Trump Moves to Weaken the Endangered Species Act; The New York Times, November 19, 2025

Maxine Joselow and Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times; Trump Moves to Weaken the Endangered Species Act

"The Trump administration proposed on Wednesday to significantly limit protections under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental law intended to prevent animal and plant extinctions.

Taken together, four proposed new rules could clear the way for more oil drilling, logging and mining in critical habitats for endangered species across the country.

One of the most contentious proposals would allow the government to assess economic factors, such as lost revenue from a ban on oil drilling near critical habitat, before deciding whether to list a species as endangered. The Endangered Species Act requires the government to consider only the best available science when making these decisions.

Another change would make it harder to protect species from threats that could occur in the future, like effects of climate change that could materialize in the decades to come."

Trump Family’s Business Ties to Saudi Arabia Raise Ethics Worries; The New York Times, November 18, 2025

 Vivian Nereim, The New York Times; Trump Family’s Business Ties to Saudi Arabia Raise Ethics Worries

"The leveraging of political relationships for personal profit is ordinary in the Persian Gulf, where hereditary ruling families hold near-total power and the term “conflict of interest” carries little weight.

But the mixing of politics and profitmaking during President Trump’s second term has shattered American norms, shocking scholars who study ethics and corruption. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, engaging in sensitive national security talks with a foreign leader who also oversees a major construction project, known as Diriyah, that is in talks over a potential deal with the Trump family business.

Even if that deal never comes to fruition, the Trump family’s real estate and other business interests in Saudi Arabia have flourished during his second term."

Student cheating dominates talk of generative AI in higher ed, but universities and tech companies face ethical issues too; The Conversation, November 17, 2025

Jeffrey C. Dixon, Professor of Sociology, College of the Holy Cross , The Conversation; Student cheating dominates talk of generative AI in higher ed, but universities and tech companies face ethical issues too

"Debates about generative artificial intelligence on college campuses have largely centered on student cheating. But focusing on cheating overlooks a larger set of ethical concerns that higher education institutions face, from the use of copyrighted material in large language models to student privacy.

As a sociologist who teaches about AI and studies the impact of this technology on work, I am well acquainted with research on the rise of AI and its social consequences. And when one looks at ethical questions from multiple perspectives – those of students, higher education institutions and technology companies – it is clear that the burden of responsible AI use should not fall entirely on students’ shoulders.

I argue that responsibility, more generally, begins with the companies behind this technology and needs to be shouldered by higher education institutions themselves."

The Unraveling of the Justice Department: Sixty attorneys describe a year of chaos and suspicion.; The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 2025

Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser, Photographs by Stephen Voss , The New York Times Magazine; The Unraveling of the Justice Department: Sixty attorneys describe a year of chaos and suspicion.

President Trump’s second term has brought a period of turmoil and controversy unlike any in the history of the Justice Department. Trump and his appointees have blasted through the walls designed to protect the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency from political influence; they have directed the course of criminal investigations, openly flouted ethics rules and caused a breakdown of institutional culture. To date, more than 200 career attorneys have been fired, and thousands more have resigned. (The Justice Department says many of them have been replaced.)

What was it like inside this institution as Trump’s officials took control? It’s not an easy question to answer. Justice Department norms dictate that career attorneys, who are generally nonpartisan public servants, rarely speak to the press. And the Trump administration’s attempts to crack down on leaks have made all federal employees fearful of sharing information.

But the exodus of lawyers has created an opportunity to understand what’s happening within the agency. We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time..."

"“They didn’t want the ethics office calling them up and telling them what to do.” Joseph Tirrell, former director of the Departmental Ethics Office"

Cleveland attorney’s use of AI in court filings raises ethical questions for legal profession; Cleveland.com, November 12, 2025

Advance Local Express Desk

David Gambino, cleveland.com

 , Cleveland.com; Cleveland attorney’s use of AI in court filings raises ethical questions for legal profession

"A Cleveland defense attorney is under scrutiny in two counties after submitting court filings containing fabrications generated by artificial intelligence — a case that’s prompting broader questions about how lawyers are ethically navigating the use of AI tools in legal practice.

