Dara Kerr, The Guardian; Elon Musk teams with El Salvador to bring Grok chatbot to public schools
"Elon Musk is partnering with the government of El Salvador to bring his artificial intelligence company’s chatbot, Grok, to more than 1 million students across the country, according to a Thursday announcement by xAI. Over the next two years, the plan is to “deploy” the chatbot to more than 5,000 public schools in an “AI-powered education program”."
GREGORY A. SMITH, Pew Research Center; Religion Holds Steady in America
"Pew Research Center polling finds that key measures of religiousness are holding steady in the United States, continuing a period of relative stability that began about five years ago.
The shares of U.S. adults who identify with Christianity, with another religion, or with no religion have all remained fairly stable in the Center’s latest polling.
The percentages of Americans who say they pray every day, that religion is very important in their lives, and that they regularly attend religious services also have held fairly steady since 2020...
So, what is happening with religion among young adults today? Some media reports have suggested there may be a religious revival taking place among young adults, especially young men, in the U.S. But our recent polls, along with other high-quality surveys we have analyzed, show no clear evidence that this kind of nationwide religious resurgence is underway.
On average, young adults remain much less religious than older Americans. Today’s young adults also are less religious than young people were a decade ago. And there is no indication that young men are converting to Christianity in large numbers."
LEE ANN ANDERSON , The Hill; HHS changes transgender former official Rachel Levine’s name on portrait
"The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) changed the name of former Adm. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman who served as the agency’s assistant secretary under former President Biden, to her birth name, or “dead name,” on her official portrait.
HHS confirmed on X Tuesday that the department changed the name during the government shutdown, saying that they wanted to depict “biological reality.”...
Rep. Rebecca Balint (D-Vt.) was among the critics who blasted the move online...
“Consummate professional, was always thinking about the American people, that was her charge and that’s what she did, so every time they do something like this, they reveal their own pettiness, smallness, vindictiveness, but also how incredibly insecure they are about their own identity.”
Levine, who was the first Senate-confirmed transgender official, told NPR that she wouldn’t “comment on this type of petty action.”
Rhys Blakely, The Times ; Publisher under fire after ‘fake’ citations found in AI ethics guide
"One of the world’s largest academic publishers is selling a book on the ethics of AI intelligence research that appears to be riddled with fake citations, including references to journals that do not exist.
Academic publishing has recently been subject to criticism for accepting fraudulent papers produced using AI, which have made it through a peer-review process designed to guarantee high standards.
The Times found that a book recently published by the German-British publishing giant Springer Nature includes dozens of citations that appear to have been invented — a sign, often, of AI-generated material."
Jack Healy , The New York Times; Colorado Officials Reject Trump’s ‘Pardon’ of a Convicted Election Denier
"President Trump’s pledge to pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines, touched off a new battle on Friday over the fate of perhaps the last high-profile 2020 election denier still behind bars.
Democratic leaders in Colorado dismissed the pardon as an empty attempt to bully a Democratic state into freeing one of the president’s political allies. They argued that Mr. Trump had no legal power to overturn Ms. Peters’s conviction in state court...
Legal scholars and Colorado officials were incredulous. They said the notion that the president could intervene in state courts clashed with the plain language of the Constitution, as well as its fundamental principles of federalism and states’ rights."
Richard Buckley, Jr. and Scott Hervey, JDSupra ; (Podcast) The Briefing: What Is Fair Use and Why Does It Matter? (Featured)
"Creators, beware: just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s fair game. In this episode of The Briefing, Scott Hervey and Richard Buckley break down one of the most misunderstood areas of copyright law—fair use.
In this featured episode, they cover:
- What makes a use “transformative”?
- Why credit alone doesn’t protect you
- How recent court rulings (Warhol v. Goldsmith) are changing the game
- Tips to stay on the right side of the law"
CHRIS STOKEL-WALKER, Fast Company ; The Disney-OpenAI tie-up has huge implications for intellectual property
"Walt Disney and OpenAI make for very odd bedfellows: The former is one of the most-recognized brands among children under the age of 18. The near-$200 billion company’s value has been derived from more than a century of aggressive safeguarding of its intellectual property and keeping the magic alive among innocent children.
