Bobby Allyn’s sources, the DOJ and CFTC are investigating whether Santos made tens of thousands of dollars betting on Kalshi that he wouldn’t be there.