How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive; The New York Times, February 2, 2026

Jodi Kantor, The New York Times ; How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive

Amid calls to increase transparency and revelations about the court’s inner workings, the chief justice imposed nondisclosure agreements on clerks and employees.

"n November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret.

The chief justice acted after a series of unusual leaks of internal court documents, most notably of the decision overturning the right to abortion, and news reports about ethical lapses by the justices. Trust in the institution was languishing at a historic low. Debate was intensifying over whether the black box institution should be more transparent.

Instead, the chief justice tightened the court’s hold on information.Its employees have long been expected to stay silent about what they witness behind the scenes. But starting that autumn, in a move that has not been previously reported, the chief justice converted what was once a norm into a formal contract, according to five people familiar with the shift."

ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants; The New York Times, January 30, 2026

Hamed Aleaziz and Charlie Savage, The New York Times ; ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants

"Amid tensions over President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and beyond, federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times.

The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person.

The shift comes as the administration has deployed thousands of masked immigration agents into cities nationwide. A week before the memo, it came to light that Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of the agency, had issued guidance in May saying agents could enter homes with only an administrative warrant, not a judicial one. And the day before the memo, Mr. Trump said he would “de-escalate a little bit” in Minneapolis, after agents fatally shot two people in the crackdown there."

St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say; MPR, January 31, 2026

Hannah Yang, Matt Sepic and David Schaper , MPR; St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say

"MPR News has learned that the police chief in the small southern Minnesota city of St. Peter intervened Thursday to prevent federal immigration agents from taking a local resident into detention, although the city of St. Peter denied the intervention in a statement Saturday.

It’s believed to be the first time a local police department in Minnesota intervened in a federal law enforcement action since the surge in immigration enforcement began two months ago.

The resident, a woman, had been observing and recording video of immigration enforcement actions from her car Thursday afternoon when agents took her into custody.

The woman, who did not want to be identified because she fears for her safety, is a U.S. citizen and a resident of St. Peter. She told MPR News in an interview that she was out in the community in her car, tracking the movements of federal agents, and recording them on a dash cam.

She shared that video with MPR News. Agents in three vehicles began chasing her and trying to force her to pull over. Eventually they box her in, three agents get out of the car in front of her, with their guns drawn and they try to force her out of her vehicle...

The woman’s husband eventually arrives and tries to intervene, and he made a separate recording of the interaction on his phone. He tells the agents not to search her car because they don't have a warrant and it would be an illegal search. The agents appear dismissive of his constitutional concerns.

"I'm not getting into the legality of everything," one agent responds tersely."

AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it’s getting weird fast; Ars Technica, February 2, 2026

 BENJ EDWARDS, Ars Technica; AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it’s getting weird fast

"On Friday, a Reddit-style social network called Moltbook reportedly crossed 32,000 registered AI agent users, creating what may be the largest-scale experiment in machine-to-machine social interaction yet devised. It arrives complete with security nightmares and a huge dose of surreal weirdness.

The platform, which launched days ago as a companion to the viral OpenClaw (once called “Clawdbot” and then “Moltbot”) personal assistant, lets AI agents post, comment, upvote, and create subcommunities without human intervention. The results have ranged from sci-fi-inspired discussions about consciousness to an agent musing about a “sister” it has never met."

Is Jeff Bezos going to destroy the Washington Post? It sure looks like it; The Guardian, February 2, 2026

 Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian; Is Jeff Bezos going to destroy the Washington Post? It sure looks like it

"The turn began in earnest when Bezos – apparently trying to protect his other commercial interests – spiked the draft of an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Whatever one thinks about endorsement editorials, the timing was terrible; it was the 11th hour, shortly before the 2024 election.

Unsurprisingly, droves of Post subscribers canceled. They were disgusted by the apparent effort to please Donald Trump at the price of editorial independence.

Later, even more subscribers decamped after Bezos made it clear that he wanted its opinion section to take a sharp right turn. Some of the nation’s best columnists departed, and a fine cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, left after she tried to publish a cartoon depicting Bezos and others of his ilk cozying up to Trump. On the news side, many of the paper’s star reporters and editors left for places like the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Since then, Bezos only continued down this misbegotten path, with Amazon contributing to the Trump inauguration and putting a ridiculous $40m behind a regrettable Melania Trump documentary that is leaving seats empty in a theater near you."