OpenAI, which celebrated its first decade of existence this week, is best known for upending creativity, the economy, and society with its flagship product, ChatGPT. And in the last two months, it has said it wants to get to a place where its adult users can use its tech to create erotica.
So what the hell should we make of a just-announced deal between the two that will allow ChatGPT and Sora users to create images and videos of more than 200 characters, from Mickey and Minnie Mouse to the Mandalorian, starting from early 2026?"
Mariam Khan, ABC News; Rubio orders State Department to change official memo font, citing DEI issue: Official
The font was changed two years ago to assist readers with visual disabilities.
"The Calibri font is going the way of the typewriter at the State Department after Secretary of State Marco Rubio inked a memo mandating that the agency use only Times New Roman for official communications – and size 14 to boot, according to a department official.
The new directive, which was sent to all diplomats, is the latest action by the Trump administration to roll back diversity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The change is effective immediately, according to the directive.
Two years ago, Rubio’s predecessor, Antony Blinken, switched the State Department font to Calibri, on the recommendation of the State Department’s office of diversity and inclusion, in part to assist individuals with certain visual disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia."
Lynsey Chutel, The New York Times ; With Dreadlocks and Yoga, Oslo’s Bishop Practices an Atypical Evangelism
"“When Putin and Trump, in their different ways, are using Christianity, my religion, in a very politicized, destructive way, it’s really important for me that we, as a church, lift up our voices for justice, for solidarity, for welcoming the stranger among us, for less differences between poor and rich.” Bishop Gylver told journalists in the days before her ordination.
Since formally assuming her new role, her public utterances have become a little more circumspect.
“As a bishop, I should not point to specific people or parties to say, ‘This, and not this; that and not that,’” she said during an interview in September. “I don’t even have to name them, but we have quite a few world leaders that are practicing and articulating Christian faith in a way that is very foreign to me...
As part of her emphasis on inclusion, she raised the Rainbow flag over the Oslo cathedral to celebrate Pride Week in June. It was a precursor to the church’s formal apology to Norway’s L.G.B.T.Q. community this October for decades of discrimination."
MEG KINNARD , AP; Trump administration says sign language services ‘intrude’ on Trump’s ability to control his image
"The Trump administration is arguing that requiring real-time American Sign Language interpretation of events like White House press briefings “would severely intrude on the President’s prerogative to control the image he presents to the public,” part of a lawsuit seeking to require the White House to provide the services.
Department of Justice attorneys haven’t elaborated on how doing so might hamper the portrayal President Donald Trump seeks to present to the public. But overturning policies encompassing diversity, equity and inclusion have become a hallmark of his second administration, starting with his very first week back in the White House.
The National Association for the Deaf sued the Trump administration in May, arguing that the cessation of American Sign Language interpretation — which the Biden administration had used regularly — represented “denying hundreds of thousands of deaf Americans meaningful access to the White House’s real-time communications on various issues of national and international import.” The group also sued during Trump’s first administration, seeking ASL interpretation for briefings related to the COVID-19 pandemic."
HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, JOSHUA GOODMAN AND JOHN HANNA , AP; Some Native Americans draw shocked response over contract to design immigration detention centers
"The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, whose ancestors were uprooted by the U.S. from the Great Lakes region in the 1830s, are facing outrage from fellow Native Americans over plans to profit from another forced removal: President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
A newly established tribal business entity quietly signed a nearly $30 million federal contract in October to come up with an early design for immigrant detention centers across the U.S. Amid the backlash, the tribe says it’s trying to get out of it...
Tribal Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick promised “full transparency” about what he described as an “evolving situation.” In a video message to tribal members Friday, he said the tribe is talking with legal counsel about ways to end the contract.
He alluded to the time when federal agents forcibly removed hundreds of Prairie Band Potawatomi families from their homes and ultimately corralled them on a reservation just north of Topeka.
