Enders Analysis Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy Research firm blames outdated DRM tech, Facebook ads, Amazon hardware, and more. Scharon Harding – May 30, 2025 5:18 pm | 114 An Amazon Fire Stick and remote. Credit: Amazon An Amazon Fire Stick and remote. Credit: Amazon Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Amazon Fire Sticks are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report today from Enders Analysis, a media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm. Technologies from other media conglomerates, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are also enabling what the report’s authors deem an “industrial scale of theft." The report, "Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem," focuses on the European market but highlights the global growth of piracy of streaming services as they increasingly acquire rights to live programs, like sporting events. Per the BBC, the report points to the availability of multiple, simultaneous illegal streams for big events that draw tens of thousands of pirate viewers. Enders' report places some blame on Facebook for showing advertisements for access to illegal streams, as well as Google and Microsoft for the alleged “continued depreciation” of their digital rights management (DRM) systems, Widevine and PlayReady, respectively. Ars Technica reached out to Facebook, Google, and Microsoft for comment but didn’t receive a response before publication. The report echoes complaints shared throughout the industry, including by the world’s largest European soccer streamer, DAZN. Streaming piracy is “almost a crisis for the sports rights industry,” DAZN’s head of global rights, Tom Burrows, said at The Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit in February. At the same event, Nick Herm, COO of Comcast-owned European telecommunication firm Sky Group, estimated that piracy was costing his company “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue. At the time, Enders co-founder Claire Enders said that the pirating of sporting events accounts for “about 50 percent of most markets.” Jailbroken Fire Sticks Friday's Enders report named Fire Sticks as a significant contributor to streaming piracy, calling the hardware a “piracy enabler.” Enders’ report pointed to security risks that pirate viewers face, including providing credit card information and email addresses to unknown entities, which can make people vulnerable to phishing and malware. However, reports of phishing and malware stemming from streaming piracy, which occurs through various methods besides a Fire TV Stick, seem to be rather limited. Still, at the February Financial Times event, Herm said that Fire Sticks account “for about half of the piracy in the UK.” “People think that because it’s a legitimate brand, it must be OK. So they give their credit card details to criminal gangs. Amazon is not engaging with us as much as we’d like," he said. In the UK, there has been a push to crack down on illegal usage of Fire Sticks. For example, in November 2024, a man received a three-year, four-month sentence for hacking Fire Sticks. In June 2024, another man got a two-year suspended sentence after a police raid found jailbroken Fire Sticks in his home. In the US, however, there aren’t nearly as many publicized efforts to combat illegal streaming on Amazon devices. While Enders’ report accuses Amazon of contributing to the piracy problem, as the owner of its own streaming service, Prime Video, Amazon has an incentive to fight piracy. Amazon’s streaming business includes selling streaming hardware, but the business is more centered on getting people to sign up for Amazon services (like Prime Video), data collection, and ad sales. When reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica: Pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights and compromises the security and privacy of our customers. We work with industry partners and relevant authorities to combat piracy and protect customers from the risks associated with pirated content. Our Appstore prohibits apps that infringe upon the rights of third parties, and we warn customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources. Amazon’s representative also told Ars that Amazon works with industry partners to break up piracy networks and has assisted law enforcement efforts, including the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in London and UK IP Crime Group. DRM limitations Enders’ report also blamed poorly updated DRM systems, especially from Google and Microsoft, for contributing to streaming piracy. Google’s Widevine and Microsoft’s PlayReady "are now compromised across various security levels,” the report said, pointing to a lack of upkeep. Microsoft issued its most recent big update to PlayReady, version 4.6, in December 2022. The report authors wrote: Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline. A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority. Outside of Enders' report, Google was criticized by the Italian government earlier this year for allegedly failing to block pirate websites identified by Italy’s communication regulator, AGCOM. In March, the Court of Milan ordered Google to poison its public DNS servers with the goal of blocking illegal soccer streams. And beyond the aforementioned tech giants, earlier this month, France ordered five VPN providers (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN, and CyberGhost) to block illegal sports streaming sites. Unsurprisingly, the move has been slammed by VPN providers as setting “a dangerous precedent," per i2Coalition, an Internet infrastructure trade association that manages the international VPN Trust Initiative consortium of VPN providers. A growing problem As the Internet solidifies its position as the primary method for watching shows, movies, and, increasingly, live events, it presents new challenges to content distributors and owners seeking to curb online piracy. In the case of sports, especially, the distribution of sports rights across various linear networks and streaming services often means signing up for multiple services in order to watch a single team’s season. For some fans—including NFL players themselves—that's financially and/or logistically impractical. Simultaneously, anti-piracy advocates argue that piracy could lead to higher subscription fees for streaming services. As legislation and rights holders become more stringent about piracy, we can expect more effort from tech providers and law enforcement to block piracy, while hackers also seek new ways to enable illegal streams. Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 114 Comments

Fifteen Iranian students and researchers sued the Trump administration for completely halting student visa interviews while it determines whether to vet all visa applicants’ social media accounts.The suit, filed against Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a Virginia federal court, claims that the pause on student visa interviews violates the Administrative Procedures Act, a law prohibiting capricious rule-making. The complaint is currently sealed. In an email, Curtis Morrison and Hamdi Masri, lawyers for the students, noted that the State Department has required visa applicants to disclose their social media handles since May 2019. Visa applicants from certain Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, are already subject to “extensive social media vetting,” Masri said, adding that Trump seemed to want to “ensure students entering align with his political values.”The students and researchers who brought the suit against Rubio were admitted to universities across the country — including Yale, Ohio State, and the University of South Florida — for graduate programs in computer science, engineering, finance, and other disciplines. Per their attorneys, each of the students had already attended visa interviews, but all of their applications are currently “awaiting national security vetting.” Some of the students were interviewed over a year ago.The pause on student visa interviews is part of the Trump administration’s multi-pronged attack on universities and international students. On Wednesday, Rubio said the State Department would start working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese Students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” On May 22nd, DHS rescinded Harvard’s access to a federal database used to track foreign students’ enrollment, putting nearly 6,800 people enrolled at Harvard at risk of immediate deportation until a federal judge intervened.Rubio has also suspended the visas of international students involved in pro-Palestine protests on campus. More recently, the State Department restricted visas of “foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States,” i.e., regulators who enforce the European Union’s Digital Services Act.See More:

