The House narrowly voted Thursday to cut about $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress as President Donald Trump’s administration looks to follow through on work done by the Department of Government Efficiency when it was overseen by Elon Musk.

The package targets foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service as well as thousands of public radio and television stations around the country. The vote was 214-212.

Republicans are characterizing the spending as wasteful and unnecessary, but Democrats say the rescissions are hurting the United States’ standing in the world and will lead to needless deaths.

“Cruelty is the point,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said of the proposed spending cuts.

The Trump administration is employing a tool rarely used in recent years that allows the president to transmit a request to Congress to cancel previously appropriated funds. That triggers a 45-day clock in which the funds are frozen pending congressional action. If Congress fails to act within that period, then the spending stands.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, your taxpayer dollars are no longer being wasted,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said after the vote. “Instead, they are being directed toward priorities that truly benefit the American people.”

The benefit for the administration of a formal rescissions request is that passage requires only a simple majority in the 100-member Senate instead of the 60 votes usually required to get spending bills through that chamber. So if they stay largely united, Republicans will be able to pass the measure without any Democratic votes.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Senate would likely not take the bill up until July and after it has dealt with Trump’s big tax and immigration bill. He also said it’s possible the Senate could tweak the bill.

The administration is likening the first rescissions package to a test case and says more could be on the way if Congress goes along.

Republicans, sensitive to concerns that Trump’s sweeping tax and immigration bill would increase future federal deficits, are anxious to demonstrate spending discipline, though the cuts in the package amount to just a sliver of the spending approved by Congress each year. They are betting the cuts prove popular with constituents who align with Trump’s “America first” ideology as well as those who view NPR and PBS as having a liberal bias.

Four Republicans voted against the measure — Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Nicole Malliotakis of New York and Mike Turner of Ohio. No Democrats voted for the measure.

The bill looked like it was in danger of going down, but two lawmakers — Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Nick LaLota of New York — changed their votes to yes, allowing it to advance to the Senate.

LaLota had an extensive conversation with Johnson on the House floor as Johnson could be seen trying to win him over. Afterward, LaLota called it “private discussions” to make sure “my constituents will get what they need.”

Bacon said he was reassured by House Republican leadership that PBS would receiving funding for next year. He said he was also told that funding for the U.S.-led global response to HIV, known as PEPFAR, will not be affected.

“Because of these reassurances, I voted yes on H.R. 4,” Bacon said.

In all, the package contains 21 proposed rescissions. Approval would claw back about $900 million from $10 billion that Congress has approved for global health programs. That includes canceling $500 million for activities related to infectious diseases and child and maternal health and another $400 million to address the global HIV epidemic.

The Trump administration is also looking to cancel $800 million, or a quarter of the amount Congress approved, for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and sanitation, and family reunification for those forced to flee their own country.

About 45% of the savings sought by the White House would come from two programs designed to boost the economies, democratic institutions and civil societies in developing countries.

Democratic leadership, in urging their caucus to vote no, said that package would eliminate access to clean water for more than 3.6 million people and lead to millions more not having access to a school.

“Those Democrats saying that these rescissions will harm people in other countries are missing the point,” said Rep. Lisa McClain, House Republican Conference chair. “It’s about people in our country being put first.”

The Republican president asked lawmakers to rescind nearly $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it’s slated to receive during the next two budget years. About two-thirds of the money gets distributed to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations. Nearly half of those stations serve rural areas of the country.

“Cutting off federal funding to public media will not only damage local stations, it will be disruptive for millions of Americans who rely on it for news and information that helps them make decisions about their lives and participate in their communities,” said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Several advocacy groups that serve the world’s poorest people had urged lawmakers to vote no.

“We are already seeing women, children and families left without food, clean water and critical services after earlier aid cuts, and aid organizations can barely keep up with rising needs,” said Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, a poverty-fighting organization.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the foreign aid is a tool that prevents conflict and promotes stability, but the measure before the House takes that tool away.

“This bill is good for Russia and China and undertakers,” said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.

Republicans disparaged the foreign aid spending and sought to link it to programs they said DOGE had uncovered.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said taxpayer dollars had gone to such things as targeting climate change, promoting pottery classes and strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Other Republicans cited similar examples they said DOGE had revealed.

“Yet, my friends on the other side of the aisle would like you to believe, seriously, that if you don’t use your taxpayer dollars to fund this absurd list of projects and thousands of others I didn’t even list, that somehow people will die and our global standing in the world will crumble,” Roy said. “Well, let’s just reject this now.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Alex Brandon—AP

JetZero Inc. announced plans Thursday to build its first manufacturing plant for a next-generation passenger jet in central North Carolina, a project that if successful would create more than 14,500 jobs there in a decade.

The California-based startup intends to build the factory at Greensboro’s airport, investing $4.7 billion. The planned hirings from 2027 through 2036 would be the largest job commitment in North Carolina history, according to Gov. Josh Stein.

The company previously identified Greensboro as one of three finalists for the factory to build its fixed-wing — also known as all-wing or blended-wing — Z4 aircraft, which JetZero says will be up to 50% more fuel-efficient than traditional tube-and-wing airliners.

JetZero has said it’s already raised about $300 million toward investment in the Z4 project, including a U.S. Air Force grant to build and fly a demonstrator model by 2027.

United Airlines and Alaska Airlines also are project investors and have made conditional purchase agreements for their fleets, the company said. JetZero aims for the planes to go into service in the early 2030s, with a goal of completing 20 airplanes per month at full production.

Stein, on hand with JetZero executives and other officials for the formal announcement at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, cited North Carolina’s robust aerospace industry and the first manned powered flights at Kitty Hawk by the Wright brothers in 1903.

“North Carolina is the perfect location,” Stein said. “North Carolina was first in flight. We are also the future of flight.”

The jobs would pay minimum average salaries of more than $89,000, according to the state Department of Commerce, which provided details of the project discussed earlier Thursday by a state committee that awards economic incentives.

State and local monetary and training incentives for JetZero and the project described at the committee meeting could exceed $2.35 billion by the 2060s if investment and job-creation thresholds and other requirements are met.

A portion of state incentives awarded by the committee — more than $1 billion over 37 years — is based on a percentage of income taxes withheld from plant workers’ paychecks. The incentives also include up to $785 million from Guilford County and Greensboro and up to $450 million from the General Assembly in part to help with infrastructure, officials said. The project includes a research facility for composite structures.

A commerce department official said that JetZero, headquartered in Long Beach, California, looked for over a year for a plant location, examining 25 sites in 17 states.

JetZero, currently with just 225 workers, enters a jet purchasing market dominated by industry behemoths U.S.-based Boeing and European Airbus.

“We have already shown strong commercial interest and momentum to meet the real airline demand for this aircraft,” CEO Tom O’Leary said. “So this is more than just a factory. It’s a launchpad for a new chapter of American aerospace.”

While a variant of the Z4 would have tanker and transport uses in the military, JetZero has said that it would focus first on building a commercial jetliner with about 250 seats and a range of 5,000 nautical miles.

The 5-year-old company says the plane’s shape will reduce drag and the mounting of engines on the top and back of the plane will make it much quieter than traditional airliners. The Z4 would run on conventional jet fuel but could be converted to hydrogen fuel, according to JetZero.

JetZero says Z4 travelers will board through larger doors and into shorter but wider cabins, and aisles will be less congested as bathrooms will be far away from galleys where meals are prepared.

“It’s going to deliver a better passenger experience than you’ve ever had before on any other plane,” O’Leary said.

Stein said the state is already home to more than 400 aerospace companies. And the Piedmont Triad airport has emerged as an industry hot spot, with Honda Aircraft placing its headquarters there and Boom Supersonic building its first full-scale manufacturing plant for next-generation supersonic passenger jets.

The central location and easy access to interstates also lured Toyota to build an electric battery plant in adjoining Randolph County.

North Carolina’s previous largest economic development project, measured by employment, was revealed in 2022, when Vietnamese automaker VinFast announced plans to build an electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Chatham County, promising 7,500 jobs.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Walt Unks—The Winston-Salem Journal via AP

Meta is making a $14.3 billion investment in artificial intelligence company Scale and recruiting its CEO Alexandr Wang to join a team developing “superintelligence” at the tech giant.

The deal announced Thursday reflects a push by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to revive AI efforts at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram as it faces tough competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI.

Meta announced what it called a “strategic partnership and investment” with Scale late Thursday. Scale said the $14.3 billion investment puts its market value at over $29 billion.

Scale said it will remain an independent company but the agreement will “substantially expand Scale and Meta’s commercial relationship.” Meta will hold a 49% stake in the startup.

Wang, though leaving for Meta with a small group of other Scale employees, will remain on Scale’s board of directors. Replacing him is a new interim Scale CEO Jason Droege, who was previously the company’s chief strategy officer and had past executive roles at Uber Eats and Axon.

Zuckerberg’s increasing focus on the abstract idea of “superintelligence” — which rival companies call artificial general intelligence, or AGI — is the latest pivot for a tech leader who in 2021 went all-in on the idea of the metaverse, changing the company’s name and investing billions into advancing virtual reality and related technology.

It won’t be the first time since ChatGPT’s 2022 debut sparked an AI arms race that a big tech company has gobbled up talent and products at innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them. Microsoft hired key staff from startup Inflection AI, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who now runs Microsoft’s AI division.

Google pulled in the leaders of AI chatbot company Character.AI, while Amazon made a deal with San Francisco-based Adept that sent its CEO and key employees to the e-commerce giant. Amazon also got a license to Adept’s AI systems and datasets.

Wang was a 19-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he and co-founder Lucy Guo started Scale in 2016.

They won influential backing that summer from the startup incubator Y Combinator, which was led at the time by Sam Altman, now the CEO of OpenAI. Wang dropped out of MIT, following a trajectory similar to that of Zuckerberg, who quit Harvard University to start Facebook more than a decade earlier.

Scale’s pitch was to supply the human labor needed to improve AI systems, hiring workers to draw boxes around a pedestrian or a dog in a street photo so that self-driving cars could better predict what’s in front of them. General Motors and Toyota have been among Scale’s customers.

What Scale offered to AI developers was a more tailored version of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which had long been a go-to service for matching freelance workers with temporary online jobs.

More recently, the growing commercialization of AI large language models — the technology behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Llama — brought a new market for Scale’s annotation teams. The company claims to service “every leading large language model,” including from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft, by helping to fine tune their training data and test their performance. It’s not clear what the Meta deal will mean for Scale’s other customers.

Wang has also sought to build close relationships with the U.S. government, winning military contracts to supply AI tools to the Pentagon and attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The head of Trump’s science and technology office, Michael Kratsios, was an executive at Scale for the four years between Trump’s first and second terms. Meta has also begun providing AI services to the federal government.

Meta has taken a different approach to AI than many of its rivals, releasing its flagship Llama system for free as an open-source product that enables people to use and modify some of its key components. Meta says more than a billion people use its AI products each month, but it’s also widely seen as lagging behind competitors such as OpenAI and Google in encouraging consumer use of large language models, also known as LLMs.

