Her husband wanted to use ChatGPT to create sustainable housing. Then it took over his life.; The Guardian, February 28, 2026

Varsha Bansal with photographs by Clayton Cotterell , The Guardian; Her husband wanted to use ChatGPT to create sustainable housing. Then it took over his life.

"Users, lawyers and mental health professionals all are raising concerns about the impact of using chatbots as confidantes. “We are kind of at this inflection point in a quest for accountability where people coming forward is forcing companies to reckon with specific use cases of how their technologies have harmed people,” said Meetali Jain, founding director of Tech Justice Law Project and co-counsel on the Ceccanti case. “In terms of the number of cases going up, there’s likely to be more coordinated efforts on parts of the court to try to deal with this influx of cases.”"

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts; The New York Times, February 13, 2026

 Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac , The New York Times; Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

The department has sent Google, Meta and other companies hundreds of subpoenas for information on accounts that track or comment on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials and tech workers said.

"The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.

In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials and tech employees privy to the requests. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Google, Meta and Reddit complied with some of the requests, the government officials said. In the subpoenas, the department asked the companies for identifying details of accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and that have criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents. The New York Times saw two subpoenas that were sent to Meta over the last six months.

The tech companies, which can choose whether or not to provide the information, have said they review government requests before complying. Some of the companies notified the people whom the government had requested data on and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court."

The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power; The New York Times, February 13, 2026

 Ezra Klein,

Produced by Jack McCordick

, The New York Times; The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power

"At the end of January, President Trump’s Justice Department released what it said was the last tranche of the Jeffrey Epstein files: millions of emails and texts, F.B.I. documents and court records.

It’s a huge dump of information. Journalists, investigators and the public are sifting through them. What’s amazing, though, is how much we still don’t know — or at least don’t know yet.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was Trump’s personal lawyer before he joined the Justice Department, has said that investigators identified six million “potentially responsive” pages but released only about three and a half million pages to the public. So what’s in the two and a half million pages that haven’t been released?...

What has come into clear view is the infrastructure of Epstein’s power — and maybe through that the infrastructure of elite networks more generally.

Anand Giridharadas is a journalist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker and many other outlets. He publishes the great newsletter The.Ink and is the author of, among other books, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” which he published in 2018, and the forthcoming “Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle and Belonging in an American City.”

I often think of his work as a kind of sociology of American elites and power, and that has been the perspective he has brought to his coverage of these files. I think it is revelatory and worth hearing.

Note: This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Kathryn Ruemmler announced she would be resigning from her role as chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs."

Don’t turn the military’s newspaper into a message platform; Stars and Stripes, February 10, 2026

RUFUS FRIDAY | CENTER FOR INTEGRITY IN NEWS REPORTING, Stars and Stripes; Don’t turn the military’s newspaper into a message platform

"There are places where a news organization’s values aren’t just written down, they’re literally inscribed on the walls.

Recently, staff at the Stars and Stripes press facility at Camp Humphreys in South Korea, the largest United States overseas military facility, unveiled a large mural titled “Stars and Stripes’ Core Values.” The words aren’t subtle: Credibility. Impartiality. Truth-telling. Balanced. Accountable.

Those aren’t marketing slogans. They are the compact between a newsroom and its readers, and especially important when the readership is the U.S. military community, often far from home, often in harm’s way.

That is why the Department of Defense’s recent posture toward Stars and Stripes is so alarming.

According to reporting by The Associated Press and other news organizations, the Pentagon said in a public statement by a spokesperson for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that it would “refocus” Stars and Stripes away from certain subject areas and toward content “custom tailored to our warfighters,” including weapons systems, fitness, lethality and related themes. The same reporting describes proposed steps such as removing content from wire services like the AP and Reuters and having a significant portion of content produced by the Pentagon itself.

Stars and Stripes is unusual and intentionally structured as-so on purpose. The paper’s own “About” page states plainly that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command,” and “unique among Department of Defense authorized news outlets” in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.” 

In August 2025, Stars and Stripes took a step that I believe should be studied by every news organization trying to rebuild trust: it adopted and published a statement of core values emphasizing credibility and impartiality, and drawing a bright line between news and opinion. 

When a government authority suddenly declares that a news outlet must abandon certain viewpoints and then signals it will take a more hands-on role in shaping editorial operations, it sends a clear message to readers: the outlet is being pressured to produce coverage that satisfies those in power, rather than reporting grounded in facts.

No serious newsroom can sustain trust under that condition, which is already in dangerously short supply. Gallup reports that Americans’ confidence in mass media has fallen to historic lows, with just 28% expressing a great deal or fair amount of trust. When Gallup began measuring media trust in the 1970s, that figure routinely exceeded two-thirds of the public.