Artificial intelligence is a deep and convoluted world. The scientists who work in this field often rely on jargon and lingo to explain what they’re working on. As a result, we frequently have to use those technical terms in our coverage of the artificial intelligence industry. That’s why we thought it would be helpful to put together a glossary with definitions of some of the most important words and phrases that we use in our articles. We will regularly update this glossary to add new entries as researchers continually uncover novel methods to push the frontier of artificial intelligence while identifying emerging safety risks. AGI Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is a nebulous term. But it generally refers to AI that’s more capable than the average human at many, if not most, tasks. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently described AGI as the “equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker.” Meanwhile, OpenAI’s charter defines AGI as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” Google DeepMind’s understanding differs slightly from these two definitions; the lab views AGI as “AI that’s at least as capable as humans at most cognitive tasks.” Confused? Not to worry — so are experts at the forefront of AI research. AI agent An AI agent refers to a tool that uses AI technologies to perform a series of tasks on your behalf — beyond what a more basic AI chatbot could do — such as filing expenses, booking tickets or a table at a restaurant, or even writing and maintaining code. However, as we’ve explained before, there are lots of moving pieces in this emergent space, so “AI agent” might mean different things to different people. Infrastructure is also still being built out to deliver on its envisaged capabilities. But the basic concept implies an autonomous system that may draw on multiple AI systems to carry out multistep tasks. Chain of thought Given a simple question, a human brain can answer without even thinking too much about it — things like “which animal is taller, a giraffe or a cat?” But in many cases, you often need a pen and paper to come up with the right answer because there are intermediary steps. For instance, if a farmer has chickens and cows, and together they have 40 heads and 120 legs, you might need to write down a simple equation to come up with the answer (20 chickens and 20 cows). In an AI context, chain-of-thought reasoning for large language models means breaking down a problem into smaller, intermediate steps to improve the quality of the end result. It usually takes longer to get an answer, but the answer is more likely to be correct, especially in a logic or coding context. Reasoning models are developed from traditional large language models and optimized for chain-of-thought thinking thanks to reinforcement learning. (See: Large language model) Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Deep learning A subset of self-improving machine learning in which AI algorithms are designed with a multi-layered, artificial neural network (ANN) structure. This allows them to make more complex correlations compared to simpler machine learning-based systems, such as linear models or decision trees. The structure of deep learning algorithms draws inspiration from the interconnected pathways of neurons in the human brain. Deep learning AI models are able to identify important characteristics in data themselves, rather than requiring human engineers to define these features. The structure also supports algorithms that can learn from errors and, through a process of repetition and adjustment, improve their own outputs. However, deep learning systems require a lot of data points to yield good results (millions or more). They also typically take longer to train compared to simpler machine learning algorithms — so development costs tend to be higher. (See: Neural network) Diffusion Diffusion is the tech at the heart of many art-, music-, and text-generating AI models. Inspired by physics, diffusion systems slowly “destroy” the structure of data — e.g. photos, songs, and so on — by adding noise until there’s nothing left. In physics, diffusion is spontaneous and irreversible — sugar diffused in coffee can’t be restored to cube form. But diffusion systems in AI aim to learn a sort of “reverse diffusion” process to restore the destroyed data, gaining the ability to recover the data from noise. Distillation Distillation is a technique used to extract knowledge from a large AI model with a ‘teacher-student’ model. Developers send requests to a teacher model and record the outputs. Answers are sometimes compared with a dataset to see how accurate they are. These outputs are then used to train the student model, which is trained to approximate the teacher’s behavior. Distillation can be used to create a smaller, more efficient model based on a larger model with a minimal distillation loss. This is likely how OpenAI developed GPT-4 Turbo, a faster version of GPT-4. While all AI companies use distillation internally, it may have also been used by some AI companies to catch up with frontier models. Distillation from a competitor usually violates the terms of service of AI API and chat assistants. Fine-tuning This refers to the further training of an AI model to optimize performance for a more specific task or area than was previously a focal point of its training — typically by feeding in new, specialized (i.e., task-oriented) data.  Many AI startups are taking large language models as a starting point to build a commercial product but are vying to amp up utility for a target sector or task by supplementing earlier training cycles with fine-tuning based on their own domain-specific knowledge and expertise. (See: Large language model [LLM]) GAN A GAN, or Generative Adversarial Network, is a type of machine learning framework that underpins some important developments in generative AI when it comes to producing realistic data – including (but not only) deepfake tools. GANs involve the use of a pair of neural networks, one of which draws on its training data to generate an output that is passed to the other model to evaluate. This second, discriminator model thus plays the role of a classifier on the generator’s output – enabling it to improve over time.  The GAN structure is set up as a competition (hence “adversarial”) – with the two models essentially programmed to try to outdo each other: the generator is trying to get its output past the discriminator, while the discriminator is working to spot artificially generated data. This structured contest can optimize AI outputs to be more realistic without the need for additional human intervention. Though GANs work best for narrower applications (such as producing realistic photos or videos), rather than general purpose AI. Hallucination Hallucination is the AI industry’s preferred term for AI models making stuff up – literally generating information that is incorrect. Obviously, it’s a huge problem for AI quality.  