It hasn’t yet released its purportedly most advanced model, Llama 4 Behemoth, despite previewing it in April as “one of the smartest LLMs in the world and our most powerful yet.”

Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who in 2019 was a winner of computer science’s top prize for his pioneering AI work, has expressed skepticism about the tech industry’s current focus on large language models.

“How do we build AI systems that understand the physical world, that have persistent memory, that can reason and can plan?” LeCun asked at a French tech conference last year.

These are all characteristics of intelligent behavior that large language models “basically cannot do, or they can only do them in a very superficial, approximate way,” LeCun said.

Instead, he emphasized Meta’s interest in “tracing a path towards human-level AI systems, or perhaps even superhuman.” When he returned to France’s annual VivaTech conference again on Wednesday, LeCun dodged a question about the pending Scale deal but said his AI research team’s plan has “always been to reach human intelligence and go beyond it.”

“It’s just that now we have a clearer vision for how to accomplish this,” he said.

LeCun co-founded Meta’s AI research division more than a decade ago with Rob Fergus, a fellow professor at New York University. Fergus later left for Google but returned to Meta last month after a 5-year absence to run the research lab, replacing longtime director Joelle Pineau.

Fergus wrote on LinkedIn last month that Meta’s commitment to long-term AI research “remains unwavering” and described the work as “building human-level experiences that transform the way we interact with technology.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Republican tax bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives would cost the poorest Americans roughly $1,600 a year while increasing the income of the wealthiest households by an average of $12,000 annually, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the Congressional Budget Office.

Middle-income households would see a boost of roughly $500 to $1,000 per year under Republican President Donald Trump’s tax bill, the CBO found.

The cuts to the lowest-income households come from proposed cuts to social safety net programs including Medicaid and a food assistance program for lower-income people, known as Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program.

The bill also proposes expanding work requirements to receive food aid and new “community engagement requirements” of at least 80 hours per month of work, education or service for able-bodied adults without dependents to receive Medicaid. Some proposed tax breaks would be temporary, including a tax break on tips and overtime, car loan interest and a $4,000 increase in the standard deduction for seniors.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other Republicans have sought to discredit the CBO’s analyses of the bill and say that the U.S. could head toward economic catastrophe if the measure is not passed. GOP Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo said during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday that the tax bill “recognizes the solution to our debt crisis is not to tax Americans more, it is to spend less.”

“The legislation recognizes that extending proven tax reform is critical for working families,” he said.

Administration officials have said the the cost of the tax bill would be offset by tariff income. Recently, the CBO separately estimated that Trump’s sweeping tariff plan would cut deficits by $2.8 trillion over a 10-year period while shrinking the economy, raising the inflation rate and reducing the purchasing power of households overall.

The CBO was established more than 50 years ago to provide objective, impartial analysis to support the budget process. It is required to produce a cost estimate for nearly every bill approved by a House or Senate committee and will weigh in earlier when asked to do so by lawmakers.

The office’s analysis released Thursday considers Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in isolation, excluding the potential impact of the tariffs that Trump has imposed and paused on nations around the world.

Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, who requested the CBO analysis released Thursday, said in a statement that “this would be one of the largest transfers of wealth from working families to the ultra-rich in American history. It’s shameful.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that directed President Donald Trump to return control of National Guard troops to California after he deployed them there following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.

The court said it would hold a hearing on the matter on Tuesday. The ruling came only hours after a federal judge’s order was to take effect at noon Friday.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Guard deployment was illegal and both violated the Tenth Amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The order applied only to the National Guard troops and not Marines who were also deployed to the LA protests. The judge said he would not rule on the Marines because they were not out on the streets yet.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had asked the judge for an emergency stop to troops helping carry out immigration raids, had praised the earlier ruling.

“Today was really about a test of democracy, and today we passed the test,” Newsom said in a news conference before the appeals court decision.

The White House had called Breyer’s order “unprecedented” and said it “puts our brave federal officials in danger.”

“The district court has no authority to usurp the President’s authority as Commander in Chief,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “The President exercised his lawful authority to mobilize the National Guard to protect federal buildings and personnel in Gavin Newsom’s lawless Los Angeles. The Trump Administration will immediately appeal this abuse of power and looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”

Marines in civil disturbance training at nearby base

About 700 Marines have been undergoing civil disturbance training at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach in Orange County, California. Nicholas Green, an attorney for the state, told the court: “I have been told by the office of the governor that within the next 24 hours, 140 Marines will replace and relieve National Guard members in Los Angeles.”

Typically the authority to call up the National Guard lies with governors, but there are limited circumstances under which the president can deploy those troops. Trump federalized members of the California National Guard under an authority known as Title 10.

Title 10 allows the president to call the National Guard into federal service under certain limited circumstances, such as when the country “is invaded,” when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is unable “to execute the laws of the United States.”

Breyer said in his ruling that what is happening in Los Angeles does not meet the definition of a rebellion.

“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’” he wrote.

California sued the federal government

Newsom sued to block the Guard’s deployment against his wishes. California later filed an emergency motion asking the judge to block the Guard from assisting with immigration raids.

The governor argued that the troops were originally deployed to protect federal buildings and wanted the court to block the troops from helping protect immigration agents during the raids, saying that involving the Guard would only escalate tensions and promote civil unrest.

Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, commander of Task Force 51, which is overseeing the Guard troops and Marines sent to Los Angeles, said that as of Wednesday about 500 of the Guard troops had been trained to accompany agents on immigration operations. Photos of Guard soldiers providing security for the agents have already been circulated by immigration officials.

None of the Marines have been trained to go on immigration raids, and it is not yet clear if they eventually will, Sherman said.

Trump improperly called up the Guard, judge says

In his broad ruling, the judge determined Trump had not properly called the Guard up in the first place.

The lawsuit argued that Title 10 also requires that the president go through governors when issuing orders to the National Guard.

Brett Shumate, an attorney for the federal government, said Trump complied with the statute by informing the general in charge of the troops of his decision and would have the authority to call in the Guard even if he had not.

In a brief filed ahead of the Thursday hearing, the Justice Department said Trump’s orders were not subject to judicial review.

“Courts did not interfere when President Eisenhower deployed the military to protect school desegregation. Courts did not interfere when President Nixon deployed the military to deliver the mail in the midst of a postal strike. And courts should not interfere here either,” the department said.

“Our position is this is not subject to judicial review,” Shumate told the judge.

Breyer, who at one point waved a copy of the Constitution, said he disagreed.

“We’re talking about the president exercising his authority, and the president is of course limited in that authority. That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George,” he said.

Protests intensified

The protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles intensified after Trump called up the Guard and have since spread to other cities, including Boston, Chicago and Seattle.

Trump has described Los Angeles in dire terms that Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom say are nowhere close to the truth.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Damian Dovarganes—AP

Israel attacked Iran’s capital early Friday in strikes that targeted the country’s nuclear program and killed at least two top military officers, raising the potential for an all-out war between the two bitter Middle East adversaries. It appeared to be the most significant attack Iran has faced since its 1980s war with Iraq.

The strikes came amid simmering tensions over Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program and appeared certain to trigger a reprisal, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning that “severe punishment” would be directed at Israel. Hours later, Israel’s military said it had begun intercepting Iranian drones launched in retaliation.

An Israeli official said the interceptions were taking place outside of Israeli territory, but did not elaborate. The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement.

Iraq said more than 100 Iranian drones had crossed its airspace, and a short time later neighboring Jordan said its air force and defense systems had intercepted several missiles and drones that had entered its airspace for fear they would fall in its territory.

Israel’s attack on Iran hit several sites, including the country’s main nuclear enrichment facility, where black smoke could be seen rising into the air. Later in the morning, it said it had also destroyed dozens of radar installations and surface-to-air missile launchers in western Iran.

The leader of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami, was confirmed dead, Iranian state television reported, a development that is a significant blow to Tehran’s governing theocracy and an immediate escalation of its long-simmering conflict with Israel.

The chief of staff of Iranian armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, was also confirmed dead by Iranian state television. Other top military officials and scientists were believed to have been killed.

In Washington, the Trump administration, which had cautioned Israel against an attack during continued negotiations over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, said that it had not been involved and warned against any retaliation targeting U.S. interests or personnel.

Still, it seemed likely the U.S. suspected an attack could be in the offing, with Washington on Wednesday pulling some American diplomats from Iraq’s capital and offering voluntary evacuations for the families of U.S. troops in the wider Middle East.

Israel calls attacks preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear program

Israeli leaders cast the preemptive assault as a fight for the nation’s survival that was necessary to head off an imminent threat that Iran would build nuclear bombs, though it remains unclear how close the country is to achieving that or whether Iran had actually been planning a strike soon.

“It could be a year. It could be within a few months,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as he vowed to pursue the attack for as long as necessary to “remove this threat.”

“This is a clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival,” he said.

Israel is believed to have carried out numerous highly secretive attacks on Iranian soil over the years, though it has rarely acknowledged them. Most have been aimed at Iran’s nuclear program, though Iran has also accused Israel of targeting its natural gas pipelines and of assassinating Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Over the past year, Israel has also been targeting Iran’s air defenses, hitting a radar system for a Russian-made air defense battery in April 2024 and surface-to-air missile sites and missile manufacturing facilities in October.

Some 200 Israeli aircraft took part in Friday’s operation, hitting about 100 targets, Israeli army chief spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said, adding that the attacks were ongoing.

In the aftermath, Defrin said Iran had launched more than 100 drones toward Israel and that “all the defense systems are acting to intercept the threats.”

Israel, Iraq, Iran and Jordan shut down their airspace to all flights as a precaution.

Iran confirms top officials and scientists killed

Khamenei issued a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency. It confirmed that top military officials and scientists had been killed in the attack.

Israel “opened its wicked and blood-stained hand to a crime in our beloved country, revealing its malicious nature more than ever by striking residential centers,” Khamenei said.

For Netanyahu, the operation distracts attention from Israel’s ongoing and increasingly devastating war in Gaza, which is now over 20 months old.

There is a broad consensus in the Israeli public that Iran is a major threat, and Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, a staunch critic of Netanyahu, offered his “full support” for the mission against Iran. But if Iranian reprisals cause heavy Israeli casualties or major disruptions to daily life, Netanyahu could see public opinion quickly shift.

Netanyahu expressed hope the attacks would trigger the downfall of Iran’s theocracy, saying his message to the Iranian people was that the fight was not with them, but with the “brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years.”

“I believe that the day of your liberation is near,” the Israeli leader said.

Multiple sites in the Iranian capital were hit in the attack, which Netanyahu said targeted both nuclear and military sites. Also targeted were officials leading Iran’s nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that an Israeli strike hit Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and said it was closely monitoring radiation levels.

