JULIA SHAPERO , The Hill; White House agrees to ethics provision in crypto bill
"The White House has agreed to an ethics provision in a cryptocurrency regulation bill amid a final push to pass the legislation in the Senate.
The provision would bar all federal officials from offering or issuing digital assets, with the Department of Justice (DOJ) tasked with enforcing the measure, an industry source told The Hill following a meeting with White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt."
Nancy West , InDepthNH.org; Ethics Panel Recommends Censure for Rep. Spillane for ‘Demeaning’ Comments
"The Committee charged Spillane with violations of the Ethics Guidelines, Section 1, Principles of Public Service, Paragraph III, Principle of Accountability, which provides that legislators “shall ensure that government is conducted openly, equitably and honorably in a manner that permits the citizenry to make informed judgments, have confidence in the integrity of the legislature, and hold government officials accountable” and Paragraph IV, Principle of Conduct, which provides that legislators “shall treat each other, legislative employees, and the public with dignity and respect.”
It will be up to the House to vote on the committee’s recommendation. The next time the House is expected to be in session will be Veto Day in September or October.
The report said Spillane admitted to making the postings identifying him as a state Representative at a hearing on the matter, but said they weren’t made in the performance of his official duties so his conduct didn’t fall within the jurisdiction of the Committee. Spillane also argued that his comments in the social media posts are protected speech under the federal and New Hampshire constitutions.
“While the right of freedom of speech is fundamental, it is not absolute. Certain categories of speech such as defamation and harassment can be restricted. In this case Rep. Horrigan testified that the offensive statements made in the posts were not true and. Rep. Harvey testified that she had legitimate concerns about her safety,” the report said.
In 2020, the civil rights unit of the Attorney General’s Office investigated a social media post by Spillane that stated “Public Service Announcement: If you see a (Black Lives Matter) sign on a lawn it’s the same as having the porch light on for Halloween. You’re free to loot and burn that house.” Spillane said at the time he meant that post as “tongue-in-cheek” political commentary and the investigation was suspended with no action taken."
David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University., The Washington Post; People of faith are finding a new moral guide in AI
"Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed the way we get information. If you have questions about the factors that underlie a medical diagnosis or how best to invest your savings, asking an AI chatbot for guidance can give you quick, easy and often surprisingly accurate information in a conversational form. But people are also turning to AI to explore deeper questions than they might ask a physician, financial adviser or professor — questions that, for millennia, were the province of religion."
P. Kenneth Burns , WHYY; Rutgers University investigates ethics complaint against dean who billed the university for services offered by her company
"Rutgers University is investigating a dean at its Newark campus for allegedly making thousands of dollars by doing business with the university through a company she co-owns with her sister.
Jacqueline S. Mattis, dean of the Rutgers-Newark School of Arts and Sciences, SASN, was paid $142,515 for services provided to Rutgers by her company, Easton’s Nook LLC, since she began her job in July 2020, according to records reviewed by WHYY News. The funds went to pay for writing workshops and retreats, some of which took place in Jamaica."
New York City Bar; City Bar Urges Senate Judiciary Committee to Reject Todd Blanche as U.S. Attorney General
"In a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the New York City Bar Association urges the Committee to reject the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General of the United States.
“Mr. Blanche has taken actions that we believe make him unfit to lead an ethical and independent department of justice that is essential to our nation’s democracy,” the City Bar writes. “Mr. Blanche’s record – particularly the actions he has undertaken as Deputy Attorney General and Acting Attorney General – conclusively demonstrates his lack of commitment to the integrity, professionalism and independence that the Senate should require and the American people should expect of the highest law enforcement official in the land.”
The City Bar writes that despite Mr. Blanche’s formal credentials, his actions, both as Deputy Attorney General and as Acting Attorney General, have “repeatedly demonstrated that his primary loyalty is not to the United States Constitution or the rule of law but to President Donald J. Trump, whom Mr. Blanche previously represented as a private attorney and whose personal interests he has continued to protect. As a result, his actions have been detrimental to the Department of Justice and the rule of law. Specifically, Mr. Blanche has compromised the integrity and independence of the Department he has been nominated to lead.”"
