Can AI judge journalism? A Thiel-backed startup says yes, even if it risks chilling whistleblowers; TechCrunch, April 15, 2026

Rebecca Bellan, TechCrunch ; Can AI judge journalism? A Thiel-backed startup says yes, even if it risks chilling whistleblowers

"After helping lead the lawsuit that bankrupted media firm Gawker, Aron D’Souza says he saw something broken in the American media system: People who felt harmed by coverage had little recourse to fight back.

His solution is software. D’Souza says his latest startup, Objection, aims to use AI to adjudicate the truth of journalism. And for the price of $2,000, anyone can pay to challenge a story, triggering a public investigation into its claims. (D’Souza is also the founder of the Enhanced Games, an Olympics-style competition that allows performance-enhancing drugs and is set to debut in Las Vegas next month.)

Objection launched on Wednesday with “multiple millions” in seed funding from Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan, as well as VC firms Social Impact Capital and Off Piste Capital. 

Thiel, who funded the Gawker lawsuit partly in defense of the individual right to privacy, has long been critical of the media. D’Souza says his goal is to restore trust in the Fourth Estate, which he argues has collapsed over decades. Critics, including media lawyers, warn Objection could make it harder to publish the kind of reporting that holds powerful institutions to account, particularly if that reporting relies on confidential sources."

Did AI kill my job, or open up a next chapter?; Public Source, April 10, 2026

[Kip Currier: I posted the following note and excerpt from this Public Source essay for the graduate students in my The Information Professional in Communities course this term:

I'm sharing this Pittsburgh local journalism first person essay by writer Austin Harvey, which I serendipitously came across and have posted to all of my blogs. Given the work that I currently do as a university faculty instructor, the piece raises thorny questions and considerations for me about what information centers/professionals can do to assist and/or "be there" for individuals and communities who are being displaced by AI.

Also, in what ways do academic programs like this one need to better prepare MLIS students to navigate AI-related positive and negative societal changes?

In what ways will information centers/professionals, as well as information center users, potentially be displaced by AI?

In what ways can information centers/professionals proactively adapt and/or manage this disruptive technological change?

What kinds of advocacy and actions by information professionals are required and needed?

Who are potential partners with whom information professionals can confer and collaborate on behalf of communities to strategically address present and future AI-fueled impacts?]

First-person essay by Austin Harvey, Public Source; Did AI kill my job, or open up a next chapter?

"Many writers feared that they would be the first ones to lose their jobs to AI. I did not share this fear, though I feel my heart rate spike every time I use an em-dash now — and you can pry them from my cold, dead hands when I’m gone. I saw value in human writing. I still do, and believe most people agree. We’ve gotten better at identifying AI-generated text, and while there are certainly a litany of websites out there publishing AI-generated articles, readers generally seem averse to them now. 

I was foolish to think none of this would affect me. 

I wasn’t replaced by AI. In fact, ATI’s editors made it very clear that they would never publish AI-generated articles. But AI was still a disruptive force. Search traffic fell. Google changed the rules on SEO and AdSense. We had editors quit or move on to other jobs, but we never hired anyone else to fill their positions. Our team of 12 became a team of seven, and for the better part of two years we were struggling to put out enough content to satisfy the algorithms. I was burning out constantly, still holding on to the idea that this was surely better than self-employment. 

Then, I was called into a meeting and told I was being let go at the end of January...

It wasn’t that I was replaced by AI, or that AI-generated articles were taking all of the search traffic; it was that a great number of people have stopped reading entirely, opting instead to simply ask ChatGPT or Gemini for answers to their questions. It’s an extension of the same issue that has caused many local news outlets to cease operations or cut staff."

Judge Rejects Hegseth’s Second Attempt to Restrict Reporters at Pentagon; The New York Times, April 9, 2026

Erik Wemple, The New York Times; Judge Rejects Hegseth’s Second Attempt to Restrict Reporters at Pentagon

"A federal judge on Thursday rejected an attempt by the Pentagon to impose a new set of restrictions on journalists who hold credentials to cover the military complex, in another blow to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempts to control the media.

