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

© SAM PANTHAKY—AFP via Getty Images

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.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Andrew Harnik—Getty Images

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

© Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

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

© Jason DeCrow—Invision/AP

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

© Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

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

A federal appeals court agreed Tuesday to let the government keep collecting President Donald Trump’s sweeping import taxes while challenges to his signature trade policy continue on appeal.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit extends a similar ruling it made after another federal court struck down the tariffs May 28, saying Trump had overstepped his authority. Noting that the challenges to Trump’s tariffs raise “issues of exceptional importance,” the appeals court said it would expedite the case and hear arguments July 31.

The case involves 10% tariffs the president imposed on almost every country in April and bigger ones he imposed and then suspended on countries with which the United States runs trade deficits. It also involves tariffs Trump plastered on imports from China, Canada and Mexico to pressure them to do more to stop the illegal flow of immigrants and synthetic opioids across the U.S. border.

In declaring the tariffs, Trump had invoked emergency powers under a 1977 law. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled he had exceeded his power.

The tariffs upended global trade, paralyzed businesses and spooked financial markets.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Luis M. Alvarez—AP

Senior U.S. and Chinese negotiators have agreed on a framework to get their trade negotiations back on track after a series of disputes that threatened to derail them, both sides have said.

The announcement came at the end of two days of talks in the British capital that wrapped up late Tuesday.

The meetings appeared to focus on finding a way to resolve disputes over mineral and technology exports that had shaken a fragile truce on trade reached in Geneva last month. It’s not clear whether any progress was made on the more fundamental differences over China’s sizeable trade surplus with the United States.

“First we had to get sort of the negativity out and now we can go forward,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters after the meetings.

Asian stock markets rose Wednesday after the agreement was announced.

The talks followed a phone call between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week to try to calm the waters.

Li Chenggang, a vice minister of commerce and China’s international trade representative, said the two sides had agreed in principle on a framework for implementing the consensus reached on the phone call and at the talks on Geneva, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Further details, including any plans for a potential next round of talks, were not immediately available.

Li and Wang Wentao, China’s commerce minister, were part of the delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng. They met with Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at Lancaster House, a 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace.

Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator, said the disputes had frittered away 30 of the 90 days the two sides have to try to resolve their disputes.

They agreed in Geneva to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that sparked fears of recession. The World Bank, citing a rise in trade barriers, cut its projections Tuesday for U.S. and global economic growth this year.

“The U.S. and China lost valuable time in restoring their Geneva agreements,” said Cutler, now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Now, only sixty days remain to address issues of concern, including unfair trade practices, excess capacity, transshipment and fentanyl.”

Since the Geneva talks, the U.S. and China have exchanged angry words over advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence, visas for Chinese students at American universities and rare earth minerals that are vital to carmakers and other industries.

China, the world’s biggest producer of rare earths, has signaled it may speed up the issuing of export licenses for the elements. Beijing, in turn, wants the U.S. to lift restrictions on Chinese access to the technology used to make advanced semiconductors.

Lutnick said that resolving the rare earths issue is a fundamental part of the agreed-upon framework, and that the U.S. will remove measures it had imposed in response. He did not specify which measures.

“When they approve the licenses, then you should expect that our export implementation will come down as well,” he said.

Cutler said it would be unprecedented for the U.S. to negotiate on its export controls, which she described as an irritant that China has been raising for nearly 20 years.

“By doing so, the U.S. has opened a door for China to insist on adding export controls to future negotiating agendas,” she said.

In Washington, a federal appeals court agreed Tuesday to let the government keep collecting tariffs that Trump has imposed not just on China but also on other countries worldwide while the administration appeals a ruling against his signature trade policy.

Trump said earlier that he wants to “open up China,” the world’s dominant manufacturer, to U.S. products.

“If we don’t open up China, maybe we won’t do anything,” Trump said at the White House. “But we want to open up China.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Li Ying—Xinhua via AP

 President Donald Trump likes to say he’s bringing in trillions of dollars in investments from foreign countries, but a provision in his tax cuts bill could cause international companies to avoid expanding into the United States.

The House-passed version of the legislation would allow the federal government to impose taxes on foreign-parented companies and investors from countries judged as charging “unfair foreign taxes” on U.S. companies.

Known as Section 899, the measure could cause companies to avoid investing in the the U.S. out of concern they could face steep taxes. The fate of the measure rests with the Senate — setting off a debate about its prospects and impact.

A new analysis by the Global Business Alliance, a trade group representing international companies such as Toyota and Nestlé, estimates that the provision would cost the U.S. 360,000 jobs and $55 billion annually over 10 years in lost gross domestic product. The analysis estimates that the tax could cut a third off the economic growth anticipated from the overall tax cuts by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.

“While proponents say this punitive tax hike is intended as a retaliatory measure against foreign governments, this report confirms that the real victims are American workers in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee and Texas,” said Jonathan Samford, president and CEO of the Global Business Alliance.

Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has defended the provision as protecting U.S. interests by giving the president a tool that can be used against countries with tax codes that, in the federal government’s opinion, put American companies at a disadvantage.