The strike on Iran pushed the Israeli military to its limits, requiring the use of aging air-to-air refuelers to get its fighter jets close enough to attack. It wasn’t immediately clear if Israeli jets entered Iranian airspace or just fired so-called “standoff missiles” over another country. People in Iraq heard fighter jets overhead at the time of the attack. Israel previously attacked Iran from over the border in Iraq.

Tension had been growing for weeks ahead of attacks

The potential for an attack had been apparent for weeks as angst built over Iran’s nuclear program.

President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he did not believe an attack was imminent but also acknowledged that it “could very well happen.” Once the attacks were underway, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem issued an alert telling American government workers and their families to shelter in place until further notice.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Israel took “unilateral action against Iran” and that Israel advised the U.S. that it believed the strikes were necessary for its self-defense.

“We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement released by the White House.

Trump is scheduled to attend a meeting of his National Security Council on Friday in the White House Situation Room, where he is expected to discuss the conflict with top advisers. It is not clear if he plans to make public remarks on the strikes.

Israel has long been determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, a concern laid bare on Thursday when the Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency for the first time in 20 years censured Iran over its refusal to work with its inspectors. Iran immediately announced it would establish a third enrichment site in the country and swap out some centrifuges for more-advanced ones.

Even so, there are multiple assessments on how many nuclear weapons it could conceivably build, should it choose to do so. Iran would need months to assemble, test and field any weapon, which it so far has said it has no desire to do. U.S. intelligence agencies also assess Iran does not have a weapons program at this time.

In a sign of the far-reaching implications of the emerging conflict, Israel’s main airport was closed and benchmark Brent crude spiked on news of the attack, rising nearly 8%. Both Iran and Israel closed their airspace.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that in the aftermath of the strikes, “missile and drone attacks against Israel and its civilian population are expected immediately.”

“It is essential to listen to instructions from the home front command and authorities to stay in protected areas,” he said in a statement.

As the explosions in Tehran started, Trump was on the lawn of the White House mingling with members of Congress. It was unclear if he had been informed, but the president continued shaking hands and posing for pictures for several minutes.

Trump earlier said he urged Netanyahu to hold off on any action while the administration negotiated with Iran over nuclear enrichment.

“As long as I think there is a (chance for an) agreement, I don’t want them going in because I think it would blow it,” Trump told reporters.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Majid Saeedi—Getty Images

Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday was forcefully removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles and handcuffed by officers as he tried to speak up about immigration raids that have led to protests in California and around the country.

Video shows a Secret Service agent on Noem’s security detail grabbing the California senator by his jacket and shoving him from the room as he tried to speak up during the DHS secretary’s event. Padilla interrupted the news conference after Noem delivered a particularly pointed line, saying federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to “liberate” the city from its “socialist” leadership.

“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” he shouted in a halting voice.

Scuffling with officers outside the room, he can be heard bellowing, “Hands off!” He is later seen on his knees and then pushed to the ground and handcuffed in a hallway, with several officers atop him.

🚨 #BREAKING @SenAlexPadilla tries to interrupt a press conference by @DHSgov Sec @KristiNoem and he’s forcibly removed.

California’s senior U.S. Senator was handcuffed and detained.

Video from @AlexPadilla4CA’s staff 🚨 pic.twitter.com/PXfszkBXxo

— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) June 12, 2025

The shocking scene of a U.S. senator being aggressively removed from a Cabinet secretary’s news conference prompted immediate outrage from his Democratic colleagues. Images and video of the scuffle ricocheted through the halls of Congress, where stunned Democrats demanded an immediate investigation and characterized the episode as another in a line of mounting threats to democracy by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said what he saw “sickened my stomach.”

“We need immediate answers to what the hell went on,” the New York senator said from the Senate floor. “It’s despicable, it’s disgusting, it’s so un-American.”

In a statement, DHS said that Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater” and that Secret Service “thought he was an attacker.” The statement claimed erroneously that Padilla did not identify himself — he did, as he was being pushed from the room.

“Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” the statement said, adding that “officers acted appropriately.”

The fracas in Los Angeles came just days after Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers outside a detention center in New Jersey while Newark’s mayor was being arrested after he tried to join a congressional oversight visit at the facility. Democrats have framed the charges as intimidation efforts by the Trump administration.

It also follows days of rising tension between Trump and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the federal military intervention in California. In a speech earlier this week, the governor warned that “democracy is under assault before our eyes.”

Emerging afterward, Padilla said he was removed while demanding answers about the Trump administration’s “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions.” He said he and his colleagues had received little to no response to their questions in recent weeks, so he attended the briefing for more information.

“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question … I can only imagine what they are doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers throughout the Los Angeles community, and throughout California and throughout the country,” he said.

Noem told Fox LA afterward that she had a “great” conversation with Padilla after the scuffle, but called his approach “something that I don’t think was appropriate at all.”

The White House accused Padilla of grandstanding.

“Padilla didn’t want answers; he wanted attention,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. “It’s telling that Democrats are more riled up about Padilla than they are about the violent riots and assaults on law enforcement in LA.”

Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, has been a harsh Trump critic and his mass deportations agenda. In a social media post, he said of recent federal immigration raids in Los Angeles, “Trump isn’t targeting criminals in his mass deportation agenda, he is terrorizing communities, breaking apart families and putting American citizens in harm’s way.”

Padilla in 2021 became the state’s first Latino U.S. senator when he was selected by Newsom to fill Kamala Harris’ Senate seat after she was elected vice president. At the time, Padilla was the state’s chief elections officer.

Harris wrote in a social media post Thursday that Padilla “was representing the millions of Californians who are demanding answers to this administration’s actions in Southern California.” She called his forceful removal “a shameful and stunning abuse of power.”

Democratic senators quickly gathered in the chamber, denouncing the treatment of their colleague — a well-liked and respected senator — and urged Americans to understand what was happening.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Trump is making this country “look more and more like a fascist state.”

“Will any Republican senator speak up for our democracy?” Warren pleaded.

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., called on Noem to resign, saying that there was no justification for Padilla’s treatment and that the Trump administration needed to be held accountable.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., accused Padilla of “charging” Noem and indicated that the behavior “rises to the level of a censure.”

“My view is it was wildly inappropriate,” Johnson, a Trump ally, told reporters outside the House chamber as Democrats walking past shouted over him, “That’s a lie!”

“A sitting member of Congress should not act like that,” Johnson said, loudly speaking over reporters’ questions. “It’s beneath a member of Congress. It’s beneath the U.S. senator.”

Senate Republican leader John Thune said he has spoken to Padilla and is trying to reach Noem but hasn’t yet connected with her.

“We want to get the full scope of what happened and do what we would do in any incident like this involving a senator and try to gather all the relevant information,” the South Dakota senator said.

The No. 2 Republican, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, said that he was unaware of what happened but that Padilla should have been at work in Washington.

The stark incident comes as Congress faces increasing episodes of encroachment on its authority. As a coequal branch of the U.S. government, the Trump administration is exerting its executive powers in untested ways.

As part of their work in Congress, lawmakers are responsible for providing oversight of the administration, its agencies and actions.

Several senators and representatives have been exercising their oversight roles by surveying the treatment of immigrants and others being detained as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation.

From the steps of the U.S. Capitol, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened to Padilla “was un-American” and those involved must be held accountable.

“This is not going to end until there is accountability and until the Trump administration changes its behavior,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Etienne Laurent

A man who says he was kidnapped by two crypto investors for his Bitcoin was seen in photos and videos “laughing and smiling” and moving about Manhattan freely during the days he claimed he was tortured in captivity, lawyers for the two suspects said in court Wednesday.

William Duplessie, 32, and John Woeltz, 37, pleaded not guilty and were ordered held in custody until their next court date on July 15. Prosecutors argue the man was clearly in distress because he ran barefoot and bloodied to the nearest police officer after escaping 17 days in captivity.

However, Duplessie’s lawyer said Wednesday that videos show the accuser participating in group sex and smoking crack cocaine while “laughing and smiling the whole time.” In other photos, Sam Talkin said, the accuser is seen visiting an eyeglass store with one of the defendants and could have fled or sought help at any time.

“The story that he is selling doesn’t make sense,” Talkin said in Manhattan criminal court as the defendants were formally arraigned.

Woeltz’s lawyer, Wayne Gosnell, added that witnesses told him the accuser came and went as he pleased from the upscale town house where he says he was held — going to church, clubs and dinners.

The accuser, a 28-year-old Italian national, has not been named by officials. Prosecutors say the defendants have known him personally for years.

In court Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Sarah Khan argued that someone who supports the defendants was selectively leaking videos to present a counternarrative of the events.

In reality, she said, the accuser was constantly watched, was not permitted to leave the house without being guarded and was subjected to violence, including being pistol-whipped and cut with a small chain saw.

The defendants also took photos of the man in various poses and acts to create the impression that he was not being held against his will, Khan said.

Police searching the town house found evidence corroborating his story, including a loaded pistol, chain saw and other instruments purportedly used to torture him.

They also located photographs, including one where the defendants point a gun to the accuser’s head, another where the accuser is tied to a wheelchair, and still another showing the accuser being set on fire.

When prodded by the judge, Khan explained that the man didn’t actually sustain any burn injuries because the defendants would quickly douse the flames, sometimes by urinating on him.

What’s more, she said, prosecutors believe this is not the first time the defendants have held a person against their will. They are aware of two other potential victims in two other locations, according to Khan.

Lawyers for the two men, meanwhile, sought their release on $1 million bail and home confinement with their parents. They rejected suggestions from prosecutors that their clients could flee the country.

“He’s so far from a flight risk here. He’s ready to fight this case. He’s not going anywhere,” Talkin said of Duplessie.

The two appeared handcuffed in prison uniforms and didn’t speak in court other than to formally enter their pleas. They are charged with kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon and face up to life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors say that on May 6, the two men lured the victim to a town house in Manhattan’s posh SoHo neighborhood by threatening to kill his family.

The man said the two investors tormented him with electrical wires, forced him to smoke from a crack pipe and at one point dangled him from a staircase five stories high.

The man said he eventually agreed to hand over his computer password, then managed to flee as his captors went to retrieve the device.

Khan said Wednesday that last month’s kidnapping was at least the third instance in which the two had convinced the man to meet them in person, only to threaten him and take his electronic devices in order to obtain his cryptocurrency.

To date, Khan said, he hasn’t received his money or electronic devices back.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Kava Gorna—AP

President Donald Trump signed a resolution on Thursday that blocks California’s first-in-the-nation rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.

The state quickly announced it was challenging the move in court, with California’s attorney general holding a news conference to discuss the lawsuit before Trump’s signing ceremony ended at the White House.

The resolution was approved by Congress last month and aims to quash the country’s most aggressive attempt to phase out gas-powered cars. Trump also signed measures to overturn state policies curbing tailpipe emissions in certain vehicles and smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from trucks.

Trump called California’s regulations “crazy” at a White House ceremony where he signed the resolutions.

“It’s been a disaster for this country,” he said.