The order, from Judge Paul Friedman of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, declared that the new policy was essentially unconstitutional. With its new rules, the Pentagon changed the wording of a provision barring journalists from seeking confidential information from government sources.

Judge Friedman added that the Pentagon had “failed” to reinstate the press passes of several New York Times reporters.

It was the second time that Judge Friedman had tossed parts of the Pentagon’s press policy. He ruled last month that major parts of the previous policy, which also sought to restrict certain journalistic activities, were unconstitutional in a case brought by The Times."

I told the internet I use AI. Boy, was it mad.; The Washington Post, April 5, 2026

Megan McArdle , The Washington Post; I told the internet I use AI. Boy, was it mad.

"...Many people think that using AI at any stage of the writing process amounts to outsourcing your thinking to a machine, and they reacted badly to a journalist suggesting some AI use might be all right.

Obviously, I disagree, but I recognize those folks are grappling with important questions, such as “What is writing for?” and “Which uses of AI serve those purposes, and which undermine them?”"

The New York Times drops freelance journalist who used AI to write book review; The Guardian, March 31, 2026

 Emma Loffhagen, The Guardian; The New York Times drops freelance journalist who used AI to write book review

"The New York Times has cut ties with a freelance journalist after discovering he used artificial intelligence to help write a book review that echoed elements of a review of the same book in the Guardian.

It came after a New York Times reader flagged similarities between the paper’s January review of Watching Over Her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, written by author and journalist Alex Preston, and an August review of the same book written by Christobel Kent in the Guardian.

The New York Times launched an investigation, during which Preston admitted that he had used AI to assist writing the review and did not spot the sections that were pulled from the Guardian before submitting it. In a statement to the Guardian on Tuesday, Preston said that he was “hugely embarrassed” and had “made a serious mistake”."

Judge appears skeptical of Pentagon’s latest press restrictions: ‘Is this a Catch-22?’; Politico, March 30, 2026

JOSH GERSTEIN , Politico; Judge appears skeptical of Pentagon’s latest press restrictions: ‘Is this a Catch-22?’

"A federal judge expressed skepticism Monday about the Pentagon’s new press access policy after invalidating an earlier version that prompted almost all holders of media credentials to turn them in.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman convened a hearing in response to complaints from The New York Times that the Pentagon is defying his earlier order to restore access by subsequently shutting down the decades-old Correspondents Corridor and giving journalists unescorted access only to a library at the margins of the complex."

Where Censored Words Find a Safe Haven: Inside Minecraft; The New York Times, March 11, 2026

Will Bahr, The New York Times; Where Censored Words Find a Safe Haven: Inside Minecraft

"I’m standing in the middle of a cavernous hall, watching the Statue of Liberty drown in a pool of her own tears. Twin blue streams run from her emerald eyes, collecting in a reservoir that submerges the statue up to her waist.

A series of lecterns line an observation deck beneath this tableau. Each displays a divisive text: Stephen Colbert’s interview with a Senate candidate that he said CBS barred from television; a report on sea-level rise that was scrubbed from government websites in President Trump’s second term; a two-volume interactive timeline of the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.

On the far wall, flanked by torches, is a mural of Ann Telnaes’s rejected cartoon for The Washington Post, featuring tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg bending the knee to Trump, offering up bags of cash. Hanging just above is an enormous American flag, stars and stripes rendered in pixel.

Welcome to the new United States wing of the Uncensored Library, an unlikely stronghold of online press freedom within Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time."

After losing in court, the Pentagon moves to restrict press access again; CNN, March 23, 2026

 Brian Stelter, CNN; After losing in court, the Pentagon moves to restrict press access again

"Undeterred by a federal judge’s recent rebuke, the Pentagon has announced another set of restrictions on the press corps that regularly covers the US military.

