The Trump administration announced new sanctions against Cuba on Thursday, threatening to deepen an ongoing economic crisis in the island nation. The State and Treasury departments announced they are leveling additional penalties against nine state-owned mining, metal and construction companies. The move also targets the leadership of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.
Cuba holds significant deposits of cobalt and nickel, which are used in the production of electronics. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused these mining companies of sustaining “the regime’s repressive apparatus through control of key economic sectors.”
“Today’s designations make clear that the Trump Administration will not tolerate the Cuban regime’s efforts to fund its repression or continue its decades-long campaign of subversive anti-American activities,” Rubio said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms — none of which are afforded to its people — by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and Communist violence across the world.”
President Donald Trump has made overthrowing Cuba’s government a priority of his second term, promising in May to “take over” the Caribbean nation, while designating it a state sponsor of terrorism and imposing an oil blockade since January 2026. This has triggered a humanitarian crisis marked by rolling blackouts, the collapse of tourism, agricultural shortages and worsened medical care. Many Cuban children and other vulnerable citizens have died in the process, according to the United Nations, also citing a doubling of infant mortality. The Cuban government has refused to resign.
The Trump administration’s sanctions have spurred a transition to renewable energy like solar panels, with the help of China, which has deepened Cuba’s dependence on the Asian nation for its energy needs. Still, the country is still struggling to meet demand thanks to its aging power grid.
There can be many reasonable reactions to the surprising news that Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, along with their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, are returning to Britain.
But when it comes to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, reasonable went out the window a decade ago.
Thursday’s initial responses to “Megxit II: Montecito’s Revenge,” as thePage Six newsletter branded the move, were typically caustic. It and other rags insinuate the problem,As Ever, is the royal formerly known as Meghan Markle. One anonymous industry well-wisher claims, “She was the more thirsty of the two of them.” Add a few more nuanced takes citing all the ways Harry and Meghan (but mostly Meghan) failed to conquer Hollywood, and you would think the Duchess had laced her famous jams with chicken poop.
A more plausible reason for the Sussexes’ unexpected English retreat may be related to the health of Prince Harry’s father, King Charles III, with whom Harry reunited in July. In 2024, Buckingham Palace made Charles’ cancer diagnosis public without specifying the severity of his illness. It’s common for people to move closer to ailing relatives. The Sussexes are many things, but if their time in the spotlight showed us anything, it’s that they are human.
Harry and Meghan’s U.K. return comes as British and American press are being scrutinized for their skewed coverage of Jason Arday, the youngest Black professor in Cambridge history. An online smear campaign accused him of having plagiarized parts of his 2015 doctoral thesis.NewsCord, a media analysis site, found that 229 articles about Arday were published in the United Kingdom in 22 days, with 188 appearing in the nine days between his resignation and his death.
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In Netflix’s 2022 docuseries “Harry & Meghan,” the couple candidly described the role that Meghan’s vicious treatment in the press played in her depression and suicidal ideation. Much of it, they say, was orchestrated by The Firm, the business arm of the British royal family.
It isn’t hard to predict what their welcome home will be like. Then again, as social media personalityMrs. Betty Bowers put it: “You know the United States is an unpleasant place when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would rather live in a country with newspapers and relatives that hate them.”
It was a punch delivered in Atlanta on Sunday and felt all the way in Washington, smooth and fluid, like one of Sugar Ray Robinson’s left hooks or Muhammad Ali’s left jabs. With one word — actually, one name: Natalie — Sen. Jon Ossoff stunned the Trump White House with a blow they didn’t see coming and caused the rest of the country to talk about what they had just witnessed.
“So [Trump] doesn’t want to do this job,” Ossoff, who is running for reelection in Georgia, said at a campaign event on Sunday. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
As special assistant to the president, 35-year-old Natalie Harp follows Trump everywhere: on Marine One, Air Force One, even on the links. She was also one of the chosen few selected to join Trump on a separate plane — and the catering truck that carried him to it — when he recently abandoned returning to the U.S. from Turkey on Air Force One after reportedly receiving threats from Iran. Platinum blonde and attractive in a Fox News sort of way, she is responsible for managing the president’s volatile moods and perhaps even his health, which she accomplishes in part by leaving him letters signed “With all my heart, Natalie.” Harp will never leave him, Trump has boasted, according to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in “Regime Change,” even as others in the administration will inevitably depart for greener, more lucrative pastures.
While all of official Washington knew Harp’s name, few outside the Beltway did. That has now changed.
Following Ossoff’s speech, White House communications director Steven Cheung was beside himself, referring to the senator as “Jackoff Jon” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics.” Trump called him Pee-wee Herman — successfully, this time. (In a recent speech, the president had mangled the character’s name, referring to him as “Pinky Herman.”)
The fury and volume of the White House’s reaction to one sentence in the senator’s speech was telling. He obviously hit a nerve, which revealed there was, in fact, a story there waiting to be told. But it also proved that Ossoff knows what he’s doing.
The fury and volume of the White House’s reaction to one sentence in the senator’s speech was telling. He obviously hit a nerve, which revealed there was, in fact, a story there waiting to be told. But it also proved that Ossoff knows what he’s doing. And more than that, he’s good at it.
In this case, the “it” is the art of burning and baiting, a gift many people just tuning into the Georgia Senate race might be surprised to associate with the earnest 39-year-old, who is known in the Senate for his reserved demeanor, for keeping his head down and doing the work.
The right was predictably appalled, with the likes of CNN pundit Scott Jennings and podcaster Megyn Kelly crying foul, accusing Ossoff of misogyny and insinuating adultery between the president and Harp. (Others have pointed out that given Trump’s well documented track record of sexual liaisons, the speculation was already alive.)
But even former Obama adviser David Axelrod seemed shocked by Ossoff’s remarks, chiding him on X for invoking Harp, calling it “gratuitous and unnecessary.” The name drop likely “juiced the virality” of his comment, he wrote, “Probably thrilled some in the base, who figured it was just giving Trump a taste of his own nasty medicine. But they distracted and detracted from the power of the message.”
Axelrod might have had a point — in 2014. His words, unfortunately, belong to another time, before Trump wrung the last drops of decorum from our politics. Now, 12 years and many political lifetimes later, they read as quaint and out-of-touch, like a grandfather telling his grandson to never contradict his betters. They also ignore the strategy and skill that Ossoff brought to the task.
What sets the senator apart from others, including many likely 2028 contenders who troll Trump, is that he brings a forensic craft to his burn-and-bait and, from a writer’s perspective, the beauty of construction. (Ossoff has often said he writes his own speeches.) Overlooked in his comments was an Easter egg hiding in plain sight: his use of “their” in reference to Air Force One. As a plural possessive, the usage implies ownership — Trump wants to “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace” — a subtle and canny construction that underscored questions about why Trump needs Harp and the recent scandal involving Air Force One.
By cleverly placing the reference in the middle of a substantive critique of Trump’s behavior in office, Ossoff also ensured that the clip would be played in full, reminding viewers digesting it on social media and cable news alike about a spate of serious issues: the reported suicide attempts and appalling conditions of America’s sailor aboard the USS Lincoln, the nation’s dwindling supply of munitions and oil reserves, concerns about the aging president’s physical health, allegations of corruption by Trump and his family, the rushed construction of the massively unpopular White House ballroom and the gift of a plane from a foreign prince that was clearly designed to curry favor.
The brief mention of Harp in Ossoff’s speech led to a round of victory laps on MS NOW — Jen Psaki on Monday, Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday — that afforded the senator the opportunity to take his message to Democrats nationwide and, most likely, add to his campaign coffers.
When asked by O’Donnell about his comments, he offered another burn: “Apparently, in the White House, the truth hurts.” That’s all. Then he pivoted to his real message. “They have lied us into war after promising peace,” he said. “They’ve driven inflation skyrocketing, thrown people off their health insurance, doubled health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians after they promised to bring down prices on day one.”
From there he brought it home: “And the president’s done so, not just enabled by hangers-on and sycophants inside the White House, but also Republicans in Congress who have enabled him at every turn, and one of them is Congressman Mike Collins here in Georgia. The pro-war, pro-tariff, pro-cutting-your-healthcare, bigot congressman, Trump puppet who’s running for the U.S. Senate.”
But Ossoff is not just baiting the White House, or even Collins, in these appearances and remarks. He’s also enticing voters to join his campaign. “This is Georgia,” he reminded viewers during his interview with O’Donnell. “This is the most competitive battleground state in the country . . . I guarantee that within weeks the polling will be within the margin of error, and there is no path back to the Senate majority without winning this race in Georgia.” (The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the race as “Lean Democratic.”) He then proceeded to invite people to donate by telephone — hey, he knows the primary audience for cable news is older voters — or using his website.
In recent months, Ossoff’s skill on the stump has stoked speculation about his aspirations for 2028. Those have led to a series of staunch denials. “I have zero interest in running for president in 2028,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June, likening the talk to “fantasy football” that takes attention from the immediate task at hand: winning a Democratic Senate majority. But a poll released today by Emerson College shows his viability and will no doubt increase the chatter about a potential presidential bid. In hypothetical matchups, Ossoff defeats Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio by five and three points respectively.
There is ample evidence to believe Ossoff’s rebuffs that he might prefer his home in Atlanta to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As Puck’s Leigh Ann Caldwell recently observed, he is seen as quiet and studious in the Senate, someone who rarely attends Washington social functions, who is professorial by nature. Then there’s the simple fact that he’s a politician, and ambitions for higher office are in his blood; after all, they are what propelled him to the Senate, and they might be part of what is taking him to the Hamptons this weekend on a fundraising swing.
The qualities that Caldwell described are also ones that were associated with another senator whose oratory attracted attention: Barack Obama. But the comparisons don’t end there. Whether by intention or accident — and few things are by accident in politics — Ossoff is swiftly turning into the Obama of this election cycle by channeling at least four attributes that will hold a premium in 2028: youth, vitality, a demonstrated willingness to fight and having an aspirational message.
Ossoff is wisely trying to harness the increased attention and direct it toward his immediate future: the midterms. Without a win in November, any presidential ambitions, whether real or projected, will be harder. But like it or not, he must learn to reckon with the heightened expectations and speculation that comes with simply being good at his current job.
In 2015’s “Jurassic World” — the first of the “Jurassic Park” franchise’s largely interminable bastard step-children — there’s a moment of action that briefly suggests the film might exist for reasons other than to extend its source material and make oodles of cash. In the scene, which occurs just as things fall apart (as they always seem to do in these films), dinosaurs break loose and attack all of the theme park’s patrons.
In the ensuing chaos, a woman is snatched up by a flying Pteranodon and swooped into the air, where others of its species take turns throwing her between their beaks. She’s then dropped into the water, where the winged creatures swarm her once more. Just as the dinosaurs pluck her out of the depths, a Mosasaurus leaps from the water and swallows both the woman and the dino attacking her. It’s downright cruel and undeniably entertaining. But namely, this sequence of dino-terror suggests that “Jurassic World” might actually provide audiences something they’d sorely lack for the next decade: fun.
That was, of course, not the case. In the years that followed, three more “Jurassic World” films saw the light of day, and none of them came close to reaching that first movie’s brief, brutal height. A swath of other summer blockbusters would be released alongside them; A “Spider-Man” here, a “Mission: Impossible” there. But finding a popcorn movie that could entertain beyond nostalgia alone was rare. (Though not entirely inconceivable.) Perhaps, in an ironic twist of fate, the truly original summertime creature feature went extinct before the onscreen dinosaurs could.
(Warner Bros. Pictures) “The End of Oak Street”
Audiences seldom get to experience summer fun at this caliber anymore. But as depressing as that may be, “The End of Oak Street” could very well be a blueprint for a fresh era in popcorn movies. They might not make ‘em like this anymore, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.
Cue Anne Hathaway, stepping into frame sensible sandals first, pointing a shotgun at her own ancient adversary in David Robert Mitchell’s delightful “The End of Oak Street.” That alone is the kind of image powerful enough to make any viewer believe that mainstream cinema is still kickin’. Everything that follows is simply further confirmation.
