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The Trump administration’s multiple investigations of the 2020 election may have more to do with 2026
Some experts say the FBI’s probes in Wisconsin and elsewhere could be a test run to challenge future election results. By Dion Nissenbaum and Alexander Shur The FBI agents arrived at David Bolter’s Milwaukee home on a cool, cloudy Wednesday morning in late May. They were armed with a list of questions for the 2020 poll worker, who had raised concerns about the way local officials…
Data centers are on the ballot—this Pennsylvania candidate won her primary keeping them top of mind
As data centers grow as an election issue, a state House candidate hopes her opposition will finally propel her to victory. By Audrey Carleton for Capital & Main Across the country, as proposals for energy-intensive data centers are popping up to power the artificial intelligence boom, so too are communities rallying in opposition to them. It’s no different in Dallas…
KPMG pulls report on AI usage due to apparent hallucinations
Trump Blocks Foreigners From Using Anthropic’s Latest AI Tech
On Friday night, the AI giant Anthropic said that the US government had ordered it to suspend foreign nationals, including employees, from all use of its most advanced products.
To comply with the Friday directive, the company announced that it disabled access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the latest models of Claude, for all customers.
Anthropic stated that the government cited national security concerns but did not provide further details. The company says its newest technology has enhanced software engineering and visual understanding compared to previous iterations. But Anthropic has also acknowledged potential concerns, releasing a preview model in April to just a few industry partners to test for capabilities to use it to create hacking tools. Claude Fable 5 is the first publicly available version of the Mythos model, and the company said it has established “guardrails” such as blocking answers to questions on cybersecurity, biology, and chemistry.
The Trump administration barred all federal agencies from using Anthropic products in February. That same day, Trump called Anthropic “a radical left, woke company” amid his feud over it being unwilling to permit the military to use its technology. At the time, CEO Dario Amodei said that the US government’s demands—namely, mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons—would allow it to violate the company’s safeguard policies.
As my colleagues Anna Merlan and Abby Vesoulis pointed out in March, the US military previously used Anthropic’s Claude for “intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios” to prepare for its initial strikes on Iran.
Anthropic has positioned itself as the ethical AI company, a significant contributor to its rapid ascent to the top of the industry especially as the public has increasingly disapproved of AI development. The company filed for an initial public offering earlier this month, and SpaceX’s success so far since it entered the stock market on Friday—which made founder Elon Musk a trillionaire—could be an encouraging sign for it and its major competitor OpenAI.
Meanwhile, other countries, like China and the United Arab Emirates, are pushing for “sovereign AI,” or in other words, expanding their own AI infrastructure to overcome reliance on nations who have their own data privacy and safeguard rules.
So despite the Trump administration’s attacks on Anthropic, developers are still raising funds and building at a frantic pace.
Amazon CEO reportedly raised Anthropic model concerns before government crackdown
Slush fund brain freeze, and only religious weirdos get to work from home
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back. It seems like every week, we marvel at how catastrophically the Department of Justice has collapsed under President Donald Trump, and this week is no exception. From completely invented legal theories designed to enshrine Trump’s bigotry…
Own goals
A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Democrats pounce on Trump’s ‘I love inflation’ gaffe…
ALT 1 in 4 covered California enrollees could get state aid under Newsom proposal
By Christine Mai-Duc and Jackie Fortiér for KFF When Congress allowed COVID-era subsidies for health insurance to expire, California used its own funds to offset the hike in Obamacare premium costs for residents with low incomes. But the reach has been limited. As Gov. Gavin Newsom negotiates his last budget with the legislature, the Democrat wants to offer financial help to…
With Kennedy Center Setback, Trump Is Losing His War on “Woke” National Placards
On Saturday morning, Kennedy Center officials confirmed that they had removed all signs with President Trump’s name from the building after a federal judge declared the previous day that the signs were unlawful. The officials also stated that they updated their website “to remove all reference to the institution as the ‘Trump Kennedy Center.’”
To justify his takeover of the Kennedy Center, Trump has repeatedly stated that the cultural center was no longer “going to be woke.”
On Friday, another federal judge ordered that the Trump administration must restore exhibits and placards on subjects like climate change, slavery, and civil rights that it had taken down following a March 2025 executive order that deemed them “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”
In a preliminary injunction, US District Judge Angel Kelley ruled in favor of scientists, historians, and park conservationists and rangers, stating that the removal established a “dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.” Kelley gave the Trump administration a reinstallation deadline of 21 days, by the 250th anniversary of the US.
The US Department of the Interior said in a statement that “the ruling is from a liberal activist judge” and would evaluate options to appeal the decision while they “celebrate UFC Freedom 250.”
