Politics

404 Media sued ICE to get documents related to its $2 million contract with the spyware company Paragon. In response, ICE sent back heavily redacted documents that provide little insight into the surveillance tool, which can be used to remotely hack people’s phones without their knowledge — and can even break into their encrypted messaging apps.

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:

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.

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.”

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 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.

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.“

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.”

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.

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.”

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:

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.

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:

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.

The Federal Trade Commission launched a new website for consumers to report alleged failures to comply with the Take It Down Act, which went into full force today. Critics fear the law will be used to censor online speech, but the website also has resources for domestic violence survivors.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced the Energy Cost Fairness and Reliability Act, which would put new requirements on “energy-intensive facilities,” in an effort to lower the strain on the energy grid. It doesn’t yet have co-sponsors, but hits on an issue that’s become central to many communities and elections.

The T1 Phone was supposed to start shipping last week. But our review units haven’t budged, and I’ve so far failed to find anyone online claiming their phone has shipped either. Maybe they’ve had to delay the launch to fix the flag.

A new investigation by the New York Times has discovered that social media influencers are collecting tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, to back candidates, endorse policies, and attack political enemies. But where that money is coming from isn’t clear, and campaigns are embracing the secrecy.

Following his summit with China’s Xi Jinping, Trump also said in an interview with Fox News that Taiwan would be “very smart to cool it a little bit.” And that China would also be “very smart to cool it a little bit.”