Mitchell’s film, which follows a family of four in 1982 as they realize their entire quaint suburban neighborhood has somehow been transported back to the Mesozoic era, has understandably swept audiences off their feet. “The End of Oak Street” has everything a viewer could want — especially a viewer fatigued by the Hollywood sequel system and all its shortcomings. There’s action, romance, suspense, creatures, creatures having sex, large piles of excrement, interdimensional portals, pizza, a comical amount of split-diopter shots, and what looks to be a pleasantly well-funded public library. What’s more, Mitchell’s film is feisty and unpredictable, always managing to stay one step ahead of the viewer.
“The End of Oak Street” has all the elements that Hollywood studio executives love to pluck from box-office hits of the past in their never-ending attempts to Frankenstein a decent modern blockbuster out of spare parts. Yet, here, there are no visible stitches, no scars or seams. Mitchell’s film succeeds where others have failed because it runs on its feelings rather than its features. It’s still pastiche, but unbeholden to the nostalgia-obsessed, highly referential style that has plagued so much contemporary media, like “Stranger Things,” “Super 8” and “Wonder Woman 1984.” The more Mitchell conjures joy and fear from thin air with the snap of his fingers, the more frustrating it becomes that audiences seldom get to experience summer fun at this caliber anymore. But as depressing as that may be, “The End of Oak Street” could very well be a blueprint for a fresh era in popcorn movies. They might not make ‘em like this anymore, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.
But that will require some convincing. For a few years now, studios have had it in their heads that the ideal way to merge art and commerce is to hire stylish, auteur-minded filmmakers to helm their franchise movies. Think Chloé Zhao taking on Marvel’s “Eternals,” or Amazon MGM tapping Denis Villeneuve to pilot “James Bond” into its next era. By and large, this formula has not worked because studios demand accessibility, even from the artistes. That cool camera setup isn’t worth it because viewers don’t care about that kind of stuff, executives say. Unless you’re Steven Spielberg, with enough money and success to have final-cut privilege, everything in a franchise blockbuster is bound to look flat, feel drab, and be nauseatingly overexplained.
That’s a big part of why “The End of Oak Street” feels like a break in the pattern from the jump. Mitchell is the film’s sole screenwriter and director, working with a clear reverence for the kinds of story-first features produced under Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment label — the movies that sprang from big, bold ideas, not financial bottom lines. The story has elements similar to popular summer blockbusters, but they’re so finely remixed and retooled that they don’t bear such exhausting resemblance to their forebears.
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Perhaps best of all: The movie has a gritty, charming meanness to it; a stickiness that’s hard to shake off. Where “Jurassic World” balked at doubling down on its single cruel sequence, “The End of Oak Street” has at least 10 stomach-dropping thrills. With a PG-13 rating that gets away with quite a bit, the action harkens back to the days of “Poltergeist,” a PG-rated film that had whole families walking out of the theater traumatized and silent. “Poltergeist” was, notably, a summertime Amblin release that similarly riffed on classic creature scares — updating dusty, old ghost tropes with new ideas — much like Mitchell does with his dino-time-travel extravaganza.
But Mitchell wants you to make those correlations, too. When the film opens at Oak Street’s idyllic summer block party, complete with cookouts and kids happily pedaling together on their bikes, he purposefully evokes the atmosphere of the movies he covertly cites. There’s some bickering between the Platt parents, Denise (Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor), that their kids, Brian (Christian Convery) and Audrey (Maisy Stella), pick up on. But Mitchell cleverly avoids setting any tone in stone. When a storm followed by a flash of blinding light sends their house and the surrounding neighborhood back in time, the entire Platt family quickly understands that they’re in deep sh*t — or, more precisely, dinosaur feces, of which a large amount has accumulated in the neighbor’s backyard.
(Daniel McFadden/Warner Bros. Pictures) Christian Convery, Anne Hathaway and Maisy Stella in “The End of Oak Street”
So much recent blockbuster filmmaking has been about embedding heart-wrenching pathos into the nostalgic elements we know and love. But more often than not, the combination comes off forced; corny at best, insipid at worst.
From here, Robert carefully stacks a Jenga tower of suspense-laden set pieces and surprisingly moving family drama, without so much as letting the structure teeter. Where other filmmakers would painstakingly elucidate every thematic detail to make their silly popcorn movie “say something,” Mitchell restrains himself. “The End of Oak Street” doesn’t need to be “about” anything, which is the best way to make a film feel like it’s actually about several things.
On one hand, “The End of Oak Street” exists to be entirely what it is and nothing more. It’s a piece of delicious, fluffy cotton candy, sweet and quick-dissolving. On the other hand, when a director isn’t trying so hard to convey a message, that’s typically when they can conjure an emotion to fill the space left empty by thematic contrivance. This movie is about family dynamics and love, sure. It’s even got a dash of trauma. But Mitchell says so much more by saying nothing overt about those things, and instead, depicting a family who wants nothing more than to get out of the bind they’ve found themselves in. It’s as if he recognizes that so much recent blockbuster filmmaking has been about embedding heart-wrenching pathos into the nostalgic elements we know and love. But more often than not, the combination comes off forced; corny at best, insipid at worst.
(Warner Bros. Pictures) Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in “The End of Oak Street”
Mitchell’s self-imposed moderation might not look radical at first. But in a blockbuster landscape like the one we’re in now, thoughtful constraint is welcome and needed. I’m reminded of “The Odyssey,” which felt, to me, crushed by its own ambition, hoping to be everything at once simply because it could be. “The End of Oak Street” couldn’t be more different. It’s just as ambitious and loaded with ideas and surprises, but Mitchell isn’t trying to make this story anything more than it needs to be.
As with his last two films, “It Follows” and “Under the Silver Lake,” Mitchell has found a winning, thrilling formula in throwing ordinary people into extraordinary situations and searching for the resonance in the results, even if the answer is simple. That’s the real key in making something feel nostalgic, without nostalgia-farming. His latest film succeeds because it’s not trying to make audiences say, “I like this, because it reminds me of that.” Rather, “The End of Oak Street” recalls a time when both life and the movies seemed simpler, but were really much more complex than most people remember. They just didn’t feel the need to spell it out for us, allowing the movies to do the talking instead.
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I had worked late the night before, and dinner was still several hours away, and I had achieved that particular state of adult exhaustion in which closing your eyes for 20 minutes begins to seem less like a luxury than a medically indicated procedure. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans.
First came the whippet who lives down the hall, galloping outside my apartment and then, as he often does, failing to account for the slickness of the linoleum. There was a skid, followed by the unmistakable sound of dog meeting trash cans: bowling ball, pins. Then two neighbors began, ironically, shouting outside my window about which of them was less considerate about the amount of noise they made. Then I remembered that the ceiling fan has one speed at which it rattles faintly but insistently, so I got out of bed, yanked the chain and sent the blades spinning faster.
Finally, I lay back down. The apartment quieted. My breathing slowed. I had just begun to lilt toward sleep when my phone buzzed.
There is something uniquely irritating about being emotionally pursued by a corporation that has also failed to notice you moved away. I lay flat on my back and began rage-unsubscribing from every company that had recently texted me in the voice of a human being. We miss you. STOP. Treat yourself. STOP. Your favorites are waiting. STOP. I continued until my phone was quiet and, eventually, so was my brain.
A few days later, rifling through my wallet, I passed a small red-and-gold card decorated with lucky cats and a rising sun. Across the top, in chunky yellow letters, it reads “Phodega.” On the back are ten little boxes. Collect ten stamps, get a free entree.
I have three.
Phodega is an Asian-American noodle and snack shop in Chicago’s West Town, a few blocks from a house where my partner and I stay when we’re house-sitting for family — a little borrowed-neighborhood life we slip into for a couple of weeks at a time, usually twice a year. Inside, a neon sign reading SEND NOODS hangs above a pyramid of Café Bustelo cans. Over the counter, another sign cheekily warns: “Don’t Try It. You Won’t Like It.” The menu includes salt-and-pepper chicken skins with sweet-and-sour sauce and something called the Viet Dip, a sandwich served with a little cup of pho jus.
The punch card is almost comically unsophisticated. It cannot send a push notification. It does not know where I live, what time I usually eat lunch or whether I have recently been searching for sandwiches. If I neglect it for six months, it will not announce that it misses me.
Every so often, while looking for a credit or business card, I flip past it and think about Phodega Fries — ribeye, cilantro, onion, jalapeños and gravy piled over seasoned fries — and decide that perhaps it is time to acquire punch number four.
During those house-sitting stretches in the neighborhood, I started feeling, embarrassingly quickly, like something of a local. The third time I walked into Phodega in about two weeks, the woman behind the counter looked up, smiled broadly and asked whether I wanted what I’d gotten last time (the Viet Dip) or wanted to try something new.
Something new, I decided. I ordered the Hainan-style chicken rice.
This is, of course, exactly the sort of interaction that restaurant apps are forever attempting to imitate. They remember what we ordered. They remind us of our favorites. They greet us by name. They offer suggestions based on what we liked last time. But there was a crucial difference in that question from behind the counter: The same thing, or something new?
She remembered me without assuming that remembering me meant she knew what I wanted.
“We know your favorites”
I like being known in restaurants. I like going to the coffee shop where the barista remembers that I take my mint tea iced and unsweetened, and I remember that she has a puppet showcase coming up. I like the brunch place where a waiter knows I want blackberry jam with my Texas toast, and I know what his nieces have been reading lately. This kind of familiarity is one of the pleasures of becoming a regular somewhere: over time, without really deciding to, two people accumulate small pieces of information about each other.
The information goes both ways.
This, increasingly, is what feels strange about the language of food apps. They borrow the vocabulary of that relationship — we remember you; we know your favorites; we missed you — while removing the reciprocal part entirely. They may know precisely what I ordered at 9:43 p.m. on a Wednesday six months ago, but there is nobody on the other side for me to know in return.
And increasingly, there is an app for almost every place we eat. The fast-food standards have them, of course, but so do regional chains and neighborhood coffee shops: download this, order ahead, skip the line, collect points, save your usual. The bargain is convenience, and often it genuinely is convenient. But increasingly, buying a sandwich or a cup of coffee also means initiating an ongoing relationship — one in which the restaurant gets a permanent little doorway into your attention long after the transaction is over.
And lately, simply remembering what we bought is beginning to look almost quaint. The next frontier is not merely knowing what we have wanted before.
It is trying to decide what we are going to want next.
A few weeks ago, I opened GoPuff, a grocery delivery app, and noticed a button I hadn’t seen before: a black square with a blue-and-white “go” glowing in the center. I tapped it.
CURATED FOR YOU.
“Pulled your late-night comfort picks,” it explained, “the usual craving fix when you order after dark.”
The screen looked almost like a cheerful kitchen-table flat-lay: products arranged over a wood-grain background, hovering around a GoPuff bag as though someone had just come home and emptied the evening’s provisions onto the table. Some were plausible: grape Uncrustables, chocolate-covered raspberries. Then came paper towels, Method cleaner, dish soap, lime sparkling water and grapefruit-scented antibacterial wipes. Apparently my 2 a.m. self is part snack-seeking raccoon, part conscientious housekeeper.
Only then did I realize this wasn’t simply a recommendation screen. GoPuff had already put every item in my cart.
The price wasn’t displayed there. I had to navigate into the cart to discover the total: $50.30.
There was an “undo auto-add” option, but it appeared in smaller, considerably less enthusiastic type. The phrase itself got me. Auto-add. The assumption was built into the feature: We have already begun shopping for you. Correct us if necessary.
I removed everything one item at a time and haven’t used the app since. I was already in the process of thinning out my reliance on delivery apps, mostly because I’ve been thinking more carefully about the cost of all that frictionless convenience — not only in money, but in how quickly every minor want can become immediately fulfillable. I haven’t sworn off delivery, nor do I particularly want to. But GoPuff made another part of the bargain newly explicit: convenience was beginning to include having my wants interpreted for me.
If a company is going to behave like a friend, eventually the friend can become presumptuous.
That is the distinction I keep returning to.
I don’t mind recommendations. Sometimes I want help deciding. But “Would you like help?” is different from “We went ahead and decided.”
Perhaps I’m protective of that difference because, of course, companies have always tried to stoke and steer desire. What feels different now is how easily they can follow us while doing it, often in the faux-friendly voice of someone who knows us — popping up on the little televisions in the backs of taxi cabs, slipping into the social media feeds in our pockets, texting us that they miss us while we’re trying to take a nap. The sales pitch has become harder to escape precisely as it has become more intimate.
Appetite, though, is not always something we know in advance.