It comes as the Republican president is mired in a clash with California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, over Trump’s move to deploy troops to Los Angeles in response to immigration protests. It’s the latest in an ongoing battle between the Trump administration and heavily Democratic California over issues including tariffs, the rights of LGBTQ+ youth and funding for electric vehicle chargers.

The state is already involved in more than two-dozen lawsuits challenging Trump administration actions, and the state’s Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the latest one at a news conference in California. Ten other states, all with Democratic attorneys general, joined the lawsuit filed Thursday.

“The federal government’s actions are not only unlawful; they’re irrational and wildly partisan,” Bonta said. “They come at the direct expense of the health and the well-being of our people.”

The three resolutions Trump signed will block California’s rule phasing out gas-powered cars and end the sale of new ones by 2035. They will also kill rules that phase out the sale of medium- and heavy-duty diesel vehicles and cut tailpipe emissions from trucks.

In his remarks at the White House, Trump expressed doubts about the performance and reliability of electric vehicles, though he had some notably positive comments about the company owned by Elon Musk, despite their fractured relationship.

“I like Tesla,” Trump said.

In remarks that often meandered away from the subject at hand, Trump used the East Room ceremony to also muse on windmills, which he claimed “are killing our country,” the prospect of getting electrocuted by an electric-powered boat if it sank and whether he’d risk a shark attack by jumping as the boat went down.

“I’ll take electrocution every single day,” the president said.

When it comes to cars, Trump said he likes combustion engines but for those that prefer otherwise, “If you want to buy electric, you can buy electric.”

“What this does is it gives us freedom,” said Bill Kent, the owner of Kent Kwik convenience stores. Kent, speaking at the White House, said that the California rules would have forced him to install “infrastructure that frankly, is extremely expensive and doesn’t give you any return.”

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents major car makers, applauded Trump’s action.

“Everyone agreed these EV sales mandates were never achievable and wildly unrealistic,” John Bozzella, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement.

Newsom, who is considered a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, and California officials contend that what the federal government is doing is illegal and said the state plans to sue.

Newsom said Trump’s action was a continuation of his “all-out assault” on California.

“And this time he’s destroying our clean air and America’s global competitiveness in the process,” Newsom said in a statement. “We are suing to stop this latest illegal action by a President who is a wholly-owned subsidiary of big polluters.”

The signings come as Trump has pledged to revive American auto manufacturing and boost oil and gas drilling.

The move follows other steps the Trump administration has taken to roll back rules that aim to protect air and water and reduce emissions that cause climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed repealing rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.

Dan Becker with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the signing of the resolutions was “Trump’s latest betrayal of democracy.”

“Signing this bill is a flagrant abuse of the law to reward Big Oil and Big Auto corporations at the expense of everyday people’s health and their wallets,” Becker said in a statement.

California, which has some of the nation’s worst air pollution, has been able to seek waivers for decades from the EPA, allowing it to adopt stricter emissions standards than the federal government.

In his first term, Trump revoked California’s ability to enforce its standards, but Democratic President Joe Biden reinstated it in 2022. Trump has not yet sought to revoke it again.

Republicans have long criticized those waivers and earlier this year opted to use the Congressional Review Act, a law aimed at improving congressional oversight of actions by federal agencies, to try to block the rules.

That’s despite a finding from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, that California’s standards cannot legally be blocked using the Congressional Review Act. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with that finding.

California, which makes up roughly 11% of the U.S. car market, has significant power to sway trends in the auto industry. About a dozen states signed on to adopt California’s rule phasing out the sale of new gas-powered cars.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Win McNamee/Getty Images

Everything ever said on the internet was just the start of teaching artificial intelligence about humanity. Tech companies are now tapping into an older repository of knowledge: the library stacks.

Nearly one million books published as early as the 15th century — and in 254 languages — are part of a Harvard University collection being released to AI researchers Thursday. Also coming soon are troves of old newspapers and government documents held by Boston’s public library.

Cracking open the vaults to centuries-old tomes could be a data bonanza for tech companies battling lawsuits from living novelists, visual artists and others whose creative works have been scooped up without their consent to train AI chatbots.

“It is a prudent decision to start with public domain data because that’s less controversial right now than content that’s still under copyright,” said Burton Davis, a deputy general counsel at Microsoft.

Davis said libraries also hold “significant amounts of interesting cultural, historical and language data” that’s missing from the past few decades of online commentary that AI chatbots have mostly learned from. Fears of running out of data have also led AI developers to turn to “synthetic” data, made by the chatbots themselves and of a lower quality.

Supported by “unrestricted gifts” from Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI, the Harvard-based Institutional Data Initiative is working with libraries and museums around the world on how to make their historic collections AI-ready in a way that also benefits the communities they serve.

“We’re trying to move some of the power from this current AI moment back to these institutions,” said Aristana Scourtas, who manages research at Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab. “Librarians have always been the stewards of data and the stewards of information.”

Harvard’s newly released dataset, Institutional Books 1.0, contains more than 394 million scanned pages of paper. One of the earlier works is from the 1400s — a Korean painter’s handwritten thoughts about cultivating flowers and trees. The largest concentration of works is from the 19th century, on subjects such as literature, philosophy, law and agriculture, all of it meticulously preserved and organized by generations of librarians.

It promises to be a boon for AI developers trying to improve the accuracy and reliability of their systems.

“A lot of the data that’s been used in AI training has not come from original sources,” said the data initiative’s executive director, Greg Leppert, who is also chief technologist at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. This book collection goes “all the way back to the physical copy that was scanned by the institutions that actually collected those items,” he said.

Before ChatGPT sparked a commercial AI frenzy, most AI researchers didn’t think much about the provenance of the passages of text they pulled from Wikipedia, from social media forums like Reddit and sometimes from deep repositories of pirated books. They just needed lots of what computer scientists call tokens — units of data, each of which can represent a piece of a word.

Harvard’s new AI training collection has an estimated 242 billion tokens, an amount that’s hard for humans to fathom but it’s still just a drop of what’s being fed into the most advanced AI systems. Facebook parent company Meta, for instance, has said the latest version of its AI large language model was trained on more than 30 trillion tokens pulled from text, images and videos.

Meta is also battling a lawsuit from comedian Sarah Silverman and other published authors who accuse the company of stealing their books from “shadow libraries” of pirated works.

Now, with some reservations, the real libraries are standing up.

OpenAI, which is also fighting a string of copyright lawsuits, donated $50 million this year to a group of research institutions including Oxford University’s 400-year-old Bodleian Library, which is digitizing rare texts and using AI to help transcribe them.

When the company first reached out to the Boston Public Library, one of the biggest in the U.S., the library made clear that any information it digitized would be for everyone, said Jessica Chapel, its chief of digital and online services.

“OpenAI had this interest in massive amounts of training data. We have an interest in massive amounts of digital objects. So this is kind of just a case that things are aligning,” Chapel said.

Digitization is expensive. It’s been painstaking work, for instance, for Boston’s library to scan and curate dozens of New England’s French-language newspapers that were widely read in the late 19th and early 20th century by Canadian immigrant communities from Quebec. Now that such text is of use as training data, it helps bankroll projects that librarians want to do anyway.

Harvard’s collection was already digitized starting in 2006 for another tech giant, Google, in its controversial project to create a searchable online library of more than 20 million books.

Google spent years beating back legal challenges from authors to its online book library, which included many newer and copyrighted works. It was finally settled in 2016 when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand lower court rulings that rejected copyright infringement claims.

Now, for the first time, Google has worked with Harvard to retrieve public domain volumes from Google Books and clear the way for their release to AI developers. Copyright protections in the U.S. typically last for 95 years, and longer for sound recordings.

The new effort was applauded Thursday by the same authors’ group that sued Google over its book project and more recently has brought AI companies to court.

“Many of these titles exist only in the stacks of major libraries and the creation and use of this dataset will provide expanded access to these volumes and the knowledge within,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, in a Thursday statement. “Importantly, the creation of a legal, large training dataset, will democratize the creation of new AI models.”

How useful all of this will be for the next generation of AI tools remains to be seen as the data gets shared Thursday on the Hugging Face platform, which hosts datasets and open-source AI models that anyone can download.

The book collection is more linguistically diverse than typical AI data sources. Fewer than half the volumes are in English, though European languages still dominate, particularly German, French, Italian, Spanish and Latin.

A book collection steeped in 19th century thought could also be “immensely critical” for the tech industry’s efforts to build AI agents that can plan and reason as well as humans, Leppert said.

“At a university, you have a lot of pedagogy around what it means to reason,” Leppert said. “You have a lot of scientific information about how to run processes and how to run analyses.”

At the same time, there’s also plenty of outdated data, from debunked scientific and medical theories to racist and colonial narratives.

“When you’re dealing with such a large data set, there are some tricky issues around harmful content and language,” said Kristi Mukk, a coordinator at Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab who said the initiative is trying to provide guidance about mitigating the risks of using the data, to “help them make their own informed decisions and use AI responsibly.”

————

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Sophie Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Internal Revenue Service, giving the beleaguered agency he once sought to abolish a permanent commissioner after months of acting leaders and massive staffing cuts that have threatened to derail next year’s tax filing season.

The Senate confirmed Long on a 53-44 vote despite Democrats’ concerns about the Republican’s past work for a firm that pitched a fraud-ridden coronavirus pandemic-era tax break and about campaign contributions he received after President Donald Trump nominated him to serve as IRS commissioner.

While in Congress, where he served from 2011 to 2023, Long sponsored legislation to get rid of the IRS, the agency he is now tasked with leading. A former auctioneer, Long has no background in tax administration

Long will take over an IRS undergoing massive change, including layoffs and voluntary retirements of tens of thousands of workers and accusations that then-Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency mishandled sensitive taxpayer data. Unions and advocacy organizations have sued to block DOGE’s access to the information.

The IRS was one of the highest-profile agencies still without a Senate-confirmed leader. Before Long’s confirmation, the IRS shuffled through four acting leaders, including one who resigned over a deal between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and another whose appointment led to a fight between Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

After leaving Congress to mount an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, Long worked with a firm that distributed the pandemic-era employee retention tax credit. That tax credit program was eventually shut down after then-IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel determined that it was fraudulent.

Democrats called for a criminal investigation into Long’s connections to other alleged tax credit loopholes. The lawmakers allege that firms connected to Long duped investors into spending millions of dollars to purchase fake tax credits.

Long appeared before the Senate Finance Committee last month and denied any wrongdoing related to his involvement in the tax credit scheme.

Ahead of the confirmation vote, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles blasting the requisite FBI background check conducted on Long as a political appointee as inadequate.

“These issues were not adequately investigated,” Wyden wrote. “In fact, the FBI’s investigation, a process dictated by the White House, seemed designed to avoid substantively addressing any of these concerning public reports. It’s almost as if the FBI is unable to read the newspaper.”

Democratic lawmakers have also written to Long and his associated firms detailing concerns with what they call unusually timed contributions made to Long’s defunct 2022 Senate campaign committee shortly after Trump nominated him.