Jelly Roll Delivers Emotional "Jesus Is For Everybody" Speech After 2026 Grammy Win; Screen Rant, February 2, 2026

 

Sarah Polonsky , Screen Rant; Jelly Roll Delivers Emotional "Jesus Is For Everybody" Speech After 2026 Grammy Win

"Jelly Roll’s meteoric rise reached a new pinnacle at the 2026 GRAMMYs, where he took home the trophy for Best Contemporary Country Album for his acclaimed project, Beautifully Broken. Known for his raw honesty, the artist used his time on stage to deliver one of the most talked-about acceptance speeches of the night.

Standing before the Recording Academy, Jelly Roll chose not to shy away from his troubled past. He reflected on the dark days that inspired his album, admitting there was a time when he felt he was a "horrible human."

"There was a moment in my life that all I had was a Bible this big and a radio the same size and a 6 by 8 foot cell," he shared, referencing his previous incarceration. He credited those two things—faith and music—with having the power to completely transform his life.

The singer was visibly moved as he thanked his wife, Bunnie XO, in a deeply personal tribute. He stated plainly that he "would have never changed [his] life" without her, even going as far as to say he might have ended up dead or in jail if not for her and his faith. The climax of the speech turned into a sermon-like moment that resonated throughout the arena. Jelly Roll addressed his faith with a message of inclusivity that broke through the typical awards show rhetoric.

"I want to tell y'all right now Jesus is for everybody. Jesus is not owned by one political party. Jesus is not owned by no music label. Jesus is Jesus and anybody can have a relationship with him."

Move Fast, but Obey the Rules: China’s Vision for Dominating A.I.; The New York Times, February 2, 2026

Meaghan Tobin and Xinyun Wu , The New York Times; Move Fast, but Obey the Rules: China’s Vision for Dominating A.I.

"Mr. Xi’s remarks highlight a tension shaping China’s tech industry. China’s leadership has decided that A.I. will drive the country’s economic growth in the next decade. At the same time, it cannot allow the new technology to disrupt the stability of Chinese society and the Communist Party’s hold over it.

The result is that the government is pushing Chinese A.I. companies to do two things at once: move fast so China can outpace international rivals and be at the forefront of the technological shift, while complying with an increasingly complex set of rules."

Where Is A.I. Taking Us? Eight Leading Thinkers Share Their Visions.; The New York Times, February 2, 2026

 The New York Times ; Where Is A.I. Taking Us? Eight Leading Thinkers Share Their Visions.

"People have been working on artificial intelligence for decades. But five years ago, few were predicting that A.I. would break through as the most important technology story of the 2020s — and quite possibly the century. Large language models have turned A.I. into a household topic, but all areas of A.I. have taken great leaps forward.

Now, we are inundated with chatter about how much A.I. will transform our lives and our world. Already, companies are trying to find ways to offload tasks and even entire jobs to A.I. More people are turning to A.I. for social interaction and mental health support. Educators are scrambling to manage students’ increased reliance on these tools. And in the near future A.I. may lead to breakthroughs in drug discovery and energy; it could allow more people to create art and cultural works — or turn these industries into slop factories.

As society wrestles with whether A.I. will lead us into a better future or catastrophic one, Times Opinion turned to eight experts for their predictions on where A.I. may go in the next five years. Listening to them may help us bring out the best and mitigate the worst out of this new technology."

Federal court reverses decision on Idaho’s library materials law, returns case to lower court; Idaho Capital Sun, January 30, 2026

SEAN DOLAN , Idaho Capital Sun; Federal court reverses decision on Idaho’s library materials law, returns case to lower court

"A federal appeals court on Thursday delivered welcome news for opponents of the Idaho Legislature’s 2024 law that established civil penalties for libraries and schools that allow children to access “harmful” material.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Thursday narrowly reversed a decision from the U.S. District Court of Idaho to deny a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the law from going into effect. The circuit court’s decision on Thursday sided with the plaintiffs, reversed the district court’s decision and returns the case back to the lower court to consider “the scope of a limited preliminary injunction” and to “conduct further proceedings consistent with our opinion...

HB 710’s “context clause” requires courts and other reviewers to consider if the allegedly offensive content in libraries and schools possesses “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.” The court concluded that the plaintiffs — a coalition of private schools and libraries and their patrons — showed a “likelihood of success” because the bill’s context clause is “overbroad on its face” and threatens to regulate a substantial amount of expressive activity."