Hallucinations produce GenAI outputs that can be misleading and could even lead to real-life risks — with potentially dangerous consequences (think of a health query that returns harmful medical advice). This is why most GenAI tools’ small print now warns users to verify AI-generated answers, even though such disclaimers are usually far less prominent than the information the tools dispense at the touch of a button. The problem of AIs fabricating information is thought to arise as a consequence of gaps in training data. For general purpose GenAI especially — also sometimes known as foundation models — this looks difficult to resolve. There is simply not enough data in existence to train AI models to comprehensively resolve all the questions we could possibly ask. TL;DR: we haven’t invented God (yet).  Hallucinations are contributing to a push towards increasingly specialized and/or vertical AI models — i.e. domain-specific AIs that require narrower expertise – as a way to reduce the likelihood of knowledge gaps and shrink disinformation risks. Inference Inference is the process of running an AI model. It’s setting a model loose to make predictions or draw conclusions from previously-seen data. To be clear, inference can’t happen without training; a model must learn patterns in a set of data before it can effectively extrapolate from this training data. Many types of hardware can perform inference, ranging from smartphone processors to beefy GPUs to custom-designed AI accelerators. But not all of them can run models equally well. Very large models would take ages to make predictions on, say, a laptop versus a cloud server with high-end AI chips. [See: Training] Large language model (LLM) Large language models, or LLMs, are the AI models used by popular AI assistants, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s AI Llama, Microsoft Copilot, or Mistral’s Le Chat. When you chat with an AI assistant, you interact with a large language model that processes your request directly or with the help of different available tools, such as web browsing or code interpreters. AI assistants and LLMs can have different names. For instance, GPT is OpenAI’s large language model and ChatGPT is the AI assistant product. LLMs are deep neural networks made of billions of numerical parameters (or weights, see below) that learn the relationships between words and phrases and create a representation of language, a sort of multidimensional map of words. These models are created from encoding the patterns they find in billions of books, articles, and transcripts. When you prompt an LLM, the model generates the most likely pattern that fits the prompt. It then evaluates the most probable next word after the last one based on what was said before. Repeat, repeat, and repeat. (See: Neural network) Neural network A neural network refers to the multi-layered algorithmic structure that underpins deep learning — and, more broadly, the whole boom in generative AI tools following the emergence of large language models.  Although the idea of taking inspiration from the densely interconnected pathways of the human brain as a design structure for data processing algorithms dates all the way back to the 1940s, it was the much more recent rise of graphical processing hardware (GPUs) — via the video game industry — that really unlocked the power of this theory. These chips proved well suited to training algorithms with many more layers than was possible in earlier epochs — enabling neural network-based AI systems to achieve far better performance across many domains, including voice recognition, autonomous navigation, and drug discovery. (See: Large language model [LLM]) Training Developing machine learning AIs involves a process known as training. In simple terms, this refers to data being fed in in order that the model can learn from patterns and generate useful outputs. Things can get a bit philosophical at this point in the AI stack — since, pre-training, the mathematical structure that’s used as the starting point for developing a learning system is just a bunch of layers and random numbers. It’s only through training that the AI model really takes shape. Essentially, it’s the process of the system responding to characteristics in the data that enables it to adapt outputs towards a sought-for goal — whether that’s identifying images of cats or producing a haiku on demand. It’s important to note that not all AI requires training. Rules-based AIs that are programmed to follow manually predefined instructions — for example, such as linear chatbots — don’t need to undergo training. However, such AI systems are likely to be more constrained than (well-trained) self-learning systems. Still, training can be expensive because it requires lots of inputs — and, typically, the volumes of inputs required for such models have been trending upwards. Hybrid approaches can sometimes be used to shortcut model development and help manage costs. Such as doing data-driven fine-tuning of a rules-based AI — meaning development requires less data, compute, energy, and algorithmic complexity than if the developer had started building from scratch. [See: Inference] Transfer learning A technique where a previously trained AI model is used as the starting point for developing a new model for a different but typically related task – allowing knowledge gained in previous training cycles to be reapplied.  Transfer learning can drive efficiency savings by shortcutting model development. It can also be useful when data for the task that the model is being developed for is somewhat limited. But it’s important to note that the approach has limitations. Models that rely on transfer learning to gain generalized capabilities will likely require training on additional data in order to perform well in their domain of focus (See: Fine tuning) Weights Weights are core to AI training, as they determine how much importance (or weight) is given to different features (or input variables) in the data used for training the system — thereby shaping the AI model’s output.  Put another way, weights are numerical parameters that define what’s most salient in a dataset for the given training task. They achieve their function by applying multiplication to inputs. Model training typically begins with weights that are randomly assigned, but as the process unfolds, the weights adjust as the model seeks to arrive at an output that more closely matches the target. For example, an AI model for predicting housing prices that’s trained on historical real estate data for a target location could include weights for features such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, whether a property is detached or semi-detached, whether it has parking, a garage, and so on.  Ultimately, the weights the model attaches to each of these inputs reflect how much they influence the value of a property, based on the given dataset. Topics

