ICE wants to give agents electrified gloves that shock people into compliance
ICE wants to give agents electrified gloves that shock people into compliance

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aiming to spend up to $20 million on equipping officers and agents with specialized gloves that deliver painful electric shocks. These plans were outlined in a notice published by the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, with an unspecified quantity of the devices set to be delivered by March […]

Doctors Push Back Against Trump’s Vaccine Order

In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at the potential impact of Trump’s executive order on vaccines, the healthcare dynamos on Forbes 50 Over 50, a Swiss startup focused on a rare bleeding disorder, and more.

Brendan Carr is one firing away from an unchecked FCC
Brendan Carr is one firing away from an unchecked FCC

President Donald Trump already holds a Republican majority in the agency tasked with regulating America’s communications systems. But with a new nomination to the Federal Communications Commission, he could move to shut out opposing voices altogether – albeit at a legal risk. The FCC is currently composed of two Republicans and one Democrat – Republican […]

How the “censorship-industrial complex” is changing the Internet and US policy

I first heard the term “censorship-industrial complex” on April 15, 2025.  That’s when I got the tip that a small office in the U.S. State Department, which focused on monitoring and countering foreign disinformation from the likes of Russia, Iran, and China, was facing imminent shutdown—the next day.  And the reason? R/FIMI, as the office…

Claude will apply invisible watermarks to AI text and images
Claude will apply invisible watermarks to AI text and images

Anthropic has pledged to start marking Claude-generated text and images with machine-readable data, in an effort to comply with European rules for AI transparency. “Generated text will carry embedded watermarks, and generated files will include digitally signed provenance metadata where supported,” Anthropic says on a new Claude support page. The changes are invisible to human […]

Can Tariffs Boost U.S. Solar Component Production?

This week’s Current Climate newsletter also looks at who gets electricity when the grid is under strain and boom times for clean energy investment

Space mirrors could ruin astronomy — and your eyes
Space mirrors could ruin astronomy — and your eyes

Solar energy, at any time of day or night – that’s the dream of space mirror projects. Futurists have been imagining satellite mirrors that could reflect the sun’s light onto the Earth’s surface for over a century. Russian scientists experimented with the concept in the ’90s with the Znamya project. The idea is to put […]

Buc-ee’s dodges John Oliver to sue another small business
Buc-ee’s dodges John Oliver to sue another small business

Buc-ee’s became something of a viral sensation during the World Cup, but it has a troubling history of suing small gas stations and convenience stores. On a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver literally begged the company to sue him for selling merch featuring his squirrel mascot, Mr. Nutterbutter, with branding that reads […]

How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy
How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy

This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project. One morning in April 2025, employees of a small office in the US State Department got the email many of them had been dreading.  For months, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had been cutting a wide swath through…

Meta ordered to pay an additional $567 million in public nuisance ruling
Meta ordered to pay an additional $567 million in public nuisance ruling

Meta has been ordered to pay $567 million in the second phase of New Mexico’s landmark child safety case, bringing total charges to nearly $1 billion for being a “public nuisance.” In a ruling published on Thursday, the Santa Fe district court found that Meta’s platforms are a “significant contributing cause” of a teen mental […]