William Norman admitted that a paralegal in his office used ChatGPT to draft a motion to reopen a murder conviction appeal. The document included quotes that did not exist in the trial transcript and misrepresented statements made by the prosecutor."

AMA ethics journal shutters after 26 years; Retraction Watch, November 13, 2025

Retraction Watch; AMA ethics journal shutters after 26 years 

"The American Medical Association will cease publication of its ethics journal at the end of this year. 

The AMA Journal of Ethics, an open access, peer-reviewed journal was founded in 1999 under the name Virtual Mentor. 

“The loss of the AMA JoE will be most acutely felt by medical students and trainees, since it had a unique production model that included them in the process,” said Matthew Wynia, a physician and bioethicist at the University of Colorado whose work has been featured in the journal and who previously led the AMA Institute for Ethics.

The journal  publishes monthly issues on a specific theme, such as private equity in health care, antimicrobial resistance, palliative surgery and more. The journal also covered ethics in publishing and research, including a 2015 article titled “How Publish or Perish Promotes Inaccuracy in Science—and Journalism” written by Retraction Watch’s cofounder Ivan Oransky...

The journal’s website will remain online with all content freely available, “in keeping with our guiding premise that ethics inquiry is a public good,” Audiey C. Kao, editor-in-chief of the AMA Journal of Ethics and vice president of the AMA’s Ethics Group for more than two decades, wrote in a statement on the journal’s website. “With humility, I am hopeful and confident that this archived journal content will stay evergreen for years to come.”

The AMA did not provide a reason for the decision to shutter the journal."

In Louisiana, casinos can’t make political donations, but sportsbooks can, ethics board says; Louisiana Illuminator, November 14, 2025

JULIE O'DONOGHUE, Louisiana Illuminator; In Louisiana, casinos can’t make political donations, but sportsbooks can, ethics board says

"Louisiana prohibits casino companies and executives from making state political contributions, but that same ban doesn’t apply to sports gambling operations, according to the Louisiana Board of Ethics. 

A sport betting company and its senior management can still make political donations, even if the business is a subsidiary of a larger gambling enterprise prohibited from doing so. 

The ethics board issued an advisory opinion last week to American Wagering Inc., saying the company, as well as its officers and directors, can legally give to political candidates. The activity is allowed even though the business, which goes by the name Caesars Sportsbook Louisiana, is owned by the gambling conglomerate, Caesars Entertainment Inc."

Former Chess Champion Faces Ethics Complaint After a Grandmaster’s Death; The New York Times, November 12, 2025

 Michael Levenson, The New York Times; Former Chess Champion Faces Ethics Complaint After a Grandmaster’s Death

"The global governing body for the game of chess said on Tuesday that it had filed an ethics complaint against a Russian grandmaster and former world champion who was accused of bullying Daniel Naroditsky, a popular American grandmaster, before Mr. Naroditsky died last month at age 29.

The organization, the International Chess Federation, filed the complaint after many in the chess world expressed anger that the former world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, had repeatedly insinuated, in videos, comments and posts, that Mr. Naroditsky had cheated when he played chess online."

Staying Human in the Age of AI; Duquesne University, Grefenstette Center for Ethics, November 6-7, 2025

Duquesne University, Grefenstette Center for Ethics; 2025 Tech Ethics Symposium: Staying Human in the Age of AI

"The Grefenstette Center for Ethics is excited to announce our sixth annual Tech Ethics Symposium, Staying Human in the Age of AI, which will be held in person at Duquesne University's Power Center and livestreamed online. This year's event will feature internationally leading figures in the ongoing discussion of ethical and responsible uses of AI. The two-day Symposium is co-sponsored by the Patricia Doherty Yoder Institute for Ethics and Integrity in Journalism and Media, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Albert P. Viragh Institute for Ethics in Business.

We are excited to once again host a Student Research Poster Competition at the Symposium. All undergraduate and graduate student research posters on any topic in the area of tech/digital/AI ethics are welcome. Accepted posters will be awarded $75 to offset printing costs. In addition to that award, undergraduate posters will compete for the following prizes: the Outstanding Researcher Award, the Ethical PA Award, and the Pope Francis Award. Graduate posters can win Grand Prize or Runner-Up. All accepted posters are eligible for an Audience Choice award, to be decided by Symposium attendees on the day of the event! Student Research Poster submissions will be due Friday, October 17. Read the full details of the 2025 Student Research Poster Competition.