“If these countries withdraw these taxes and decide to behave, we will have achieved our goal,” Smith said in a statement last week. “It’s just common sense. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to move quickly to pass this bill and protect Americans from economic bad actors around the world.”

House Republicans have been looking into the issue for a long time and the bill provides the flexibility so that a president doesn’t have to levy taxes. There were concerns among GOP lawmakers during Joe Biden’s presidency that an agreement among countries on corporate tax codes could cause foreign governments to charge U.S. companies more.

The tax gets at a fundamental tension within Trump’s policy agenda: a contradiction in the broad strokes of Trump simultaneously trying to tax imports and foreign profits at higher rates while also seeking investments from companies headquartered abroad.

In late May, Trump defended his approach by saying that his tariffs were causing more countries to invest in the U.S. to avoid imports getting taxed. While some countries and companies have made announcements, there is not evidence of the investments pushing up spending on new factories as measured in the government’s monthly report on construction spending.

The Republican president said his tendency to impose steep tariffs, then retreat to lower rates, had succeeded.

“We have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing,” Trump said then. “You know we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia, the king told me, he said, you got the hottest — we have the hottest country in the world right now.”

The Global Business Alliance was among the groups that signed a letter on Monday warning of the consequences of Section 899 to Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho, both Republicans.

The Investment Company Institute, representing financial firms, said the provision “could limit foreign investment to the U.S. — a key driver of growth in American capital markets that ultimately benefits American families saving for their futures.”

The analysis performed by EY Quantitative Economics and Statistics notes there is a degree of uncertainty in how the taxes under Section 899 could be implemented and other countries would respond. But they could be charged against companies based in countries that tax digital services, as is the case in parts of Europe.

If the U.S. judged the taxes unfair, there would be a 30% tax rate on foreign companies’ profits and income. People working in the U.S. for the companies who are not citizens could also be taxed, among other provisions. Still, an exemption is in place so that the foreign holders of U.S. debt are not affected by the potential new taxes.

The possibility of the taxes and seemingly arbitrary nature by which they could be imposed is also a challenge, said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of New York University’s Tax Law Center.

“Section 899 creates a game of political chicken with trade partners that risks harming businesses, consumers, and workers in the hopes of securing US multinationals the ability to shift more of their profits out of the US to tax havens,” Huang said in an email. “It’s a high-risk strategy that could expand the damage of the failed tariff war.”

There could also be political repercussions if key states in Trump’s political coalition from 2024 suffer layoffs or simply find job growth slowing. The Global Business Alliance finds job losses could amount to 44,200 in Florida, 27,700 in Pennsylvania, 24,500 in North Carolina and 23,500 in Michigan.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Marines and additional National Guard troops headed to Los Angeles on Tuesday, sent by President Donald Trump in response to four days of protests over immigration raids despite the strenuous objections of state and local leaders.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, filed an emergency motion in federal court to block the Trump administration from using the Guard and Marines to assist with immigration raids in Los Angeles, saying the motion was in response to an apparent change in orders that had been issued for the Guard.

Trump’s deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to the country’s second-largest city came despite a relative calm to the Monday’s and Tuesday’s protests.

State officials sued Trump on Monday in an attempt to roll back the Guard deployment, saying the president had trampled on California’s sovereignty.

This appears to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor. Trump said in a social media post that the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he hadn’t sent Guard members to the city over the weekend.

Here are some things to know about the lawsuit, the protests and the troop deployments:

LA mayor blasts Trump

Mayor Karen Bass pinned the unrest at some protests squarely on the Trump administration, saying Tuesday that there was “nothing going on here that warranted the federal intervention.”

She also said she was mystified about why the Marines were sent.

“People have asked me what are the Marines going to do when they get here? That’s a good question. I have no idea,” she said at a news conference, emphasizing that violence and looting by protesters won’t be tolerated and that the city was considering imposing a curfew.

She also called out Trump for suggesting the National Guard, not local police, quelled the violence that did happen. She noted Trump made the claim in a Saturday night tweet, but that the National Guard troops didn’t arrive until Sunday.

“If you want to know what the National Guard is doing, drive by the federal building. They are stationary at the federal building protecting the building,” she said. “They are not out doing crowd control or anything like that. So I don’t know how he could say that the National Guard is who saved the day. Who saved the day was our local law enforcement agencies.”

Bass also suggested that the $134 million that the Pentagon said it was costing to deploy troops to LA would have better used to help the city prepare for next summer’s World Cup.

Newsom vs. Trump

The governor on Tuesday filed an emergency request seeking to block the Trump administration from using the Guard and Marines to assist with immigration raids.

The filing included a declaration from Paul Eck, deputy general counsel in the California Military Department. Eck said the department has been told that the Pentagon plans to direct the California National Guard to start providing support for immigration operations. That support would include holding secure perimeters around areas where raids are taking place and securing streets for immigration agents.

The Guard members were originally deployed to protect federal buildings.

Trump and Newsom have been feuding over the immigration raids and protests, with the president and his border czar, Tom Holman, trading taunts with the governor about the possibility of arresting Newsom if he interfered with federal immigration enforcement efforts.

“I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great,” Trump said.

Newsom responded in a post on X: “The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America.”