Recently, I went to the grocery store intending, more or less, to buy ingredients for spaghetti with a weeknight Bolognese. I had already picked up a white onion, although an onion is hardly a binding commitment; so many good dinners begin that way.
The sales pitch has become harder to escape precisely as it has become more intimate.
Then I saw a jar of sun-dried tomatoes I’d never noticed before, packed with dark, jewel-like fruit. A pile of particularly good-looking spinach caught my eye. One decision tugged at another, and by the time I checked out, dinner had become rigatoni with chicken, spinach and sun-dried tomato sauce.
This is not an earth-shattering example of the mysterious contours of human desire. Dinner simply changed. But food is full of these tiny departures: the dish ordered on a whim that becomes the thing you return for; the ingredient you taste for the first time and immediately begin imagining in everything; the afternoon when what sounded good yesterday suddenly sounds terrible today.
That is one of the pleasures of appetite. Sometimes you enter the store with an idea and let yourself be talked out of it by a vegetable. Sometimes you only discover what you want as you go.
Food companies are increasingly interested in that interval, too. As Cris Tolomia reported this week at Quartz, Nestlé is piloting AI-powered simulations designed to model how shoppers might react to new products before they launch, while a separate AI system scans social media for shifts in what consumers want. The tools are part of a broader push into AI-assisted product development, including Nestlé’s work on foods for people taking GLP-1 drugs.
That is obviously several steps removed from GoPuff loading antibacterial wipes into my late-night cart. Nestlé is looking for signals across markets, not deciding what one particular shopper should eat at 2 a.m. But both illustrate how valuable it has become for food companies to arrive earlier — to understand appetite not merely after a preference has been expressed, but while it is still taking shape.
Which makes the moment when we still have to ask ourselves what sounds good feel increasingly precious: a little unoptimized space before something has been recommended, queued or dropped into a cart for us.
Maybe that is why I like that little Phodega card so much. It will wait in my wallet until I decide I want another sandwich, and when I do, someone will punch another square.
It rewards the wanting after it happens. It leaves the wanting itself to me.
Donald Trump thought that if he could scare television executives badly enough, eventually the jokes would stop. Probably more than any other president, he understands television’s power because he was manufactured and insulated by it. So Trump thought that if Stephen Colbert could be pushed off his late-night perch at CBS and Jimmy Kimmel could be suspended by ABC, and Brendan Carr could dangle the Federal Communications Commission over ABC like a regulatory sword, the message would sink in across the television industry: Criticize the president at your own peril.
For a while, Trump’s gameplan seemed to be working. But it’s now clear that ABC and Disney, the network’s parent company, have decided they are done running.
That is what makes Rosie O’Donnell’s unlikely return to television so delicious. On the surface, it is just a bit of summer programming: Kimmel is taking a vacation, so O’Donnell is filling in for him this week. But Kimmel tapped O’Donnell for the gig deliberately, framing it as “a special treat” for Trump — a delicious nod to the president’s notoriously thin-skinned, two-decade-long vendetta against her for mocking his business failures back when she co-hosted “The View,” another ABC franchise. O’Donnell has been one of Trump’s most persistent celebrity antagonists since. And Trump has spent that same stretch periodically threatening to strip her of her American citizenship in Truth Social posts that read like ransom notes. (After he returned to the White House, she famously moved to Ireland.)
Now O’Donnell is back behind a network television desk and, by all appearances, is having a blast. There was a comforting nostalgia in watching her surrounded by tchotchkes, radiating the loose, warm confidence that made “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” such a phenomenon in the 1990s. She handed out copies of her longtime friend Madonna’s new album to the studio audience, told stories about ordinary life and looked completely at home.
Love her or not, seeing O’Donnell back in her element was a master class in unapologetic cultural resistance. She didn’t waste any time getting down to business.
Love her or not, seeing O’Donnell back in her element was a master class in unapologetic cultural resistance. She didn’t waste any time getting down to business. In Monday’s opening monologue, she tipped her hat to Trump by dubbing him the “Mango Mussolini” and offering a stark warning: “If you thought that the president hated ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ when it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, buckle up, people!”
On Tuesday night, O’Donnell twisted the knife even further by referencing Trump’s humiliating, tightly guarded escape from Air Force One in a catering truck during a recent Turkey trip — quipping that he was currently watching the show from inside a mobile food cart. After calling him “President Oompa J. Loompa,” she thanked Trump sarcastically for making her “re-famous.” She looked directly into the camera and said, “Hi! I know you’re watching!” Then she moved on. Nothing enrages Trump quite like being ignored.
But while O’Donnell’s return provided the cultural fireworks, the real earthquake was happening inside a federal courtroom. On the very morning after her debut, ABC and Disney officially sued the FCC, marking a monumental escalation against an administration that has weaponized federal agencies to settle personal vendettas. The suit is one of the most muscular legal challenges mounted by a major media corporation against this administration, and it arrives after nearly a year of Disney choosing concession.
The lawsuit involves eight Disney-owned ABC stations whose license renewals were moved up years ahead of schedule. ABC claims that government pressure from the action has already affected programming decisions, including political coverage on “The View.” The long-running daytime talk show has reportedly gone months without booking a single political candidate and has quietly declined to air clips it otherwise would have used, out of fear that footage could be weaponized against the network in the FCC’s ongoing review. The lawsuit seeks emergency relief to stop the agency’s early renewal proceeding and any resulting threat against ABC’s station licenses.
The company also concedes, remarkably, that it aired one of Trump’s primetime speeches on its streaming platform — a speech that recycled thoroughly debunked claims about the 2020 election — specifically because it worried about the consequences of not airing it, something it says it normally would not have done.
Sit with that for a second. A multinational conglomerate, worth an estimated $106 billion, that owns Marvel, Pixar, ESPN and a chunk of the American entertainment imagination, admitted in a federal court under oath that it is self-censoring its own airwaves out of fear of a government agency.
The FCC, for its part, insists that its scrutiny concerns Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices, not ABC’s speech. Carr has called the lawsuit “meritless” and said the commission is merely following facts and law. But this explanation has a glaring problem: The pattern is impossible to ignore.
Carr, a Trump appointee, has publicly echoed Trump’s attacks on ABC. In September, he dangled a naked ultimatum: Either ABC “took action” against Kimmel, or the network would face severe regulatory consequences. In April, Carr ordered an early review of the network’s broadcast licenses just after Kimmel used the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to needle the president. The move followed months of Trump publicly demanding, on Truth Social and in impromptu Air Force One gaggles, that ABC’s licenses be “taken away” because the network’s coverage of him is “almost 100% Negative.” Documents uncovered by the Guardian this week laid bare the cozy coordination between Carr, his top staffers and Trump’s inner circle — including nearly a dozen scheduled calls and White House meetings between senior officials and the supposedly “independent” regulator.
Disney, meanwhile, has not exactly distinguished itself as a fearless corporate warrior against Trump. The company previously chose accommodation over confrontation. In December 2024, ABC agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library and museum to settle a defamation lawsuit over comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Disney’s newfound spine did not appear out of nowhere, and it’s worth being honest about what actually moved it. The company’s current CEO, Josh D’Amaro, who took over from Bob Iger in March, has told business reporters that the company intends to stand on “journalistic integrity” and refuses to be told how to run its news operations — a fine sentiment, and one that would carry more weight if it had arrived before a federal regulator forced the company’s hand rather than after.
That is precisely why O’Donnell’s presence behind that desk this week functions as something closer to a renaissance than counterprogramming. O’Donnell has explicitly framed her Kimmel hosting role as solidarity with the late-night community and a defense of First Amendment rights. She is, in her own telling, guest-hosting partly to show support for Kimmel and partly out of grief for Stephen Colbert, whose “Late Show” was canceled by Paramount amid its own merger maneuvering — and who, in O’Donnell’s estimation, never got the public defense he deserved. In interviews, she has been unsparing about what she sees as coming next in American media consolidation, warning that a CNN controlled by David Ellison — who purchased Paramount and CBS — would be “tragic.” O’Donnell has compared the current wave of right-wing ownership takeovers to a future in which Fox News wouldn’t be one outlier conservative network among many, but the mainstay of the entire industry.
Whatever you think of O’Donnell — and conservative media has spent the week insisting that her return to network television constitutes some sort of Trump Derangement Syndrome case study — she understood something Disney’s legal department only recently caught up to: Capitulation doesn’t buy safety. It buys an appetite for more capitulation.
When TIME Magazine released their “100 Most Influential People” list in 2017, it stood to reason that Jared Kushner would be listed. After all, Donald Trump had brought his son-in-law into the White House and given him a broad portfolio which, as the husband of the president’s favorite daughter, made him very powerful. Kushner couldn’t be fired. But the question of whether he was up to the job was pretty well answered by the man TIME chose to write the required encomium: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It’s hard to read the late secretary’s words as anything but damning with faint praise.
Kissinger opened his short two-paragraph tribute by essentially saying that the presidential transition process is difficult and that a president who doesn’t know anything must depend on his advisers to help him through it. Then he wrote:
This space has been traversed for nearly four months by Jared Kushner, whom I first met about 18 months ago, when he introduced himself after a foreign policy lecture I had given. We have sporadically exchanged views since. As part of the Trump family, Jared is familiar with the intangibles of the President. As a graduate of Harvard and NYU, he has a broad education; as a businessman, a knowledge of administration. All this should help him make a success of his daunting role flying close to the sun.
That was it. In Kissinger’s accounting, Kushner’s only qualifications were that he went to college, was a businessman and knew the president. And we all know what happened to the guy who flew too close to the sun.
As it happened, Kissinger had actually been quite involved with the Trump transition and knew exactly how ill-prepared they were. Shortly after the 2016 election, the 93-year-old had met with Trump, Kushner and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at Trump Tower and traveled at their behest to China to meet with Premier Xi Jinping and set up an early bilateral meeting between the two leaders. (Trump, ever the bull in a China shop, immediately fumbled the agreement by taking a call from Taiwan’s president. Apparently, no one in the president-elect’s circle knew about the One China policy, or that no president had spoken with a Taiwanese leader since 1979.)
Kissinger helped set up a so-called “Kushner channel” to certain powerful Chinese leaders — even as the young staffer was privately pursuing private Chinese business deals on the side. But by the time the secretary was asked to write that plaudit for TIME, it was pretty clear that he didn’t have much use for the new administration.
Trump’s son-in-law appears to see himself as the Kissinger of this era, consciously modeling himself on the notorious diplomat, perhaps not realizing that the secretary’s foreign policy achievements were tempered by his reputation as a ruthless, immoral purveyor of realpolitik who left millions of dead bodies in his wake.
That apparently didn’t matter to Kushner. Trump’s son-in-law appears to see himself as the Kissinger of this era, consciously modeling himself on the notorious diplomat, perhaps not realizing that the secretary’s foreign policy achievements were tempered by his reputation as a ruthless, immoral purveyor of realpolitik who left millions of dead bodies in his wake. Then again, it’s also possible Kushner knows that very well and is fine with the comparison.
While Kushner’s approach to world affairs is remarkably similar to Kissinger’s, the older man’s worldview was shaped by his ideology and academic understanding of world power dynamics. Kushner’s, on the other hand, is primarily influenced by his alleged business savvy; like his father-in-law, he sees everything through the lens of a win-win real estate deal.
Kushner’s portfolio during the first Trump administration was wide-ranging. But his heart was in international relations, particularly the Middle East, where he had an intense interest in resolving the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By the end, he managed to orchestrate the Abraham Accords, an agreement normalizing diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Israel. The accords were controversial, with some calling it a useful first step, while others viewing it as a sop to commercial interests that ignored the Palestinians altogether.
Although Kushner chose not to officially rejoin his father-in-law’s second administration, he is serving, along with Trump’s real estate buddy Steve Witkoff, as its special diplomatic envoy. So far, the duplicitous duo have tried and failed to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine and failed to stop the war with Iran. The Gaza Peace Plan that had everyone strutting around declaring victory just a few months ago is stuck.
The exchange of prisoners took place as required by the agreement, and some aid has been allowed to flow, but the violence has continued. The current impasse hinges on Hamas disarming and Israel withdrawing, and neither side will make the first move. There appeared to be some movement a couple of weeks ago when Trump announced that his so-called Board of Peace had secured an agreement from Hamas to disarm and Israel to suspend all military strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s immediate rejection of the idea brought Kushner back into the mix to see if he could resurrect a little of that old Kissinger magic.