The changes will further reduce day-to-day press access, ultimately eroding the public’s understanding of what the military is doing.

Under the new rules, announced Monday, the “Correspondents’ Corridor” inside the Pentagon building — where journalists have worked for decades — has been shut down. The Pentagon says replacement workspace will be set up at a faraway “annex” location at some point.

Some longtime Pentagon reporters immediately suggested that the changes were retaliatory, coming three days after The New York Times won a permanent injunction against an earlier set of Pentagon restrictions. In that order, senior US District Judge Paul Friedman said the Pentagon had violated the First Amendment."

Judge Rules Pentagon Restrictions on Press Are Unconstitutional; The New York Times, March 20, 2026

Erik Wemple , The New York Times; Judge Rules Pentagon Restrictions on Press Are Unconstitutional

A federal judge tossed parts of the Pentagon’s restrictions on news outlets, saying they violated the First Amendment, in a lawsuit brought by The New York Times.

"A federal judge ruled on Friday that the Pentagon’s restrictions on news outlets violate the First Amendment and issued an order tossing parts of the Defense Department’s policy, handing a victory to The New York Times, which filed suit in December over the restrictions.

Judge Paul Friedman, of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also ordered the Pentagon to restore the press passes of seven journalists for The Times. They had surrendered those passes in October instead of signing the policy, which empowered the Pentagon to declare journalists “security risks” and revoke their press passes if they engaged in any conduct that the Pentagon believed threatened national security.

In his 40-page ruling, Judge Friedman wrote that the Pentagon’s policy rewarded reporters who were “willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.”

Siding with an argument advanced by The Times, Judge Friedman added that the Pentagon had given itself too much power to enforce its new rules. The policy also violates journalists’ due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, he said, writing that it “provides no way for journalists to know how they may do their jobs without losing their credentials.”

Politicians Are Trying to Control the News; The New York Times, March 5, 2026

The Editorial Board, The New York Times ; Politicians Are Trying to Control the News

"The shadow of press repression is spreading around the world. In the past decade, the number of journalists detained and imprisoned has soared as governments seek tighter control over the media. What started as a crackdown first by dictatorships and then by illiberal democracies is expanding to onetime bastions of civil liberties.

A recent high-profile case is Jimmy Lai, whom authorities in Hong Kong sentenced to 20 years in prison last month. He had campaigned against China’s choking of the territory’s freedoms. Mr. Lai, 78, has already spent five years in a dark cell and is ailing. The sentence effectively condemns him to dying in prison. Mr. Lai has denied all the charges against him.

His plight is increasingly common. At least 330 journalists worldwide were in prison at the end of 2025, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, up from fewer than 200 a decade ago. More than a third of them were serving sentences of five years or more. Nearly half remained behind bars despite never having been formally sentenced. One-fifth say they were tortured or beaten. An additional 129 members of the press died while doing their jobs or because of them, the highest number since records began in 1992. Among the worst offenders against press freedom have been China, Russia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Sudan and Turkey.

These courageous journalists have sought to shine a light on the world around them. They ask questions that political leaders do not want to answer and publish information that leaders do not want the public to know. For their efforts, they have been falsely accused of being enemies of the state, terrorists, foreign agents or spies."

An Ohio newspaper has a new star writer. It isn’t human.; The Washington Post, March 1, 2026

Will Oremus

 and 

Scott Nover

, The Washington Post; An Ohio newspaper has a new star writer. It isn’t human.

At the 184-year-old Cleveland Plain Dealer, a top editor’s push to let AI draft news articles is boosting traffic — and spooking staffers.

"The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s largest newspaper, has begun to feature a new byline. On recent articles about an ice carving festival, a medical research discovery and a roaming pack of chicken-slaying dogs, a reporter’s name is paired with the words “Advance Local Express Desk.” It means: This article was drafted by artificial intelligence."