The governor called the presence of troops on the streets of Los Angeles both “illegal and immoral,” writing: “This isn’t about public safety. It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego.”

In a post Monday, Newsom called the deployment of Marines “a blatant abuse of power” and said officials would sue to stop it.

“U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns,” Newsom wrote. “The Courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling.”

What’s the mood in the city?

Downtown Los Angeles was fairly quiet Tuesday morning, with Guard members outnumbering protesters. Several Guard members were stationed in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal lockup where some immigrants are being held, with long guns and wooden bats slung over their shoulders. Passing drivers occasionally honked at or heckled them, drawing no response. News crews were stationed across the street, awaiting the possible arrival of the Marines, who had arrived in the area by late morning.

Otherwise, there were few signs of the tumult that gripped the city in recent nights, aside from the graffiti scrawled across several buildings — “Abolish ICE,” “Amerikkka,” and obscene slogans directed at Trump and federal law enforcement.

Monday’s demonstrations were less raucous than Sunday’s, with thousands peacefully attending a rally at City Hall to protest Friday’s arrest of union leader David Huerta, who was protesting the immigration raids, and hundreds rallying outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center. The protests have been driven by anger over Trump’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws that critics say are tearing apart migrant families.

What’s behind the demonstrations?

The protests were sparked by Trump’s immigration crackdown in the area. They started Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount and neighboring Compton.

Federal agents arrested immigrants in LA’s fashion district, in a Home Depot parking lot and at several other locations on Friday. The next day, they were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office near another Home Depot in Paramount, which drew out protesters who suspected another raid. Federal authorities later said there was no enforcement activity at that Home Depot.

Demonstrators attempted to block Border Patrol vehicles by hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, agents in riot gear unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.

The weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the LA area climbed above 100, federal authorities said. Many have also been arrested while protesting.

What’s happening elsewhere?

Protest over immigration raids have happening in major cities throughout the country, including on Tuesday, though none have reached the scale of those in Los Angeles.

Hundreds of protesters organized by the Austin, Texas, chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation gathered Monday near the state Capitol before moving toward the federal building that houses an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

Authorities appeared to use chemical irritants to disperse a crowd, and the city’s police chief said Tuesday that four officers were injured during the protests, including three who were struck by thrown rocks.

In Dallas, hundreds of people demonstrated on a city bridge for hours before police determined the rally to be “unlawful.” Police said one person was arrested and that charges were pending.

The demonstrations from Boston to Seattle have ranged from gatherings outside of federal office buildings or statehouses, and marches through downtown neighborhoods. “No Kings” rallies critical of Trump are planned nationwide Saturday to coincide with the president’s scheduled military parade in Washington, D.C.

___

Associated Press reporters Michael Casey in Boston, Jesse Bedayn in Denver, Jason Dearen in Los Angeles, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia, Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California, Martha Bellisle in Seattle, Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida, and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo Damian Dovarganes

It’s one of crypto’s hottest trends: publicly traded companies buying bitcoin and then buying even more.

President Donald Trump’s media company just announced a plan to raise $2.5 billion to buy bitcoin, joining a growing number of so-called “bitcoin treasury companies” as the world’s most popular cryptocurrency hits all-time highs.

The companies buy bitcoin for different reasons: Some hold it as a hedge against inflation or to signal support for the cryptocurrency industry, while some firms have made using debt and stock sales to buy bitcoin their primary business strategy.

“The world at large has no idea what’s happening and they’re in for a big shock,” Dylan LeClair, an executive at the Japan-based Metaplanet, which recently went from being a budget hotel firm to a bitcoin treasury company, said at a recent crypto conference. “This is a one-way train, nothing is going to stop this.”

The massive increases in some firms’ stock price may seem to validate LeClair’s bravado, but there are plenty of warnings that a downturn in bitcoin’s prices could lead to large selloffs.

Here’s a look at bitcoin treasury companies by the numbers:

582,000

That’s how many bitcoins owned by MicroStrategy – the undisputed goliath of bitcoin treasury companies.

With nearly 3% of the total bitcoin supply, MicroStrategy owns more bitcoins than every other bitcoin treasury company combined. It also owns more bitcoin than every nation state combined, according to the tracking site bitcointreasuries.net.

Now called Strategy, the software company first started buying bitcoin in 2020 with reserve cash. Now, its software business is a small part of a perpetual bitcoin-buying machine that uses a variety of strategies – like selling shares or issuing debt – to keep growing its bitcoin holdings.

More than 3000%

That’s how much MicroStrategy’s stock price has increased in the last five years, compared to around 1,000% gain in bitcoin and the 1,500% jump for chipmaker and stock market darling Nvidia during that same period.

The company’s success has boosted the profile of MicroStrategy’s founder and chairman, Michael Saylor, who has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and the White House while becoming bitcoin’s enigmatic high priest.

“Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy,” Saylor said in a social media post.

Saylor’s success has also spawned many imitators.

“It’s kind of shocking … that it took someone four years after Michael Saylor started doing it to finally do it and pull the trigger and now it feels like everyone’s pulling the trigger,” said Eric Semler, the chairman of Semler Scientific, a healthcare company that started acquiring bitcoin last year.