After Syria and Egypt’s surprise attack on Israel in October 1973, Kissinger spent nearly two years on “shuttle diplomacy,” flying back and forth between Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem in search of a lasting peace deal. If managing a fragile ceasefire counts as a win, he was successful. But it took Jimmy Carter to broker the Camp David Accords six years later, which brought a lasting peace between Egypt and Israel.
Over the past few days, in an attempt to salvage the obviously empty Board of Peace agreement, Kushner traveled to Egypt, along with his fellow board member and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, to meet with leaders of Hamas. The trip raised the ire of Israel’s supporters in the U.S., including former ambassador Eliot Abrams, who accused Kushner of legitimizing a terrorist organization. The leader of Hamas said they will not disarm unless Israel withdraws from Gaza, so Kushner shuttled to Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu, who basically told him to pound sand; Israel will not withdraw until Hamas disarms. They decided to establish some working groups to talk further, and the next day Israel struck a seaside cafe in Gaza City, killing seven people.
Kushner gave the game away in an interview with Fox News, putting the full onus on Hamas to end the impasse. “If they don’t follow through now on their commitment,” he said, “everyone will see that they’re not genuine about peace, and then Israel will have a lot more support from the U.S. and others to go and finish the job.”
Trump’s special envoy for peace didn’t explain what he meant by “finish the job,” but considering what Israel has already done, it’s pretty clearly a terrifying threat. Even Henry Kissinger was more subtle than that.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correctly reflect the events of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
The sums are vast, but the explanations for the spending range from vague to inscrutable. Consider these items in the law that funded the Department of Defense this year:
For “Other Procurement, Air Force”: $32.6 billion. For “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide”: $35.2 billion. And for “supplies and associated support services” related to U.S. Code Title 10 Section 3601 subsection(c)(3)(B) clauses (i) through (iv): a mere $650 million.
Determining what, exactly, all this public money is paying for requires cross-referencing thousands of pages of financial tables, accounting records and congressional committee documents that will leave all but the most determined budgeting sleuth at a loss. Yet this is how the U.S. government explains its funding decisions for the most expensive military in the world. And the cost is growing.
“There’s no way that you can follow the money, because it keeps getting twisted like a Rubik’s Cube,” said John Ferrari, a retired Army major general and now a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “None of it is set up to be transparent.”
ProPublica is setting out to untwist this Rubik’s Cube in a series of investigative articles, and we’re asking for your help. In the months to come, we will grapple with how President Donald Trump is spending taxpayer money at the Department of Defense (or the Department of War, as his administration calls it). With your assistance, we hope to emerge with vital, previously untold investigative stories.
While accounting is rarely the stuff of action thrillers, the black box that is the Pentagon budget contains a world of grandiose plans and staggering consequences, from extraordinarily expensive jets, ships and missiles, to high-stakes projects gone terribly awry, to closed-door dealmaking with the world’s most powerful arms sellers. (Consider our first story in this series, about the epic dysfunction of an artillery factory bankrolled by $533 million from the U.S. Army.)
The scale is hard to fathom. Congress appropriated $1 trillion for defense this year, more than the combined appropriations for agencies overseeing health, veterans affairs, education, housing, agriculture and justice — twice as much, in fact. If the president prevails in his priorities for next year’s budget, defense spending will soar dramatically higher still, to $1.5 trillion. That would be more, adjusted for inflation, than the country spent annually on defense during the height of World War II. The Pentagon’s balance sheets are opaque even to the Pentagon itself: The agency as a whole has never received a passing grade on a comprehensive financial audit. (The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.)
One thing is clear: Vast sums are funneled into developing costly weapons systems that often come in over budget, get delivered behind schedule or are rendered obsolete by the time they’re finished — if they’re finished at all.
These poor outcomes follow grand promises. The Zumwalt class of naval destroyers was lauded for its “affordable and flexible design.” A ground-control system for GPS satellites called Next Generation Operational Control System was billed the “best-value GPS control system for the future.” And the F-35 jet was promised as “a truly remarkable, capable and affordable multirole fighter” that would be built “on schedule and on cost.”
Each of these programs went years past their original delivery deadlines and cost far more than originally budgeted. In 1998, the price tag for Zumwalts was estimated at $1.5 billion per ship, according to the Government Accountability Office. Now the expected price exceeds $10 billion per ship (in part because the Navy reduced the quantity it ordered). Expected costs for the GPS control system increased from $4.5 billion to over $7.5 billion. And developing, producing and maintaining the F-35 is anticipated to require $2 trillion, making it the DOD’s most expensive weapon system in history, according to the GAO. (A Lockheed Martin spokesperson called the jet “a critical capability for the United States and our allies” and said the company “is proud to serve as its prime contractor.”)
After the delays and cost increases, these projects have not exactly delivered reliable marvels. Only three of the originally expected 32 Zumwalts have been built. The GPS system was canceled — after 16 years and $6.27 billion in program costs, including payments to defense contractor RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies). And F-35s are able to perform all of their missions only a quarter of the time.
Experts in defense spending cite many systemic causes for such outcomes, including the Pentagon’s frequent preference for complex designs, its habit of starting production before the design has been finalized and, not least, its dependency on companies operating virtual monopolies over niche defense products. There are few lasting consequences for contractors who fail to deliver, the experts said. “Industry just says, ‘Shucks, write us another check,’” said one defense congressional staffer, who requested anonymity to speak about internal defense spending deliberations. “Congress just throws cash at the problem.”
Other types of notable figures abound, like the $7 million that the Pentagon reportedly spent on lobster tail in one month last year, the thousands of pages of regulations that would-be Pentagon contractors must navigate, the 4,000% by which a company was found to be marking up products sold to the DOD and the $111 million that RTX fraudulently extracted from the Pentagon by misleading the agency, according to the Department of Justice. (In 2024, RTX admitted to engaging in two schemes to defraud the Pentagon, including for Patriot missile systems, and paid over $950 million to resolve federal investigations. RTX did not respond to a request for comment.)
Those in positions to reform U.S. military spending can benefit from the high-spending status quo. Former four-star generals, Pentagon officials and congressional staffers alike find a welcome reception in the industry they once oversaw. Defense spending bills present excellent opportunities for members of Congress to direct jobs to their districts. And the largest defense firms enjoyannualprofits in the billions of dollars.
This windfall ends up in the hands of a powerful few. From 2020 to 2024, just five companies — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, RTX and Northrop Grumman — received DOD contracts worth a combined $771 billion. (General Dynamics and Boeing declined to comment. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin did not respond to requests for comment on the value of their DOD contracts.)
None of this is a secret. It was four decades ago, during another military buildup under a Republican president, that reports of the Pentagon paying $400 for a hammer led a presidential commission to study wasteful defense spending. It’s because this dynamic has been allowed to persist (despite periodic reform efforts) that ProPublica believes the topic deserves renewed attention.
The current administration, for its part, says that it is undertaking its own reforms, limiting stock buybacks by defense contractors, boosting new entrants to the defense industry and promising new financial accountability. Yet some fear Pentagon spending is becoming even more unrestrained in the second Trump era. Two of Trump’s marquee Pentagon programs, panned by some as boondoggles, are estimated to collectively cost more than $1 trillion. Companies connected to the president’s family and appointees have scooped up numerous DOD deals. The administration gutted the office that tests weapons systems for safety and efficacy. All in all, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet told investors in April: “This is a golden opportunity right now based on who’s in government.”
Not everyone views U.S. military spending as excessive — some defense hawks have spent years clamoring for more of it. Measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, they note, U.S. defense spending has fallen from previous highs. A large chunk of the defense budget goes toward paying the salaries of service members. And even if they take longer and cost more than expected, American defense products are sought after the world over. “Weapons are expensive because our standards are high,” said longtime defense lobbyist Jim Dyer. “The outcomes are good.”
ProPublica is setting out to examine military spending and its outcomes. If you have worked in the world of defense budgeting, spending or contracting, we’d like to hear from you.
Businessman and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, best known as the founder of My Pillow and a prominent advisor to Donald Trump, refuses to accept his loss in the Republican primary for governor of Minnesota on Aug. 11. Lindell lost by 11 points to the Minnesota house speaker, Lisa Demuth, but did not graciously concede. Instead, he immediately began spouting conspiracy theories that explained away his loss, suggesting there were “anomalies” in the election process.
He’s still not giving up. On Wednesday, he offered to fund a recount of the election.
“One of the few good election laws Minnesota does have is that as a candidate, I have the right to completely audit and hand-count every ballot in the state, and I am going to exercise that right to the full extent of the law,” Lindell said in a press release, which claimed “the effort will be the largest privately funded statewide paper-ballot recount and audit in U.S. history.” It will cost Lindell approximately $825,000, according to CBS News.
A recount is automatically triggered when there is a 0.25% difference in votes in Minnesota, but obviously 11 points is quite a bit more. Lindell cited counties reporting more votes than were cast, vote totals that moved backward and unusual synchronized vote totals across all seven Republican candidates, as motivation for the recount. It could also have to do with the fact that in early August, Lindell stepped down as CEO of My Pillow to focus on his gubernatorial run, so maybe he needs the job.
Lindell has pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election as well, leading to a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, now known as Liberty Vote. In July, the two parties settled the suit for an undisclosed sum.
It’s difficult to get one’s hopes up when it comes to the dicey state of Hollywood filmmaking, and even more difficult to keep them there. Mergers and consolidations threaten to dictate which films can get made. Theatergoing is only starting to boast consistent numbers again, taking six years to bounce back from its pandemic freefall. And Netflix has a Rolodex of movie stars trapped in terrible roles. But when things get tough, and our spirits wane, there’s no better pair to summon than Mulder and Scully, who are returning (technically) to the feature-length format with “The X-Files: I Want to Believe — Vrach Frankenshteyn.”
This version of Mulder and Scully’s widely panned 2008 outing has more gore, more grit and more gothic delights, courtesy of its director and “X-Files” series creator, Chris Carter, returning to clean up the mess left by Fox 18 years ago. Following the FBI duo as they search for a missing colleague, Carter’s director’s cut is for the most staunch sci-fi fans, those who crave every little bit of “X-Files” lore they can get.
Carter says that when the original film was in production, he faced intense pressure to cut enough grisly material to get a PG-13 rating so the movie could reach as many people as possible. That’s not an uncommon phenomenon, especially when working with a big, financially successful, well-loved property, but it is frustrating. And more often than studios realize, fans and even the average moviegoer can sense when a studio has tampered with a film.
But, notably, Carter’s director’s cut arrives on Hulu on the heels of Ryan Coogler finishing an “X-Files” reboot pilot for the streamer. Coogler’s recent deal with Warner Bros. to regain ownership rights to his smash hit “Sinners” was a boon for filmmakers who’ve long been frustrated with studio greed and meddling. That Carter’s been able to release the film he always intended to make, and Coogler’s helping to turn Hollywood in favor of artists, movie fans may finally have enough proof to believe again — though Scully, as always, would be skeptical.
Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude are quickly changing the healthcare landscape. An estimated one in seven people have used AI for a health-related question instead of seeing a general practitioner. One in ten people have used AI for mental health support. Within the Venn diagram of people using AI for health-related information lies a cohort for whom access to accurate information is of the utmost importance: those seeking information on abortion care. In an era when the internet is already rife with abortion-related misinformation, LLMs entering the chat have complicated the landscape — and abortion rights advocates are fighting back.
“Unfortunately, we live in a world where it feels like some days you need a law degree to even understand abortion policy and legality on any given day,” Kelly Baden, Guttmacher Institute’s vice president of policy and communications, told Salon. “And the presence of AI has complicated that even further.”
On June 24, 2022, the SCOTUS ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — a case that challenged a Mississippi ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy — overturned Roe v. Wade, which effectively ended the federal constitutional right to choose to have an abortion in the United States. As a result, many states enacted so-called “trigger bans.” Since then, it’s already been difficult for people searching for information on abortion care as they’ve had to wade through misinformation and anti-abortion propaganda online. Today, organizations with dedicated staff and resources to share accurate information are feeling the effects of AI’s presence. Baden said, for example, that Guttmacher Institute has an interactive abortion policy map, which is a popular resource for people to understand the laws in all 50 states. Now, with AI summaries and LLMs, Baden and her colleagues have to be creative with how they write updates to this map to ensure LLMs aggregate the information accurately.