The IRS faces an uncertain future under Long. Tax experts have voiced concerns that the 2026 filing season could be hampered by the departure of so many tax collection workers. In April, The Associated Press reported that the IRS planned to cut as many as 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce. An IRS representative on Thursday confirmed the IRS had shed about that many workers but said the cuts amounted to approximately the same number of IRS jobs added under the Biden administration.

The fate of the Direct File program, the free electronic tax return filing system developed during President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, is also unclear. Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation companies had complained it was a waste of taxpayer money because free filing programs already exist, although they are hard to use. Long said during his confirmation hearing that it would be one of the first programs that come up for discussion if he were confirmed.

Long is not the only Trump appointee to support dismantling an agency he was assigned to manage.
Linda McMahon, the current education secretary, has repeatedly said she is trying to put herself out of a job by closing the federal department and transferring its work to the states. Rick Perry, Trump’s energy secretary during his first term, called for abolishing the Energy Department during his bid for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Greg Nash/Pool via AP File

A string of recent cyberattacks and data breaches involving the systems of major retailers have started affecting shoppers.

United Natural Foods, a wholesale distributor that supplies Whole Foods and other grocers, said this week that a breach of its systems was disrupting its ability to fulfill orders — leaving many stores without certain items.

In the U.K., consumers could not order from the website of Marks & Spencer for more than six weeks — and found fewer in-store options after hackers targeted the British clothing, home goods and food retailer. A cyberattack on Co-op, a U.K. grocery chain, also led to empty shelves in some stores.

Cyberattacks have been on the rise across industries. But infiltrations of corporate technology carry their own set of implications when the target is a consumer-facing business.

Beyond potentially halting sales of physical goods, breaches can expose customers’ personal data to future phishing or fraud attempts.

Here’s what you need to know.

Cyberattacks are on the rise overall

Despite ongoing efforts from organizations to boost their cybersecurity defenses, experts note that cyberattacks continue to increase across the board.

In the past year, there’s also been an “uptick in the retail victims” of such attacks, said Cliff Steinhauer, director of information security and engagement at the National Cybersecurity Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit.

“Cyber criminals are moving a little quicker than we are in terms of securing our systems,” he said.

Ransomware attacks — in which hackers demand a hefty payment to restore hacked systems — account for a growing share of cyber crimes, experts note. And of course, retail isn’t the only affected sector. Tracking by NCC Group, a global cybersecurity and software escrow firm, showed that industrial businesses were most often targeted for ransomware attacks in April, followed by companies in the “consumer discretionary” sector.

Attackers know there’s a particular impact when going after well-known brands and products that shoppers buy or need every day, experts note.

“Creating that chaos and that panic with consumers puts pressure on the retailer,” Steinhauer said, especially if there’s a ransom demand involved.

Ade Clewlow, an associate director and senior adviser at the NCC Group, points specifically to food supply chain disruptions. Following the cyberattacks targeting M&S and Co-op, for example, supermarkets in remote areas of the U.K., where inventory already was strained, saw product shortages.

“People were literally going without the basics,” Clewlow said.

Personal data is also at risk

Along with impacting business operations, cyber breaches may compromise customer data. The information can range from names and email addresses, to more sensitive data like credit card numbers, depending on the scope of the breach. Consumers therefore need to stay alert, according to experts.

“If (consumers have) given their personal information to these retailers, then they just have to be on their guard. Not just immediately, but really going forward,” Clewlow said, noting that recipients of the data may try to commit fraud “downstream.”

Fraudsters might send look-alike emails asking a retailer’s account holders to change their passwords or promising fake promotions to get customers to click on a sketchy link. A good rule of thumb is to pause before opening anything and to visit the company’s recognized website or call an official customer service hotline to verify the email, experts say.

It’s also best not to reuse the same passwords across multiple websites — because if one platform is breached, that login information could be used to get into other accounts, through a tactic known as “credential stuffing.” Steinhauer adds that using multifactor authentication, when available, and freezing your credit are also useful for added lines of defense.

Which companies have reported recent cybersecurity incidents?

A range of consumer-facing companies have reported cybersecurity incidents recently — including breaches that have caused some businesses to halt operations.

United Natural Foods, a major distributor for Whole Foods and other grocers across North America, took some of its systems offline after discovering “unauthorized activity” on June 5.

In a securities filing, the company said the incident had impacted its “ability to fulfill and distribute customer orders.” United Natural Foods said in a Wednesday update that it was “working steadily” to gradually restore the services.

Still, that’s meant leaner supplies of certain items this week. A Whole Foods spokesperson told The Associated Press via email that it was working to restock shelves as soon as possible. The Amazon-owned grocer’s partnership with United Natural Foods currently runs through May 2032.

Meanwhile, a security breach detected by Victoria’s Secret last month led the popular lingerie seller to shut down its U.S. shopping site for nearly four days, as well as to halt some in-store services. Victoria’s Secret later disclosed that its corporate systems also were affected, too, causing the company to delay the release of its first quarter earnings.

Several British retailers — M&S, Harrods and Co-op — have all pointed to impacts of recent cyberattacks. The attack targeting M&S, which was first reported around Easter weekend, stopped it from processing online orders and also emptied some store shelves.

The company estimated last month that the it would incur costs of 300 million pounds ($400 million) from the attack. But progress towards recovery was shared Tuesday, when M&S announced that some of its online order operations were back — with more set to be added in the coming weeks.

Other breaches exposed customer data, with brands like Adidas, The North Face and reportedly Cartier all disclosing that some contact information was compromised recently.

In a statement, The North Face said it discovered a “small-scale credential stuffing attack” on its website in April. The company reported that no credit card data was compromised and said the incident, which impacted 1,500 consumers, was “quickly contained.”

Meanwhile, Adidas disclosed last month that an “unauthorized external party” obtained some data, which was mostly contact information, through a third-party customer service provider.

Whether or not the incidents are connected is unknown. Experts like Steinhauer note that hackers sometimes target a piece of software used by many different companies and organizations. But the range of tactics used could indicate the involvement of different groups.

Companies’ language around cyberattacks and security breaches also varies — and may depend on what they know when. But many don’t immediately or publicly specify whether ransomware was involved.

Still, Steinhauer says the likelihood of ransomware attacks is “pretty high” in today’s cybersecurity landscape — and key indicators can include businesses taking their systems offline or delaying financial reporting.

Overall, experts say it’s important to build up “cyber hygiene” defenses and preparations across organizations.

“Cyber is a business risk, and it needs to be treated that way,” Clewlow said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Wyatte Grantham-Phillips—AP

An Air India passenger plane bound for London with more than 240 people on board crashed Thursday in India’s northwestern city of Ahmedabad, the airline said.

Visuals on local television channels showed smoke billowing from the crash site in what appeared to be a populated area near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city with a population of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.

Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multi-story buildings with water. Charred bodies lay on the ground.

“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.

Modi called the crash “heartbreaking beyond words.”

“In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected,” he said in a social media post.

The airline said the Gatwick Airport-bound flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew. Of those, Air India said there were 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.

Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told The Associated Press that Air India flight AI 171, a Boeing 787-8, crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 p.m. local time. He said 244 people were on board and it was not immediately possible to reconcile the discrepancy with Air India’s numbers.

All efforts were being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site, India’s Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X.

The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engine plane. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

Boeing said it was aware of the reports of the crash and was “working to gather more information.”

The aircraft was introduced in 2009 and more than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to the flightradar24 website.

Air India’s chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said at the moment “our primary focus is on supporting all the affected people and their families.”

He said on X that the airline had set up an emergency center and support team for families seeking information about those who were on the flight.

“Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of all those affected by this devastating event,” he said.

British Cabinet minister Lucy Powell said the government will provide “all the support that it can” to those affected by the crash.

“This is an unfolding story, and it will undoubtedly be causing a huge amount of worry and concern to the many, many families and communities here and those waiting for the arrival of their loved ones,” she told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

“We send our deepest sympathy and thoughts to all those families, and the government will provide all the support that it can with those in India and those in this country as well,” she added.

Britain has very close ties with India. There were nearly 1.9 million people in the country of Indian descent, according to the 2021 U.K. census.

The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020 when an Air India Express Boeing-737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people.

The worst air disaster in India was on Nov. 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided midair with a Kazakhastan Airlines Flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 on board the two planes.

The crash comes days before the opening of the Paris Air Show, a major aviation expo where Boeing and European rival Airbus will showcase their aircraft and battle for jet orders from airline customers.

Boeing has been in recovery mode for more than six years after Lion Air Flight 610, a Boeing 737 Max 8, plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157 passengers and crew members.

Shares of Boeing Co. tumbled nearly 9% before trading opened in the U.S.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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President Donald Trump is expected to sign a measure Thursday that blocks California’s first-in-the-nation rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, a White House official told The Associated Press.

The resolution Trump plans to sign, which Congress approved last month, aims to quash the country’s most aggressive attempt to phase out gas-powered cars. He also plans to approve measures to overturn state policies curbing tailpipe emissions in certain vehicles and smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from trucks.

The timing of the signing was confirmed Wednesday by a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to share plans not yet public.

The development comes as the Republican president is mired in a clash with California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, over Trump’s move to deploy troops to Los Angeles in response to immigration protests. It’s the latest in an ongoing battle between the Trump administration and heavily Democratic California over everything from tariffs to the rights of LGBTQ+ youth and funding for electric vehicle chargers.

“If it’s a day ending in Y, it’s another day of Trump’s war on California,” Newsom spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor said in an email. “We’re fighting back.”

According to the White House official, Trump is expected to sign resolutions that block California’s rule phasing out gas-powered cars and ending the sale of new ones by 2035. He will also kill rules that phase out the sale of medium- and heavy-duty diesel vehicles and cut tailpipe emissions from trucks.

The president is scheduled to sign the measures and make remarks during an event at the White House on Thursday morning.

Newsom, who is considered a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, and California officials contend that what the federal government is doing is illegal and said the state plans to sue.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin are expected to attend, along with members of Congress and representatives from the energy, trucking and gas station industries.

The signings come as Trump has pledged to revive American auto manufacturing and boost oil and gas drilling.

The move will also come a day after the Environmental Protection Agency proposed repealing rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas. Zeldin said it would remove billions of dollars in costs for industry and help “unleash” American energy.

California, which has some of the nation’s worst air pollution, has been able to seek waivers for decades from the EPA, allowing it to adopt stricter emissions standards than the federal government.

In his first term, Trump revoked California’s ability to enforce its standards, but President Joe Biden reinstated it in 2022. Trump has not yet sought to revoke it again.

Republicans have long criticized those waivers and earlier this year opted to use the Congressional Review Act, a law aimed at improving congressional oversight of actions by federal agencies, to try to block the rules.

That’s despite a finding from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, that California’s standards cannot legally be blocked using the Congressional Review Act. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with that finding.

California, which makes up roughly 11% of the U.S. car market, has significant power to sway trends in the auto industry. About a dozen states signed on to adopt California’s rule phasing out the sale of new gas-powered cars.