If our nation is struggling to persuade people that journalism is independent, accurate, objective, impartial and not an instrument of power, why would we take one of the country’s most symbolically important newsrooms, an outlet serving people in uniform, and wrap it more tightly inside the very institution it is entrusted to cover?

Last fall, I was in Japan for the 80th anniversary celebration of the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes. In a detailed first-person account, the gala’s keynote speaker, journalist Steve Herman, described the paper’s long history of resisting becoming a “propaganda rag,” including General Eisenhower’s defense of the paper’s independence. 

That history matters because it explains why generations of commanders tolerated uncomfortable stories: a paper that service members trust does more for cohesion and legitimacy than one that reads like a propaganda platform for approved narratives.

The Stars and Stripes values statement puts it plainly: “Credibility is the greatest asset of any news medium,” and impartiality is its “greatest source of credibility.” It describes truth-telling as the core mission, accountability as a discipline, and it emphasizes the strict separation between news and opinion. 

Those principles are neither ideological nor hostile to the military. They are the foundational principles of a free press, and they are especially important when the audience is made up of people who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.

The Americans who serve in our Armed Forces deserve more than information that flatters authority.

They deserve journalism that respects them enough to tell the truth.

That mural in South Korea has it right. Credibility. Impartiality. Truth-telling. Balanced. Accountable.

We should treat those words as a promise kept and a commitment upheld.

Rufus Friday serves as chairman of the Stars and Stripes publisher advisory board of directors and is the former publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky. Currently he is the executive director of the Center for Integrity in News Reporting."

The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US; The Guardian, February 7, 2026

Bryan Armen Graham  , The Guardian; The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US

"The modern Olympics sell themselves on a simple premise: the whole world, watching the same moment, at the same time. On Friday night in Milan, that illusion fractured in real time.

When Team USA entered the San Siro during the parade of nations, the speed skater Erin Jackson led the delegation into a wall of cheers. Moments later, when cameras cut to US vice-president JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance, large sections of the crowd responded with boos. Not subtle ones, but audible and sustained ones. Canadian viewers heard them. Journalists seated in the press tribunes in the upper deck, myself included, clearly heard them. But as I quickly realized from a groupchat with friends back home, American viewers watching NBC did not.

On its own, the situation might once have passed unnoticed. But the defining feature of the modern sports media landscape is that no single broadcaster controls the moment any more. CBC carried it. The BBC liveblogged it. Fans clipped it. Within minutes, multiple versions of the same happening were circulating online – some with boos, some without – turning what might once have been a routine production call into a case study in information asymmetry.

For its part, NBC has denied editing the crowd audio, although it is difficult to resolve why the boos so audible in the stadium and on other broadcasts were absent for US viewers. But in a broader sense, it is becoming harder, not easier, to curate reality when the rest of the world is holding up its own camera angles. And that raises an uncomfortable question as the United States moves toward hosting two of the largest sporting events on the planet: the 2026 men’s World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

If a US administration figure is booed at the Olympics in Los Angeles, or a World Cup match in New Jersey or Dallas, will American domestic broadcasts simply mute or avoid mentioning the crowd audio? If so, what happens when the world feed, or a foreign broadcaster, shows something else entirely? What happens when 40,000 phones in the stadium upload their own version in real time?

The risk is not just that viewers will see through it. It is that attempts to manage the narrative will make American broadcasters look less credible, not more. Because the audience now assumes there is always another angle. Every time a broadcaster makes that trade – credibility for insulation – it is a trade audiences eventually notice."

NBC appears to cut crowd’s booing of JD Vance from Winter Olympics broadcast; The Guardian, February 6, 2026

Tom Lutz , The Guardian; NBC appears to cut crowd’s booing of JD Vance from Winter Olympics broadcast

[Kip Currier: NBC's decision to edit out booing of JD Vance during the Winter Olympics' Opening Ceremony is not surprising, given prior instances of U.S. media editing of similar occurrences, as noted in this Guardian article. But it is nevertheless troubling. NBC is distorting and altering what actually happened, without informing viewers and listeners of its editorial decision-making.

The Opening Ceremony isn't a fictional movie: it's an historical, newsworthy event. As such, alterations to the historical record should not have been made.

Additionally, if a news organization like NBC decides to make changes to news reporting, like removing or suppressing sound for non-technical reasons, it should be transparent about having done so and explain the reasons for such alterations. Trust in news organizations is vital. Actions like sanitization and alterations of news reporting diminish public trust in the accuracy and integrity of news sources and disseminators.

NBCU Academy's website provides information on ethics in journalism. Its first principle "Seek the truth and be truthful in your reporting." is relevant to the editorial decision to edit out the booing of JD Vance:

What are journalism ethics?