In an era when the internet is already rife with abortion-related misinformation, LLMs entering the chat have complicated the landscape.
“Our job now is to also think about how the information that we share is getting translated by other tools that didn’t exist, or weren’t on our radar, a few years ago,” Baden told Salon. “And now, these tools are a big part of how people understand their rights and their ability to get abortion care.”
While published data on how many people are using AI to access abortion-related information falls short, many organizations are seeing referral traffic from AI. Amy Merrill, co-founder of Plan C Pills, told Salon her organization — which provides resources for self-managed, at-home abortions with pills— has seen spikes of traffic from ChatGPT to her website. Rebecca Nall, founder of I Need an A, which is a free website that helps people find abortion providers, telehealth services, financial support and travel information, said they’ve also seen referral traffic from ChatGPT.
“We see in our data the referrals from AI assistants,” Nall said. “Referrals have been increasing over the last two years pretty significantly.”
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The mirage of privacy and convenience could be causing more people to turn to AI for health-related information. However, when it comes to abortion care, there are concerns about AI’s ability to provide unbiased, accurate information.
“It feels like you’re dialoguing with your healthcare provider,” Merrill said. “Whereas you’re actually just talking to a tech company and giving them all your personal data, and that’s a real concern within the movement.”
In July, Open Democracy’s team of international investigative journalists found that AI chatbots were “nudging” pregnant women to anti-abortion resources. In 2025, a team of healthcare providers and researchers concluded that only 65% of ChatGPT-3.5’s responses to abortion questions were “acceptable.” A separate 2024 study found that ChatGPT was actively spreading misinformation about self-managed medication abortions. “The chatbot’s tendency to perpetuate health misinformation and associated stigma regarding self-managed medication abortions poses a threat to public health and reproductive autonomy,” the researchers wrote. This can have real-world impacts on patient care.
The mirage of privacy and convenience could be causing more people to turn to AI for health-related information. However, when it comes to abortion care, there are concerns about AI’s ability to provide unbiased, accurate information.
“Any day that you are delayed in getting the care that you need because you might have gotten confusing information, conflicting information, or wrong information potentially puts you out of reach of getting the care that you need,” Baden said. She gave an example of someone living in Louisiana, a state that prohibits in-person abortion care at all stages of pregnancy without exceptions. However, that person can still seek abortion care in Florida or Georgia before six weeks of pregnancy. “If you, for some reason, got misleading information or wrong information because of an AI model, and miss that cutoff, then you are that much farther away geographically and financially from getting an abortion that you need after six weeks.”
Nall, from I Need an A, said one of the biggest pieces of misinformation that they see come from AI is a lack of a comprehensive overview of a person’s options. While some states like Louisiana have highly restrictive laws, people can still choose to self-manage an abortion at home by receiving medication abortion pills in the mail. Abortion pills being shipped to states with bans are becoming more common. For example, in Missouri — where abortion access is highly restrictive with limited exceptions for medical emergencies— the number of medication abortions has quadrupled since 2023. “Many people are getting pills by mail in every single state,” Nall said. Nall added that they’ve seen LLMs recommend crisis pregnancy centers in restricted states as well.
The good news is that AI is currently influenced by SEO strategies. “We have been changing our language and encouraging other reproductive activists to change language on their websites,” Nall said. Advocates encourage media outlets reporting on abortion restrictions to keep in mind how their articles will affect how LLMs aggregate abortion-related information as well. Specifically, the use of the word “ban.”
“We’ve been talking about this with colleagues and journalists, but when the words ‘abortion ban’ are used, like ‘abortion is banned in Texas,’ some AI tools will interpret that to mean that there is no abortion available in any form, and factually, that’s just incorrect,” Merrill told Salon. “There’s a risk of oversimplifying, and that’s what we saw happening with the word ‘abortion ban.’”
Merrill emphasized it’s important to communicate that “in-person care is restricted,” but that people are still accessing pills by mail. When it comes to navigating the abortion landscape in the U.S. in the age of AI, she recommends website directories like PlanCPills.org, INeedAnA.com, or the Repro Legal Helpline if someone wants to talk to a human.
Nall said while she is hesitant to use the word “optimistic,” she has been seeing improvements in AI’s answers since they’ve been doubling down on their efforts to influence LLMs. However, Nall said, she wouldn’t recommend AI as a go-to source. “I highly recommend skipping Google, skipping ChatGPT, and going straight to INeedAnA.com.”
Martin, Tennessee, is a small, out-of-the-way town that is ultimately best explained to strangers by relaying its travel time from Memphis. (Two hours and some change.) It’s not the sort of place where grand history happens, and yet, in 1971 this sleepy burg was the site of a world-historic upset.
Inside the local university’s gym, the Harlem Globetrotters had come up short. The classic lineup featuring Meadowlark Lemon and Hubert “Geese” Ausbie had tried and failed to beat their perennial foils: the Washington Generals, playing that night as the New Jersey Reds. An audience expecting acrobatic basketball stunts and on-court clowning set to “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the Globetrotters’ signature song, was instead treated to a real, close-fought exhibition. At the end of overtime, the Reds pulled out a one-point victory, their first in more than 2,000 games. Lacking champagne for the occasion, they poured orange soda on owner-coach-player Herm “Red” Klotz’s head.
The upset might not have been what the exhibition’s management wanted, and it definitely wasn’t what the crowd paid to see, but it was a healthy reminder that the Reds’ squad was more than just the butt of an endless string of hardwood jokes. The losingest jersey in sports masked five no-funny-business basketball players who could give superstars a scare. When Abe Saperstein, the Globetrotters’ founder, stormed the Reds locker room in a huff, Klotz warned him, “If you let your guard down, we’ll get you again.” But the Reds/Generals would go on to lose their next 17,000 games, an unbroken streak of ignominy that continues to this day.
I was reminded of the 1971 fluke while reading that the Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a rare loss at the Supreme Court on Monday. Chief Justice John Roberts and Company once again rejected his bid to avoid paying the $5 million in civil damages awarded to the writer E. Jean Carroll, after a jury found the president had sexually abused her at a Manhattan department store and later defamed her.
The president had appealed that verdict, as well as a larger defamation verdict in a separate lawsuit, all the way to the Supreme Court. The high court rejected Trump’s first attempt to overturn the verdict in June.
The news was applauded across Bluesky, the largely liberal social media platform, with posts calling Trump “Senile Satan” and characterizing the decision as a rebuke for a “adjudicated rapist.” (The president has not been convicted of rape; he was found guilty of sexual abuse by a jury in a civil trial.) But for me, the ruling brought to mind Klotz’s orange soda bath and empty boasts.
Across its 2025-2026 term, the Court has proven that it’s more than willing to let Trump dunk all over them, doing everything short of giving him a boost on the way to the rim. In June, they allowed the president to pull Congress’ athletic shorts down, giving him the power to revoke the temporary protected status that lawmakers had granted to Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
That same month, Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Court’s liberal justices to ward off an attack on birthright citizenship, allowing liberals to claim victory while the dissenting conservatives laid out a road map for future cases.
But within a week, Roberts and Barrett had returned to their squad, getting caught up in the magic circle that surrounds Trump’s actions as president. In a decision that overturned nearly a century of precedent, the conservative majority granted Trump the ability to fire the heads of independent regulatory agencies in the executive branch, effectively letting the administration bowl over any career officials and oversight that might stand in the way of the president’s radical agenda.
Notably, there was an exception to the Court’s stooge act: They won’t allow Trump to toy with the Federal Reserve. Messing with the nation’s money is off-limits, apparently even for Republicans. You have to wonder how the Generals’ unwelcome win would be remembered if it had hurt the Globetrotters’ gate receipts.
All of this is downstream from the Roberts Court’s most egregious ruling: Trump v. United States. In a 6-3 decision that fell along partisan lines, the Court held that Trump could do almost anything he wanted while in the White House and be largely immune from prosecution. Writing for the majority, Roberts found that so long as Trump could provide the barest of cover, even illegal actions are allowed as part of his presidential duties. The chief justice’s ruling shredded an essential part of the Constitution to confetti, and like Meadowlark Lemon, Roberts loaded it into a bucket for Trump to toss into the air whenever he needs a distraction.
The fiction being peddled by the Court — that this is the legitimate carrying out of the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution — is similar to the one used in basketball arenas across the country when the Globetrotters come to town.
The fiction being peddled by the Court — that this is the legitimate carrying out of the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution — is similar to the one used in basketball arenas across the country when the Globetrotters come to town. The team is free to carry out any number of obvious fouls, double-dribbles and prop-assisted scoring plays so long as the audience maintains the idea that what they are watching is a refereed game of basketball. The Court is free to play-act at being a check on Trump’s power, so long as the majority of Americans consider it a legitimate body. Keeping that ruse going is crucial for the aims of the wider right-wing project. And to do that, the conservative majority can’t just rubber stamp every last thing this president does.
By handing Trump a highly publicized and embarrassing loss on an issue that doesn’t hamper Republicans’ agenda, the conservative justices are continuing their smoke screen by reinforcing the Court’s legitimacy as an impartial body at a time when they’re more captured by partisan politics than ever. Occasionally ruling against the president keeps up the charade.
Trump might have been sent packing this time, but don’t expect his foils on the Court to go on a winning streak. SCOTUS will be back to their regularly scheduled losing soon enough.
NBC’s “Heroes” made Hayden Panettiere a household name by making us believe she was unstoppable. Not her, of course, but Claire Bennet — the Odessa, Texas high school cheerleader who couldn’t be killed.
In the series premiere, Claire throws herself off an oil derrick’s rusty platform, plummeting at least 70 or 80 feet in a fall that should have broken her body. Instead, she stands up, pops her dislocated shoulder back into its socket and grimly declares to the shocked classmate filming her, “This is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt No. 6.” Later, in that same episode, she runs into a burning building to rescue a man trapped inside. He suffers horrible burns, but she dashes away unscathed.
Claire wears her cheerleader uniform in both scenes — the identifying outfit that generated the first season’s catchphrase, “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
There are so many dark stories about child stars that make us wonder what might have been, if only. Panettiere, who died on Sunday at 36, lived one of them. She rocketed to stardom with starring roles on “Heroes” and “Nashville,” where she played up-and-coming country star Juliette Barnes opposite Connie Britton.
Both productions also transgressed personal boundaries that pushed Panettiere to lows no one should endure, but so many stars growing up in the spotlight unfortunately do. During her time on “Heroes,” she wrote in her recently published memoir “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” someone in her orbit began slipping her pharmaceuticals to amp up her energy for public appearances.
Later, the writers on “Nashville” mined Panettiere’s private battles for her character’s storylines: Her postpartum depression and struggles with substance dependency began turning up in scripts. Since she was raised to be a good soldier, she took it all in stride. Privately, Panettiere spent time in and out of rehab to treat her addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs.
When emergency responders in Greenville, S.C., found Panettiere in an apartment on Sunday, she was unresponsive and in cardiac arrest. An anonymous source told The New York Times that the cause was an apparent drug overdose.
It is easy to regard a former child star’s troubles as an inevitability of the profession. From the looks of where Panettiere was steering her life, it didn’t have to be. Yes, she grew up in front of TV cameras, landing her first regular roles on soap operas, including ABC’s “One Life to Live” and CBS’ “Guiding Light.” Four seasons on “Heroes” launched her to a level of celebrity few child actors achieve.
There are so many dark stories about child stars that make us wonder what might have been, if only. Panettiere, who died on Sunday at 36, lived one of them.
But she also defied the industry tendency to pigeonhole performers based on the breakout success of characters like Claire Bennet. Panettiere’s high school hero emerged on TV during the “sheroes” era of the aughts, arriving in the wake of Sydney Bristow on “Alias” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” another cheerleader turned supernatural brawler.
But where Jennifer Garner and Sarah Michelle Gellar struggled to shake the action-hero personas that made them stars, Panettiere followed “Heroes” with ABC’s “Nashville,” a series created by “Thelma & Louise” writer Callie Khouri that showcased the full range of her acting ability. Playing Juliette earned Panettiere two Golden Globe nominations, and her performances of the character’s songs landed her on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts 11 times.
What we saw onscreen, along with the catchy music she made, was, in her telling, the fruit of a creative yield achieved by pressing beyond her breaking point.
In “This Is Me,” she describes spending time in and out of rehab, losing custody of her child and rebuilding her life to a place that, as of this year, included plans to produce and direct new projects, as she mentioned in a recent New York Times profile.