Sen. Maggie Hassan has asked Spotify about its moderation policies after a BI investigation. Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP 2025-05-24T18:31:51Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Sen. Maggie Hassan is demanding answers from Spotify over fake podcasts that pushed opioids. In a letter, Hassan asked Spotify to "take action" on the phony content. Hassan's letter comes after a BI investigation found 200 podcasts on Spotify peddling opioids. A senator is demanding answers from Spotify about its handling of fake podcasts that promoted opioids and other prescription drugs.In the wake of a Business Insider investigation that found 200 phony podcasts on Spotify advertising the sale of pills, often without a prescription, Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire urged the digital music and podcast company to moderate its content better.Some of the podcasts were removed after BI previously flagged them to Spotify."I urge you to take action to prevent fake podcasts that facilitate the illicit sale of drugs — including those that could contain fentanyl — from appearing on your platform," the two-term Democratic lawmaker said in a letter to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek."Addressing these threats requires an all-hands-on-deck approach, and based on recent reports, Spotify has not exercised the level of diligence needed," she continued.In response to BI's investigation earlier this month, a Spotify spokesperson said: "The content in question has been removed because it violates our Platform Rules. We are constantly working to detect and remove violating content across our service." In response to Hassan's letter, a company spokesperson on Saturday referred BI to its earlier statement.Many lawmakers across the United States have long sought to address the scourge of opioid abuse, which increasingly comes in the form of fentanyl.Fentanyl trafficking is a major issue for President Donald Trump, who has accused Mexico, Canada, and China of allowing the drug to be transported into the United States. Trump imposed tariffs on those countries in part to force them to do more to stem the flow of fentanyl.In her letter, Hassan, a former governor, spoke of the "heart-wrenching conversations" that she's had with constituents in her state who've lost family members or friends to drug overdoses."The scale of the fentanyl crisis requires cooperation among law enforcement, online platforms, and international partners to protect our communities," she said.Hassan also asked Spotify to detail its moderation tools and policies and inquired about the number of drug-related podcasts it has had to remove. She asked whether the platform received any revenue from the removed podcasts.The lawmaker, who serves on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, gave Spotify until June 12 to respond to her inquiries."We are constantly working to detect and remove violating content across our service," a Spotify spokesperson said in response to BI's investigation.Read the full letter here:

In a move Democrats warned would have disastrous consequences for the economy, the environment, and public health, the Republican-led Senate Thursday voted to block California’s electric-vehicle mandates, revoking the state’s right to implement the nation’s toughest emissions standards.    Republicans used the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, to overturn California’s long-standing authority under the Clean Air Act to request waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency to pass emissions standards stricter than federal rules and protect residents from dangerous air pollution. The move affects 17 other states and Washington, D.C., which have voluntarily adopted one or more of California’s stricter standards.  The CRA allows Congress to quickly rescind a rule within a limited time after it’s issued by a federal agency, allowing a simple majority vote rather than the 60 votes needed to advance legislation under the filibuster rule.  An aerial view of traffic on a smoggy day in Los Angeles in January 1985. [Photo: Ernst Haas/Getty Images] But both the Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s official nonpartisan adviser, and the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional referee, said the waivers are not rules and so are not subject to the Congressional Review Act. In defying the Senate parliamentarian, Democrats charged, the vote endangers not just the health of children and the climate but also decades of legal precedent and the integrity of the Senate itself. “Today, the Senate has done something unprecedented,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island late Wednesday night, after he and his Democratic colleagues spent the past several days urging Republicans to respect not just California’s authority under the law, but also Senate rules.  “Our actions and the ones that will follow from the procedural steps taken here today, over the next day or so will change the Clean Air Act, will change the Congressional Review Act, will change the rules of the Senate, and will do so by overruling the parliamentarian and breaking the filibuster—in effect, going nuclear,” Whitehouse said, referring to attempts to subvert the filibuster. “This isn’t just about California’s climate policies, and this isn’t just about the scope of the Congressional Review Act, and this isn’t just about eliminating the legislative filibuster,” said California Sen. Alex Padilla on the Senate floor Tuesday. The Trump administration’s EPA submitted California’s waivers for review by Congress “with full knowledge that they are not actually rules” subject to the CRA, Padilla said, opening the door for any agency to ask Congress to revoke regulations a new administration doesn’t like.  By mid-afternoon Thursday, Republicans moved to overturn California’s waivers through a procedural maneuver—giving the Senate the authority to determine what constitutes a rule for fast-track voting. They overturned waivers behind California’s rules to reduce tailpipe emissions from passenger vehicles and trucks, those regulating medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and the rule for heavy-duty smog-producing diesel and gas trucks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) mocked Democrats’ objections to using the CRA, saying they were “throwing a tantrum over a supposed procedural problem.”Thune insisted that having a waiver submitted to Congress “is all that Congress has ever needed to decide to consider something under the Congressional Review Act.” He called the GAO’s ruling that the waiver is not a rule “an extraordinary deviation from precedent,” saying it was the first time the office “has decided to insert itself into the process and affirmatively declare that an agency rule submitted to Congress as a rule is not a rule.”  Despite Thune’s claim, since the CRA was passed in 1996 the GAO has offered 26 legal opinions about whether an agency action was a rule in response to inquiries from members of Congress. And EPA never submitted California Clean Air Act waivers to Congress before the Trump administration, Padilla and his Democratic colleagues say. They contend that Republicans chose this route because they don’t have the votes to withdraw the waivers through legislation. “The CRA has never been used to go after emission waivers like the ones in question today,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on the floor Tuesday. “The waiver is so important to the health of our country, and particularly to our children; to go nuclear on something as significant as this and to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry is outrageous.” The first waiver was granted to California on July 11, 1968, Whitehouse told his colleagues in a last-ditch effort to change their minds late Wednesday night. Waivers have either been granted or amended or modified repeatedly since then, he said. “The score on whether the California clean air rule is treated by EPA as a waiver or a rule? It’s 131 to zero.” The use of the Congressional Review Act resolution is inconsistent with past precedent and violates the plain language of the act itself, said John Swanton, a spokesperson for California’s Air Resources Board, which regulates emissions.  “The vote does not change CARB’s authority,” Swanton said, adding that the agency will continue its mission to protect the public health of Californians impacted by harmful air pollution. Ten million Californians live in areas that are under distinct, elevated threats from air pollution, said Adam Schiff, California’s junior senator. That has led to higher rates of respiratory issues like asthma and chronic lung disease, and increased the risk of heart disease, cancer, chronic headaches, and immune system issues, he said.  Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks about the importance of the Clean Air Act in California during a Senate meeting on May 8. [Image: U.S. Senate floor webcast] “And that is multiplied by us living now on the front lines of the climate crisis. We have devastating and year-round fire dangers that put millions of other pollutants into our air,” Schiff said. “We need, deserve, and reserve the right as Californians to do something about our air.” Yet earlier this month, House Republicans, joined by 35 Democrats, including two from California, voted to rescind the waivers, sending the issue to the Senate. A “Compelling and Extraordinary” Need California’s legal authority to implement stricter air quality standards than federal rules comes from having already implemented its own tailpipe-emission regulations before Congress passed national standards in 1967. California officials developed the regulations to deal with the “compelling and extraordinary” air-pollution problems caused by the Golden State’s unique geography, climate, and abundance of people and vehicles. Recognizing these unique conditions, Congress gave California the authority to ask the Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver from rules barring states from passing air and climate pollution rules that are more protective than federal rules.  Only one waiver was denied, an action that was quickly reversed, according to CARB. And though the Trump administration in 2019 withdrew a waiver, a move legal scholars say has no basis in the law, the Biden administration restored the state’s authority to set its own vehicle-emission standards within a few years. Republicans argued that California’s rules amount to de facto national standards, given the state’s size and the fact that other states have signed on.  But California can’t force its emission standards on other states, Padilla said. “Yes, over a dozen other states have voluntarily followed in California’s footsteps, not because they were forced to, but because they chose to, in order to protect their constituents, their residents, and protect our planet.” California’s standards also represent ambitious but achievable steps to cut carbon emissions and fight the climate crisis, Padilla said. “Transportation is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and California has been proud to set the example for other states who may choose to follow suit.” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) told his Republican colleagues late Wednesday night why his state’s unique geography and climate create particularly hazardous air-quality problems. [Image: U.S. Senate floor webcast] Padilla, who grew up in California’s chronically polluted San Fernando Valley, recalled being sent home from grade school “on a pretty regular basis” when throat-burning smog settled over the valley. “It appears that Republicans want to overturn half a century of precedent in order to undermine California’s ability to protect the health of our residents,” Padilla said. “Republicans seem to be putting the wealth of the big oil industry over the health of our constituents.” “For Their Fossil Fuel Donors” Rhode Island’s Whitehouse, who has long schooled his colleagues on the perils of carbon pollution, took to the floor Tuesday to school them on the Congressional Review Act. Under the American legal system, administrative agencies can make rules through “a very robust process” that follows the Administrative Procedure Act, Whitehouse said. A rule could be contested in court, but years ago Congress decided there also could be a period of review when congressional members could reject the rule.  And for all the decades since the CRA was passed, he said, it’s been used to address rules under the APA within the specified 60 days.Other states, including Rhode Island, follow California’s emissions standards because it’s good for public health to have clean air, Whitehouse said. “Efficient cars may mean lower cost for consumers, but those lower costs for consumers are lower sales for the fossil fuel industry.” Whitehouse told his colleagues they had legitimate pathways to change laws they didn’t like. They could pass a joint resolution or a simple Senate resolution. But those approaches would require 60 votes to end debate. “They don’t want to do that,” he said. “They want to ram this thing through for their fossil fuel donors.” Republicans, by contrast, argued they had the authority to protect consumers from what they call California’s “electric vehicle mandate,” which they say would endanger consumers, the economy, and the nation’s energy supply. “And our already shaky electric grid would quickly face huge new burdens from the surge in new electric vehicles,” argued Thune.  Congress had approved $5 billion to build electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the country, but the Trump administration withheld that funding, triggering a lawsuit from a coalition of attorneys to reverse what they said was a clearly illegal action. Republicans’ attacks on electric vehicles could disrupt a burgeoning industry built around the transition to renewable energy. “The repeal of these waivers will dramatically destabilize the regulatory landscape at a time when industry needs certainty to invest in the future and compete on a global scale,” said Jamie Hall, policy director for EV Realty, which develops EV-charging hubs. Thune also argued that California’s waiver rules are an improper expansion of a limited Clean Air Act authority, echoing an argument in Project 2025, a policy blueprint for the second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has long battled efforts to combat climate change. In a chapter on transportation asserts, Project 2025 claims that California has no valid basis under the Clean Air Act to claim an extraordinary or unique air quality impact from carbon dioxide emissions. Its recommendation? “Revoke the special waiver granted to California by the Biden administration.” On Wednesday, a clearly frustrated Whitehouse argued that Republicans were helping the fossil fuel industry create a shortcut for itself so it can sell more gasoline and ignore all the states that joined California to demand cleaner air for their constituents. “The fossil fuel industry essentially runs the Republican Party right now,” he said. Last year, the oil and gas industry spent more than $153 million on lobbying, led by the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which spent $27.6 million to influence Congress on bills including those designed to repeal vehicle-emission standards. The trade group also donated $178,750 to congressional candidates, 96% of which went to Republicans.  The American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. oil and gas industry trade association, spent $6.25 million on lobbying last year to influence some of the same bills. Of nearly $400,000 donated to congressional candidates last year, 78% went to Republicans.  Ninety-five percent of the $21,000 the Heritage Foundation donated to congressional candidates last year went to Republicans. “We Believe That You Can Do It” The week before Donald Trump returned to office, the American Petroleum Institute held its biggest annual meeting in Washington, D.C. API promoted the event as an opportunity to urge the incoming Trump administration and Congress to “seize the American energy opportunity” by advancing commonsense energy policies. Thune joined API Chief Executive Mike Sommers onstage, where they reminisced about starting their careers in adjacent offices in the same congressional office building 30 years ago.  “It is a huge opportunity, having an administration that actually is pro-energy development working with the Congress,” Thune told his old friend. “We want to be supportive in any way that we can in ensuring that the president and his team have success in making America energy dominant.” Sommers suggested that one of the “big, powerful tools” Congress can use when one party controls both chambers is the Congressional Review Act, which he said offers fast-track authority to reverse “midnight regulations” passed by the Biden administration. Thune said he wouldn’t be able to use the CRA for one of California’s tailpipe emissions standards because it doesn’t fit within the required time window. But he was arguing with the parliamentarian and others, he said, “about the whole California waiver issue and how to reverse that because that was such a radical regulatory overreach.”Both California’s Clean Cars and Clean Trucks rules require an increasing percentage of vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emissions by 2035, with the cars rule, the so-called “EV mandate,” requiring that 100% of passenger cars and trucks be zero emissions by that date. “What California did was completely radical,” Sommers said at the meeting. “The fact that 17 other states who’ve waived into this are going to be subject to it could completely change the vehicle market.” “So we would highly encourage you to look at that as an option for the CRA,” Sommers told Thune. “And we believe that you can do it.” Thune assured Sommers that his committee chairs and team were looking at ways to fit repeal of California’s waivers “within the parameters of a CRA action” to fix what they saw as a shared problem. The oil and gas industry appreciated the efforts of Thune; John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Senate Majority Whip; and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who pledged to overturn California’s clean cars rule and introduced the measure to do so last month.  “Today, the United States Senate delivered a victory for American consumers, manufacturers, and U.S. energy security by voting to overturn the prior administration’s EPA rule authorizing California’s gas car ban and preventing its spread across our country,” said the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers in a joint statement. “We cannot thank Senators John Barrasso, Shelley Moore Capito, and Leader John Thune enough for their leadership on this important issue.” Back on the Senate floor, Democrats warned their Republican colleagues that they may live to regret their decision to override the parliamentarian and flout legislative rules. “It won’t be long before Democrats are once again in the driver’s seat here, in the majority once again,” Padilla said. When that happens, he warned, every agency action that Democrats don’t like, whether it’s a rule or not, and no matter how much time has passed, would be fair game with this new precedent.  “I suggest that we all think long and hard and be very careful about this,” he implored, in vain. “I would urge my colleagues, all my colleagues, to join me, not just in defending California’s rights to protect the health of our residents, not just in combating the existential threat of climate change, but in maintaining order in this chamber.” This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s ban to prevent international students from enrolling at Harvard on Friday, the latest development in the White House’s escalating pressure campaign against the Ivy League university. The judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order on the basis that the school would “sustain immediate and irreparable injury” before a hearing, which CNBC reports is set for Tuesday, could take place.  On Thursday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered her agency to withdraw the school’s certification for admitting foreign students, known as a Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification. The change would block future international students from enrolling at Harvard while also imperiling the legal status of international students currently studying there. The university filed a lawsuit on Friday morning to oppose the ban, arguing that it violates the First Amendment. “Harvard has, over this time, developed programs and degrees tailored to its international students, invested millions to recruit the most talented such students, and integrated its international students into all aspects of the Harvard community,” the lawsuit states, noting that the university along with 7,000 visa holders would suffer “immediate and devastating” effects. Homeland Security accused Harvard of permitting “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students” and jeopardizing safety on campus, pointing the finger at foreign students. The agency also referenced alleged connections between the university and the Chinese Communist Party. “They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law,” Noem said. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.” The escalation against Harvard is the latest attack on high-profile universities during Trump’s second term. The administration has repeatedly targeted Harvard and other academic institutions over their diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments, and claims that they foster antisemitism through student protests over Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza. However the Trump administration’s attack on Harvard shakes out in court, schools that attract the best and brightest from around the globe are likely to suffer as foreign students think twice about taking the risk on elite American universities.

A computer science student is behind a new AI tool designed to track down Redditors showing signs of radicalization and deploy bots to “deradicalize” them through conversation.  First reported by 404 Media, PrismX was built by Sairaj Balaji, a computer science student at SRMIST in Chennai, India. The tool works by analyzing posts for specific keywords and patterns associated with extreme views, giving those users a “radical score.” High scorers are then targeted by AI bots programmed to attempt deradicalization through engaging the user in conversation.  According to the federal government, the primary terror threat to the U.S. now is individuals radicalized to violence online through social media. At the same time, fears around surveillance technology and artificial intelligence infiltrating online communities pose an ethical minefield.  Responding to concerns, Balaji clarified in a Linkedin post that the conversation part of the tool has not been tested on real Reddit users without consent. Instead, the scoring and conversation elements were used in simulated environments for research-purposes only.  “The tool was designed to provoke discussion, not controversy,” he explained in the post. “We’re at a point in history where rogue actors and nation-states are already deploying weaponized AI. If a college student can build something like PrismX, it raises urgent questions: Who’s watching the watchers?” While Balaji doesn’t claim to be an expert in deradicalization, as an engineer, he is interested in the ethical implications of surveillance technology. “Discomfort sparks debate. Debate leads to oversight. And oversight is how we prevent the misuse of emerging technologies,” he continued.  This isn’t the first time Redditors have been used as guinea pigs in recent months. Just last month, researchers from the University of Zurich faced intense backlash after experimenting on an unsuspecting subreddit.  The research involved deploying AI-powered bots into the r/ChangeMyView subreddit, which positions itself as a “place to post an opinion you accept may be flawed”, in an experiment to see if AI could be used to change peoples’ minds. When Redditors, and Reddit itself, found out they were being experimented on without their knowledge, they weren’t impressed.  Reddit’s chief legal officer, Ben Lee, wrote in a post that neither Reddit nor the r/changemyview mods knew about the experiment ahead of time. “What this University of Zurich team did is deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level,” Lee wrote. “It violates academic research and human rights norms, and is prohibited by Reddit’s user agreement and rules, in addition to the subreddit rules.”  While PrismX is not currently being tested on real unconsenting users, it piles on the ever-growing question of the role of artificial intelligence in human spaces. 