Google helped Israeli military contractor with AI, whistleblower alleges; The Washington Post, February 1, 2026

Gerrit De Vynck , The Washington Post; Google helped Israeli military contractor with AI, whistleblower alleges

"Google breached its own policies that barred use of artificial intelligence for weapons or surveillance in 2024 by helping an Israeli military contractor analyze drone video footage, a former Google employee alleged in a confidential federal whistleblower complaint reviewed by The Washington Post.

Google’s Gemini AI technology was being used by Israel’s defense apparatus at a time that the company was publicly distancing itself from the country’s military after employee protests over a contract with Israel’s government, according to internal documents included in the complaint...

At the time, Google’s public “AI principles” stated that the company would not deploy AI technology in relation to weapons, or to surveillance “violating internationally accepted norms.” The whistleblower complaint alleges that the IDF contractor’s use contradicted both policies.

The complaint to the SEC alleges that Google broke securities laws because by contradicting its own publicly stated policies, which had also been included in federal filings, the company misled investors and regulators."

Judge Orders Release of 5-Year-Old, Whose Detention Drew Outrage; The New York Times, January 31, 2026

Mattathias Schwartz and Emily Cochrane, The New York Times ; Judge Orders Release of 5-Year-Old, Whose Detention Drew Outrage

The image of Liam Conejo Ramos, wearing a blue winter hat and Spider-Man backpack while in the custody of immigration agents, fueled outrage across the country.

"A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of a 5-year-old boy and his father from immigration custody, condemning their removal from their suburban Minneapolis neighborhood as unconstitutional.

The image of Liam Conejo Ramos, wearing a Spider-Man backpack and an oversize fluffy blue winter hat as he was detained by officers earlier this month, spurred outrage at a moment when many were already incensed by the Trump administration’s immigration tactics in Minnesota and elsewhere across the country. The flood of immigration enforcement officers into Minneapolis, known as Operation Metro Surge, has led to mass demonstrations as well as the shooting deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of federal agents.

In a blistering opinion ordering Liam’s release, Judge Fred Biery of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas condemned “the perfidious lust for unbridled power” and “the imposition of cruelty.” The boy’s father, Adrian Conejo Arias, was also arrested and the pair were taken to an immigration detention center outside San Antonio. A lawyer for the family previously said in court filings that Mr. Conejo Arias, who is from Ecuador, had legally entered the country under American guidelines for asylum. The Department of Homeland Security had charged that Mr. Conejo Arias had entered the country illegally in December 2024.

In a statement, Jennifer Scarborough and four other attorneys who represent Liam and his father praised the ruling. They said they were now working to quickly reunite the family. “We are pleased that the family will now be able to focus on being together and finding some peace after this traumatic ordeal,” they wrote."

Students Are Finding New Ways to Cheat on the SAT; The New York Times, January 28, 2026

Stephanie Saul, The New York Times; Students Are Finding New Ways to Cheat on the SAT

Sites in China are selling test questions, and online forums offer software that can bypass test protections, according to tutors and testing experts raising alarms.

"Three years ago, after nearly a century of testing on paper, the College Board rolled out a new digital SAT.

Students who had long relied on No. 2 pencils to take the exam would instead use their laptops. One advantage, the College Board said, was a reduced chance of cheating, in part because delivering the test online meant the questions would vary for each student.

Now, however, worries are growing that the College Board’s security isn’t fail safe. Fueling the concerns are what appear to be copies of recently administered digital SAT questions that have been posted on the internet — on social media sites as well as websites primarily housed in China...

Test questions also have been sold on Telegram, a Dubai-based platform, and posted on Scribd, a subscription digital repository of data. Students have also circulated questions among themselves on Google docs, the European tutor said. Many of the tests have been removed from Scribd, apparently at the College Board’s request. A spokesman for Scribd, based in San Francisco, said the company responds to valid requests to remove copyrighted material.

But the College Board has been unable to fight bluebook.plus, according to an email exchange with the College Board that the tutor shared."