“This is Me” also depicts her mother, former soap actress Lesley Vogel, as demanding her daughter’s absolute best at every step in her career and leaving her with no alternative path. Panettiere’s first national TV gig came at 11 months old with a Playskool toy train commercial, the start of around 50 advertising appearances she’d rack up before she was 5 years old.
Her feature film debut came in 1998, when she voiced Princess Dot in “A Bug’s Life.” She was 9. After that, she became one of the youngest Grammy nominees ever in the best spoken word album for children category thanks to her voice work on “A Bug’s Life Read-Along.”
As Panettiere told Jay Shetty on a May episode of his podcast “On Purpose,” those early achievements came at the cost of enjoying a normal childhood. By the time she was 11, she’d already acted alongside Denzel Washington in “Remember the Titans,” which led her teachers and classmates to treat her differently. Vogel bought an apartment for her daughter when she was 16, Panettiere recalled, and the whole family lived in it. She parted ways with Vogel professionally when she was 19.
Her father, Alan “Skip” Panettiere, worked for New York City’s fire department and was the parent she leaned on for emotional support. “That has kind of continued in my life,” she told Shetty, “just wanting to know that if I found myself in a terrible position, that I could call somebody to help me. I could rely on somebody . . . I wasn’t the person that everybody else was relying on, and therefore nobody was there for me.”
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Panettiere was 17 when “Heroes” became a breakout hit and made her and co-stars Milo Ventimiglia, Masi Oka and Zachary Quinto sought-after talents. But she was the one that the paparazzi hounded most fiercely, feeding malicious tabloid coverage focused on her body image and weight.
The news that she was dating Ventimiglia kicked the frenzy into overdrive, especially since he was 30 years old at the time while she was 18.
Not long ago, she told The Messenger that, overall, she looks back on her career with a sense of curiosity. “Because [‘Nashville’] took six years of my career when I was at my physical prime, my mental, my everything, I just wonder what it would have been like in the hiatuses, [if I] did one project or film, or was encouraged to do that,” she remarked. “Where would I be today?”
Jon Ossoff certainly struck a nerve. At a campaign rally on Sunday, the Democratic senator from Georgia declared that Donald Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” of president but would instead prefer to “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” The crowd went nuts, showing how much people, at least on the left, have been noticing that Trump goes everywhere with a 35-year-old blonde aide named Natalie Harp, whom New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has deemed his “human binky.”
The White House erupted in rage, furious that Ossoff had called out the walking security blanket provided to the president. Because there’s no way around it: Having a babysitter makes the 80-year-old president look even older and weaker than he already is. The over-the-top response revealed how sensitive Trump and his staff are about his visible aging, and how much it ties into their larger anxieties about his rapid decline.
Harp’s devotion to Trump is ecstatic to the point of religiosity. When she worked at One America Network, she would end her segments by quoting Trump or the Bible, as if they were one and the same.
As Haberman and her colleague Jonathan Swan have detailed, Harp’s main job is offering a steady stream of reassurances to Trump. She leaves love letters on his pillow with language like, “You are all that matters to me” and “I want to bring you joy.” She carries around a briefcase full of clippings from social media and right-wing media websites of MAGA types praising him, to be brought out and shown to him whenever his mood needs stabilizing, much as a parent would offer a stuffed toy to a baby. Harp’s devotion to Trump is ecstatic to the point of religiosity. When she worked at One America Network, she would end her segments by quoting Trump or the Bible, as if they were one and the same.
At a speech intended to honor graduates of a New York police academy on Friday, Trump himself bragged about how his staff surrounds him with pretty young women to flatter him. “These young beautiful girls in the White House, they come in,” he said. “These young, these gorgeous, beautiful girls, they want to be safe and they come say ‘Mr. President, thank you, sir.'”
After Ossoff mocked Trump’s “young, beautiful girls” spiel, however, it seems the White House realized how embarrassing the situation is for the president. But the hyper-defensiveness only made the situation worse. White House communications director Steven Cheung tweeted, “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics.” Alas, Cheung made the fatal error of posting a clip of the handsome 39-year-old speaking behind a podium, his posture erect, his delivery natural and confident, his sentences coherent — a man on a mission. Cheung’s colleague Davis Ingle made the same mistake. Calling Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid,” he posted the same video of Ossoff.
Still, the White House could not let it go. In what may be the biggest backfire of the debacle, Trump himself had to weigh in. “You mean Pee-wee Herman? Pee-wee Herman look-alike,” he said when asked by CNN reporter Kristen Holmes about Ossoff’s comments. (The president proceeded to disparage Holmes and CNN for asking the question, and later, in a particularly disgusting episode, the White House’s rapid response account launched a blistering personal attack on the reporter, even invoking her children.)
Trump’s reference to Pee-wee Herman, played by the late actor Paul Reubens, was both homophobic and antisemitic. But what’s striking about it is how it’s one more reminder that the president is very old. The character’s silver screen debut in 1985’s “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” came two years before Ossoff was even born. Back then, calling a Jewish man “Pee-wee” to impugn his manhood was probably a huge hit with the bigots at the country club. Now it’s just confusing, especially since Reubens is widely regarded as a comedy legend.
Ever since Swan and Haberman, in their recent book “Regime Change,” revealed the humiliating details of Harp’s job as what amounts to Trump’s full-time babysitter, speculation has run rampant about the nature of the president’s relationship with her. Some have speculated that given Trump’s long history of chronic adultery, there might be something more to the arrangement. Others, pointing to Trump’s strange gait and prominent backside, which is often seen to have an odd shape, wonder if he might be forced to wear a medical device or garments. The expanding size of the bag Harp lugs around isn’t helping dissuade rumors that nursing duties are an important part of her job.
Whatever the case, the rumors have served to draw more attention to Trump’s age. But the simple fact that he requires a woman to linger around him most of the time, ready to express her devotion and that of his most ardent followers, isn’t a great look. When considered alongside the extraordinary medical privacy exerted by Trump and the White House, it cuts against his failing efforts to position himself as virile and robust.
But Trump’s decline isn’t just physical. As the November midterms approach, the president is setting new records for low approval ratings. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Aug. 14-17, 64% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance as president. He’s losing a war with Iran that he assured Americans would be over months ago. His promises to create jobs and lower prices have gone up in smoke. His mismanagement of public health agencies have even contributed to outbreaks of explosive diarrhea and measles across the country. Republicans in Congress are expecting major election losses in November.
But Trump doesn’t appear to be deterred. He recently attempted to troll liberals — his old go-to hat trick — by posting an AI-generated picture of himself in a “Trump 2028” hat. While some of the usual suspects took the bait, this threat to run for the presidency again felt a little hollow this time around. It wasn’t just because a third term is forbidden by the Constitution. The swift signs of aging he is exhibiting simply makes it hard to imagine. As Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s cardiologist, recently wrote in the New York Times, “the president has not looked well.” Reiner pointed to “a variety of physical ailments” that are “easy to see,” including bruised hands, swollen legs and an inability to stay awake. Trump also brags frequently about taking cognitive tests, seemingly unaware that’s usually a sign doctors are tracking dementia symptoms.
Whatever the extent of Natalie Harp’s duties, it seems undeniable that she is there to keep the temperamental president calm by distracting him from his own failures with words of praise. That he needs this is a sign of profound weakness. Stable adults do not need full-time babysitters. That Harp’s job even exists is a testament to Trump’s incredible narcissism, but it also carries more than a whiff of elder care and suspicions about medical conditions that require monitoring and placating.
The White House’s extreme response only serves to underscore how worried they are about the narrative being created — one they themselves weaponized against another aging president, Joe Biden. By flipping out at anyone who brings it up, they’re only ensuring more people are paying attention.
I’m a huge fan of the corporate death penalty, a legal process in which a corporation is forced to dissolve or stop existing. (This is actually the only death penalty I support, because the state executing humans isn’t just unethical, it also doesn’t work to deter homicides. But unlike what the Supreme Court believes, I don’t think of corporations as human.) More formally known as judicial dissolution, the corporate death penalty basically happens when the government is so pissed off by the corruption or damage a corporation causes that it yanks away their charter.
The mechanism has existed since at least the 19th century, but it has only been used a few times, usually in response to severe environmental destruction. In 1890, the North River Sugar Refining Corporation was dissolved by New York’s highest court on the grounds that it was abusing its power as a corporation. The judge’s opinion contains this little gem: “The life of a corporation is indeed less than that of the humblest citizen…”
It’s hard to find any modern examples of the corporate death penalty, but that doesn’t mean critics of abusive business haven’t attempted to invoke it. Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Equifax and even the National Rifle Association have all been the target of calls for this form of execution.
There is at least one semi-recent example of the government destroying a business as punishment for corruption. Arthur Andersen was once one of the “Big Five” accounting firms (it’s now the Big Four) that dominate the financial sector. Among the company’s biggest customers was Enron, the energy company that infamously filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after widespread internal fraud was uncovered. The largest corporate bankruptcy in American history at the time, Arthur Andersen was instrumental in helping Enron cover up that fraud by destroying evidence, and the firm was indicted and found guilty of a narrow charge of obstructing a Securities and Exchange Commission official proceeding. Arthur Andersen surrendered its CPA license, effectively putting the firm out of business in 2002, although the Supreme Court later overturned the conviction. But the damage was done, and the firm no longer exists.
Generally, while calls to invoke judicial dissolution don’t result in much action, it’s still fun to fantasize about which corporations should face execution. Perhaps there should be a reckoning for Flock Safety, whose mass surveillance devices have spread like a plague through communities, and are ripe for abuse from police and riddled with false positives. Or we could break up Amazon for a million reasons. But to pick one just from this month, the company is planning to build a power plant (for fueling artificial intelligence data centers, naturally) so big it threatens to instantly become the country’s largest polluter. That seems like a decent rationale for invoking the corporate death penalty. And Taylor Farms would certainly top the list for anyone glued to a toilet bowl lately, thanks to the company’s alleged indiscretion handling lettuce laced with the “explosive diarrhea” parasite.
In another universe, one in which Donald Trump hadn’t secured a second term, he may have been convicted of the fraud he was accused of and his companies could have been liquidated by using the corporate death penalty. Indeed, people were floating the idea before the 2024 election, which allowed Trump to dodge the numerous lawsuits against him that may have resulted in total dissolution of his businesses. It could still happen one day, but it doesn’t seem likely any time soon.
Much like jury nullification — another legal mechanism that is not widely known — there is a reason the corporate death penalty isn’t part of the Overton window, the range of acceptable discourse in the mainstream public. The corporate death penalty is the kind of thing that keeps the ultra-rich scared. It’s why corporate shills love to make the excuse that using the corporate death penalty would unfairly punish employees and bring shocks to the economy. More likely, it would persuade big business to pursue due diligence instead of profits over people and the environment.
“This weapon might help minimize corruption but with collateral damage,” John F. Hulpke, a professor at University College Dublin, wrote in the Journal of Management Inquiry in 2017. “But if society is serious about wanting to curb corruption, all weapons must be considered, including this one.”
In yet another universe, we would restructure corporations to have more than one bottom line beyond their shareholders. So-called public benefit corporations do actually exist, and with a triple bottom line: a dedication to people, planet and profit, essentially in that order. Corporate responsibility could encompass so much more than making the stock market rise. There are approximately 10,000 of these entities in the U.S. It’s difficult to get an exact number of corporations in the U.S., but the IRS flagged 6.8 million active corporate returns filed in 2022, so to say there’s a big gap in ideology here is a major understatement.
Corporations aren’t people — they’re technology. And if our corporate law is actually outdated and destructive tech, maybe we should update it. Don’t worry, the rich will still make plenty more than they need, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of everyone else.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.
Tensions between state election officials and the Trump administration are rising as we head into the heart of the midterm election season. Frustrations boiled over on Monday during a rare election security call hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for state officials. During the call, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes unloaded on the agency.
CISA used to be a go-to shop for many states looking for help ensuring that their elections weren’t hacked, targeted, or undermined by cyberattacks or foreign interference. CISA provided states with classified security briefings on threats, helped ensure that state voting equipment wasn’t vulnerable to cyberattacks, and worked with election leaders to game out potential risks.