$90,000

That’s the average purchase price of bitcoin for half of the 61 publicly traded bitcoin strategy companies, excluding bitcoin mining companies and bitcoin exchange-traded funds, according to a recent analysis by Standard Chartered.

Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s head of digital assets research, said in the report that restrictions on investors buying bitcoin directly help explain the popularity of bitcoin treasury companies, as their stocks can serve as bitcoin proxies. But as crypto becomes more mainstream, the case for investing in bitcoin treasury companies becomes weaker, Kendrick said.

He added that bitcoin’s volatility could force some newer bitcoin treasury companies to sell their holdings to satisfy their debts if it falls under the purchase price.

“The question then becomes, how much pain can companies withstand before being forced to sell their BTC?” Kendrick said, referring to the symbol for bitcoin.

Triple digits

That’s how much of a one-day percentage increase in stock prices firms have seen after recently announcing plans to hold other types of cryptocurrencies as corporate treasuries, highlighting how the appetite for such companies extends beyond bitcoin.

SharpLink Gaming, a gambling marketing firm, saw its share price increase by more than 400% after it announced plans to buy up to $425 million in Ethereum, the second most popular form of cryptocurrency. And crypto firm Upexi saw its stock price soar more than 300% after it announced plans to buy $100 million of Solana, a cryptocurrency popular in the meme coin ecosystem.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Mark Humphrey—AP

The U.S. and China held a second day of talks Tuesday in London aimed at easing their trade dispute, after President Donald Trump said China is “not easy” but the U.S. was “doing well” at the negotiations.

A Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng met U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for several hours on Monday at Lancaster House, an ornate 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace.

Wang Wentao, China’s commerce minister, and trade negotiator Li Chenggang are also in Beijing’s delegation.

Lutnick said as he arrived Tuesday morning that the talks were “going well,” and he expected them to continue all day.

Asked late Monday how the negotiations were going, Trump told reporters: “We are doing well with China. China’s not easy.”

The two sides are trying to build on negotiations in Geneva last month that agreed to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that had sparked fears of recession.

Since the Geneva talks, the U.S. and China have exchanged angry words over advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence, visas for Chinese students at American universities and rare earth minerals that are vital to carmakers and other industries.

Trump spoke at length with Chinese leader Xi Jinping by phone last Thursday in an attempt to put relations back on track. Trump announced on social media the following day that the trade talks would resume in London.

China, the world’s biggest producer of rare earths, has signaled it may ease export restrictions it placed on the elements in April, alarming automakers around the world who rely on them. Beijing, in turn, wants the U.S. to lift restrictions on Chinese access to the technology used to make advanced semiconductors.

Trump said that he wants to “open up China,” the world’s dominant manufacturer, to U.S. products.

“If we don’t open up China, maybe we won’t do anything,” Trump said at the White House. “But we want to open up China.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Li Ying—Xinhua via AP

The leaders of a sex-focused women’s wellness company that promoted “orgasmic meditation” have been convicted of federal forced labor charges.

A Brooklyn jury on Monday found Nicole Daedone, founder of OneTaste Inc., and Rachel Cherwitz, the California-based company’s former sales director, guilty after deliberating for less than two days following a five-week trial. The two each face up to 20 years in prison when sentenced later.

Prosecutors had argued the two women ran a yearslong scheme that groomed adherents — many of them victims of sexual trauma — to do their bidding.

They said Daedone, 57, of New York, and Cherwitz, 44, of California, used economic, sexual and psychological abuse, intimidation and indoctrination to force OneTaste members into sexual acts they found uncomfortable or repulsive, such as having sex with prospective investors or clients.

The two told followers the questionable acts were necessary in order to obtain “freedom” and “enlightenment” and demonstrate their commitment to the organization’s principles.

Prosecutors said OneTaste leaders also didn’t pay promised earnings to the members-turned-workers and even forced some of them to take out new credit cards to continue taking the company’s courses.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nina Gupta, in her closing statement last week, said the defendants “built a business on the backs” of victims who “gave everything” to them, including “their money, their time, their bodies, their dignity, and ultimately their sanity.”

“The jury’s verdict has unmasked Daedone and Cherwitz for who they truly are: grifters who preyed on vulnerable victims by making empty promises of sexual empowerment and wellness only to manipulate them into performing labor and services for the defendants’ benefit,” said Joseph Nocella, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Daedone’s defense team cast her as a “ceiling-shattering feminist entrepreneur” who created a unique business around women’s sexuality and empowerment.

Cherwitz’s lawyer, Celia Cohen, argued that the witnesses who testified weren’t forced to do anything. When they didn’t like the organization anymore or wanted to try other things, she said, they simply left.

“No matter what you think about OneTaste and what they were doing, they chose it. They knew what it was about,” she said in her closing statement last week. “The fact they are regretting the actions that they took when they were younger is not evidence of a crime.”

Lawyers for the defendants said their clients maintain their innocence and intend to appeal.

“We are deeply disappointed in today’s verdict,” the lawyers said in a statement Monday. “This case raised numerous novel and complex legal issues that will require review by the Second Circuit.”

Daedone co-founded OneTaste in San Francisco in 2004 as a sort of self-help commune that viewed female orgasms as key to sexual and psychological wellness and interpersonal connection.