The Symposium is free to attend and open to all university students, faculty, and staff, as well as community members. Registrants can attend in person or experience the Symposium via livestream. Registration is now open!"

With AI technology rapidly advancing, ethics must evolve as well - opinion; The Jerusalem Post, November 2, 2025

 AVI JORISCH, The Jerusalem Post; With AI technology rapidly advancing, ethics must evolve as well - opinion

"Wisdom over intelligence

Whether this century becomes our renaissance or our ruin will depend on a quality that can’t be coded or automated: wisdom.

For all our progress, we have not yet learned to match our technological power with moral imagination. We’ve achieved abundance without equilibrium, connection without community, knowledge without humility. The danger isn’t that machines will become more human – it’s that humans will become more machine-like, optimizing for speed and efficiency while forgetting the soul.

Humanity’s story has always been shaped by invention. The wheel, the compass, the printing press, the microchip – each expanded what we could do, but not necessarily who we could be. The Industrial Revolution lifted billions from poverty, yet it also gave us the mechanized wars of the twentieth century. Nuclear energy promised limitless power – and then birthed Hiroshima.

Today, as we stand on the edge of quantum computing, gene editing, and artificial general intelligence, the pattern repeats. The tools evolve. The ethics lag behind.

We need a new kind of moonshot – not just of science, but of spirit."

German woman who stole ancient relic over 50 years ago returns it to Greece: "Never too late to do the right thing"; CBS News, October 26, 2025

CBS News ; German woman who stole ancient relic over 50 years ago returns it to Greece: "Never too late to do the right thing"

"Torben Schreiber, curator of the University of Muenster's archaeological museum, added that: "It is never too late to do the right thing, the moral and the just."

Athens has been trying for years to broker deals for the repatriation of antiquities without resorting to legal action.

Its chief goal remains the return of the Parthenon Marbles, held by the British Museum since the 19th century. Several European governments have been pushing for the sculptures to be returned to Athens since the early 1980s."

Gambling. Investing. Gaming. There’s No Difference Anymore.; The New York Times, October 20, 2025

Jonathan D. Cohen and Isaac Rose-Berman, The New York Times ; Gambling. Investing. Gaming. There’s No Difference Anymore.

[Kip Currier: It's good to see online gambling issues getting more attention, as in this 10/20/25 New York Times Op-Ed. One of the piece's writers is Jonathan D. Cohen, author of the 2025 book “Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling".

I spoke on these issues in my talk -- AI Gambling Thirst Traps and God: Christian Imperatives, Church Roles, and Ethical Responsibilities -- at the September 2-5, 2025 Faithful Futures: Guiding AI with Wisdom and Witness conference in Minneapolis. A publication based on the talk is forthcoming.]

[Excerpt]

"If it feels as if gambling is everywhere, that’s because it is. But today’s gamblers aren’t just retirees at poker tables. They’re young men on smartphones. And thanks to a series of quasi-legal innovations by the online wagering industry, Americans can now bet on virtually anything from their investment accounts. 

In recent years, this industry has been gamifying the investing experience; on brightly colored smartphone apps, risking your money is as easy and attractive as playing Candy Crush. On the app of the investment brokerage Robinhood, users can now buy stocks on one tab, “bet” on Oscars outcomes on another, and trade crypto on a third.

Given a recent explosion in unsafe gambling and growing evidence of severe financial harm, one might ask whether the government should be permitting 18-year-olds to effectively bet on the Dallas Cowboys with the same accounts they can use to invest in Coca-Cola. Under President Trump, who has a son serving as an adviser to two entrants in the sports prediction marketplace, the answer appears to be a firm yes."