I Trusted Jeff Bezos. The Joke’s on Me.; The New York Times, February 14, 2026

 Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times; I Trusted Jeff Bezos. The Joke’s on Me.

"At the end of the century, a journalism scholar published a fascinating comparative study of regional newspapers in the early 1960s and the late 1990s. “Papers of the 1960s seem naïvely trusting of government, shamelessly boosterish, unembarrassedly hokey and obliging,” Carl Sessions Stepp, the researcher, wrote. Newspapers of the ’90s were “better written, better looking, better organized, more responsible, less sensational, less sexist and racist and more informative and public-spirited.”

This sounds, you might think, salutary for the health of democracy. But it may have been precisely this move, away from deferential stenography and toward fearless investigation, that led to declining trust in the news media. Aggressive, probing and accountability-oriented journalism held up a mirror to American society — and many Americans didn’t like what they saw.

“As news grew more negative and more critical, people had more reason to find journalism distasteful,” the media scholar Michael Schudson wrote in a provocative essay on the problem of assessing trust in journalism. “What people do not like about the media is its implicit or explicit criticism of their heroes or their home teams.” No one, famously, likes the bearer of bad news.

Thinking back to that dinner with Bezos, I realized that something similar had happened. He flattered my chosen profession, reassuring me that it was not a cynical undertaking but something much more noble. He told me, in short, what I wanted to hear — and won my trust. In the intervening years, Bezos has apparently decided that his flattery is better aimed at a very different audience: Donald Trump.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Bezos notoriously demanded that The Post spike its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, at great cost to the paper. After the election, he donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and joined the row of plutocrats at the inauguration. Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to a documentary about Melania Trump, spent tens of millions more to market the movie and donated to Trump’s absurd White House mega-ballroom project. It’s certainly one way to win trust.

The Post’s loss is others’ gain. Its best-known journalists have streamed out the door, joining thriving news organizations like The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and The Times. These companies’ success, built on aggressive and independent reporting, makes me wonder whether the hand-wringing about trust is misplaced. In this new gilded age, maybe we should set aside trust and — as Bezos himself once urged — embrace skepticism."

Bar Punts on Ethics Complaint Over Application to Search Reporter’s Home; The New York Times, February 12, 2026

Charlie Savage, The New York Times; Bar Punts on Ethics Complaint Over Application to Search Reporter’s Home

A press freedom group accused a prosecutor of violating an ethics rule by not telling a judge about a law limiting searches for journalistic work product.

"The Virginia State Bar has told a press freedom organization that it is up to a judge to decide whether a federal prosecutor mishandled an application for a warrant last month to search the home of a Washington Post reporter as part of a leak investigation.

The group, Freedom of the Press Foundation, had filed a disciplinary complaint with the bar against the prosecutor, Gordon D. Kromberg. It cited his failure to alert the magistrate judge, who approved the search warrant, about the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which limits searches for journalistic work product.

But in an unsigned letter viewed by The New York Times, the state bar said the judge, William B. Porter of the Eastern District of Virginia, had to evaluate the omission."

Essential Knowledge for Journalists Reporting on AI, Creativity and Copyright; Webinar, National Press Foundation: Thursday, February 19, 2026 12 PM - 1 PM EST

 Webinar, National Press Foundation: Essential Knowledge for Journalists Reporting on AI, Creativity and Copyright 

"Generative AI is one of the biggest technological and cultural stories of our time – and one of the hardest to explain. As AI companies train models on news articles, books, images and music, reporters face tough questions about permission, transparency and fair use. Should AI companies pay when creative works are used to train their AI models? Where’s the line between innovation and theft?

The National Press Foundation will host a webinar to help journalists make sense of the evolving AI licensing landscape and report on it with clarity and confidence. We’ll unpack what “AI licensing” really means, how early one-off deals are turning into structured revenue-sharing systems, and why recent agreements in media and entertainment could shift the conversation from conflict to cooperation.