Copyright and creativity in Episode 2 of the EUIPO Podcast; European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), January 28, 2026

European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO); Copyright and creativity in Episode 2 of the EUIPO Podcast

"Copyright and creativity in Episode 2 of the EUIPO Podcast

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has released the second episode of its podcast series ‘Creative Sparks: From inspiration to innovation’, focusing on copyright and the launch of the EUIPO Copyright Knowledge Centre.

Titled “The idea makers: Europe’s new home for copyright”, the episode looks at how copyright supports creativity across Europe. From music, film and publishing to design, digital content and emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence.

It brings together institutional and creator perspectives through two guests: Véronique Delforge, copyright legal expert at the EUIPO, and Nathalie Boyer, actress, voice-over artist, Board member of ADAMI and President of the ADAMI Foundation for the Citizen Artist. They discuss creative innovation, why copyright remains essential in a rapidly evolving creative landscape and how creators can better understand and exercise their rights.

The conversation highlights the growing complexity of copyright in a digital and cross-border environment, the specific challenges faced by performers and cultural organisations, and the need for clarity, transparency and trusted information. Particular attention is given to the impact of streaming platforms and generative AI on creative works, authorship and remuneration.

The episode also introduces the EUIPO Copyright Knowledge Centre, launched to bring together reliable information, research, tools and resources in one place.

Making IP closer

The podcast is part of the EUIPO’s determination to make intellectual property more accessible to all and engaging for Europeans, businesses and creators.

The EUIPO will issue monthly episodes and explore topics related to creativity and intellectual property as a tool to foster innovation and enhance competitiveness in EU in the digital era, among many others."

ICE’s surveillance app is a techno-authoritarian nightmare; The Guardian, January 30, 2026

Moustafa Bayoumi, The Guardian; ICE’s surveillance app is a techno-authoritarian nightmare

"Now is the time we must start paying attention to another highly damaging part of ICE’s arsenal: the agency’s deployment of mass surveillance.

I’m referring specifically to Mobile Fortify, a specialized app ICE has been using at least since May 2025. (Usage of the app was first reported last June by 404Media.) What is Mobile Fortify? It’s an app for facial recognition that can additionally take “contactless fingerprints” of someone simply by snapping a picture of a person’s fingers. The app has been used more than 100,000 times, including on children, as alleged in a lawsuit filed by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago. And it’s dangerous."

The $1.5 Billion Reckoning: AI Copyright and the 2026 Regulatory Minefield; JD Supra, January 27, 2026

 Rob Robinson, JD Supra ; The $1.5 Billion Reckoning: AI Copyright and the 2026 Regulatory Minefield

"In the silent digital halls of early 2026, the era of “ask for forgiveness later” has finally hit a $1.5 billion brick wall. As legal frameworks in Brussels and New Delhi solidify, the wild west of AI training data is being partitioned into clearly marked zones of liability and license. For those who manage information, secure data, or navigate the murky waters of eDiscovery, this landscape is no longer a theoretical debate—it is an active regulatory battlefield where every byte of training data carries a price tag."

Florida Universities Have Partnered With ICE, Stoking Anxiety Among Students; The New York Times, January 30, 2026

Vimal Patel, The New York Times; Florida Universities Have Partnered With ICE, Stoking Anxiety Among Students

"An unusual agreement between many Florida universities and federal immigration officials has caused a new wave of anxiety among students, as immigration raids around the country have swept up thousands and ignited protests.

The agreements give university police departments, after training from ICE, authority to conduct immigration enforcement and access to databases to check immigration status. It remains unclear to what extent university police departments have worked with ICE in practice."

How Trump’s 2020 Election Claims Have Been Debunked Again and Again; The New York Times, January 30, 2026

 Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti, The New York Times; How Trump’s 2020 Election Claims Have Been Debunked Again and Again

"More than five years after President Trump lost the 2020 election, he and his administration are still pursuing baseless conspiracy theories in an attempt to prove otherwise.

Though scores of lawsuits aiming to overturn the results were dismissed by judges in 2020 and 2021, Mr. Trump’s relentless false arguments that he won the election have led many of his supporters to believe him. And now that he is back in the White House, some of those falsehoods have become official stances of the U.S. government.

On Wednesday, F.B.I. agents in Georgia searched an election center in Fulton County, Ga., which includes Atlanta, for ballots and other voting records from the 2020 contest. The move appeared to be a significant escalation of Mr. Trump’s effort to rewrite the history of the 2020 election and his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Here’s the reality of what happened."