Both orders act as a massive blow to President Trump’s censorship campaign to take control over federal historical sites and cultural institutions. As my colleague Dan Friedman reported in February, the Trump administration’s efforts were shrouded in secrecy—the Interior Department has so far refused to disclose the number of signs and exhibits they are targeting as “non-conformant” with the president and signs were taken down without notice.
And as my colleague Jeffrey Kelly also wrote in February, local residents and government officials of targeted areas have been fighting back against this censorship through protests and even makeshift signs to replace the ones that’d been removed, because despite the administration’s best efforts, “nothing can change what happened at these places, and who it happened to.”
Trump loves inflation, and Knicks fans hate Trump
President Donald Trump says just about anything, doesn’t he? Earlier this week, when asked about soaring inflation due to his idiotic war in Iran, Trump responded by saying, “I love the inflation.” He then took a lavish, joy-killing nap at the NBA game between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs—after calling the NBA a “political organization” that no one cares about in 2020.
OpenAI faces investigation from state attorneys general
This thin under-pillow speaker helped me fall asleep without earbuds
An Indian billionaire was targeted by Trump. Then he poured money into a startup secretly backed by Donald Trump Jr.
An obscure Texas firm secretly connected to the president’s son said it received at least $100 million from Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. At the same time, the Ambani family secured major policy wins from the Trump administration. By Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski for ProPublica In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful…
World Cup AI predictor now lets users ask daft what-ifs
The long, strained history between US and Cuba
Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out “Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.“ There’s a very long history between the United States and Cuba. And though many Cuban Americans are staunch supporters of racist right-wing efforts like the blockade against Cuba…
Booing is the new clapping
A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Nothin’ but naps: Trump gets dunked on for sleeping through NBA game…
The Department of Homeland Security Is “Kidnapping People’s Kids”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave a press conference on Thursday to tell reporters about 300,000 supposedly “missing” immigrant children. These were unaccompanied minors who’d crossed the border alone during the Biden administration, before being apprehended by the government and then quickly released to sponsors—typically adult relatives.
Mullin and Blanche claimed the Biden administration lost track of these children, and that many ended up with adults who purported to be family but were actually criminals who abused them. “Kids now have been paying for it,” Mullin said. “They have been getting raped over and over and over again because the previous administration chose not to enforce our nation’s laws and protect the most vulnerable.”
The claim that 300,000 unaccompanied minors went missing has already been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. Still, over the past year, the Trump administration has used this misleading narrative as justification to go out and find these kids. Officials have gotten back in touch with nearly 150,000, whether calling or visiting their homes or encountering them in the community. Hundreds have been re-detained. Their sponsors must then be re-vetted before the kids can be released.
“It is not right that I have to stay here for so long when I have someone to take care of me who knows me and loves me.”
The administration says it’s doing this for the good of the children. “We are going to rescue as many kids as we possibly can,” Mullin said. And it’s true that there have been some horrific cases: The press conference was pegged to the indictment of three people who allegedly lied about their identities to gain custody of minors; a fourth man was sentenced for raping a girl in his care.
But lawyers around the country who work with unaccompanied children paint a remarkably different picture. They tell me that abuse by fake sponsors is relatively rare, and that most sponsors really are who they say they are: family members. The Trump administration, by and large, isn’t saving kids—it’s separating them from loved ones and putting them in detention for months on end.
Unaccompanied minors taken into custody at the end of the Biden administration were held by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for about 37 days on average. Under the Trump administration, the average is about six months, and many children have been detained more than a year. “A majority of the kids in our facilities today have biological parents who want them home, and there’s no reason the government shouldn’t be releasing them,” says Jessica Richardson, an attorney whose nonprofit, The Door, works with detained kids in New York.
“Family separation under the first Trump administration got so much attention, and DHS is doing it again, but with everything else they’re doing it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves,” says Jen Smyers, who served as ORR’s deputy director under Biden. “DHS is kidnapping people’s kids.”
At the press conference, Angie Salazar, Trump’s acting ORR director, touted more stringent vetting requirements for sponsors—families must jump through many more hoops than before to prove they’re worthy of getting their kids back. The process, Salazar said, “should mirror the standards of the American foster care system,” with “rigorous background checks, vetting of caregivers, financial stability verification, and home visits before a child is turned over.”
Several families are now suing, arguing that the new requirements have led to detention periods that are too lengthy and violate the Flores agreement, a court settlement requiring kids to be released from government care “without unnecessary delay.”
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act also requires ORR to “promptly” place unaccompanied minors “in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”
“These children have been forced to spend extremely long periods of time away from their family, friends, school and community without justification,” notes the families’ complaint, which was filed by Democracy Forward and the National Center for Youth Law.
“It’s incredibly stressful and confusing, especially for the little ones. They don’t understand why they can’t get out.”