It’s a provocative idea: that empathy — that is, putting yourself in another person’s proverbial shoes, and feeling what they feel — is a sin. The Bible contains repeated invocations from Jesus to show deep empathy and compassion for others, including complete strangers. He’s very clear on this point. Moreover, Christianity is built around a fundamental act of empathy so radical — Jesus dying for our sins — that it’s difficult to spin as harmful. Yet as stunning as it may sound, “empathy is a sin” is a claim that’s been growing in recent years across the Christian right. It was first articulated six years ago by controversial pastor and theologian Joe Rigney, now author of the recently published book, The Sin of Empathy, which has drawn plenty of debate among religious commentators. In this construction, empathy is a cudgel that progressives and liberals use to berate and/or guilt-trip Christians into showing empathy to the “wrong” people. Had it stayed within the realm of far-right evangelicals, we likely wouldn’t be discussing this strange view of empathy at all. Yet we are living in an age when the Christian right has gained unprecedented power, both sociocultural and political. The increasing overlap between conservative culture and right-leaning tech spaces means that many disparate public figures are all drinking from the same well of ideas — and so a broader, secular version of the belief that empathy is a tool of manipulation has bubbled into the mainstream through influential figures like Elon Musk.What “empathy is a sin” actually meansThe proposition that too much empathy is a bad thing is far from an idea that belongs to the right. On Reddit, which tends to be relatively left-wing, one popular mantra is that you can’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. That is, too much empathy for someone else can erode your own sense of self, leaving you codependent or open to emotional abuse and manipulation. That’s a pretty standard part of most relationship and self-help advice — even from some Christian advice authors. But in recent months, the idea that empathy is inherently destructive has not only become a major source of debate among Christians, it’s escaped containment and barreled into the mainstream by way of major media outlets, political figures, and influencers.The conversation began with an incendiary 2019 essay by Rigney, then a longtime teacher and pastor at a Baptist seminary, in which he introduced “the enticing sin of empathy” and argued that Satan manipulates people through the intense cultural pressure to feel others’ pain and suffering. Rigney’s ideas were met with ideological pushback, with one Christian blogger saying it “may be the most unwise piece of pastoral theology I’ve seen in my lifetime.” As his essay incited national debate, Rigney himself grew more controversial, facing allegations of dismissing women and telling one now-former Black congregant at his Minneapolis church that “it wouldn’t be sinful for him to own me & my family today.” (In an email to Vox, Rigney denied the congregant’s version of events.) Rigney also has a longtime affiliation with Doug Wilson, the leader of the Reformed Christian Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. In practice, what Rigney is typically decrying is any empathy for a liberal perspective or for someone who’s part of a marginalized community.Now well-known for spreading Christian nationalism, and for allegedly fostering a culture of abuse (allegations he has denied), Wilson’s infamy also comes from his co-authored 1996 essay “Southern Slavery: As It Was,” in which he claimed that “Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.” (“My defense of the South does not make me a racist,” Wilson said in 2003.) Rigney appeared on Wilson’s 2019 podcast series Man Rampant to discuss empathy; their conversation quickly devolved into decrying fake rape allegations and musing that victims of police violence might have “deserved to be shot.” In an email, Rigney told me that both he and Wilson developed their similar views on empathy from the therapist and Rabbi Edwin Friedman, whose posthumously published 1999 book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, has influenced not only family therapy but conservative church leadership and thought. In the book, Friedman argues that American society has devalued the self, leading to an emotional regression and a “low pain threshold.” Alongside this he compares “political correctness” to the Inquisition, and frames a “chronically anxious America” as one that is “organize[d] around its most dysfunctional elements,” in which leaders have difficulty making tough decisions. This correlation of emotional weakness with societal excess paved the way for Rigney to frame empathy itself as a dangerous weapon. Despite using the incendiary generalization, “empathy is sin,” Rigney told me that it is not all empathy that is sinful, but specifically “untethered empathy.” He describes this as “empathy that is detached or unmoored from reality, from what is good and right.” (An explanation that begs definitions for “reality,” “good,” and “right.”)“Just as ‘the sin of anger’ refers to unrighteous or ungoverned anger, so the sin of empathy refers to ungoverned, excessive, and untethered empathy,” Rigney told me. This kind of unrestrained empathy, he writes, is a recipe for cultural mayhem. In theory, Rigney argues that one should be “tethered” to God’s will and not to Satan. In practice, what Rigney is typically decrying is any empathy for a liberal perspective or for someone who’s part of a marginalized community. When I asked him for a general reconciliation of his views with the Golden Rule, he sent me a response in which he brought up trans identity in order to label it a “fantasy” that contradicts “God-given biological reality,” while misgendering a hypothetical trans person. The demonization of empathy moves into the mainstreamDespite receiving firm pushback from most religious leaders (and indeed most people) who hear about it, Rigney’s argument has been spreading through the Christian right at large. Last year, conservative personality and author Allie Stuckey published Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, in which she argues that “toxic empathy is a dangerous guide for our decisions, behavior, and public policy” while condemning queer people and feminists. “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary,” Josh McPherson, host of the Christian-centered Stronger Man Nation podcast and an adherent of Wilson and Rigney’s ideas, said in January, in a clip that garnered an outsize amount of attention relative to the podcast episode itself. That same month, Vice President JD Vance struck a nerve with a controversial appearance on Fox News in which he seemed to reference both the empathy conversation and the archaic Catholic concept of “ordo amoris,” meaning “the order of love.” As Vance put it, it’s the idea that one’s family should come before anyone else: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country,” he