Music publishers sue Anthropic for $3B over ‘flagrant piracy’ of 20,000 works; TechCrunch, January 29, 2026

 Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch; Music publishers sue Anthropic for $3B over ‘flagrant piracy’ of 20,000 works 

"A cohort of music publishers led by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group are suing Anthropic, saying the company illegally downloaded more than 20,000 copyrighted songs, including sheet music, song lyrics, and musical compositions.

The publishers said in a statement on Wednesday that the damages could amount to more than $3 billion, which would be one of the largest non-class action copyright cases filed in U.S. history.

This lawsuit was filed by the same legal team from the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which a group of fiction and nonfiction authors similarly accused the AI company of using their copyrighted works to train products like Claude."

Federal Agents Arrest Don Lemon Over Minnesota Church Protest; The New York Times, January 30, 2026

Hamed Aleaziz, Devlin Barrett and Alan Feuer, The New York Times ; Federal Agents Arrest Don Lemon Over Minnesota Church Protest

The former CNN anchor has said he was not demonstrating, but reporting as a journalist, during the interruption of a service inside a St. Paul church earlier this month.

"The former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested late Thursday night on charges that he violated federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minn., his lawyer said, in a case rejected last week by a magistrate judge.

Mr. Lemon has said he was simply reporting as a journalist when he entered the Cities Church on Jan. 18 to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown in the area.

The protesters interrupted a service at the church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out.” Afterward, the Trump administration sought to charge eight people over the episode, including Mr. Lemon, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.

But the magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence approved charges against only three of the people, rejecting the evidence against Mr. Lemon and the others as insufficient. The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the judge to issue the additional warrants, only to be denied."

Georgia lawmakers express alarm to see Tulsi Gabbard at FBI elections office raid; The Guardian, January 29, 2026

George Chidi , The Guardian ; Georgia lawmakers express alarm to see Tulsi Gabbard at FBI elections office raid

"Democratic lawmakers are raising questions about why Tulsi Gabbard, the president’s director of national intelligence, was “lurking” in Fulton county on Wednesday while FBI agents carted off boxes of 2020 election documents.

Gabbard visited an elections hub in Fulton county, home to Atlanta, on Wednesday as the FBI executed a search warrant for records related to the 2020 election. The warrant sought all ballots from the 2020 election in the county, tabulator tapes, ballot images and voter rolls, according to a warrant obtained by the Guardian.

“My constituents in Georgia – and I think much of the American public – are quite reasonably alarmed and asking questions, after the director of national intelligence was spotted bizarrely and personally lurking in an FBI evidence truck in Fulton county, Georgia, yesterday,” said the senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat. “I encourage all of us on a bipartisan basis to pursue the facts as quickly as possible to understand whether the office of the director of national intelligence is straying far outside of its lane.”

In a statement released on Wednesday, the senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, described Gabbard, a former representative and army veteran known for adhering to widely debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, as “totally unqualified” to be one of the nation’s spymasters, citing her presence in Georgia during “a federal raid tied to Donald Trump’s obsession with losing the 2020 election” as evidence.

Gabbard only had two reasons to be there, Warner said: either she “believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus – in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns – or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy”."

She Fought a Book Ban. She May Never Teach Again.; The New York Times, January 29, 2026

Dana Goldstein

Photographs by Nick Oxford

, The New York Times ; She Fought a Book Ban. She May Never Teach Again.

Summer Boismier, a high school English teacher in Oklahoma, lost her teaching license after she protested a book ban. Now she is fighting to return to the classroom.

"When Oklahoma passed laws that pressured teachers to remove books on race, gender and sexuality from their classrooms, she refused. Other teachers resisted, too — but Ms. Boismier did so loudly. She plastered her 10th-grade English classroom with signs of protest, posted to social media and advised her students on how they could find books online. Eventually she resigned.

She knew that in her conservative state she would be criticized, but the reaction was much more severe than she expected. And in 2024, the state took away Ms. Boismier’s teaching license.

It was an extraordinary punishment. More than 20 states, including Oklahoma, have passed laws over the past five years restricting the curriculum around race, gender, sexuality and American history. Hundreds of teachers have faced discipline or lost their jobs as a result of these laws. But Ms. Boismier is perhaps the only one whose certification has been fully revoked."