“It is not right that I have to stay here for so long when I have someone to take care of me who knows me and loves me,” a child told the court in another similar lawsuit. “I don’t know if I can tolerate it much longer.”
Under Biden, says Michigan-based attorney Ana Raquel Devereaux, who works with unaccompanied minors, parents could “receive the child in a relatively swift manner. Now, the barriers to sponsor reunification are so significant that, from our perspective, sponsor reunification is essentially nonexistent.”
Acting director Salazar said at the press conference that ORR is “prioritizing child safety over placement speed.”
But is holding kids for months, or even a year or more, really good for them? ORR facilities are often called shelters, but they are “essentially prisons,” says attorney Richardson. “They have specific times they are allowed to shower and use the bathroom. Specific times they are allowed to go to get food.”
Some of the detained kids are having suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety because of the lengthy detention, or are acting out or running away. “ORR is meant to be a very, very short-term place for unaccompanied children,” notes Smyers, the former ORR official.
Among the plaintiffs is Diego N., a 14-year-old who’d been living with his father in Texas. Since being re-detained, “he has little privacy,” the complaint states. “He misses being able to go outside for fresh air when he wants to and being able to talk to his friends.” Detention has interrupted his schooling—ORR classes are primarily focused on basic language skills: “He is being taught how to name fruits in English when he should be a freshman at his public high school.”
Younger kids are confused about why they’re detained at all, says Alexa Sendukas, an attorney in Texas. “It’s incredibly stressful and confusing, especially for the little ones. They don’t understand why they can’t get out.”
Rather than saving these kids, she says, the administration is using them “as bait.” Last year, ORR began requiring sponsors to attend in-person meetings to verify their identification documents—and sometimes ICE arrests them when they show up. “We’re seeing family members detained,” says Sendukas. (This week, federal agents raided the offices of organizations that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors, to gather more information.)
Kids are so terrified for their parents that some decide not to go through the sponsorship process at all. Mario C., a 17-year-old plaintiff who’s been detained for months, wants to live with his mom, but he’s considering foster care instead because he doesn’t want to risk her arrest. Other kids are so desperate to get out of detention that they self-deport, returning to countries where they haven’t lived in years, even though their parents are in the United States.
Trump officials remember the public outrage that ensued after they split up kids and parents at the border in 2017. Now they’re splitting them up in the interior and holding press conferences about saving missing children to justify it. They want to make their activities more palatable to the public.
But even rebranded, family separation is still just family separation.
Want a Deal on a Heat Pump? Team up With Your Neighbors.
This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Last year, Marie Tai needed a better way to keep her condo cool. Her window air-conditioning units were borderline ineffective, even running at full blast. Summers have been getting more intense in Tai’s Boston neighborhood because of a rapidly warming climate, and she had just adopted a 16-year-old cat named Mittens, who was still recovering from being hit by a car.
Tai had already been considering a heat pump, an all-electric appliance that heats and cools spaces and lets homeowners ditch polluting fossil fuels. But three contractors had quoted her prices ranging from about $28,000 to $40,000. Tai, who heads finance and administration at Harvard University’s Project Zero, thought those estimates seemed excessive for her 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom place. So she had hit pause on the project.
“Even though homeowners often save significantly over time, the first quotes can bring real sticker shock.”
But with Mittens’ well-being front of mind, Tai renewed her heat pump search last spring. Through Facebook, she found an opportunity to participate in a program that aggregates demand, organized by Laminar Collective, a local startup that does research on the tech and coordinates installations.
These heat pump group-buy initiatives let installers purchase equipment in bulk and spend less time chasing leads, accruing savings that they can pass on to customers. Tai, tantalized by Laminar’s menu of low prices for a heat-pump setup, decided to give it a shot.
After a representative from the startup visited her home to check what heat pump size and configuration would fit her needs, Tai signed up for a ductless minisplit system for $20,000—thousands less than even her lowest initial quote. She then also took advantage of an additional $8,500 state rebate and eight-year financing with zero percent interest.
The new equipment has been life-changing, Tai said.
She no longer has to buy fuel oil for heating in the winter, and the heat pump is so efficient that last year she saved roughly $1,300 on her energy bills. In contrast to the old, noisy window ACs, the new system’s wall-mounted, air-filtering indoor units “are so quiet,” she said. Her allergy symptoms have improved. And Mittens is comfortable and doing well, she noted. “I couldn’t be happier.”
Group-buy initiatives smooth out demand by allowing for planned installations when business naturally slumps.
Like Tai, homeowners in communities across the US are signing up for an unusual way of buying heat pumps: together. Companies, nonprofits, and local governments are increasingly offering programs that coordinate consumer demand to secure meaningful discounts of around 10 percent to 20 percent, which can translate to roughly $3,000 to $6,000 per installation. It’s like a group buying a pack of muffins at Costco rather than each buying a muffin at Starbucks.