A centerpiece was “orgasmic meditation,” or “OM,” which was carried out by men manually stimulating women in a group setting.

The company enjoyed glowing media coverage in the 2010s and quickly opened outposts from Los Angeles to London. Portrayed as a cutting-edge enterprise that prioritized women’s sexual pleasure, it generated revenue by providing courses, coaching, OM events, and other sexual practices for a fee.

Daedone sold her stake in the company in 2017 for $12 million — a year before OneTaste’s marketing and labor practices came under scrutiny.

The company’s current owners, who have rebranded it the Institute of OM Foundation, have said its work has been misconstrued and the charges against its former executives were unjustified.

They maintain sexual consent has always been a cornerstone of the organization. The company didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Jeenah Moon—AP

It was an unusual question coming from a police officer. Heather Brady was napping at home in San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon when the officer knocked on her door to ask: Had she applied to Arizona Western College?

She had not, and as the officer suspected, somebody else had applied to Arizona community colleges in her name to scam the government into paying out financial aid money.

When she checked her student loan servicer account, Brady saw the scammers hadn’t stopped there. A loan for over $9,000 had been paid out in her name — but to another person — for coursework at a California college.

“I just can’t imagine how many people this is happening to that have no idea,” Brady said.

The rise of artificial intelligence and the popularity of online classes have led to an explosion of financial aid fraud. Fake college enrollments have been surging as crime rings deploy “ghost students” — chatbots that join online classrooms and stay just long enough to collect a financial aid check.

In some cases, professors discover almost no one in their class is real. Students get locked out of the classes they need to graduate as bots push courses over their enrollment limits. And victims of identity theft who discover loans fraudulently taken out in their names must go through months of calling colleges, the Federal Student Aid office and loan servicers to try to get the debt erased.

On Friday, the U.S. Education Department introduced a temporary rule requiring students to show colleges a government-issued ID to prove their identity. It will apply only to first-time applicants for federal student aid for the summer term, affecting some 125,000 borrowers. The agency said it is developing more advanced screening for the fall.

“The rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid program,” the department said in its guidance to colleges.

Public colleges have lost millions of dollars to fraud

An Associated Press analysis of fraud reports obtained through a public records request shows California colleges in 2024 reported 1.2 million fraudulent applications, which resulted in 223,000 suspected fake enrollments. Other states are affected by the same problem, but with 116 community colleges, California is a particularly large target.

Criminals stole at least $11.1 million in federal, state and local financial aid from California community colleges last year that could not be recovered, according to the reports.

Colleges typically receive a portion of the loans intended for tuition, with the balance going directly to students for other expenses. Community colleges are targeted in part because their lower tuition means larger percentages of grants and loans go to borrowers.

Scammers frequently use AI chatbots to carry out the fraud, targeting courses that are online and allow students to watch lectures and complete coursework on their own time.

In January, Wayne Chaw started getting emails about a class he never signed up for at De Anza Community College, where he had taken coding classes a decade earlier. Identity thieves had obtained his Social Security number and collected $1,395 in financial aid in his name.

The energy management class required students to submit a homework assignment to prove they were real. But someone wrote submissions impersonating Chaw, likely using a chatbot.

“This person is typing as me, saying my first and last name. … It’s very freaky when I saw that,” said Chaw.

The fraud involved a grant, not loans, so Chaw himself did not lose money. He called the Social Security Administration to report the identity theft, but after five hours on hold, he never got through to a person.

As the Trump administration moves to dismantle the Education Department, federal cuts may make it harder to catch criminals and help victims of identity theft. In March, the Trump administration fired more than 300 people from the Federal Student Aid office, and the department’s Office of Inspector General, which investigates fraud, has lost more than 20% of its staff through attrition and retirements since October.

“I’m just nervous that I’m going to be stuck with this,” Brady said. “The agency is going to be so broken down and disintegrated that I won’t be able to do anything, and I’m just going to be stuck with those $9,000” in loans.

Criminal cases around the country offer a glimpse of the schemes’ pervasiveness.

In the past year, investigators indicted a man accused of leading a Texas fraud ring that used stolen identities to pursue $1.5 million in student aid. Another person in Texas pleaded guilty to using the names of prison inmates to apply for over $650,000 in student aid at colleges across the South and Southwest. And a person in New York recently pleaded guilty to a $450,000 student aid scam that lasted a decade.

Identify fraud victims who never attended college are hit with student debt

Brittnee Nelson of Shreveport, Louisiana, was bringing her daughter to day care two years ago when she received a notification that her credit score had dropped 27 points.

Loans had been taken out in her name for colleges in California and Louisiana, she discovered. She canceled one before it was paid out, but it was too late to stop a loan of over $5,000 for Delgado Community College in New Orleans.

Nelson runs her own housecleaning business and didn’t go to college. She already was signed up for identity theft protection and carefully monitored her credit. Still, her debt almost went into collections before the loan was put in forbearance. She recently got the loans taken off her record after two years of effort.

“It’s like if someone came into your house and robbed you,” she said.

The federal government’s efforts to verify borrowers’ identity could help, she said.

