Of all the jarring things I've witnessed on the National Mall, nothing will beat the image of the first thing I saw after I cleared security at the Army festival: a child, sitting at the controls of an M119A3 Howitzer, being instructed by a soldier on how to aim it, as his red-hatted parents took a photo with the Washington Monument in the background.
The primary stated reason for the Grand Military Parade is to celebrate the US Army's 250th birthday. The second stated reason is to use the event for recruiting purposes. Like other military branches, the Army has struggled to meet its enlistment quotas for over the past decade. And according to very defensive Army spokespeople trying to convince skeptics that the parade was not for Donald Trump's birthday, there had always been a festival planned on the National Mall that day, and it had been in the works for over two years, and the parade, tacked on just two months ago, was purely incidental. Assuming that their statement was true, I wasn't quite sure if they had anticipated so many people in blatant MAGA swag in attendance - or how eager they were to bring their children and hand them assault rifles.
There had been kid-frien …
As President Donald Trump kicked off a birthday military parade on the streets of Washington, DC, what's estimated as roughly 2,000 events were held across the US and beyond - protesting Trump and Elon Musk's evisceration of government services, an unprecedented crackdown by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and countless other actions from the administration in its first five months. Held under the title "No Kings" (with, as you'll see, one conspicuous exception), they're the latest in several mass protests, following April's Hands Off events and a wave of Tesla Takedown demonstrations in March.
As The Verge's Tina Nguyen went to downtown DC, we also sent reporters to No Kings demonstrations spanning the country, plus a "No Tyrants" event in the UK. How would they unfold after promises of "very heavy force" against protesters in the capital, after the deployment of thousands of military troops in a move a judge has bluntly called illegal, and after promises to "liberate" the city of Los Angeles from its "burdensome leadership" by local elected officials? What about the overnight killing of a Minnesota Democratic state representative and her husband, and the shooting of …
The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly pitching a merger condition that would forbid advertising agencies from boycotting platforms based on political content, in a move that could benefit Elon Musk's X social network and President Trump's own Truth Social platform.
As the FTC reviews a proposed merger between Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group, two large ad agencies, The New York Times reported yesterday that a "proposed consent decree would prevent the merged company from boycotting platforms because of their political content by refusing to place their clients' advertisements on them, according to two people briefed on the matter."
This is one of several moves the FTC has reportedly made to discourage ad boycotts that have riled conservatives. The FTC currently has only Republican commissioners because President Trump fired both Democrats, who allege in a lawsuit that the firings were illegal. Trump also declared sweeping executive power over the FTC and other agencies that were created to operate independently from the White House.
© Getty Images | Tom Williams
As artificial intelligence has advanced, AI tools have emerged to make it possible to easily create digital replicas of lost loved ones, which can be generated without the knowledge or consent of the person who died.
Trained on the data of the dead, these tools, sometimes called grief bots or AI ghosts, may be text-, audio-, or even video-based. Chatting provides what some mourners feel is a close approximation to ongoing interactions with the people they love most. But the tech remains controversial, perhaps complicating the grieving process while threatening to infringe upon the privacy of the deceased, whose data could still be vulnerable to manipulation or identity theft.
Because of suspected harms and perhaps a general repulsion to the idea of it, not everybody wants to become an AI ghost.
© Aurich Lawson
The Trump administration has upended plans that state governments made to distribute $42 billion in federal broadband funding, forcing state officials to scrap much of the preparation work they did over the previous couple of years.
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick essentially put the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program on hold earlier this year and last week announced details of a rules overhaul that requires states to change how they distribute money to Internet service providers. To find out how this affects states, we spoke with Andrew Butcher, president of the Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA).
"We had been in position to be making awards this month, but for [the Trump administration's] deliberations and program changes, so it's pretty unfortunate," Butcher told Ars. Established by a 2021 state law, the MCA is a quasi-governmental agency that oversees Maine's BEAD planning and other programs that increase broadband access.
© Getty Images | Akchamczuk
Over 300 researchers from the National Institutes of Health have published a letter rebuking its director and the Trump administration for deep, politically motivated cuts to research funding, as well as disrupting global collaboration, undermining scientific review processes, and laying off critical NIH staff.
"We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources," the letter states, linking to independent news reports on the harms of NIH trials being halted and that the administration's cuts to the agency have cost, rather than saved, taxpayer money. Since January, the Trump administration has terminated 2,100 NIH research grants totaling around $9.5 billion and $2.6 billion in contracts, the letter notes. The researchers also accuse the administration of creating "a culture of fear and suppression" among federal researchers.