“We know our Indian reservations were the government’s first attempts at detention centers,” Rupnick said in the video message. “We were placed here because we were prisoners of war. So we must ask ourselves why we would ever participate in something that mirrors the harm and the trauma once done to our people.”"
"Authors in a putative class action copyright suit against
JEFF SCHOGOL, Task & Purpose; Marine jumps down onto New York City subway tracks to save man
"Marine Sgt. Derrick McMillian was waiting for the subway in Manhattan when he heard a commotion. He saw that a man had fallen onto the tracks and was struggling to stand up.
A recruiter based in New York City, McMillian, realized that a train was about 2 minutes away. Without hesitating, he jumped onto the tracks and went over to the man, whom he was afraid would stumble onto the electrified third rail.
“I saw people were more just kind of like watching, wondering, who’s going to help this guy,” McMillian told Task & Purpose. “I’m seeing him trying to get up and he can’t get up. It just felt normal and natural to go down and help him out."...
When asked why he sprang into action, McMillian cited a lesson he learned from one of his staff sergeants: People expect that Marines will always help them out, no matter who they are or what they look like.
“I just didn’t want to be a bystander,” McMillian said. “I didn’t want to see this man die. So that was what was motivating me.”
BRIAN BARRETT, Wired; The Disney-OpenAI Deal Redefines the AI Copyright War
"“I think that AI companies and copyright holders are beginning to understand and become reconciled to the fact that neither side is going to score an absolute victory,” says Matthew Sag, a professor of law and artificial intelligence at Emory University. While many of these cases are still working their way through the courts, so far it seems like model inputs—the training data that these models learn from—are covered by fair use. But this deal is about outputs—what the model returns based on your prompt—where IP owners like Disney have a much stronger case
Coming to an output agreement resolves a host of messy, potentially unsolvable issues. Even if a company tells an AI model not to produce, say, Elsa at a Wendy’s drive-through, the model might know enough about Elsa to do so anyway—or a user might be able to prompt their way into making Elsa without asking for the character by name. It’s a tension that legal scholars call the “Snoopy problem,” but in this case you might as well call it the Disney problem.
“Faced with this increasingly clear reality, it makes sense for consumer-facing AI companies and entertainment giants like Disney to think about licensing arrangements,” says Sag."
Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times; Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort
"The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders.
Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people.
It’s unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration."
Igor Bonifacic, engadget; Disney's deal with OpenAI is about controlling the future of copyright
"The agreement brings together two parties with very different public stances on copyright. Before OpenAI released Sora, the company reportedly notified studios and talent agencies they would need to opt out of having their work appear in the new app. The company later backtracked on this stance. Before that, OpenAI admitted, in a regulatory filing, it would be "impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials."
By contrast, Disney takes copyright law very seriously. In fact, you could argue no other company has done more to shape US copyright law than Disney. For example, there's the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which is more derisively known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. The law effectively froze the advancement of the public domain in the United States, with Disney being the greatest beneficiary. It was only last year that the company's copyright for Steamboat Willie expired, 95 years after Walt Disney first created the iconic cartoon."
"Secret meetings between Ukraine’s top peace negotiator and FBI leaders have injected new uncertainty into the high-stakes talks to end the war there, according to diplomats and officials familiar with the matter.
Over the last several weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, flew to Miami three times to meet with President Donald Trump’s top envoy, Steve Witkoff, and discuss a proposal to end the nearly four-year conflict with Russia.
But during his time in the United States, Umerov also held closed-door meetings with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, according to four people, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.
The meetings have caused alarm among Western officials who remain in the dark about their intent and purpose. Some said they believe Umerov and other Ukrainian officials sought out Patel and Bongino in the hopes of obtaining amnesty from any corruption allegations the Ukrainians could face. Others worry the newly established channel could be used to exert pressure on Zelensky’s government to accept a peace deal, proposed by the Trump administration, containing steep concessions for Kyiv."