The National Automobile Dealers Association supported the federal government’s move to block California’s ban on gas-powered cars, saying Congress should decide on such a national issue, not the state.

The American Trucking Associations said the rules were not feasible and celebrated Congress’ move to block them.

Chris Spear, the CEO of the American Trucking Associations, said in a statement Wednesday: “This is not the United States of California.”

It was also applauded by Detroit automaker General Motors, which said it will “help align emissions standards with today’s market realities.”

“We have long advocated for one national standard that will allow us to stay competitive, continue to invest in U.S. innovation, and offer customer choice across the broadest lineup of gas-powered and electric vehicles,” the company said in a statement.

Dan Becker with the Center for Biological Diversity, in anticipation of the president signing the measures, said earlier Thursday that the move would be “Trump’s latest betrayal of democracy.”

“Signing this bill is a flagrant abuse of the law to reward Big Oil and Big Auto corporations at the expense of everyday people’s health and their wallets,” Becker said in a statement.

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The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas, an action that Administrator Lee Zeldin said would remove billions of dollars in costs for industry and help “unleash” American energy.

The EPA also proposed weakening a regulation that requires power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants that can harm the brain development of young children and contribute to heart attacks and other health problems in adults.

The rollbacks are meant to fulfill Republican President Donald Trump’s repeated pledge to “ unleash American energy ” and make it more affordable for Americans to power their homes and operate businesses.

If approved and made final, the plans would reverse efforts by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to address climate change and improve conditions in areas heavily burdened by industrial pollution, mostly in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities.

The power plant rules are among about 30 environmental regulations that Zeldin targeted in March when he announced what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”

Zeldin said Wednesday the new rules would help end what he called the Biden and Obama administrations’ “war on so much of our U.S. domestic energy supply.”

“The American public spoke loudly and clearly last November,” he added in a speech at EPA headquarters. “They wanted to make sure that … no matter what agency anybody might be confirmed to lead, we are finding opportunities to pursue common-sense, pragmatic solutions that will help reduce the cost of living … create jobs and usher in a golden era of American prosperity.”

Environmental and public health groups called the rollbacks dangerous and vowed to challenge the rules in court.

Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, called the proposals “yet another in a series of attacks” by the Trump administration on the nation’s “health, our children, our climate and the basic idea of clean air and water.”

She called it “unconscionable to think that our country would move backwards on something as common sense as protecting children from mercury and our planet from worsening hurricanes, wildfires, floods and poor air quality driven by climate change.”

“Ignoring the immense harm to public health from power plant pollution is a clear violation of the law,” added Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If EPA finalizes a slapdash effort to repeal those rules, we’ll see them in court.”

The EPA-targeted rules could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination that included the agency’s own prior assessments and a wide range of other research.

It’s by no means guaranteed that the rules will be entirely eliminated — they can’t be changed without going through a federal rulemaking process that can take years and requires public comment and scientific justification.

Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead — and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of greenhouse gases, driving Earth’s warming to deadlier levels.

Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued last year. Then-EPA head Michael Regan said the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while supporting a reliable, long-term supply of electricity.

The power sector is the nation’s second-largest contributor to climate change, after transportation.

In its proposed regulation, the Trump EPA argues that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired plants “are a small and decreasing part of global emissions,” the EPA said, adding: “This Administration’s priority is to promote the public health or welfare through energy dominance and independence secured by using fossil fuels to generate power.”

The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to limit emissions from power plants and other industrial sources if those emissions significantly contribute to air pollution that endangers public health.

If fossil fuel plants no longer meet the EPA’s threshold, the Trump administration may later argue that other pollutants from other industrial sectors don’t either and therefore shouldn’t be regulated, said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Justice Department lawyer now in private practice at Jenner & Block LLP.

The EPA proposal “has the potential to have much, much broader implications,” she said.

Zeldin, a former New York congressman, said the Biden-era rules were designed to “suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment,” with the intent to regulate the coal industry “out of existence” and make it “disappear.”

National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan applauded the new rules, saying they remove “deliberately unattainable standards” for clean air while “leveling the playing field for reliable power sources, instead of stacking the deck against them.”

But Dr. Howard Frumkin, a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health and professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said Zeldin and Trump were trying to deny reality.

“The world is round, the sun rises in the east, coal- and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change, and climate change increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms and many other health threats,” Frumkin said. “These are indisputable facts. If you torpedo regulations on power plant greenhouse gas emissions, you torpedo the health and well-being of the American public and contribute to leaving a world of risk and suffering to our children and grandchildren.”

A paper published earlier this year in the journal Science found the Biden-era rules could reduce U.S. power sector carbon emissions by 73% to 86% below 2005 levels by 2040, compared with a reduction of 60% to 83% without the rules.

“Carbon emissions in the power sector drop at a faster rate with the (Biden-era) rules in place than without them,” said Aaron Bergman, a fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research institution and a co-author of the Science paper. The Biden rule also would result in “significant reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, pollutants that harm human health,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world’s most influential recording artists, has died at 82.

Wilson’s family posted news of his death to his website and social media accounts Wednesday. Further details weren’t immediately available. Since May 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship to oversee his personal and medical affairs, with Wilson’s longtime representatives, publicist Jean Sievers and manager LeeAnn Hard, in charge.

The eldest and last surviving of three musical brothers — Brian played bass, Carl lead guitar and Dennis drums — he and his fellow Beach Boys rose in the 1960s from local California band to national hitmakers to international ambassadors of surf and sun. Wilson himself was celebrated for his gifts and pitied for his demons. He was one of rock’s great Romantics, a tormented man who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper path to aural perfection, the one true sound.

The Beach Boys rank among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million. The 1966 album “Pet Sounds” was voted No. 2 in a 2003 Rolling Stone list of the best 500 albums, losing out, as Wilson had done before, to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The Beach Boys, who also featured Wilson cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine, were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Wilson feuded with Love over songwriting credits, but peers otherwise adored him beyond envy, from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Katy Perry and Carole King. The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, fantasized about joining the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney cited “Pet Sounds” as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and the ballad “God Only Knows” as among his favorite songs, often bringing him to tears.

Wilson moved and fascinated fans and musicians long after he stopped having hits. In his later years, Wilson and a devoted entourage of younger musicians performed “Pet Sounds” and his restored opus, “Smile,” before worshipful crowds in concert halls. Meanwhile, The Go-Go’s, Lindsey Buckingham, Animal Collective and Janelle Monáe were among a wide range of artists who emulated him, whether as a master of crafting pop music or as a pioneer of pulling it apart.

An endless summer

The Beach Boys’ music was like an ongoing party, with Wilson as host and wallflower. He was a tall, shy man, partially deaf (allegedly because of beatings by his father, Murry Wilson), with a sweet, crooked grin, and he rarely touched a surfboard unless a photographer was around. But out of the lifestyle that he observed and such musical influences as Chuck Berry and the Four Freshmen, he conjured a golden soundscape — sweet melodies, shining harmonies, vignettes of beaches, cars and girls — that resonated across time and climates.

Decades after its first release, a Beach Boys song can still conjure instant summer — the wake-up guitar riff that opens “Surfin’ USA”; the melting vocals of “Don’t Worry Baby”; the chants of “fun, fun, fun” or “good, good, GOOD, good vibrations”; the behind-the-wheel chorus “’Round, ’round, get around, I get around.” Beach Boys songs have endured from turntables and transistor radios to boom boxes and iPhones, or any device that could lie on a beach towel or be placed upright in the sand.

The band’s innocent appeal survived the group’s increasingly troubled backstory, whether Brian’s many personal trials, the feuds and lawsuits among band members or the alcoholism of Dennis Wilson, who drowned in 1983. Brian Wilson’s ambition raised the Beach Boys beyond the pleasures of their early hits and into a world transcendent, eccentric and destructive. They seemed to live out every fantasy, and many nightmares, of the California myth they helped create.

From the suburbs to the national stage

Brian Wilson was born June 20, 1942, two days after McCartney. His musical gifts were soon obvious, and as a boy he was playing piano and teaching his brothers to sing harmony. The Beach Boys started as a neighborhood act, rehearsing in Brian’s bedroom and in the garage of their house in suburban Hawthorne, California. Surf music, mostly instrumental in its early years, was catching on locally: Dennis Wilson, the group’s only real surfer, suggested they cash in. Brian and Love hastily wrote up their first single, “Surfin,’” a minor hit released in 1961.

They wanted to call themselves the Pendletones, in honor of a popular flannel shirt they wore in early publicity photos. But when they first saw the pressings for “Surfin,’” they discovered the record label had tagged them “The Beach Boys.” Other decisions were handled by their father, a musician of some frustration who hired himself as manager and holy terror. By mid-decade, Murry Wilson had been displaced and Brian, who had been running the band’s recording sessions almost from the start, was in charge, making the Beach Boys the rare group of the time to work without an outside producer.

Their breakthrough came in early 1963 with “Surfin’ USA,” so closely modeled on Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” that Berry successfully sued to get a songwriting credit. It was their first Top 10 hit and a boast to the nation: “If everybody had an ocean / across the USA / then everybody’d be surfin,’ / like Cali-for-nye-ay.” From 1963-66, they were rarely off the charts, hitting No. 1 with “I Get Around” and “Help Me, Rhonda” and narrowly missing with “California Girls” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.” For television appearances, they wore candy-striped shirts and grinned as they mimed their latest hit, with a hot rod or surfboard nearby.

Their music echoed private differences. Wilson often contrasted his own bright falsetto with Love’s nasal, deadpan tenor. The extroverted Love was out front on the fast songs, but when it was time for a slow one, Brian took over. “The Warmth of the Sun” was a song of despair and consolation that Wilson alleged — to some skepticism — he wrote the morning after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. “Don’t Worry Baby,” a ballad equally intoxicating and heartbreaking, was a leading man’s confession of doubt and dependence, an early sign of Brian’s crippling anxieties.

Stress and exhaustion led to a breakdown in 1964 and his retirement from touring, his place soon filled by Bruce Johnston, who remained with the group for decades. Wilson was an admirer of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” productions and emulated him on Beach Boys tracks, adding sleigh bells to “Dance, Dance, Dance” or arranging a mini-theme park of guitar, horns, percussion and organ as the overture to “California Girls.”

By the mid-1960s, the Beach Boys were being held up as the country’s answer to the Beatles, a friendly game embraced by each group, transporting pop music to the level of “art” and leaving Wilson a broken man.

The Beach Boys vs. The Beatles

The Beatles opened with “Rubber Soul,” released in late 1965 and their first studio album made without the distractions of movies or touring. It was immediately praised as a major advance, the lyrics far more personal and the music far more subtle and sophisticated than such earlier hits as “She Loves You” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” Wilson would recall getting high and listening to the record for the first time, promising himself he would not only keep up with the British band, but top them.