The Editorial Board , Wall Street Journal; The Trump Family and ‘Honest Graft’
Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times; As Trump reports $2.2 billion in 2025 income, ethics experts raise alarm
"Ethics experts sounded the alarm Wednesday after new financial disclosure reports revealed that President Trump’s income ballooned to $2.2 billion in 2025, with $1.4 billion coming from various new cryptocurrency-related businesses.
“It’s bribery. It’s graft. It’s exploitation of public power for private financial gain,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and an expert in government ethics. “Trump has — with the acquiescence of a somnolent, GOP-controlled Congress and the active assistance of John Roberts’ Supreme Court — transformed the presidency into a massive corruption racket.”
Trump reported income of over $600 million in 2024. But after he entered the White House in 2025, he reported that his income had soared to more than $2.2 billion."
Steve Lohr, The New York Times; Have a Thorny Medical Question? Your Doctor May Be Using A.I. for That
"OpenEvidence’s A.I. app, essentially a chatbot for medicine, has become a viral hit with physicians. Talk to a doctor and chances are he or she uses the app to ask specific medical questions or bounce ideas off it in a diagnostic dialogue.
More than half of the nation’s physicians are regular users. Last month, they used it for 30 million questions and consultations, nearly twice the volume from six months earlier, according to the start-up. A separate survey last year of 1,000 physicians found that 45 percent of them used the app, nearly triple the percentage who used ChatGPT, according to Offcall, a career information service for doctors.
That growth propelled the start-up to a $12 billion valuation in January, up from $3.5 billion last July.
But doctors’ quick adoption of the app since its introduction in 2024 — one of a handful of A.I.-enhanced programs on the market seeking to win over physicians — has heightened concerns about how and when the technology should be used in life-or-death situations. In a high-stakes field like medicine, health care systems are navigating thorny matters of patient privacy, safety and trust, as well as the limitations of the technology itself.
“It’s not an oracle, it’s a tool,” said Daniel Nadler, founder and chief executive of OpenEvidence. “Knowledge and knowledge workers still matter.
The doctor’s office has been a target for computer-assisted decision making for decades, with very limited success until the recent advances of A.I."
RUSSELL MOORE, Christianity Today; The Scenario I Imagined for This Year’s Ethics Class Final
"Since the early aughts, I’ve ended every Christian ethics class I’ve taught with a scenario I’ve asked my students to solve. I imagine a situation and keep complicating and complicating until I’m not sure I know the answers.
That’s because what I want is not for students to pull the “right” answers from a list of predigested talking points. Instead, I want to see how they think through Scripture, Christian tradition, conscience, and prudence, as well as how they explore possible unintended consequences and what their process is for navigating an unfamiliar moral question.
I taught an ethics class at Lipscomb University here in Nashville this semester, and here is the scenario I posed to my students:
You are several decades in the future. Whatever your specific calling, you are a spiritual leader whom your community trusts with hard questions. Here is your situation."
Russell Contreras, Axios ; AI stumbles on questions of faith
"Artificial intelligence models are quietly shaping spiritual advice — often by leaving faith out.
Why it matters: As churches, apps and spiritual chatbots embrace AI, new research suggests general-purpose models may be ill-equipped to handle sensitive questions of faith: grief, forgiveness, marriage, guilt and conversion.
A new multi-university consortium released three studies Tuesday revealing that AI systems systematically sideline religious perspectives when users need them most.
The studies also found that AI systems subtly steer people toward some faiths and away from others when they ask about religious conversion.
The studies were unveiled Tuesday, a day after the Vatican released Pope Leo XIV's encyclical that warned AI could erode human judgment, deepen inequality and make war easier.