Changes at CISA have paired with the president’s broad focus on controlling how elections are run. The federal government is threatening to arrest election officials if they allow noncitizens to vote. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has vowed to withhold federal funds from states that don’t implement Trump administration election overhaul proposals. A coalition of Democratic states and officials has sued the Department of Homeland Security in a suit that accuses the Trump administration of withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency funding in an attempt to coerce states into enacting disputed election changes.
With all that as backdrop, CISA organized this week’s call – and things didn’t go too well.
After more than a year of near silence, elections officials wondered if CISA would step up to offer classified intelligence briefings on emerging cyber threats from hostile countries, specialized testing of election equipment, or training on how to prepare for potential problems on Election Day.
Instead, CISA leaders provided what one participant characterized as a generic “CYA” (cover your a**) briefing that offered state officials few assurances that the federal government would help thwart threats this November.
Participants said acting CISA Director Nick Andersen and Jim Harrell, the assistant director for integrated operations, offered no concrete support for the 2026 election, which is less than 90 days away. Instead, the participants said, CISA leadership seemed more focused on the 2028 presidential election.
When they were done, according to participants, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, lashed out at the CISA officials. Fontes blasted the Trump administration for threatening state election officials and made it clear he had no confidence in their leadership, they said.
“Fontes got testy with them,” said one participant on the call who asked not to be identified. “‘I don’t trust you,’ [Fontes told the CISA officials.] ‘Your boss came out there and said: We are going to criminalize the work you do. Why should we trust you?’”
When asked about the call, Fontes confirmed that he’d made those comments and expanded on his frustrations
“They don’t work with us, they work against us,” Fontes told Votebeat. “Why should I trust them?”
Fontes said it was difficult for state and local elections officials to have confidence they would get support from the federal government when the administration treats them like an adversary rather than a partner. He and others on the call said CISA leaders offered few assurances they would provide much support in the coming weeks.
“They just wholly and completely abandoned their duties and threatened prosecution,” Fontes said. “If they want to apologize for threatening us and ruining perfectly good systems, that’s a good start.”
CISA did not respond to requests for comment on the call.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, also a Democrat, echoed Fontes’s frustrations.
“It’s unhelpful to have political leaders, including the secretary of Homeland Security, hinting at imprisoning election administrators who don’t do what they want,” Simon told Votebeat. “That’s just not helpful.”
Simon said Minnesota and other states have spent months working to fill the gaps left by the drop-off in CISA support.
“It’s pretty clear states are almost entirely on their own this election cycle and cannot rely on the federal government for election assistance,” said Simon.
Not everyone on the call came away with a sour taste in their mouth, though. Some participants described it as a tentative move that could help repair the strained relationship between state and federal leaders working on elections.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, also a Democrat, described the call as a “positive step” in rebuilding relations between CISA and state election officials.
“While this engagement is encouraging, CISA and our other federal partners must focus on continuing to rebuild trust with election officials,” Hobbs said. “Over the last two years, we have watched this administration systematically dismantle many of the election security resources in place at the federal level.”
With the November election fast approaching, he said, “election officials need sustained commitment to supporting local elections, not renewed attention only as major elections approach. Meaningful support will do more to rebuild relationships than words alone.”
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The Trump administration’s construction project in Big Bend National Park, which is destroying the area’s pristine environment to build more of President Donald Trump’s border wall, is temporarily on hold following bipartisan outrage over the environmental damage.
“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Rodney Scott, head of Customs and Border Protection, posted on X Monday. “CBP is firmly committed to protecting America, and that includes our national treasures like Big Bend National Park.”
Last summer, Congress gave the Trump administration $46 billion to construct a wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, a project that is happening with little to no oversight in order to fast track construction.
Big Bend, bordering Mexico in West Texas, features volcanic dikes, dinosaur bones and stunning canyon views. In July, the Trump admin waived restrictions on construction, allowing bulldozing and parts of the border wall and roads to be built, drawing the ire of environmental groups and the National Parks Conservation Association, which has warned that the damage could last generations.
“Bulldozing Big Bend National Park is an unconscionable attack on one of America’s greatest treasures,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, National Parks Conservation Association President and CEO, told USA Today. “The administration is slashing through miles of this wild landscape, threatening access to recreation and harming sensitive wildlife habitat.”
The Big Bend project is on hold for now, but on Tuesday, the Trump admin advanced plans to open up approximately 45 million acres of wilderness in places like Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to road construction and logging, removing protections that have been in place for a quarter century, according to the New York Times. The move will rescind the “roadless rule” enacted by President Bill Clinton, opening up millions of acres of untouched wilderness to destruction.
“By ripping protections from some of our oldest intact forests, the Trump administration is endangering the drinking water supplies of tens of millions and threatening wildlife habitats and recreation opportunities in almost every state,” Drew McConville, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told the Times.
None of this is entirely surprising given how Trump eroded environmental protections for national parks in his first term, such as shrinking the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah. Those efforts were challenged in federal court, but in his second term, Trump has doubled down on his efforts to reshape these and other parks. It’s not yet clear how bad the damage is, but it’s also evident that Trump is just getting started.
The fame machine is a distinctly American invention. In what other country is it wired into people’s heads from the moment they can coherently string together five words that they, too, can be a star if they work hard enough and dream big enough? Here, “fame” doesn’t merely suggest flashy movie-star celebrity; it’s a status you can attain in any industry, so long as you climb to its upper ranks. Fame is a bedfellow of the newer, more modern American dream, which promises not only contentment, but success, as a reward for ambition, ravaging the lifestyles of millions of people in the process. It’s getting harder to be happy with what one has, and even more difficult to stop destroying ourselves — either with contempt for others or regret for what we perceive as imperfection — in striving for more. America might not have a monarchy, but that doesn’t mean most of us won’t try to bow at fame’s feet at some point. Each trade has its kings and queens, its princes and princesses.
When news broke of actress Hayden Panettiere’s death at the age of 36 late last week, the immediate aftermath felt like watching the fame machine go on the fritz, rumbling and sputtering before outpouring a swath of both genuine grief and rubbernecking greed. Those who grew up watching Panettiere light up screens both big and small were devastated. Others — maybe even a subset of the same people — jumped to alarmism and misinformation. After an extended hiatus from acting, Panettiere was returning to work and primed for an even bigger comeback. Earlier this summer, she detailed her struggles with postpartum depression, abuse, child stardom, addiction and recovery in her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning.” Many assumed her death was a result of any one of these. (First responders found Panettiere in cardiac arrest, but no exact cause of death is known at the time of writing.)
Considered alongside its stars’ tragically brief lives, “Ice Princess” conveys the critical need to give teenagers both stalwart encouragement and the tools to speak up when they need help. And while the movie’s legacy looks a little more macabre now, Panettiere and Trachtenberg’s glimmering performances are enough to push through the darkness.
Within hours, conspiracies about Panettiere being killed for speaking out about Hollywood appeared online. A TikTok search for her name brings up ghoulish videos with thousands of views: “Last video of Hayden Panettiere alive”; “Nobody realized Hayden made three unusual moves before her death.” CBS News posted audio of the 911 response call to their TikTok page just this morning. It’s as if, in the untimely death of a famous person — especially a former child star — particles of their fame dissipate into the air, leaving the desperate and discontent to try to snatch a piece of their own before it dissolves completely.
Some of Panettiere’s most notable roles point back to this phenomenon, with her TV arcs in series like “Heroes” and “Nashville,” at their cores, tracking the effects of the whole world watching and depending on you. But it’s her 2005 Disney film, “Ice Princess” — one of my first experiences with Panettiere’s work — that’s most illustrative of both fame’s pitfalls and the culture that cosigns them in the name of success. In the movie, Panettiere plays Gen Harwood, an archetypal most-popular-girl-in-school and less-than-standard teenage ice-skating prodigy. Though her form and marks in the sport are good, real success is just out of Gen’s reach. That is, until physics geek Casey Carlyle (Michelle Trachtenberg, another child star gone far too soon) begins studying the science of Gen’s skating in hopes of scoring a college scholarship.
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Casey and Gen’s journey from competitors to confidantes is the film’s familiar emotional center, but tucked into an unfamiliar narrative. Beneath its Disney dialogue and some smoothed-over depictions of the harsher realities of competitive sports, “Ice Princess” boasts winning messages about the pressures put on young people to achieve greatness at an age when they’re too young to define personal success. That the film is led by two young women who accomplished such greatness in their childhood and teenage years at the risk of their privacy and potentially their well-being is a tragically meta asterisk that will now hang over the movie forever.
But that doesn’t mean “Ice Princess” doesn’t still come loaded with hope and pertinent themes of personal choice, active listening, and cheering young people on in whatever they choose to do (within reason). Considered alongside its stars’ tragically brief lives, “Ice Princess” conveys the critical need to give teenagers both stalwart encouragement and the tools to speak up when they need help. And while the movie’s legacy looks a little more macabre now, Panettiere and Trachtenberg’s glimmering performances are enough to push through the darkness.
Casey and Gen are, for a Disney movie, as different as they come. Casey lives with her mother, Joan (Joan Cusack), in a cozy, rural house outside of town, where Casey skates for fun on the frozen pond in their backyard. Gen is your typical blonde suburbanite who wishes she could spend her Saturday nights at parties or with her friends, instead of in intensive training on the ice, coached by her mother, Tina (Kim Cattrall). Gen and Casey aren’t enemies, but they’re not exactly friends, either. But when Casey’s science teacher encourages her to apply for a college scholarship that could change her entire life — and make the project she submits as part of her application personal — Casey’s affection for ice skating becomes a thorn in Gen and Tina’s side.
The two girls are thrown together by their mutual commitment to their passions, science and skating. What Gen and Casey want is to enjoy these things for the personal thrills they offer. Fame or excellence in either field seems to be the desire of their parents and other adult figures in their lives. “People wait their whole life to find their calling,” Casey’s teacher tells her about the scholarship, asserting that a natural fluency in science means it must be her destiny. These sentiments are reflected by Joan, who desperately wants more for her daughter than she’s been able to provide on her own teacher’s salary.
Tina, on the other hand, gets to the point with candor. “You’re not like other girls,” Tina tells Gen when her daughter asks why she can’t take a half-hour break from training to be with her boyfriend. “Winners make sacrifices.” For Gen, those sacrifices come at the expense of joy. Gen knows the exact measurements of her salad order and is strictly forbidden from eating any bread. Her practice doesn’t stop when the sun goes down. And attending a high school party is entirely out of the question. There is something genuinely quite heartbreaking about watching Panettiere, a young woman just coming to understand Hollywood industry standards, repeat the sickly refrains of a similarly demanding profession. When Gen orders cheese (in a strict one-quarter cup measurement) for her salad one afternoon, her friends poke fun at her. “It’s Saturday,” she replies, “I can pig out if I want to.”
With its focused screenplay, “Ice Princess” quickly cultivates an atmosphere that’s sympathetic to Gen and Casey. The film frames their lapses in rigor as the joys of being a teenager, rather than imperfections — or worse, weakness in the pursuit of glory. No 16-year-old should be so strictly confined to a routine that prevents them from actually living their life.
(Alli Harvey / Getty Images for Stuart Weitzman) (L-R) Hayden Panettiere and Michelle Trachtenberg attend the unveiling of Stuart Weitzman’s Young Hollywood Cares Collection in aid of ovarian cancer research during Fashion’s Night Out at Stuart Weitzman Boutique on September 8, 2011.
It’s ironic that, in the aftermath of Panettiere’s death, so much of the response has been about the lack of protections offered to child stars in the film and television industries, and not the content creation field. Social media is the new breeding ground for the kind of toxicity that the people mining Panettiere’s death for views purport to abhor.
But that’s not the message that America is selling. The same tracks to success still exist for young people gifted in sports or science. But fame as a general concept also seems much more attainable than it did 21 years ago. Teenagers want to grow up to be influencers or TikTokers, spending a significant portion of their youth creating content about life instead of actually living it.
It’s a lifestyle not entirely dissimilar to the rigorous training of an ice-skating prodigy, putting in the work at all hours to hone their skill. But it does strike me as odd that, in the aftermath of Panettiere’s death, so much of the response was about the lack of protections offered to child stars in the film and television industries, and not the rapidly booming content creation field. How ironic that social media is the new breeding ground for the kind of toxicity that the people mining Panettiere’s death for views purport to abhor.