Wilson worked for months on what became “Pet Sounds,” and months on the single “Good Vibrations.” He hired an outside lyricist, Tony Asher, and used various studios, with dozens of musicians and instruments ranging from violins to bongos to the harpsichord. The air seemed to cool on some tracks and the mood turn reflective, autumnal. From “I Know There’s an Answer” to “You Still Believe in Me,” many of the songs were ballads, reveries, brushstrokes of melody, culminating in the sonic wonders of “Good Vibrations,” a psychedelic montage that at times sounded as if recorded in outer space.

The results were momentous, yet disappointing. “Good Vibrations” was the group’s first million-seller and “Pet Sounds,” which included the hits “Sloop John B” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” awed McCartney, John Lennon and Eric Clapton among others. Widely regarded as a new kind of rock LP, it was more suited to headphones than to the radio, a “concept” album in which individual songs built to a unified experience, so elaborately crafted in the studio that “Pet Sounds” couldn’t be replicated live with the technology of the time. Wilson was likened not just to the Beatles, but to Mozart and George Gershwin, whose “Rhapsody in Blue” had inspired him since childhood.

But the album didn’t chart as highly as previous Beach Boys releases and was treated indifferently by the U.S. record label, Capitol. The Beatles, meanwhile, were absorbing lessons from the Beach Boys and teaching some in return. “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper,” the Beatles’ next two albums, drew upon the Beach Boys’ vocal tapestries and melodic bass lines and even upon the animal sounds from the title track of “Pet Sounds.” The Beatles’ epic “A Day in the Life” reconfirmed the British band as kings of the pop world and “Sgt. Pepper” as the album to beat.

All eyes turned to Wilson and his intended masterpiece — a “teenage symphony to God” he called “Smile.” It was a whimsical cycle of songs on nature and American folklore written with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. The production bordered on method acting; for a song about fire, Wilson wore a fire helmet in the studio. The other Beach Boys were confused, and strained to work with him. A shaken Wilson delayed “Smile,” then canceled it.

Remnants, including the songs “Heroes and Villains” and “Wind Chimes” were re-recorded and issued in September 1967 on “Smiley Smile,” dismissed by Carl Wilson as a “bunt instead of a grand slam.” The stripped down “Wild Honey,” released three months later, became a critical favorite but didn’t restore the band’s reputation. The Beach Boys soon descended into an oldies act, out of touch with the radical ’60s, and Wilson withdrew into seclusion.

Years of struggle, and late life validation

Addicted to drugs and psychologically helpless, sometimes idling in a sandbox he had built in his living room, Wilson didn’t fully produce another Beach Boys record for years. Their biggest hit of the 1970s was a greatest hits album, “Endless Summer,” that also helped reestablish them as popular concert performers.

Although well enough in the 21st century to miraculously finish “Smile” and tour and record again, Wilson had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and baffled interviewers with brief and disjointed answers. Among the stranger episodes of Wilson’s life was his relationship with Dr. Eugene Landy, a psychotherapist accused of holding a Svengali-like power over him. A 1991 lawsuit from Wilson’s family blocked Landy from Wilson’s personal and business affairs.

His first marriage, to singer Marilyn Rovell, ended in divorce and he became estranged from daughters Carnie and Wendy, who would help form the pop trio Wilson Phillips. His life stabilized in 1995 with his marriage to Melinda Ledbetter, who gave birth to two more daughters, Daria and Delanie. He also reconciled with Carnie and Wendy and they sang together on the 1997 album “The Wilsons.” (Melinda Ledbetter died in 2024.)

In 1992, Brian Wilson eventually won a $10 million out-of-court settlement for lost songwriting royalties. But that victory and his 1991 autobiography, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice: My Own Story,” set off other lawsuits that tore apart the musical family.

Carl Wilson and other relatives believed the book was essentially Landy’s version of Brian’s life and questioned whether Brian had even read it. Their mother, Audree Wilson, unsuccessfully sued publisher HarperCollins because the book said she passively watched as her husband beat Brian as a child. Love successfully sued Brian Wilson, saying he was unfairly deprived of royalties after contributing lyrics to dozens of songs. He would eventually gain ownership of the band’s name.

The Beach Boys still released an occasional hit single: “Kokomo,” made without Wilson, hit No. 1 in 1988. Wilson, meanwhile, released such solo albums as “Brian Wilson” and “Gettin’ In Over My Head,” with cameos by McCartney and Clapton among others. He also completed a pair of albums for the Walt Disney label — a collection of Gershwin songs and music from Disney movies. In 2012, surviving members of the Beach Boys reunited for a 50th anniversary album, which quickly hit the Top 10 before the group again bickered and separated.

Wilson won just two competitive Grammys, for the solo instrumental “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” and for “The Smile Sessions” box set. Otherwise, his honors ranged from a Grammy lifetime achievement prize to a tribute at the Kennedy Center to induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2018, he returned to his old high school in Hawthorne and witnessed the literal rewriting of his past: The principal erased an “F” he had been given in music and awarded him an “A.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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The owner of an Omaha food packaging company says his business has been unfairly hamstrung by federal immigration officials, who raided the plant and arrested more than half its workforce.

The raid took place despite the company meticulously following the government’s own system for verifying the workers were in the country legally, owner Gary Rohwer said Wednesday.

Glenn Valley Foods now is operating at about 30% of capacity as the business scrambles to hire more workers, Rohwer said as he stood outside the plant.

Asked how upsetting the raid was, Rohwer replied, “I was very upset, ma’am, because we were told to e-verify, and we e-verified all these years, so I was shocked.”

“We did everything we could possibly do,” he said.

E-Verify is an online U.S. Department of Homeland Security system launched in the late 1990s that allows employers to quickly check if potential employees can work legally in the U.S., often by using Social Security numbers.

Some of America’s largest employers use it, including Starbucks and Walmart, but the vast majority of employers do not. Critics say the system is fairly easy to cheat, particularly with false documents.

Rohwer noted that federal officials have said his company was a victim of those using stolen identities or fake IDs to get around the E-Verify system, which lead agents conducting the raid described as “broken” and “flawed” to Glenn Valley executives.

But that does nothing to repair the company’s bottom line, Rohwer said.

“I’d like to see the United States government … come up with a program that they can communicate to the companies as to how to hire legitimate help. Period,” he said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that more than 70 people were arrested during the Glenn Valley Foods raid on Tuesday. It also said one of the workers, described as a Honduras national, assaulted federal agents as he was being detained.

The Omaha raid comes amid an immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump. The administration has been intensifying its efforts in recent weeks, and Trump deployed more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines this week to respond to ongoing protests in Los Angeles over his immigration policies.

The raid, in the southeastern section of Omaha where nearly a quarter of residents are foreign born according to the 2020 census, led to hundreds of people turning out to protest Tuesday evening. But it also had a chilling effect on the south Omaha community.

The Metropolitan Community College’s South Omaha campus and an Omaha library branch in the area closed Tuesday afternoon, and several businesses along south Omaha’s normally bustling 24th Street closed as news of the raid spread. Several of them remained closed Wednesday, said Douglas County Board of Commissioners Chairman Roger Garcia, whose district covers south Omaha.

“Everybody’s still on alert, waiting to see what happens today and in the coming days,” Garcia said. “So there’s still a lot of anxiety and fear out there.”

That fear will show up in the form of a weakened economy in Omaha, he added.

“You know, when products are not being sold, taxes are not being collected, and people are not able to get their goods as well. So it affects all of us,” he said.

An aunt of Garcia’s wife was among those taken away by ICE during the Omaha raid, he said. They have been unable to determine where she is being held.

The raid came on the same day of the inauguration of newly elected Omaha Mayor John Ewing, a Democrat who unseated three-term Republican Jean Stothert last month.

During a news conference Wednesday to address the raid, Ewing declined to speculate on whether the timing of it was intended to distract from his swearing-in. But he denounced the action by federal authorities, saying, “My message to the public is that we are with them.”

Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer also declared that his department will play no part in checking immigration or the legal status of residents in the community.

“That is not our mission. Our mission is public safety,” the chief said. “I need victims to come forward. They will not come forward if they’re fearful of Omaha Police Department being immigration officers.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight new vaccine policy advisers to replace the panel that he abruptly dismissed earlier this week.

They include a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine technology and became a conservative darling for his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns, and a professor of operations management.

Kennedy’s decision to “retire” the previous 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was widely decried by doctors’ groups and public health organizations, who feared the advisers would be replaced by a group aligned with Kennedy’s desire to reassess — and possibly end — longstanding vaccination recommendations.

On Tuesday, before he announced his picks, Kennedy said: “We’re going to bring great people onto the ACIP panel – not anti-vaxxers – bringing people on who are credentialed scientists.”

The new appointees include Vicky Pebsworth, a regional director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses, who has been listed as a board member and volunteer director for the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that is widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation.

Another is Dr. Robert Malone, the former mRNA researcher who emerged as a close adviser to Kennedy during the measles outbreak. Malone, who runs a wellness institute and a popular blog, rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as he relayed conspiracy theories around the outbreak and the vaccines that followed. He has appeared on podcasts and other conservative news outlets where he’s promoted unproven and alternative treatments for measles and COVID-19.

He has claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into taking the COVID-19 shots and has suggested that those vaccines cause a form of AIDS. He’s downplayed deaths related to one of the largest measles outbreaks in the U.S. in years.

Other appointees include Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist who was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 letter maintaining that pandemic shutdowns were causing irreparable harm. Dr. Cody Meissner, a former ACIP member, also was named.

Abram Wagner of the University of Michigan’s school of public health, who investigates vaccination programs, said he’s not satisfied with the composition of the committee.

“The previous ACIP was made up of technical experts who have spent their lives studying vaccines,” he said. Most people on the current list “don’t have the technical capacity that we would expect out of people who would have to make really complicated decisions involving interpreting complicated scientific data.”

He said having Pebsworth on the board is “incredibly problematic” since she is involved in an organization that “distributes a lot of misinformation.”

Kennedy made the announcement in a social media post on Wednesday.

The committee, created in 1964, makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC directors almost always approve those recommendations on how vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used. The CDC’s final recommendations are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

The other appointees are:

—Dr. James Hibbeln, who formerly headed a National Institutes of Health group focused on nutritional neurosciences and who studies how nutrition affects the brain, including the potential benefits of seafood consumption during pregnancy.

—Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies business issues related to supply chain, logistics, pricing optimization and health and health care management. In a 2023 video pinned to an X profile under his name, Levi called for the end of the COVID-19 vaccination program, claiming the vaccines were ineffective and dangerous despite evidence they saved millions of lives.

—Dr. James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles.

—Dr. Michael Ross, a Virginia-based obstetrician and gynecologist.

Of the eight named by Kennedy, perhaps the most experienced in vaccine policy is Meissner, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who has previously served as a member of both ACIP and the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel.