Ethics are the guiding values, standards and responsibilities of journalism. At NBCU News Group, the following principles act as the foundation of ethical journalism:

Seek the truth and be truthful in your reporting. Your reporting should be accurate and fair. Ensure that the facts you gathered are verified, sources are attributed and context is provided. Journalists should be bold in seeking and presenting truths to the public, serving as watchdogs over public officials and holding the powerful accountable.

https://nbcuacademy.com/journalism-ethics/

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) also maintains a Code of Ethics. One of its four guiding principles addresses transparency and accountability:

BE ACCOUNTABLE AND TRANSPARENT

Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one's work and explaining one’s decisions to the public.

Journalists should:

 

Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content.

 

Respond quickly to questions about accuracy, clarity and fairness.

 

Acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently.

 

Explain corrections and clarifications carefully and clearly.

 

Expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.

 

Abide by the same high standards they expect of others.

https://www.spj.org/pdf/spj-code-of-ethics.pdf] 

[Excerpt]

"The US vice-president, JD Vance, was greeted by a chorus of boos when he appeared at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan on Friday, although American viewers watching NBC’s coverage would have been unaware of the reception.

As speedskater Erin Jackson led Team USA into the San Siro stadium she was greeted by cheers. But when the TV cameras cut to Vance and his wife, Usha, there were boos, jeers and a smattering of applause from the crowd. The reaction was shown on Canadian broadcaster CBC’s feed, with one commentator saying: “There is the vice-president JD Vance and his wife Usha – oops, those are not … uh … those are a lot of boos for him. Whistling, jeering, some applause.”

The Guardian’s Sean Ingle was also at the ceremony and noted the boos, as did USA Today’s Christine Brennan. However, on the NBC broadcast the boos were not heard or remarked upon when Vance appeared on screen, with the commentary team simply saying “JD Vance”. That didn’t stop footage of the boos being circulated and shared on social media in the US. The White House posted a clip of Vance applauding on NBC’s broadcast without any boos.

Friday was not the first time there have been moves to stop US viewers from witnessing dissent against the Trump administration. At September’s US Open, tournament organizers asked broadcasters not to show the crowd’s reaction to Donald Trump, who attended the men’s final. Part of the message read: “We ask all broadcasters to refrain from showing any disruptions or reactions in response to the president’s attendance in any capacity.”

Earlier on Friday in Milan, hundreds of people protested against the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at this year’s Olympics. The US state department has said that several federal agencies, including ICE, will be at the Games to help protect visiting Americans. The state department said the ICE unit in Italy is separate from those involved in the immigration crackdown in the United States."

Bill Gates’ Ex Responds to Alleged STD Drug Plot in Epstein Files; The Daily Beast, February 3, 2026

Tom Latchem , The Daily Beast; Bill Gates’ Ex Responds to Alleged STD Drug Plot in Epstein Files

"Bill Gates’ ex-wife says she felt “unbelievable sadness” about allegations in the Epstein files that her former husband plotted to slip her antibiotics for a sexually transmitted infection he contracted following “sex with Russian girls.” 

Gates, 70, has vehemently denied that there is any truth to claims made in a 2013 email Jeffery Epstein drafted...

In a 2022 interview, she said: “I did not like that he [Bill Gates] had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein… I made that clear to him.” She also described the only time she’d met Epstein, saying: “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards.”"

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."

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."

Key Witness in Alex Pretti Shooting Says Feds Are Totally Ignoring Her; The New Republic (TNR), January 28, 2026

Malcolm Ferguson, The New Republic (TNR); Key Witness in Alex Pretti Shooting Says Feds Are Totally Ignoring Her

"The woman who filmed federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti still hasn’t been contacted by the government days later, only fanning accusations of a federal cover-up. 

“Have you been contacted by anyone from the federal government?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Minnesota resident Stella Carlson, whose footage has been crucial in delegitimizing the Trump administration’s lies about Pretti. “FBI?”

“No, no, I have not. I do have a legal team now who are fielding much of that, and I am no longer accessible in those ways,” Carlson replied. 

“I talked to your attorney this morning; she said she had not received any outreach from the FBI or anybody from the federal government,” Cooper said.

“I do not think they have my name yet,” said Carlson, a shocking oversight given that it’s been four days since the shooting. She then expressed that she had zero confidence in a federal investigation into Pretti’s killing."

Frantic Stephen Miller Tries Shifting Blame for Minneapolis Disaster; The Daily Beast, January 28, 2026

Catherine Bouris , The Daily Beast; Frantic Stephen Miller Tries Shifting Blame for Minneapolis Disaster

"Stephen Miller is seeking to shift blame for the death of Alex Pretti at the hands of Customs and Border Patrol agents away from himself and back onto Kristi Noem.