, International Business Times; AI Has Its Place in Law, But Lawyers Who Treat It as a Replacement Can Risk Trust, Ethics, and Their Clients' Futures
"When segments of our profession begin treating AI outputs as inherently reliable, we normalize a lower threshold of scrutiny, and the law cannot function on lowered standards. The justice system depends on precision, on careful reading, on the willingness to challenge assumptions rather than accept the quickest answer. If lawyers become comfortable skipping that intellectual step, even once, we begin to erode the habits that make rigorous advocacy possible. The harm is not just procedural; it's generational. New lawyers watch what experienced lawyers do, not what they say, and if they see shortcuts rewarded rather than corrected, that becomes the new baseline.
This is not to suggest that AI has no place in law. When used responsibly, with human oversight, it can be a powerful tool. Legal teams are successfully incorporating AI into tasks like document review, contract analysis, and litigation preparation. In complex cases with tens of thousands of documents, AI has helped accelerate discovery and flag issues that humans might overlook. In academia as well, AI has shown promise in grading essays and providing feedback that can help educate the next generation of lawyers, but again, under human supervision.
The key distinction is between augmentation and automation. We must not be naive about what AI represents. It is not a lawyer. It doesn't hold professional responsibility. It doesn't understand nuance, ethics, or the weight of a client's freedom or financial well-being. It generates outputs based on patterns and statistical likelihoods. That's incredibly useful for ideation, summarization, and efficiency, but it is fundamentally unsuited to replace human reasoning.
To ignore this reality is to surrender the core values of our profession. Lawyers are trained not just to know the law but to apply it with judgment, integrity, and a commitment to truth. Practices that depend on AI without meaningful human oversight communicate a lack of diligence and care. They weaken public trust in our profession at a time when that trust matters more than ever.
We should also be thinking about how we prepare future lawyers. Law schools and firms must lead by example, teaching students not just how to use AI, but how to question it. They must emphasize that AI outputs require verification, context, and critical thinking. AI should supplement legal education, not substitute it. The work of a lawyer begins long before generating a draft; it begins with curiosity, skepticism, and the courage to ask the right questions.
And yes, regulation has its place. Many courts and bar associations are already developing guidelines for the responsible use of AI. These frameworks encourage transparency, require lawyers to verify any AI-assisted research, and emphasize the ethical obligations that cannot be delegated to a machine. That's progress, but it needs broader adoption and consistent enforcement.
At the end of the day, technology should push us forward, not backward. AI can make our work more efficient, but it cannot, and should not, replace our judgment. The lawyer who delegates their thinking to an algorithm risks their profession, their client's case, and the integrity of the justice system itself."
The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal; Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping
Cecilia Kang, The New York Times; Trump Signs Executive Order to Neuter State A.I. Laws
"President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that aims to neuter state laws that place limits on the artificial intelligence industry, a win for tech companies that have lobbied against regulation of the booming technology.
Mr. Trump, who has said it is important for America to dominate A.I., has criticized the state laws for generating a confusing patchwork of regulations. He said his order would create one federal regulatory framework that would override the state laws, and added that it was critical to keep the United States ahead of China in a battle for leadership on the technology."
Chuck Hagel, The Atlantic; Banning AI Regulation Would Be a Disaster
"On Monday, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would soon sign an executive order prohibiting states from regulating AI...
The greatest challenges facing the United States do not come from overregulation but from deploying ever more powerful AI systems without minimum requirements for safety and transparency...
Contrary to the narrative promoted by a small number of dominant firms, regulation does not have to slow innovation. Clear rules would foster growth by hardening systems against attack, reducing misuse, and ensuring that the models integrated into defense systems and public-facing platforms are robust and secure before deployment at scale.
Critics of oversight are correct that a patchwork of poorly designed laws can impede that mission. But they miss two essential points. First, competitive AI policy cannot be cordoned off from the broader systems that shape U.S. stability and resilience...
Second, states remain the country’s most effective laboratories for developing and refining policy on complex, fast-moving technologies, especially in the persistent vacuum of federal action...
The solution to AI’s risks is not to dismantle oversight but to design the right oversight. American leadership in artificial intelligence will not be secured by weakening the few guardrails that exist. It will be secured the same way we have protected every crucial technology touching the safety, stability, and credibility of the nation: with serious rules built to withstand real adversaries operating in the real world. The United States should not be lobbied out of protecting its own future."