During his five-year term as an FDA adviser, the committee was repeatedly asked to review and vote on the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines that were rapidly developed to fight the pandemic. In September 2021, he joined the majority of panelists who voted against a plan from the Biden administration to offer an extra vaccine dose to all American adults. The panel instead recommended that the extra shot should be limited to seniors and those at higher risk of the disease.

Ultimately, the FDA disregarded the panel’s recommendation and OK’d an extra vaccine dose for all adults.

In addition to serving on government panels, Meissner has helped author policy statements and vaccination schedules for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

ACIP members typically serve in staggered four-year terms, although several appointments were delayed during the Biden administration before positions were filled last year. The voting members all have scientific or clinical expertise in immunization, except for one “consumer representative” who can bring perspective on community and social facets of vaccine programs.

Kennedy, a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government’s top health official, has accused the committee of being too closely aligned with vaccine manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines. ACIP policies require members to state past collaborations with vaccine companies and to recuse themselves from votes in which they had a conflict of interest, but Kennedy has dismissed those safeguards as weak.

Most of the people who best understand vaccines are those who have researched them, which usually requires some degree of collaboration with the companies that develop and sell them, said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher.

“If you are to exclude any reputable, respected vaccine expert who has ever engaged even in a limited way with the vaccine industry, you’re likely to have a very small pool of folks to draw from,” Schwartz said.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Kennedy in February after he promised he would not change the vaccination schedule. But less than a week later, he vowed to investigate childhood vaccines that prevent measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.

Kennedy has ignored some of the recommendations ACIP voted for in April, including the endorsement of a new combination shot that protects against five strains of meningococcal bacteria and the expansion of vaccinations against RSV.

In late May, Kennedy disregarded the committee and announced the government would change the recommendation for children and pregnant women to get COVID-19 shots.

On Monday, Kennedy ousted all 17 members of the ACIP, saying he would appoint a new group before the next scheduled meeting in late June. The agenda for that meeting has not yet been posted, but a recent federal notice said votes are expected on vaccinations against flu, COVID-19, HPV, RSV and meningococcal bacteria.

A HHS spokesman did not respond to a question about whether there would be only eight ACIP members, or whether more will be named later.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Jacquelyn Martin—AP

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Khaby Lame, the world’s most popular TikTok personality with millions of followers, has left the U.S. after being detained by immigration agents in Las Vegas for allegedly overstaying his visa.

The Senegalese-Italian influencer, whose legal name is Seringe Khabane Lame, was detained Friday at Harry Reid International Airport but was allowed to leave the country without a deportation order, a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed in a statement.

Lame arrived in the U.S. on April 30 and “overstayed the terms of his visa,” the ICE spokesperson said. The Associated Press sent a message seeking comment Tuesday to the email address listed on Lame’s Instagram account. He has not publicly commented on his detainment.

His detainment and voluntary departure from the U.S. comes amid President Donald Trump’s escalating crackdown on immigration, including raids in Los Angeles that sparked days of protests against ICE, as the president tests the bounds of his executive authority.

A voluntary departure — which was granted to Lame — allows those facing removal from the U.S. to avoid a deportation order on their immigration record, which could prevent them from being allowed back into the U.S. for up to a decade.

The 25-year-old rose to international fame during the pandemic without ever saying a word in his videos, which would show him reacting to absurdly complicated “life hacks.” He has over 162 million followers on TikTok alone.

The Senegal-born influencer moved to Italy when he was an infant with his working class parents and has Italian citizenship.

His internet fame quickly evolved. He signed a multiyear partnership with designer brand Hugo Boss in 2022. In January, he was appointed as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.

Last month, he attended the Met Gala in New York City, days after arriving in the U.S.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Samir Hussein—WireImage

Protests that sprang up in Los Angeles over immigration enforcement raids and prompted President Donald Trump to mobilize National Guard troops and Marines have begun to spread across the country, with more planned into the weekend.

From Seattle and Austin to Chicago and Washington, D.C., marchers have chanted slogans, carried signs against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and snarled traffic through downtown avenues and outside federal offices. While many have been peaceful, some have resulted in clashes with law enforcement as officers made arrests and used chemical irritants to disperse crowds.

Activists are planning more and even larger demonstrations in the coming days, with “No Kings” events across the country on Saturday to coincide with Trump’s planned military parade through Washington.

The Trump administration said it would continue its program of raids and deportations despite the protests.

“ICE will continue to enforce the law,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted Tuesday on social media.

A look at some protests across the country:

Philadelphia

About 150 protesters gathered outside the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon and marched to ICE headquarters for speeches and then back to the detention center, according to Philadelphia police.

A group then walked though what police called major roads using bicycles to obstruct officers, prompting police to issue several orders for people to disperse. Police said demonstrators ignored the orders and things escalated when officers started arresting people.

Fifteen people were arrested, one on allegations of aggravated assault on police, and the rest for disorderly conduct, police said. Several officers used force during the arrests and their conduct will be reviewed, police said. Police didn’t say specifically what kind of force was used. Two officers had minor injuries and were treated at a hospital. Two females who were arrested reported minor injuries and were receiving medical attention, police said.

About 20 people remained peacefully gathered outside the detention center as of Tuesday night, police said.

San Francisco

About 200 protesters gathered outside the San Francisco Immigration Court on Tuesday after activists said several arrests were made there.

That gathering came after protests on Sunday and Monday swelled to several thousand demonstrators and saw more than 150 arrests with outbreaks of violence that included vandalized buildings, and damaged cars, police vehicles and buses. Police said two officers suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Most of the arrests were Sunday night.

“Individuals are always free to exercise their First Amendment rights in San Francisco, but violence, especially against SFPD officers, will never be tolerated,” San Francisco police posted on social media.

Police described Monday’s march as “overwhelmingly peaceful,” but said “two small groups broke off and committed vandalism and other criminal acts.” Several people were detained or arrested, police said.

Seattle

About 50 people gathered outside the immigration court in downtown Seattle on Tuesday, chanting with drums and holding up signs that said, “Free Them All; Abolish ICE” and “No to Deportations.” Protesters began putting scooters in front of building entryways before police arrived.

Mathieu Chabaud, with Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Washington, said they were there in solidarity with the Los Angeles protesters, “and to show that we’re opposed to ICE in our community.”

Legal advocates who normally attend the immigration court hearings as observers and to provide support to immigrants were not allowed inside the building. Security guards also turned away the media. The hearings are normally open to the public.

New York City

A mass of people rallied in lower Manhattan on Tuesday evening to protest deportations and federal immigration policy.

Demonstrators gathered outside two federal buildings that house immigration courts and began marching amid a heavy police presence.

Some protesters held signs reading “ICE out of New York” and others chanted, “Why are you in riot gear? I don’t see no riot here.”

New York City police said multiple people were taken into custody. There were no immediate charges.

Chicago

In Chicago, a small crowd gathered Tuesday outside immigration court in downtown and called for an end to Trump administration immigration sweeps and military presence in California.

“With the militarization of Los Angeles it’s time to get out and let Trump know this is unacceptable,” said retiree Gary Snyderman. “All of this is so unconstitutional.”

The group then marched through downtown streets drumming and chanting, “No more deportations! and “Trump must go now.” A woman at one point drove a car quickly through the street filled with protesters, causing them to dart out of her way. It was not immediately known whether anyone had been injured.

The demonstration had grown to at least a thousand protesters by late Tuesday, remaining relatively peaceful with limited engagement between the group and police officers.

Denver

A group of protesters gathered in front of the Colorado state capitol in Denver on Tuesday, creating a sea of cardboard signs, one exhorting: “Show your faces. ICE cowards.”

The group, inspired by the Los Angeles protests over the past several days, split in half, marching down two different thoroughfares and crowding out traffic.

A large police presence wasn’t seen initially, but a few officers began blocking a street behind the the marchers.

Santa Ana

In Santa Ana near Los Angeles, armored vehicles blocked the road Tuesday morning leading into the Civic Center, where federal immigration officers and numerous city and county agencies have their offices.

Workers swept up plastic bottles and broken glass from Monday’s protests. Tiny shards of red, black and purple glass littered the pavement. Nearby buildings and the sidewalk were tagged with profane graffiti slogans against ICE and had Trump’s name crossed out. A worker rolled paint over graffiti on a wall to block it out.

National Guard officers wearing fatigues and carrying rifles prevented people from entering the area unless they worked there.

While a small group kept up their demonstration Tuesday, several counter-protesters showed up. One man wore a red T-shirt and Make America Great Again cap as he exchanged words with the crowd opposing the raids.

San Antonio

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus confirmed that Texas Gov. Greg Abbot sent members of the state’s National Guard to the city in advance of protests expected this week, Assistant Chief Jesse Salame told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“We don’t have any additional details about their deployment,” Salame said.

Soldiers were “on standby in areas where mass demonstrations are planned in case they are needed,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said Tuesday evening.

Austin

Four Austin police officers were injured and authorities used chemical irritants to disperse a crowd of several hundred demonstrators Monday night that moved between the state Capitol and a federal building that houses an ICE office. State officials had closed the Capitol to the public an hour early in anticipation of the protest.

Austin police used pepper spray balls and state police used tear gas when demonstrators began trying to deface the federal building with spray paint. The demonstrators then started throwing rocks, bottles and other objects at a police barricade, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said. Three officers were injured by “very large” rocks and another was injured while making an arrest, she said.

Austin police arrested eight people, and state police arrested five more. Davis said her department is prepared for Saturday’s planned protest downtown.

“We support peaceful protest,” Davis said. “When that protest turns violent, when it turns to throwing rocks and bottles … that will not be tolerated. Arrests will be made.”

Dallas

A protest that drew hundreds to a rally on a city bridge lasted for several hours Monday night before Dallas police declared it an “unlawful assembly” and warned people to leave or face possible arrest.

Dallas police initially posted on social media that officers would not interfere with a “lawful and peaceful assembly of individuals or groups expressing their First Amendment rights.” But officers later moved in and media reported seeing some in the crowd throw objects as officers used pepper spray and smoke to clear the area. At least one person was arrested.

“Peaceful protesting is legal,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, posted on X. “But once you cross the line, you will be arrested.”

Boston

Hundreds of people gathered in Boston’s City Hall Plaza on Monday to protest the detainment of union leader David Huerta Friday during immigration raids in Los Angeles.

Protesters held signs reading “Massachusetts stands with our neighbors in Los Angeles” and “Protect our immigrant neighbors,” and shouted, “Come for one, come for all” and “Free David, free them all.”

Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California, was released from federal custody later Monday on $50,000 bond.

“An immigrant doesn’t stand between an American worker and a good job, a billionaire does,” said Chrissy Lynch, President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

Washington, D.C.

Several unions gathered Monday in Washington to protest the raids and rally for Huerta’s release, and marched past the Department of Justice building.

Among the demonstrators was U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state.

“Enough of these mass ICE raids that are sweeping up innocent people,” Jayapal said. “As we see people exercising the constitutional rights to peacefully use their voices to speak out against this injustice, they are being met with tear gas and rubber bullets.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Santiago Mejia—San Francisco Chronicle via AP