“If they can make these hurdles a little bit harder and have these verifications more provable, I think that’s really, really, really going to protect people in the long run,” she said.

Delgado spokesperson Barbara Waiters said responsibility for approving loans ultimately lies with federal agencies.

“This is an unfortunate and serious matter, but it is not the direct or indirect result of Delgado’s internal processes,” Waiters said.

In San Francisco, the loans taken out in Brady’s name are in a grace period, but still on the books. That has not been her only challenge. A few months ago, she was laid off from her job and decided to sign up for a class at City College San Francisco to help her career. But all the classes were full.

After a few weeks, Brady finally was able to sign up for a class. The professor apologized for the delay in spots opening up: The college has been struggling with fraudulent applications.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Sarah Reingewirtz—MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images

In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. “Dissent,” he said, ”is the very essence of science.”

That commitment is being put to the test.

On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”

It says: “We dissent.”

In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers put their signatures on the letter — and their careers on the line. An additional 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.

The letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. White House spokesman Kush Desai defended the administration’s approach to federal research and said President Donald Trump is focused on restoring a “Gold Standard” of science, not “ideological activism.”

The letter came out a day before Bhattacharya is to testify to a Senate committee about Trump’s proposed budget, opening him to questions about the broadside from declaration signers, and it stirred Democrats on a House panel to ask the Republican chair for hearings on the matter.

Confronting a ‘culture of fear’

The signers went public in the face of a “culture of fear and suppression” they say Trump’s administration has spread through the federal civil service. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” the declaration says.

Bhattacharya responded to the declaration by saying it “has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months,” such as suggestions that NIH has ended international collaboration.

“Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive,” he said in a statement. “We all want the NIH to succeed.”

Named for the agency’s headquarters location in Maryland, the Bethesda Declaration details upheaval in the world’s premier public health research institution over the course of mere months.

It addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or leaving them with unmonitored device implants.

In one case, an NIH-supported study of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti had to be stopped, ceasing antibiotic treatment mid-course for patients.

In a number of cases, trials that were mostly completed were rendered useless without the money to finish and analyze the work, the letter says. “Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million,” it says, “it wastes $4 million.”

The mask comes off

Jenna Norton, who oversees health disparity research at the agency’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, recently appeared at a forum by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., to talk about what’s happening at the NIH.

At the event, she masked to conceal her identity. Now the mask is off. She was a lead organizer of the declaration.

“I want people to know how bad things are at NIH,” Norton told The Associated Press.

The signers said they modeled their indictment after Bhattacharya’s Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, when he was a professor at Stanford University Medical School.

His declaration drew together likeminded infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who dissented from what they saw as excessive COVID-19 lockdown policies and felt ostracized by the larger public health community that pushed those policies, including the NIH.

“He is proud of his statement, and we are proud of ours,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute who signed the Bethesda Declaration.

Cancer research is sidelined

As chief of the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch, Kobrin provides scientific oversight of researchers across the country who’ve been funded by the cancer institute or want to be. Cuts in personnel and money have shifted her work from improving cancer care research to what she sees as minimizing its destruction. “So much of it is gone — my work,” she said.

The 21-year NIH veteran said she signed because she didn’t want to be “a collaborator” in the political manipulation of biomedical science.

Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, also signed the declaration. “We have a saying in basic science,” he said. “You go and become a physician if you want to treat thousands of patients. You go and become a researcher if you want to save billions of patients.

“We are doing the research that is going to go and create the cures of the future,” he added. But that won’t happen, he said, if Trump’s Republican administration prevails with its searing grant cuts.

The NIH employees interviewed by the AP emphasized they were speaking for themselves and not for their institutes nor the NIH.

Dissenters range across the breadth of NIH

Employees from all 27 NIH institutes and centers gave their support to the declaration. Most who signed are intimately involved with evaluating and overseeing extramural research grants.

The letter asserts “NIH trials are being halted without regard to participant safety” and the agency is shirking commitments to trial participants who “braved personal risk to give the incredible gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would fuel scientific discovery and improve health.”

The Trump administration has gone at public health research on several fronts, both directly, as part of its broad effort to root out diversity, equity and inclusion values throughout the bureaucracy, and as part of its drive to starve some universities of federal money.

At the White House, Desai said Americans “have lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of Americans moved on from years ago.”

A blunt ax swings

This has forced “indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes for ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science,” the declaration says.

Some NIH employees have previously come forward in televised protests to air grievances, and many walked out of Bhattacharya’s town hall with staff. The declaration is the first cohesive effort to register agency-wide dismay with the NIH’s direction.

The dissenters remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his oft-stated ethic that academic freedom must be a lynchpin in science.

With that in place, he said in a statement in April, “NIH scientists can be certain they are afforded the ability to engage in open, academic discourse as part of their official duties and in their personal capacities without risk of official interference, professional disadvantage or workplace retaliation.”

Now it will be seen whether that’s enough to protect those NIH employees challenging the Trump administration and him.

“There’s a book I read to my kids, and it talks about how you can’t be brave if you’re not scared,” said Norton, who has three young children. “I am so scared about doing this, but I am trying to be brave for my kids because it’s only going to get harder to speak up.