I’m a Screenwriter. Is It All Right if I Use A.I.?; The Ethicist, The New York Times, October 4, 2025

 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethicist, The New York Times; I’m a Screenwriter. Is It All Right if I Use A.I.?;

"I write for television, both series and movies. Much of my work is historical or fact-based, and I have found that researching with ChatGPT makes Googling feel like driving to the library, combing the card catalog, ordering books and waiting weeks for them to arrive. This new tool has been a game changer. Then I began feeding ChatGPT my scripts and asking for feedback. The notes on consistency, clarity and narrative build were extremely helpful. Recently I went one step further: I asked it to write a couple of scenes. In seconds, they appeared — quick paced, emotional, funny, driven by a propulsive heartbeat, with dialogue that sounded like real people talking. With a few tweaks, I could drop them straight into a screenplay. So what ethical line would I be crossing? Would it be plagiarism? Theft? Misrepresentation? I wonder what you think. — Name Withheld"

Better Safe than Sorry? Tylenol, Pregnancy, and Ethics; The Hastings Center for Bioethics, October 2, 2025

Rita Dexter, Sophie Schott, Miranda R. Waggoner and Anne Lyerly, The Hastings Center for Bioethics; Better Safe than Sorry? Tylenol, Pregnancy, and Ethics

"Bioethicists have a big job to do in the current climate, where experts are dismissed and pseudoscience is weaponized to serve a political agenda."

How to live a good life in difficult times: Yuval Noah Harari, Rory Stewart and Maria Ressa in conversation; The Guardian, October 4, 2025

Interview by Alex Clark , The Guardian; How to live a good life in difficult times: Yuval Noah Harari, Rory Stewart and Maria Ressa in conversation

[Kip Currier: One of the most insightful, nuanced, enlightening pieces I've read amongst thousands this year. I've followed and admired the work and wisdom of Maria Ressa and Yuval Noah Harari but wasn't familiar with UK academic and politician Rory Stewart who makes interesting contributions to this joint interview. They all individually and collectively identify in clear-eyed fashion what's going on in the world today, what the stakes are, and what each of us can do to try to make some kind of positive difference.

I shared this article with others in my network and encourage you to do the same, so these beneficial, thought-provoking perspectives can be read by as many as possible.]

[Excerpt]

"What happens when an internationally bestselling historian, a Nobel peace prize-winning journalist and a former politician get together to discuss the state of the world, and where we’re heading? Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli medieval and military historian best known for his panoramic surveys of human history, including Sapiens, Homo Deus and, most recently, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Maria Ressa, joint winner of the Nobel peace prize, is a Filipino and American journalist who co-founded the news website Rappler. And Rory Stewart is a British academic and former Conservative MP, writer and co-host of The Rest Is Politics podcast. Their conversation ranged over the rise of AI, the crisis in democracy and the prospect of a Trump-Putin wedding, but began by considering a question central to all of their work: how to live a good life in an increasingly fragmented and fragile world?...

YNH I think that more people need to realise that we have to do the hard work ourselves. There is a tendency to assume that we can rely on reality to do the job for us. That if there are people who talk nonsense, who support illogical policies, who ignore the facts, sooner or later, reality will wreak vengeance on them. And this is not the way that history works.

So if you want the truth, and you want reality to win, each of us has to do some of the hard work ourselves: choose one thing and focus on that and hope that other people will also do their share. That way we avoid the extremes of despair."

Lawmakers Across the Country This Year Blocked Ethics Reforms Meant to Increase Public Trust; ProPublica, October 1, 2025

Gabriel Sandoval, ProPublica, with additional reporting by Nick Reynolds and Anna Wilder, The Post and Courier; Yasmeen Khan, The Maine Monitor; Lauren Dake, Oregon Public Broadcasting; Marjorie Childress, New Mexico In Depth; Louis Hansen, Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO; Mary Steurer and Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor; Kate McGee, The Texas Tribune; Alyse Pfeil, The Advocate | The Times-Picayune; and Shauna Sowersby, The Seattle Times , ProPublica; Lawmakers Across the Country This Year Blocked Ethics Reforms Meant to Increase Public Trust

"At a time when the bounds of government ethics are being stretched in Washington, D.C., hundreds of ethics-related bills were introduced this year in state legislatures, according to the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures’ ethics legislation database. While legislation strengthening ethics oversight did pass in some places, a ProPublica analysis found lawmakers across multiple states targeted or thwarted reforms designed to keep the public and elected officials accountable to the people they serve.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers tried to push through bills to tighten gift limits, toughen conflict-of-interest provisions or expand financial disclosure reporting requirements. Time and again, the bills were derailed.