The White House deputy chief of staff released a statement to CNN just hours after Homeland Security Secretary Noem appeared to draw battle lines, throwing 40-year-old Miller under the bus...

Miller, the president’s top aide in the White House, is widely considered the architect of the aggressive immigration crackdown that has quickly come to define President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

Miller’s hint at an investigation or evaluation into the agents involved in the Saturday killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, is a departure from prior inflammatory comments in which he labelled Pretti a “would-be assassin.”...

Miller seeking to distance himself and the White House from the actions of the agents involved in Pretti’s killing suggests that Noem is not the only senior Trump official trying to emerge unscathed, particularly as the public backlash against him continues to grow.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote in a Tuesday editorial that Miller’s immigration policies are costing the White House credibility and “building distrust.”"

How We Determined That Minneapolis Videos Contradicted Federal Officials; The New York Times, January 26, 2026

Mark Scheffler, The New York Times ; How We Determined That Minneapolis Videos Contradicted Federal Officials

"The first viral video from Minneapolis last Saturday morning told only a partial story: Federal agents skirmish in the street with several civilians. Officers bring a man to the ground. Gunshots go off.

What were the federal officers doing? What preceded the confrontation? What went on in the scuffle? Who fired? Who was the man? Was he alive or dead?

There are often more questions than answers in the work of the Visual Investigations team at The New York Times. Our job is to assemble and analyze visual material — including video footage taken by both witnesses and security cameras — to piece together chaotic events and present as full a picture of what happened as we can.

Our goal isn’t to establish guilt or innocence. We aren’t a court of law. Instead, we establish what we call ground truth: what happened, how it happened and who might be responsible. We follow the visuals wherever they take us, not to a predetermined conclusion. In doing so, this work can start to establish accountability."

Statement of ABA President Michelle A. Behnke Re: Shootings in Minneapolis; American Bar Association (ABA), January 26, 2026

American Bar Association (ABA); Statement of ABA President Michelle A. Behnke Re: Shootings in Minneapolis

"Our nation is hurting. People are mourning the loss of two lives at the hands of immigration agents in Minneapolis. There is confusion and fear as to the legalities at hand. Let’s be clear: This level of violence is not normal.  

The gravity of these incidents cannot be overstated. The American Bar Association emphasizes the need for a fair and open government investigation into the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both U.S. citizens. Only through a full and proper investigation will the facts of these incidents come to light.

Beyond the investigations, as the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA underscores the important constitutional rights that are at stake. The constitutional rights at issue must be protected. These include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. 

The Rule of Law undergirds these inalienable rights. It ensures that all people and all government entities are accountable to laws that are clear, just and fair."

The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act.; The New York Times, January 25, 2026

The Editorial Board, The New York Times; The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act.

"The federal government owes Americans a thorough investigation and a truthful accounting of the Saturday morning shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti on a Minneapolis street. When the government kills, it has an obligation to demonstrate that it has acted in the public interest. Instead, the Trump administration is once again engaged in a perversion of justice.

Mere hours after Mr. Pretti died, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, declared without offering evidence that Mr. Pretti had “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” Gregory Bovino, a border patrol official, offered his own assessment: “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

These unfounded and inflammatory judgments pre-empt the outcome of an investigation, which the Department of Homeland Security has promised. They also appear wholly inconsistent with several videos recorded at the scene.

Those videos showed that Mr. Pretti had nothing but a phone in his hands when he was tackled by border patrol agents, and that he never drew the gun he was carrying (and reportedly had a license to carry). Indeed, the videos seem to show that one federal agent took the gun from Mr. Pretti moments before a different agent shot him from behind. Separate analyses by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CBS News and otherorganizations all concluded that the videos contradict the Trump administration’s description of the killing.

The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power...

It is premature to reach conclusions about what exactly happened on that Minneapolis street. The Trump administration should not have done so, and we will not do so. What is clear, however, is that the federal government needs to re-establish public faith in the agencies and officers who are carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration. If the administration is allowed to act with impunity and avoid even the most basic accountability, the result will be more violence."

The Minneapolis Shooting Demands a Real Investigation (w/ Andrew Weissmann); The Bulwark, January 24, 2026

SARAH LONGWELL AND ANDREW WEISSMANN, The Bulwark; The Minneapolis Shooting Demands a Real Investigation (w/ Andrew Weissmann)

"Sarah Longwell is joined by Andrew Weissmann for his reaction to the second killing of a civilian in Minnesota by federal agents. Andrew is professor of practice at the NYU School of Law who served as lead prosecutor in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office from 2017 to 2019, and was General Counsel for the FBI from 2011 to 2013. They discuss the roles of the First and Second Amendments in the case, the contradictions and falsehoods issued by the government, and why it is important for people to continue speaking out and come forward with any video evidence in cases like this."