“Maybe I’m putting my kids at risk by doing this,” she added. “And I’m doing it anyway because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP

Sly Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and ’70s and beyond with such hits as “Everyday People,” “Stand!” and “Family Affair,” died Monday at age 82

Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said Stone died in Los Angeles surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments.

Founded in 1966-67, Sly and the Family Stone was the first major group to include Black and white men and women, and well embodied a time when anything seemed possible — riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The singers screeched, chanted, crooned and hollered. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk.

Sly’s time on top was brief, roughly from 1968-1971, but profound. No band better captured the gravity-defying euphoria of the Woodstock era or more bravely addressed the crash which followed. From early songs as rousing as their titles — “I Want To Take You Higher,” “Stand!” — to the sober aftermath of “Family Affair” and “Runnin’ Away,” Sly and the Family Stone spoke for a generation whether or not it liked what they had to say.

Stone’s group began as a Bay Area sextet featuring Sly on keyboards, Larry Graham on bass; Sly’s brother, Freddie, on guitar; sister Rose on vocals; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini horns and Greg Errico on drums. They debuted with the album “A Whole New Thing” and earned the title with their breakthrough single, “Dance to the Music.” It hit the top 10 in April 1968, the week the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered, and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time.

Led by Sly Stone, with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades, mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio. “Everyday People,” “I Wanna Take You Higher” and other songs were anthems of community, non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit, built around such catchphrases as “different strokes for different folks.” The group released five top 10 singles, three of them hitting No. 1, and three million-selling albums: “Stand!”, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” and “Greatest Hits.”

For a time, countless performers wanted to look and sound like Sly and the Family Stone. The Jackson Five’s breakthrough hit, “I Want You Back,” and the Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next to You” were among the many songs from the late 1960s that mimicked Sly’s vocal and instrumental arrangements. Miles Davis’ landmark blend of jazz, rock and funk, “Bitches Brew,” was inspired in part by Sly, while fellow jazz artist Herbie Hancock even named a song after him.

“He had a way of talking, moving from playful to earnest at will. He had a look, belts, and hats and jewelry,” Questlove wrote in the foreword to Stone’s memoir, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” named for one of his biggest hits and published through Questlove’s imprint in 2023. “He was a special case, cooler than everything around him by a factor of infinity.”

In 2025, Questlove released the documentary “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius).”

Sly’s influence has endured for decades. The top funk artist of the 1970s, Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton, was a Stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and the Black Eyed Peas were among the many performers from the 1980s and after shaped in part by Sly, and countless hip-hop artists have sampled his riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and the Roots.

“Sly did so many things so well that he turned my head all the way around,” Clinton once wrote. “He could create polished R&B that sounded like it came from an act that had gigged at clubs for years, and then in the next breath he could be as psychedelic as the heaviest rock band.”

A dream dies, a career burns away

By the early ’70s, Stone himself was beginning a descent from which he never recovered, driven by the pressures of fame and the added burden of Black fame. His record company was anxious for more hits, while the Black Panthers were pressing him to drop the white members from his group. After moving from the Bay Area to Los Angeles in 1970, he became increasingly hooked on cocaine and erratic in his behavior. A promised album, “The Incredible and Unpredictable Sly and the Family Stone” (“The most optimistic of all,” Rolling Stone reported) never appeared. He became notorious for being late to concerts or not showing up at all, often leaving “other band members waiting backstage for hours wondering whether he was going to show up or not,” according to Stone biographer Joel Selvin.

Around the country, separatism and paranoia were setting in. As a turn of the calendar, and as a state of mind, the ’60s were over. “The possibility of possibility was leaking out,” Stone later explained in his memoir.

On “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” Stone had warned: “Dying young is hard to take/selling out is harder.” Late in 1971, he released “There’s a Riot Going On,” one of the grimmest, most uncompromising records ever to top the album charts. The sound was dense and murky (Sly was among the first musicians to use drum machines), the mood reflective (“Family Affair”), fearful (“Runnin’ Away”) and despairing: “Time, they say, is the answer — but I don’t believe it,” Sly sings on “Time.” The fast, funky pace of the original “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” was slowed, stretched and retitled “Thank You For Talkin’ to Me, Africa.”

The running time of the title track was 0:00.

“It is Muzak with its finger on the trigger,” critic Greil Marcus called the album.

“Riot” highlighted an extraordinary run of blunt, hard-hitting records by Black artists, from the Stevie Wonder single “Superstition” to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” album, to which “Riot” was an unofficial response. But Stone seemed to back away from the nightmare he had related. He was reluctant to perform material from “Riot” in concert and softened the mood on the acclaimed 1973 album “Fresh,” which did feature a cover of “Que Sera Sera,” the wistful Doris Day song reworked into a rueful testament to fate’s upper hand.

By the end of the decade, Sly and the Family Stone had broken up and Sly was releasing solo records with such unmet promises as “Heard You Missed Me, Well I’m Back” and “Back On the Right Track.” Most of the news he made over the following decades was of drug busts, financial troubles and mishaps on stage. Sly and the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock & Roll of Fame in 1993 and honored in 2006 at the Grammy Awards, but Sly released just one album after the early ’80s, “I’m Back! Family & Friends,” much of it updated recordings of his old hits.