That dissonance is a big part of why “Ice Princess” holds up today. One could even argue that it’s now an even more critical part of Panettiere and Trachtenberg’s legacies. The film is no longer just a tender-hearted story of fame and all its drawbacks, but also a look at two women who bravely wrestled with those flaws, making a major impact in the short time they were here. When they’re on screen, Panettiere and Trachtenberg shine through all the Disney conventions, their characters pointing back to their real selves.
Each one has her singular presence — Trachtenberg plucky and inspiring; Panettiere charming and bold — but together, they’re beautiful complements. Panettiere’s grounded presence helps untether the film from its somewhat corny conceit, giving it authentic complexity. She deviates from the one-note mean girl role, supplying Gen with dimensionality and kindness that characters like these were rarely afforded. That Gen’s growing discontent with skating is so closely linked to Panettiere’s real-life trajectory — trying to figure out where she fits in a ruthless industry — is a sour cherry on top: unexpected, but worth embracing. Though the importance of “Ice Princess” is obscured by histrionic high school drama and feel-good fluff, it remains a vital work for teaching parents and kids of all ages that success is what you make of it. And none of that would be possible without its two forever-shining stars.
The act itself — appointing a crony and longtime friend to an important government job — was not unusual. It’s not even unprecedented for them to appoint family members. (See: Kennedy, President John F. and Attorney General Robert F.) But Donald Trump’s appointment of Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense attorney, as attorney general may be a first, and not because Blanche has been a close associate. What’s striking about it is the fact that the president needed a criminal defense attorney in the first place.
On Sunday Blanche made his first appearance since his confirmation on “Meet the Press”, and from the first seconds of the interview he made it clear that his new, permanent position would not change his understanding of his role as the president’s apparatchik. When host Kristen Welker pressed him on whether he would act independently, Blanche did not mince words. “No, I’m not going to pledge that,” he said. “No attorney general should ever pledge that.”
Blanche clearly believes that his job is to run the Justice Department by doing the president’s bidding. But he did take time to assure the country that Trump had never, and would never, ask him to do anything unethical or illegal, so we needn’t worry our pretty little heads about that. “There is this extraordinarily false narrative that the president wakes up in the morning and calls me and says, ‘Todd, go prosecute X or Y,’” Blanche said. “He does not do that. He has never done that. He will never do that.”
Well, we know that isn’t true, don’t we? Aside from the mountain of evidence of Trump’s unethical, vengeful public rhetoric, we also have the September 2025 Truth Social draft post he mistakenly published in which he demanded that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute his political enemies, saying “They’re all guilty as hell” and complaining “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Ultimately, Bondi was fired in part for failing to get the indictments he ordered for former FBI director James Comey, California Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Blanche won’t make that same mistake.
When Welker asked him how he squares his and the president’s commitment to prosecute anyone who “inappropriately touches” a law enforcement officer after Trump’s pardons of the violent Jan. 6 criminals, Blanche essentially replied that pardons are the president’s business and they have nothing to do with him. (In fact, the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney has traditionally had oversight of the process.) Unfortunately, Welker didn’t point this out in a follow-up, nor did she ask him about his role as deputy attorney general in overseeing the firings of the department’s prosecutors and staff members who worked on the Jan. 6 cases.
The irony is that this is exactly the kind of interference in the Justice Department that precipitated the rules and norms that call for the attorney general to operate at arm’s length from the White House. Admittedly, it’s a complicated role; the attorney general is a prominent member of the Cabinet, but is also expected to act independently. Some have been more successful at that than others, and at times attorneys general on both sides of the aisle have been thorns in the side of the presidents they serve.
In the 1990s, Janet Reno’s liberal use of the independent counsel statute, which resulted in several investigations against the Clinton administration, caused the president and his staff heartburn. But although he may have groused privately, Bill Clinton did not retaliate against her; Reno remained at the Justice Department throughout his two terms. On the other hand, John Ashcroft’s refusal to allow the George W. Bush administration to override the Justice Department’s finding that a covert domestic surveillance program was illegal — which included a “showdown” at the severely ill Ashcroft’s hospital bedside in March 2004 — helped ensure he was replaced in Bush’s second term.
By and large, administrations respected the formal guardrails that were enacted in the wake of Watergate, which saw Richard Nixon manipulate the Justice Department for his own political protection.
After the so-called Saturday Night Massacre on Oct. 20, 1973, which saw Nixon fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in, and subsequent revelations of Nixon’s abuses of power — including the fact that his Attorney General John Mitchell was personally involved in the planning of the Watergate break-in — Congress enacted a series of reforms to insulate the Justice Department from political pressure and interference. The Justice Department itself created guidelines to make the department a “neutral zone” to ensure that while the president could set national law enforcement goals, the White House would not be involved in specific investigations and prosecutions.
For the most part, administrations stuck to those regulations for decades, although the Republicans started pushing the envelope even before Trump came along. Recall that in 2007 Bush’s second attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, was forced to resign when it became known that he had fired several U.S. attorneys when they failed to follow orders to go after Democratic politicians on dubious charges before elections.
While serious, even that is small potatoes to how Trump has blown the guidelines to smithereens. Like Nixon, Trump sees the Justice Department as a personal law firm that possesses all the power of the U.S. government to use for his own purposes. And since vengeance against his enemies is his top priority, the department is his chosen weapon.
At every step of the way — from deputy to acting attorney general, and now to holding the post in his own right following his narrow Senate confirmation — Todd Blanche has acted in Trump’s interest over that of the people of the United States.
At every step of the way — from deputy to acting attorney general, and now to holding the post in his own right following his narrow Senate confirmation — Todd Blanche has acted in Trump’s interest over that of the people of the United States. In further insult to the public, Blanche told NBC in April that they should be “happy” Trump is meddling in matters of the Justice Department. In his various roles, Blanche has helped cover up the Epstein files, and he personally signed a memorandum of understanding assuring the president that he and his family would never face an IRS audit again. Since he took office as deputy attorney general, some 16,000 to 20,000 personnel have left the Justice Department, apparently unwilling to go along with an edict bearing his imprimatur that Donald Trump is their “chief client.” Here, they’d been thinking their chief client was the American people.
During his interview with Welker, Blanche attempted to spin his refusal to ensure the department’s independence from Trump. “If I were to pledge I were to be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, ‘I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country, which is what he has said — what you’re saying to me is I should say, ‘No sir, I’m not gonna do it,’” Blanche said. “So I will act with integrity, our prosecutors will act with integrity, we will prosecute without fear or any sort of favor, and that’s exactly what we have been doing.”
With over two years left in Trump’s presidency, I can’t even begin to contemplate what Blanche will do on his behalf. Whatever happens will be cloaked in lies — and followed by gaslighting.
In the year the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its break with the British crown, there is something almost painfully ironic about a broadcaster from the kingdom that once ruled us now being more willing to stand up to Donald Trump than much of the American establishment. But the irony isn’t really the story. The story is that the president filed a $10 billion lawsuit to punish the BBC, and in doing so, he may have handed the corporation a legal instrument to drag his children Ivanka and Donald Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, into a Miami courtroom to answer for what happened on Jan. 6.
The lawsuit was supposed to be another exercise in the familiar Trumpian playbook: File a claim, demand an astronomical sum, bury the target in legal expenses, force a humiliating settlement that gets marketed as a political win. That strategy has worked before. In 2024, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million after network anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurately said Trump had been found liable for rape. Paramount later paid more than $24 million over CBS News’ handling of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that took place during the 2024 presidential race. With that track record, Trump had every reason to expect the BBC to fold in the same way.
He miscalculated badly. As a public service corporation, the BBC operates under a royal charter that explicitly bars it from entering into out-of-court financial settlements to make litigation disappear. It cannot cut a check to sweep away Trump’s claims. The corporation is legally bound to fight until a verdict is reached — or until Trump himself gives up. And its defense team, anchored by the First Amendment firm Ballard Spahr, has used that obligation to go straight at the people closest to Trump on Jan. 6.
The underlying claim concerns a 2024 documentary about Trump’s candidacy that aired on “Panorama.” Titled “Trump, A Second Chance?”, the program edited together separate portions of Trump’s Jan. 6 speech so that it sounded as though he said, in immediate sequence, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you,” followed by “we fight, we fight like hell.” Those lines were actually spoken nearly an hour apart, and the BBC has apologized for how the edit was constructed. But the corporation has not apologized for the underlying accusation — because the documentary’s producers and the BBC’s lawyers believe it is true. The BBC has also noted the documentary never aired in the U.S., including in Florida, which creates its own problem for Trump’s attempt to establish the legal connection between the broadcast and the injury he claims to have suffered.
But the discovery fight is where this stopped being a media dispute and became a family liability. Because the entire defamation claim hinges on Trump’s intent — on what he meant by the phrase “fight like hell” — the BBC’s lawyers moved to subpoena the people who helped draft that speech and who were closest to him as the Capitol riot unfolded. On Aug. 14, the BBC asked a federal court in Miami for permission to compel testimony and records from Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Kushner concerning the drafting and meaning of the speech.
According to the BBC’s own filings, Donald Jr. and Ivanka were in the room while the speech was being revised and were present when it was delivered. Kushner drafted a statement condemning the Capitol violence that the White House never issued. He also reportedly told then-chief of staff Mark Meadows the situation was “getting really ugly” as it unfolded, while Trump Jr. texted Meadows begging him to get his father to “condemn this” immediately.
These are not neutral bystanders being swept into a media spat. They are three people who watched the fire get lit and, by their own contemporaneous words, knew exactly what was burning.
These are not neutral bystanders being swept into a media spat. They are three people who watched the fire get lit and, by their own contemporaneous words, knew exactly what was burning. And if the case proceeds, they may have to say so under oath.
Trump’s own conduct made this exposure worse. The BBC also sought his financial records to test the legitimacy of the massive damages he claimed to have suffered — a maneuver that prompted him to quietly abandon his monetary claims rather than open his ledgers to public scrutiny. His lawyers had previously dismissed the request as a “fishing expedition.” But this is how discovery works: If you claim a broadcast inflicted extraordinary economic harm, the defendant gets to test that claim. Trump built the case that now threatens to expose his own children and son-in-law, and he built it because he assumed no one would ever call his bluff.
But the most revealing part of the BBC’s filing isn’t the subpoenas themselves — it’s the account of what happened when the network tried to serve them. Process servers attempting to deliver subpoenas to Ivanka and Kushner at their fortified Miami residence in May were physically blocked by local law enforcement, who directed them to coordinate through the Secret Service. When the BBC’s legal team did exactly that, Secret Service counsel Troy Epstein flatly declared the agency was neither authorized to accept service on the family’s behalf nor willing to help facilitate it. The BBC says it also could not serve Trump Jr. at Trump Tower. It has now asked the court for permission to use alternative methods — email or certified mail — because the ordinary machinery of American process service has been quietly closed off by a federal agency to a foreign broadcaster trying to hold the president’s family accountable.
That is the part of this story that should trouble people well beyond press freedom circles. Taxpayer-funded federal security agencies are being used as a private shield for a political dynasty, deployed to physically block the basic mechanics of a civil lawsuit that Trump himself initiated. It echoes the darker pattern already established around this family and this date — the Secret Service’s unexplained failure to preserve text messages and call logs from around Jan. 6, and allegations that agents played a role in intimidating witnesses like former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson before her explosive congressional testimony. A protective detail meant to keep the first family safe is being repurposed to keep it unaccountable.
Trump has responded predictably, complaining that the BBC is “abusing the deposition process.” His projection is transparent. Nobody dragged his family into this. He is the plaintiff. He asked for $10 billion. He put his own reputation, his financial losses and the meaning of his own speech at the center of a case he chose to bring, and in doing so he opened the door to exactly the kind of scrutiny now aimed at Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Kushner. A defendant testing the plaintiff’s claims isn’t harassment. It’s the legal process working according to centuries of jurisprudence — just as the president intended.
None of this guarantees the subpoenas will be enforced, or that Ivanka, Donald Jr. or Kushner will ever sit for testimony. The court could still limit the subpoena’s scope, and the family’s lawyers will fight the serving of them on every available ground. But the posture itself matters.
While the BBC absorbs real financial strain from international litigation against a sitting American president, it has refused to play the domestic game of corporate capitulation that has defined how ABC, CBS and so many other news outlets have handled Trump’s legal threats. It punched back in the fight Trump started and pushed it toward the people who were actually in the room on Jan. 6 — the same people the taxpayer-funded Secret Service is now, apparently, working to keep out of reach.
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