The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way

The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way

By William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden and Kirsten Berg This story was originally published by ProPublica In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling…

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A shooting in Austin exposes the terror of ICE’s ‘shadow surge’

A shooting in Austin exposes the terror of ICE’s ‘shadow surge’

Texas Monthly reports: The Crestview-Wooten neighborhood, where on Sunday an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, wears its identity proudly. There’s a Mexican market on one block, a supermercado on the next, and paleterias, a panaderia, and Latino-owned salons and body shops nearby. It sits just south of Rundberg and the trend-resistant “Taco Mile,” named for its concentration of authentic taco joints. North Austin neighborhoods have been seeing increased ICE activity for months. Locals have…

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‘We’re on track to hand control of the most powerful weapon the world has ever built to the weapon itself’

‘We’re on track to hand control of the most powerful weapon the world has ever built to the weapon itself’

"We're on track to hand control of the most powerful weapon the world has ever built to the weapon itself." Former UK Defence Secretary and ControlAI advisor Lord Browne of Ladyton, closing our London event the night before @alexsobel introduced our bill to ban superintelligent… pic.twitter.com/dPzvsFOqQB — ControlAI (@ControlAI) September 22, 2026 ControlAI is a non-profit organisation that works to prevent the extinction risk posed by superintelligence and to secure a great future for humanity. Ezra Klein writes: There’s a…

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AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society

AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society

The Financial Times reports: Staff at world-leading AI companies and institutions are increasingly suffering from the mental strain of working on systems they fear could cause serious harm to society. Multiple staff at the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute, the global leader in the independent testing of frontier AI models, have been signed off work with stress and are undergoing counselling, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The tight schedules for testing unreleased AI models and alarm over…

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An army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political content

An army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political content

The New York Times reports: Judging from his TikTok feed, Drew was struggling to get by as a young man living near Dallas. Grocery bills were skyrocketing, he said, and he was looking for thrift stores to help keep costs down. In reality, according to his LinkedIn profile, Drew was a man from Utah named Alex Forrester, who said he was now in Florida. “All of it was paid for,” he said in a video posted in late June, which…

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‘Literally state-run TV’: Trump launches YouTube channel amid boycott by networks

‘Literally state-run TV’: Trump launches YouTube channel amid boycott by networks

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s previous television career centred on his role on The Apprentice, but the US president’s latest media venture is a rather lower-budget affair: the launch of Trump TV in the wake of his ban on several outlets from covering the White House. With major US networks agreeing to not cover the president while the dispute continues, on Monday the White House announced the new 24/7 YouTube live stream, which it promised would feature “top past moments,…

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How virus-like ‘jumping genes’ became our partners in evolution

How virus-like ‘jumping genes’ became our partners in evolution

Jake Buehler writes: You might imagine that the DNA in your cells has a simple history. Even though it’s been recombined in every generation through sex and gained the occasional mutation, on the whole the genome has been stable and has been passed down reliably from your ancestors. But that’s not the entire story. Nearly half of your genome is a wild drama: mobile, repetitive, disruptive, even viral. This half is the result of genetic material that can clip itself…

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Capitulating to AI: How humanity might surrender to machine rule

Capitulating to AI: How humanity might surrender to machine rule

Ruxandra Teslo writes: [W]hat is striking about current discussions around AI risks is that they return to one dominant fear: that humanity might summon into existence a power whose capacities exceed its comprehension, and discover, too late, that it cannot control it. In this vision of the world, AI would essentially take over the world and after that, potentially destroy humanity. Although I do not regard such fears as frivolous, my own anxiety concerns the rather less spectacular way humans…

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In California, three quarters of voters view AI as a threat

In California, three quarters of voters view AI as a threat

Politico reports: Even Silicon Valley’s backyard is bracing for a dark AI future. California voters are overwhelmingly pessimistic about AI and believe the rapidly advancing technology poses a serious risk to humanity, according to a new poll by POLITICO and its partners. The anxiety in the hub of the global tech industry cuts across partisan and demographic lines, with voters of different ages and party affiliations expressing remarkably similar concerns about where the technology is headed. “The drumbeat of negativism…

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The existential threat that AI poses to universities

The existential threat that AI poses to universities

The New York Times reports: The worries that artificial intelligence is degrading education have been building for months. Students are using it for everything, including cheating, and a recent report out of M.I.T. said it is triggering “cognitive surrender.” Many university leaders are embracing A.I. with enthusiasm anyway. As A.I. leaders warn about the dangers of their own technology, the dissonance between the optimism of university leaders and the fears of many students and professors may increase. Professors and students…

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The Washington press corps needs to boycott White House events

The Washington press corps needs to boycott White House events

Margaret Sullivan writes: On Monday, the three news organizations that had been kicked out of the White House because of Donald Trump’s latest fit of pique sued the president and three top advisers. An accompanying statement by CNN, MS Now and Politico accurately calls last week’s sudden lockout “a direct assault on the first amendment”. The legal action is the right move, of course, and one that may prevail since the ban seems to be a clear case of what…

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The seven-day lightning offensive by the Houthis that changed Yemen’s war

The seven-day lightning offensive by the Houthis that changed Yemen’s war

Mohammed Al-Qadhi writes: There are moments in Yemen’s long war when the map changes faster than politicians can understand it. The collapse of the western coast this month was one of them. The lightning offensive by Yemen’s Houthi movement and its seizure of key positions around the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are game changers in the country’s 12-year conflict, fundamentally reshaping the domestic balance of power and bearing consequences that go…

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To bomb, or not to bomb: Trump’s indecisive ‘deciding mode’

To bomb, or not to bomb: Trump’s indecisive ‘deciding mode’

The New York Times reports: For two weeks, the question of whether to yield to pleas from Saudi Arabia and order the U.S. military to strike targets in Yemen controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis has bedeviled President Trump. A decision to go forward could open another front in the war against Iran that Mr. Trump started but has been unable to end as it spreads economic shock around the globe. The president had wavered for weeks over the Saudi appeals…

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How the American revolt against Flock cameras mirrors the Boston Tea Party of 1773

How the American revolt against Flock cameras mirrors the Boston Tea Party of 1773

A license plate recognition camera is seen in Boulder. Colo., on March 5, 2026. Matthew Jonas/MediaNews Group/Boulder Daily Camera via Getty Images By G. Patrick O’Brien, University of Tampa A grassroots revolt against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, has gained momentum across the United States. ALPRs are AI-powered cameras that capture images of all passing vehicles. The camera systems turn details into datapoints searchable by anyone with access to the information. Today, there are more than 130,000 ALPRs on…

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