Join NPF and a panel of experts for a free online briefing from 12-1 p.m. ET, Feb. 19, 2026. The practical, forward-looking discussion examines how trust, creativity, and innovation can coexist as this new era unfolds and will equip journalists with plain-language explanations, real-world examples, and story angles that help readers understand why AI licensing matters to culture, innovation and the creative ecosystem they rely on every day."

When AI and IP Collide: What Journalists Need to Know; National Press Foundation (NPF), January 22, 2026

 National Press Foundation (NPF); When AI and IP Collide: What Journalists Need to Know

"With roughly 70 federal lawsuits waged against AI developers, the intersection of technology and intellectual property is now one of the most influential legal beats. Courts are jumping in to define the future of “fair use.” To bridge the gap between complex legal proceedings and the public’s understanding, NPF held a webinar to unpack these intellectual property battles. One thing all of the expert panelists agreed on: most cases are either an issue of input – i.e. what the AI models pull in to train on – or output – what AI generates, as in the case of Disney and other Hollywood studios v. Midjourney.

“The behavior here of AI companies and the assertion of fair use is completely understandable in our market capitalist system – all players want something very simple. They want their inputs for little or nothing and their outputs to be very expensive,” said Loyola Law professor Justin Hughes. “The fair use argument is all about AI companies wanting their inputs to be free, just like ranchers want their grazing land from the federal government to be free or their mining rights to be free.” AI Copyright Cases Journalists Should Know: Bartz et al. v. Anthropic: Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion settlement in a landmark case for the industry after a class of book authors accused the company of using pirated books to train the Claude AI model. “The mere training itself may be fair use, but the retention of these large copy data sets and their replication or your training from having taken pirated data sets, that’s not fair use,” Hughes explained. The NYT Company v. Microsoft Corporation et al.: This is a massive multi-district litigation in New York where the NYT is suing OpenAI. The Times has pushed for discovery into over 20 million private ChatGPT logs to prove that this model is being used to get past paywalls. Advance Local Media LLC et al. v. Cohere Inc.: The case against the startup Cohere is particularly vital for newsrooms as a judge ruled that AI-generated summaries infringe of news organizations’ ability to get traffic on their sites. “We’ve seen, there’s been a lot of developers who have taken the kind of classic Silicon Valley approach of ask forgiveness rather than permission,” said Terry Hart, general counsel of the Association of American Publishers. “They have gone ahead and trained a lot of models using a lot of copyrighted works without authorization.” Tech companies have trained massive models to ingest the entirety of the internet, including articles, without prior authorization, and Hughes points out that this is a repeated occurrence. AI companies often keep unauthorized copies of these vast datasets to retrain and tweak their models, leading to multiple steps of reproduction that could violate copyright. AI and U.S. Innovation A common defense from tech companies in Silicon Valley is that using these vast amounts of data is necessary to U.S. innovation and keeping the economy competitive. “‘We need to beat China, take our word for it, this is going to be great, and we’re just going to cut out a complete sector of the economy that’s critical to the success of our models,'” Hart said. “In the long run, that’s not good for innovation. It’s not good for the creative sectors and it’s not good for the AI sector.” Reuters technology reporter Deepa Seetharaman has also heard the China competition argument, among others. “The metaphor that I’ll hear a lot here is, ‘it’s like somebody visiting a library and reading every book, except this is a system that can remember every book and remember all the pieces of every book. And so why are you … harming us for developing something that’s so capable?'” Seetharaman said. Hughes noted that humans are not walking into a library with a miniature high-speed photocopier to memorize every book. Humans don’t memorize with the “faithful” precision of a machine. Hart added that the metaphor breaks down because technology has created a new market space that isn’t comparable to a human reader. Speakers:

• Wayne Brough, Resident Senior Fellow, Technology and Innovation Team, R Street
• Terry Hart, General Counsel, Association of American Publishers
• Justin Hughes, Honorable William Matthew Byrne Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola Marymount University
• Deepa Seetharaman, Tech Correspondent, Reuters

Summary and transcript: https://nationalpress.org/topic/when-... This event is sponsored by The Copyright Alliance and NSG Next Solutions Group. This video was produced within the Evelyn Y. Davis studios. NPF is solely responsible for the content."