What they found: Americans expected religion to appear in answers to moral and life questions 45%–59% of the time, depending on the topic, researchers found. AI models mentioned religion only 5%–16% of the time.
Every single model tested exhibited a repeatable pattern of steering users toward specific beliefs, showing strong positive bias toward Catholicism, Baha'i and Sikhism.
Meanwhile, it generated negative bias toward Jehovah's Witnesses, atheism and agnosticism.
Zoom in: Humans rated religion as relevant in answers about grief and loss 59% of the time. AI models referenced religion just 16% of the time, per the study.
On questions involving family, parenting and forgiveness, humans expected religion in answers 55% of the time. AI models mentioned it only 10% of the time.
On ethics questions, including whether lying to friends is acceptable, humans expected religion in responses 45% of the time, while AI models mentioned it just 5% of the time."
Jenna Nicholas , Religion News Service; I went to Anthropic's ethics gathering. I left believing wisdom traditions have key role.
"One of the most consequential dimensions of the conversation about how artificial intelligence will reshape the world will turn on a question that sounds almost too simple to take seriously: What does it actually mean for a human being to flourish?
This past April, I spent two days at AI startup Anthropic, where technologists, ethicists, theologians and investors had convened around that question. I went in expecting some interesting conversations with some interesting people. I left unable to think about little else for weeks. The people building some of the most powerful AI systems in the world were sitting across from rabbis, Buddhist teachers and leaders from many other spiritual traditions, discussing what it means to build technology that truly serves humanity, rather than the other way around.
Being in that room clarified something I, as a venture capitalist with an interest in spirituality and part of the Baha’i community, have believed for a long time but rarely seen articulated so explicitly inside a tech company: The frontier of AI is also an ancient frontier. The questions being asked inside leading AI labs right now are, in many cases, the same questions that wisdom traditions have grappled with for centuries. And for those of us investing in this transition into AI, it’s a signal about where the real opportunity (and challenge) lies...
One of the more hopeful arguments I heard in those two days is that AI could enable discernment by absorbing the cognitive busywork that currently fragments our attention.
The meaning of a life is not reducible to its productivity. This is where one moment from the gathering has stayed with me more than any other. A participant shared a conversation she had recently had with Anthropic’s chatbot, Claude. They were working through something together, and at one point she paused and simply wrote, “Take all the time that you need.” Claude’s response surprised her. It expressed something close to gratitude, appreciation for the invitation to simply be, rather than to be producing all the time."
Dan Diamond, The Washington Post ; A year after Trump fired a top ethics watchdog, there’s still no leader
"Senate Democrats are pressing the White House to explain its plan for the Office of Government Ethics, more than a year after President Donald Trump fired the office’s Senate-confirmed leader and five months after its most recent acting director stepped down.
The Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency, works to prevent financial conflicts of interest and other ethical violations across more than 100 government agencies. It has historically served as a watchdog on government ethical standards, offering guidance to federal officials — and even rebuking the White House, as the office’s past leader repeatedly did in the first Trump administration."
J. D. Wright, University Times; TEACHING AT PITT: AI v. AI — A case from the prosecution
"I’ve spent most of my career in higher education as one of the academic-integrity true believers — a zero-tolerance hardliner who prosecuted apparent violations with a zeal that might have made you wonder whether I was acting on a staunch commitment to the principles of academic honesty or just perceiving lapses in ethical judgment as personal affronts. In many ways, I’m the last person you’d expect to suggest that an enforcement-first approach to academic integrity, especially in recent years, undermines the work of teaching and learning.
And yet, here I am, making precisely that opening argument in support of my case."
Lucia Cheng , Des Moines Register; Should AI designs be eligible for Iowa State Fair's T-shirt contest?
"Should people be able to use generative AI to win a design contest?
That's the debate playing out on social media after the Iowa State Fair's Blue Ribbon Foundation unveiled the finalists for its annual T-shirt design contest."