The letter describes the researchers' action as "dissent" from the administration's policies, quoting NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in his congressional confirmation hearing as saying, "Dissent is the very essence of science."
© Getty | Andrew Harnik
Ajit Pai is back on the telecom policy scene as chief lobbyist for the mobile industry, and he has quickly managed to anger a coalition that includes both cable companies and consumer advocates.
Pai was the Federal Communications Commission chairman during President Trump's first term and then spent several years at private equity firm Searchlight Capital. He changed jobs in April, becoming the president and CEO of wireless industry lobby group CTIA. Shortly after, he visited the White House to discuss wireless industry priorities and had a meeting with Brendan Carr, the current FCC chairman who was part of Pai's Republican majority at the FCC from 2017 to 2021.
Pai's new job isn't surprising. He was once a lawyer for Verizon, and it's not uncommon for FCC chairs and commissioners to be lobbyists before or after terms in government.
© Getty Images | Bloomberg
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
The daughter of a woman who was killed by extreme heat during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against major oil companies claiming they should be held responsible for her death.
The civil lawsuit, filed on May 29 in King County Superior Court in Seattle, is the first wrongful death case brought against Big Oil in the US in the context of climate change. It attempts to hold some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies liable for the death of Juliana Leon, who perished from overheating during the heat dome event, which scientists have determined would have been virtually impossible absent human-caused climate change.
© Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants to enforce a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation by making states ineligible for broadband funding if they try to impose any limits on development of artificial intelligence.
The House previously approved a budget bill that contained a fairly straightforward provision to ban state AI regulation for 10 years. Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, yesterday released budget reconciliation text that takes a different approach to preventing states from regulating AI.
Cruz's approach may be an attempt to get around the Senate's Byrd Rule, which limits the inclusion of "extraneous matter" in budget reconciliation legislation. He wants to make it impossible for states to receive money from the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program if they try to regulate AI. Cruz released a summary that says his bill "forbids states collecting BEAD money from strangling AI deployment with EU-style regulation."
© Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla
Late Thursday, OpenAI confronted user panic over a sweeping court order requiring widespread chat log retention—including users' deleted chats—after moving to appeal the order that allegedly impacts the privacy of hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users globally.
In a statement, OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap explained that the court order came in a lawsuit with The New York Times and other news organizations, which alleged that deleted chats may contain evidence of users prompting ChatGPT to generate copyrighted news articles.
To comply with the order, OpenAI must "retain all user content indefinitely going forward, based on speculation" that the news plaintiffs "might find something that supports their case," OpenAI's statement alleged.
© Leonid Korchenko | Moment
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
© Getty | KAREN BLEIER
"I want to make a big announcement," said Faryar Shirzad, the chief policy officer of Coinbase, to a nearly empty room. His words echoed across the massive hall at the Bitcoin Conference, deep in the caverns of The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas, and it wasn't apparent how many people were watching on the livestream. Then again, somebody out there may have been interested in the panelists he was interviewing, one of whom was unusual by Bitcoin Conference standards: Chris LaCivita, the political consultant who'd co-chaired Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
"I am super proud to say it on this stage," Shirzad continued, addressing the dozens of people scattered across 5,000 chairs. "We have just become a major sponsor of the America250 effort."
My jaw dropped. Coinbase, the world's largest crypto exchange, the owner of 12 percent of the world's Bitcoin supply, and listed on the S&P 500, was paying for Trump to hold a military parade.
No wonder they made the announcement in an empty room. Today was "Code and Country": an entire day of MAGA-themed panels on the Nakamoto Main Stage, full of Republican legislators, White House officials, and political operatives, all of whom pr …
Senate Commerce Republicans have kept a ten year moratorium on state AI laws in their latest version of President Donald Trump's massive budget package. And a growing number of lawmakers and civil society groups warn that its broad language could put consumer protections on the chopping block.
Republicans who support the provision, which the House cleared as part of its "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," say it will help ensure AI companies aren't bogged down by a complicated patchwork of regulations. But opponents warn that should it survive a vote and a congressional rule that might prohibit it, Big Tech companies could be exempted from state legal guardrails for years to come, without any promise of federal standards to take their place.
"What this moratorium does is prevent every state in the country from having basic regulations to protect workers and to protect consumers," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), whose district includes Silicon Valley, tells The Verge in an interview. He warns that as written, the language included in the House-passed budget reconciliation package could restrict state laws that attempt to regulate social media companies, prevent algorithmic rent discrimination, …
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