He would allege he had hundreds of unreleased songs and did collaborate on occasion with Clinton, who would recall how Stone “could just be sitting there doing nothing and then open his eyes and shock you with a lyric so brilliant that it was obvious no one had ever thought of it before.”

Sly Stone had three children, including a daughter with Cynthia Robinson, and was married once — briefly and very publicly. In 1974, he and actor Kathy Silva wed on stage at Madison Square Garden, an event that inspired an 11,000-word story in The New Yorker. Sly and Silva soon divorced.

A born musician, a born uniter

He was born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, and raised in Vallejo, California, the second of five children in a close, religious family. Sylvester became “Sly” by accident, when a teacher mistakenly spelled his name “Slyvester.”

He loved performing so much that his mother alleged he would cry if the congregation in church didn’t respond when he sang before it. He was so gifted and ambitious that by age 4 he had sung on stage at a Sam Cooke show and by age 11 had mastered several instruments and recorded a gospel song with his siblings. He was so committed to the races working together that in his teens and early 20s he was playing in local bands that included Black and white members and was becoming known around the Bay Area as a deejay equally willing to play the Beatles and rhythm and blues acts.

Through his radio connections, he produced some of the top San Francisco bands, including the Great Society, Grace Slick’s group before she joined the Jefferson Airplane. Along with an early mentor and champion, San Francisco deejay Tom “Big Daddy” Donahue, he worked on rhythm and blues hits (Bobby Freeman’s “C’mon and Swim”) and the Beau Brummels’ Beatle-esque “Laugh, Laugh.” Meanwhile, he was putting together his own group, recruiting family members and local musicians and settling on the name Sly and the Family Stone.

“A Whole New Thing” came out in 1967, soon followed by the single “Dance to the Music,” in which each member was granted a moment of introduction as the song rightly proclaimed a “brand new beat.” In December 1968, the group appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and performed a medley that included “Dance to the Music” and “Everyday People.” Before the set began, Sly turned to the audience and recited a brief passage from his song “Are You Ready”:

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Mark J. Terrill—AP

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday removed every member of a scientific committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to use vaccines and pledged to replace them with his own picks.

Major physicians and public health groups criticized the move to oust all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Kennedy, who was one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine activists before becoming the nation’s top health official, has not said who he would appoint to the panel, but said it would convene in just two weeks in Atlanta.

Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the entire current roster of committee members were Biden appointees.

“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

When reached by phone, the panel’s now-former chair — Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University — declined to comment. But another panel member, Noel Brewer at the University of North Carolina, said he and other committee members received an email late Monday afternoon that said their services on the committee had been terminated but gave no reason.

“I’d assumed I’d continue serving on the committee for my full term,” said Brewer, who joined the panel last summer.

Brewer is a behavioral scientist whose research examines why people get vaccinated and ways to improve vaccination coverage. Whether people get vaccinated is largely influenced by what their doctors recommend, and doctors have been following ACIP guidance.

“Up until today, ACIP recommendations were the gold standard for what insurers should pay for, what providers should recommend, and what the public should look to,” he said.

But Kennedy already took the unusual step of changing COVID-19 recommendations without first consulting the committee — a move criticized by doctors’ groups and public health advocates.

“It’s unclear what the future holds,” Brewer said. “Certainly provider organizations have already started to turn away from ACIP.”

Kennedy said the committee members had too many conflicts of interest. Currently, committee members are required to declare any potential such conflicts, as well as business interests, that arise during their tenure. They also must disclose any possible conflicts at the start of each public meeting.

But Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Kennedy’s actions were based on false conflict-of-interest claims and set “a dangerous and unprecedented action that makes our families less safe” by potentially reducing vaccine access for millions of people.

“Make no mistake: Politicizing the ACIP as Secretary Kennedy is doing will undermine public trust under the guise of improving it,” he said in a statement. “We’ll look back at this as a grave mistake that sacrificed decades of scientific rigor, undermined public trust, and opened the door for fringe theories rather than facts.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy’s mass ouster “a coup.”

“It’s not how democracies work. It’s not good for the health of the nation,” Benjamin told The Associated Press.

Benjamin said the move raises real concerns about whether future committee members will be viewed as impartial. He added that Kennedy is going against what he told lawmakers and the public, and the public health association plans to watch Kennedy “like a hawk.”

“He is breaking a promise,” Benjamin said. “He said he wasn’t going to do this.”

Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, called the committee a trusted source of science- and data-driven advice and said Kennedy’s move, coupled with declining vaccination rates across the country, will help drive an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.

“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said in a statement.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who had expressed reservations about Kennedy’s nomination but voted to install him as the nation’s health secretary nonetheless, said he had spoken with Kennedy moments after the announcement.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy said in a social media post. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

The committee had been in a state of flux since Kennedy took over. Its first meeting this year had been delayed when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services abruptly postponed its February meeting.

During Kennedy’s confirmation, Cassidy had expressed concerns about preserving the committee, saying he had sought assurances that Kennedy would keep the panel’s current vaccine recommendations.

The webpage that featured the committee’s members was deleted Monday evening, shortly after Kennedy’s announcement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Jose Luis Magana—AP