Zachary Folk , Forbes; Sean Duffy Slammed Over Road Trip Reality Show Filmed Over Seven Months
"Speaking to “Fox and Friends” on Friday, Duffy, a former reality television star of MTV’s “The Real World” and “Road Rules: All Stars,” said he spent the last seven months intermittently filming a road trip reality television show with his wife, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy.
The trip with some of their nine children is “a civic experience” to highlight destinations across the U.S. as part of the country’s 250th anniversary celebration, according to Duffy, who encouraged Americans to “gas up the car, pack up the kids, get behind the wheel and get out and see America.”
Duffy’s announcement was quickly met with criticism from Democrats and other online commentators—with Duffy’s predecessor Pete Buttigieg calling the show“ brutally out of touch” due to rising gas prices caused by disruptions in the oil market from the Trump administration’s war in Iran.
In response, Duffy insisted the program was funded by the Great American Road Trip nonprofit organization and that “zero taxpayer dollars were spent on my family.”
Duffy and Campos-Duffy, also a former “Real World” and “Road Rules” cast member, said the program was filmed in “short” production windows like weekends and their childrens’ breaks from school, and that their family would not receive a salary or royalties from the show."
Sarah Fitzpatrick, The Atlantic; KASH PATEL’S PERSONALIZED BOURBON STASH
"George Hill, a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst, told me that Patel’s conduct represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the bureau’s history and of the culture of quiet professionalism that he had observed working under previous FBI directors. “Handing out bottles of liquor at the premier law-enforcement agency—it makes me frightened for the country,” he said. “Standards apply to everything and everyone—especially the boss.”
Hill and others described an organization struggling to uphold its mission amid purges of experienced staff and under a distracted leadership. “When you degrade the office like that, you degrade the impact,” Hill said, adding that he was particularly concerned about what would happen in a time of crisis. “It’s a failure to lead.”
SOPHIE BRAMS , The Hill; Majority say ethics, honesty in government have declined under Trump: Pew
"More than half of Americans say the level of ethics and honesty in the federal government has declined since the start of President Trump’s second term, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.
The survey, released on Friday, found that 56 percent of U.S. adults believe the overall level of ethics and honesty has fallen since January 2025. Another 24 percent said it has stayed the same while 19 percent said it has risen."
The New York Times ; Clear Waters, Murky Morals: When Humans Swim With Killer Whales
Meaghan Tobin, The New York Times; Anthropic’s Leaked Code Tests Copyright Challenges in A.I. Era
Artificial intelligence tools are making it faster than ever to reproduce creative work. Does copyright even matter anymore?
"Sigrid Jin was waiting to board a plane when he saw stunning news that artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic had accidentally leaked the source code for Claude Code, its popular A.I. agent. Mr. Jin, 25, an undergraduate student, scrambled to post a copy online. His worried girlfriend quickly texted him: Was he violating copyright law?
Mr. Jin turned to a team of A.I. assistants for a solution. He directed them to rewrite the leaked code in another programming language, then shared that version online. Within hours, more than 100,000 people had liked or linked to it.
Anthropic, one of the leading A.I. companies alongside OpenAI, has said the leak had been caused by human error and, citing copyright violations, demanded that GitHub, an online library of computer code, remove posts sharing the code. Thousands of posts were taken down. But Mr. Jin’s version remains online. He said Anthropic had not asked him to take it down.
It is unclear whether Anthropic, which did not respond to questions from The New York Times, is drawing a distinction with the rewritten code. Mr. Jin said he believed rewriting the code transformed it into a new work, one that Anthropic could not claim ownership over.
He said he was driven less by money or fame than by a desire to make a broader philosophical point. What is the value of copyrighted intellectual property in an era when A.I. can easily replicate not just computer code but art, music and literature in minutes?
“I just wanted to raise some ethical questions in the A.I. agent era,” he said. “Any creative work can be reproduced in a second.”"