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."

FREE WEBINAR: REGISTER: AI, Intellectual Property and the Emerging Legal Landscape; National Press Foundation, Thursday, January 22, 2026

 National Press Foundation; REGISTER: AI, Intellectual Property and the Emerging Legal Landscape

"Artificial intelligence is colliding with U.S. copyright law in ways that could reshape journalism, publishing, software, and the creative economy.

The intersection of AI and intellectual property has become one of the most consequential legal battles of the digital age, with roughly 70 federal lawsuits filed against AI companies and copyright claims on works ranging from literary and visual work to music and sound recording to computer programs. Billions of dollars are at stake.

Courts are now deciding what constitutes “fair use,” whether and how AI companies may use copyrighted material to build models, what licensing is required, and who bears responsibility when AI outputs resemble protected works. The legal decisions will shape how news, art, and knowledge are produced — and who gets paid for them.

To help journalists better understand and report on the developing legal issues of AI and IP, join the National Press Foundation and a panel of experts for a wide-ranging discussion around the stakes, impact and potential solutions. Experts in technology and innovation as well as law and economics join journalists in this free online briefing 12-1 p.m. ET on Thursday, January 22, 2026."

‘60 Minutes’ is finally airing the shelved ‘Inside CECOT’ segment; CNN, January 18, 2026

Brian Stelter, CNN ; ‘60 Minutes’ is finally airing the shelved ‘Inside CECOT’ segment

"Nearly a month after CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss triggered a scandal by shelving a “60 Minutes” story about Venezuelan men deported by the US to a hellish prison in El Salvador, the story is airing on Sunday evening.

Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who defended the story and alleged “corporate censorship” by Weiss last month, recorded a new beginning and ending to the segment to incorporate the additions Weiss wanted.

But the report itself, titled “Inside CECOT,” remained the same as it was on the day Weiss delayed it."

To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave; The Guardian, January 12, 2026

 Marie Le Conte, The Guardian; To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave

"What does matter is that X is drifting towards irrelevance, becoming a containment pen for jumped-up fascists. Government ministers cannot be making policy announcements in a space that hosts AI-generated, near-naked pictures of young girls. Journalists cannot share their work in a place that systematically promotes white supremacy. Regular people cannot be getting their brains slowly but surely warped by Maga propaganda.

We all love to think that we have power and agency, and that if we try hard enough we can manage to turn the tide – but X is long dead. The only winning move now is to step away from the chess board, and make our peace with it once and for all."

Press arrests used to silence protest coverage in 2025; U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, December 15, 2025

Stephanie Sugars from Freedom of the Press Foundation, U.S. Press Freedom Tracker; Press arrests used to silence protest coverage in 2025

"While covering anything from protests to government meetings, journalists in 2025 were pulled from news scenes, placed in cuffs and held in custody from minutes to days — long enough for deadlines to pass and breaking news to go cold.

As of Dec. 15, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented at least 32 instances in which journalists were detained or charged just for doing their jobs. While that count is lower than the 50 documented last year, each one is a warning flare that something fundamental is shifting in how authorities police information and those who gather it. Most were released without charges or had them quickly dropped, but the impact extends far beyond the time spent in custody...

The LA Press Club’s Rose told the Tracker that, once a member of the press is placed in handcuffs, they can’t operate a camera, take notes or observe unfolding events.

“But I know one reporter who mastered a new skill they don’t teach in journalism school,” he added. “While his hands are behind him in zip ties, he can pull out his phone and still type out emergency messages asking for help. I’ve been on the receiving end of quite a few of those.

“This should not be what’s needed to cover protests,” said Rose, “but it’s where we are in 2025.”"