The bulk-buy approach is taking off as the Trump administration demolishes electrification incentives. Last year, the Republican-led Congress eliminated a $2,000 federal tax credit for home heat pumps. Late last month, the administration said that it won’t allow home energy-efficiency rebates to be used by people looking to get off gas.
While heat pumps reduce pollution and typically cut owners’ energy bills, they can be a pricey proposition up front. Whole-home installations typically range from $17,000 to $30,000, depending on the property size, insulation, climate, and many other factors, according to electrification advocacy nonprofit Rewiring America.
“Even though homeowners often save significantly over time, the first quotes can bring real sticker shock,” said Cole Merrick, founder and CEO of VoltHub, an online heat-pump installation marketplace.
VoltHub and heat-pump general contractor Vayu organized a California group-buy program this spring to serve the counties of Los Angeles and Orange and the greater San Francisco Bay Area. They’re offering another one this summer.
Most heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning replacements are emergencies, and these jobs will continue to make up the majority of Vayu’s business, said founder and CEO Shreyas Sudhakar. But for households that can hold off on getting a heat pump installed, group buys are ideal, he noted.
The process entails a waiting period, which can be several weeks to about six months, as the slots fill up and the installer determines the final pricing. The installer then confirms individual quotes with customers—who can decide not to move forward without penalty—and schedules the work.
Electrician and technicians install a condenser/compressor to connect a residential heat pump system on July 21, 2025 in Charlotte, Vermont.Robert Nickelsberg via Getty
Heat pump group buys come in different forms. They can be organized at the grassroots level, offered by a contractor, or run by a third party that aggregates demand over a limited time window. Through a competitive bidding process, the third party vets qualified installers and chooses one or more to carry out the jobs.
The collective bargaining approach has succeeded in the past. Nonprofit Solar United Neighbors has led similar group buys for rooftop solar since 2007, helping thousands of households net deals on installations.
Now, the organization is partnering with iChoosr, an international company that helps households electrify, in order to get group deals for heat pumps, too. Using iChoosr’s Switch Together platform, people in select areas can sign up to unlock group discounts for the all-electric appliance, as well as solar and batteries.
Since 2023, more than 5,100 US homeowners have gotten their solar panels or batteries via iChoosr, which earns a fee from participating vetted installers for jobs they get through the platform, said Fred Wu, a director of community engagement for the company.
iChoosr was already running successful bulk-purchasing programs for heat pumps in the UK and the Netherlands, and launched its first offerings in the US last year with Solar United Neighbors. They opened one program in the Colorado Front Range and another in the Washington, DC, area in July, closed those lists in September, and finished up the installations—for about 90 households—by the end of the year.
On the heels of that success, iChoosr reran group buys in both regions this spring. More than 1,000 households have signed up expressing interest so far.
“The first thing we need…is a local government that wants to bring this to their constituents.”
This year, the company will also launch new programs in the metro areas of Houston and Dallas, Chicagoland, and northern Arizona around Flagstaff, partnering with nonprofits and local governments at no cost to them, Wu said.
For contractors, these bulk-buy initiatives are a boon.
They cut down on the installers’ sales and marketing costs, thanks to word of mouth and publicity from third parties like iChoosr. Home electrification contractor Elephant Energy, which is working with iChoosr to deploy the Colorado heat-pump installations, saves about $300 per project, said CEO and co-founder DR Richardson. Elephant has also run its own community bulk buys across its California, Colorado, and Massachusetts markets, he noted.
Group-buy initiatives smooth out demand by allowing for planned installations when business naturally slumps. Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning work is highly seasonal, with most people calling an HVAC technician during the first heat wave or cold snap.
“For a lot of businesses, two months will make up 70 percent to 80 percent of the revenue for the year,” said Sudhakar of Vayu. “So to be able to have some guaranteed revenue that is on the books and [can] fill downtime is really valuable.”
But heat pump group-buying programs aren’t ubiquitous yet. Wu of iChoosr recommends that homeowners who are interested but not in a rush contact city and county leaders to let them know that they’d like to get a bulk deal going in their area.
“We’re continuously trying to expand the program,” Wu said. “The first thing we need…is a local government that wants to bring this to their constituents.” These partnerships lend credibility and visibility to the group initiatives, since local governments help promote them.
Tai in Boston was grateful to be part of Laminar Collective’s heat-pump bulk buy. It not only helped her save money but also provided her time to get her questions answered without the sales pressure she felt from one-on-one solicitations. “It’s empowering,” she said. After she told her neighbor about her experience, they got their heat pump that way, too.