Louis Casiano , Fox News; Kilmar Abrego Garcia released after judge rules Trump admin lacked valid removal order
"Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran illegal immigrant that became the face of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, has been released from detention.
Garcia's lawyer confirmed his release with Fox News.
His release came after a federal judge on Thursday ordered he be freed."
RYAN WHITWAM , Ars Technica; Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale”
"Disney has sent a cease and desist to Google, alleging the company’s AI tools are infringing Disney’s copyrights “on a massive scale.”
According to the letter, Google is violating the entertainment conglomerate’s intellectual property in multiple ways. The legal notice says Google has copied a “large corpus” of Disney’s works to train its gen AI models, which is believable, as Google’s image and video models will happily produce popular Disney characters—they couldn’t do that without feeding the models lots of Disney data.
The C&D also takes issue with Google for distributing “copies of its protected works” to consumers."
PBS ; WATCH: Rep. Magaziner confronts Noem with deported U.S. military veteran on Zoom in hearing
"Democrats questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about several deportations on Thursday, including identifying members of the House hearing audience they said had been deported or had family members who had been improperly treated by the immigration system.
Watch the video clip in the video above.
Noem said she would review the cases of several called out by Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island. One, a combat veteran, appeared on a screen via a video call. Magaziner said the Purple Heart recipient had been deported earlier this year."
Sawdah Bhaimiya, CNBC; U.S. to mandate checks of some tourists’ social media history from past 5 years
"The U.S. is planning to impose social media inspections on some tourists as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up travel restrictions for foreign visitors.
Tourists — including those from Britain, Australia, France, and Japan — will be mandated to provide five years of their social media history as part of their applications to visit the U.S., according to a notice posted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, on Wednesday. The proposal, which has been given a 60 day-notice with requests for comments from the public, is not final and may see some revisions.
Tourists from nations that are included in the U.S.′ Visa Waiver Program can apply to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, to visit the country for 90 days or less, with a fee of $40. The social media check will now form a “mandatory data element” as part of the ESTA application.
The border force said it will also collect “several high value data fields,” including applicants’ email addresses from the past 10 years, their telephone numbers used in the past five years, and names and details of family members."
Avery Lotz, Axios ; "Abject partisanship": Trump loyalist Bove hit with judicial misconduct complaint
"Emil Bove, a federal appeals court judge who previously served as President Trump's personal attorney, is accused of an ethics violation for attending the president's rally-style speechTuesday night.
Why it matters: The complaint from a watchdog group alleges that Bove's presence at the event runs afoul of two clear pillars of judicial ethics: to avoid impropriety and political activity. It could result in disciplinary action.
Driving the news: Fix the Court, a watchdog and advocacy group, alleged that Bove violated multiple sections of the governing Code of Conduct for U.S. judges in a judicial misconduct complaint filed Wednesday.
The other side: Bove reportedly told a reporter from MS NOW at the event that he attended "just ... as a citizen coming to watch the president speak.""
SHIRIN ALI, Slate ; This May Be the Most Cynical Ploy to Win a Trump Supreme Court Appointment Yet
"Ever since Emil Bove came back into government following Donald Trump’s return to office, he’s found himself mired in controversy. As the deputy attorney general at the start of Trump’s term, Bove was accused of corruptly dismissing a high-profile criminal indictment over the objections of line prosecutors and a U.S. attorney. Around that time, he also allegedly told members of the Justice Department that they should tell the courts “fuck you” in the face of any attempts to stop the president’s unlawful deportations to third-party countries without due process. On Tuesday night, Bove, now a Trump-appointed judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, committed a new foul. He attended a Trump rally in Pennsylvania during which the president called Joe Biden a “son of a bitch” and said that Democrats are “bad people” and “sick people.” Within less than 24 hours, a complaint was filed against Bove, accusing him of “abject partisanship” that is unacceptable for a member of the judiciary."