With the help of local newsrooms, many of which have been part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, we reviewed a range of legislation that sought to weaken or stymie ethics regulations in 2025. We also spoke to experts for an overview of trends nationwide. Their take: The threats to ethics standards and their enforcement have been growing.

“Donald Trump has been ushering a new cultural standard, in which ethics is no longer significant,” said Craig Holman, a veteran government ethics specialist with the progressive watchdog nonprofit Public Citizen. He pointed to Trump’s private dinner with top buyers of his cryptocurrency and the administration’s tariff deal with Vietnam after it greenlit the Trump Organization’s $1.5 billion golf resort complex; and he said in an email it was “most revealing” that the White House “for the first time in over 16 years has no ethics policy. Trump 2.0 simply repealed Biden’s ethics Executive Order and replaced it with nothing.”

Government website blames shutdown on "radical left." Ethics group calls it a "blatant violation."; CBS News, October 1, 2025

Faris Tanyos, CBS News ; Government website blames shutdown on "radical left." Ethics group calls it a "blatant violation."

"Ahead of Wednesday's government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Tuesday posted a banner in large type on its homepage blaming the shutdown on the "Radical Left," an allegation that an ethics group said was a "blatant violation" of the Hatch Act. 

"The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands," the message read. "The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people."

A complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel by the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen alleged that the banner on HUD's website was a "blatant violation" of the Hatch Act, describing it as "highly partisan" and seeking to "idolize the Trump administration … without attributing any blame for the lack of compromise causing the shutdown."   

The Hatch Act is a federal law passed in 1939 that "limits certain political activities of federal employees as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs," according to the Office of Special Counsel.  

Its purpose, among other things, is to "ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion," the office explains."

SUPREME COURT ETHICS ISSUES TRACE TO JOHN ROBERTS’ ‘ORIGINAL SIN,’ NEW BOOK ALLEGES; Rolling Stone, September 30, 2025

TESSA STUART , Rolling Stone; SUPREME COURT ETHICS ISSUES TRACE TO JOHN ROBERTS’ ‘ORIGINAL SIN,’ NEW BOOK ALLEGES

"The Hamdan case, Graves argues, was Roberts’ “original sin,” and one that goes a long way toward explaining why Roberts has failed so spectacularly as successive ethics scandals have engulfed the high court. “If you realize what he did to get the job — staying on that case that he had no business staying on, a case where the Supreme Court reversed him ultimately — I think that it reveals that we’ve placed false hope in Roberts being fair, and in Roberts not being motivated by his own desire for power.”"

The virtues of Superman; Thinking About..., September 25, 2025

TIMOTHY SNYDER, Thinking About... ; The virtues of Superman

[Spoilers for 2025 Superman film]

"Superman’s victory, in the end, is crowned with an argument about humanity. For Luthor, humanity is genetic. He is human because he is genetically so. And whatever he does is therefore human, in the interest of humanity. The better it feels, the more human it must be. Superman counters with an ethical definition: to be human is to be humane. It is to try to do what is right. It is to take risks and pains to try to find the truths, including about oneself. Luthor, naturally, laughs at all of this. 

Luthor has himself raised a super-clone of Superman to be loathsomely obedient. But whose point does that really prove? Superman was genetically the child of parents who wanted him to take over the earth in a display of his own genetic superiority. But he was raised by kind people and became a kind person. Parenting, it turns out, makes the difference."

FINDING GOD in the APP STORE; The New York Times, September 14, 2025

Lauren Jackson , The New York Times; FINDING GOD in the APP STORE

"God works in mysterious ways — including through chatbots. At least, that’s what many people seem to think.

On religious apps, tens of millions of people are confessing to spiritual chatbots their secrets: their petty vanities and deepest worries, gluttonous urges and darkest impulses. Trained on religious texts, the bots are like on-call priests, imams or rabbis, offering comfort and direction at any time. On some platforms, they even purport to channel God."