said. “And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” In a follow-up on X, he posted, “the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense.” Vance’s statements received backlash from many people, including both the late Pope Francis and then-future Pope Leo XIV — but the controversy just drove the idea further into the mainstream. As part of the odd crossover between far-right religion and online reactionaries, it picked up surprising alliances along the way, including evolutionary biologist turned far-right gadfly Gad Saad. In January, Saad, applying a survival-of-the-fittest approach to our emotions, argued against “suicidal empathy,” which he described as “the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into an orgiastic hyperactive form of empathy, deployed on the wrong targets.” (Who are the wrong targets according to Saad? Trans women and immigrants.)In a February appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Elon Musk explicitly referenced Saad but went even further, stating, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy — the empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization” — the “they” here being the left wing. “I think empathy is good,” Musk added, “but you need to think it through, and not just be programmed like a robot.” By March, mainstream media had noticed the conversation. David French had observed the “strange spectacle” of the Christian turn against empathy in a column for the New York Times. In April, a deep-dive in the Guardian followed. That same month, a broad-ranging conversation in the New Yorker with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, led to interviewer Isaac Chotiner pressing him about why empathy is bad. The discussion, of deported Venezuelan immigrants wrongfully suspected of having gang tattoos, led to Mohler saying that “there’s no reason anyone other than a gang member should have that tattoo.” (Among the tattoos wrongly flagged as gang symbols were the words “Mom” and “Dad” on the wrists of one detainee.)The pro-empathy backlash is fierce The connective tissue across all these disparate anti-empathy voices is two-fold, according to Christian scholar Karen Swallow Prior. Prior, an anti-abortion ethicist and former longtime Liberty University professor, singled out the argument’s outsize emphasis on attacking very small, very vulnerable groups — as well as the moment in which it’s all happening.“The entire discourse around empathy is backlash against those who are questioning the authority of those in power,” she told me, “not coincidentally emerging in a period where we have a rise in recognition of overly controlling and narcissistic leaders, both in and outside the church.” Those people “understand and appreciate empathy the least.”“Trump made it okay to not be okay with culture,” Peter Bell, co-creator and producer of the Sons of Patriarchy podcast, which explores longstanding allegations of emotional and sexual abuse against Doug Wilson’s Christ Church, told me. (Wilson has denied that the church has a culture of abuse or coercion.) “He made it kind of cool for Christians to be jerks,” Bell said. “He made the unspoken things spoken, the whispered things shouted out loud.”Prior believes that the argument won’t have a long shelf life because Rigney’s idea is so convoluted. Yet she added that it’s born out of toxic masculinity, in an age where stoicism, traditionally male-coded, is increasingly part of the regular cultural diet of men via figures like Jordan Peterson. That hypermasculinity goes hand in hand with evangelical culture, and with the ideas Rigney borrowed from Friedman about too many emotions being a weakness. In this framing, emotion becomes non-masculine by default — i.e., feminine.“Everybody’s supposed to have sympathy for the white male, but when you show empathy to anyone else, suddenly empathy is a sin.”— Karen Swallow Prior, Christian scholarThat leads us to the grimmest part of Rigney’s “untethered empathy” claims: the way he explicitly genders it — and demonizes it — as feminine. Throughout his book, he argues that women are more empathetic than men, and that as a result, they are more prone to giving into it as a sin. It’s an inherently misogynistic view that undermines women’s decision-making and leadership abilities. Though Rigney pushed back against this characterization in an email to me, arguing that critics have distorted what he views as merely “gendered tendencies and susceptibility to particular temptations,” he also couldn’t help reinforcing it. “[F]emale tendencies, like male tendencies, have particular dangers, temptations, and weaknesses,” he wrote. Women thus should recognize this and “take deliberate, Spirit-wrought action to resist the impulse to become a devouring HR department that wants to run the world.”As Prior explains, though, Rigney’s just fine with a mythic national human resources department, as long as it supports the status quo. “Everybody’s supposed to have sympathy for the white male,” she said, “but when you show empathy to anyone else, suddenly empathy is a sin.”What’s heartening is that, whether they realize what kind of dangerous extremism undergirds it, most people aren’t buying Rigney’s “empathy is sin” claim. Across the nation, in response to Rigney’s assertion, the catchphrase, “If empathy is a sin, then sin boldly” has arisen, as heard in pulpits, seen on church marquees, and worn on T-shirts — a reminder that it takes much more than the semantic whims of a few extremists to shake something most people hold in their hearts.See More:

DOGE in court Trump admin tells Supreme Court: DOGE needs to do its work in secret DOJ complains of "sweeping, intrusive discovery" after DOGE refused FOIA requests. Jon Brodkin – May 21, 2025 5:08 pm | 73 A protest over DOGE's reductions to the federal workforce outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building on March 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago A protest over DOGE's reductions to the federal workforce outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building on March 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The Department of Justice today asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling that requires DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations as part of court-ordered discovery. President Trump's Justice Department sought an immediate halt to orders issued by US District Court for the District of Columbia. US Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the Department of Government Efficiency is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a presidential advisory body and not an official "agency." The district court "ordered USDS [US Doge Service] to submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS is subject to FOIA in the first place," Sauer wrote. "That order turns FOIA on its head, effectively giving respondent a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies. And that order clearly violates the separation of powers, subjecting a presidential advisory body to intrusive discovery and threatening the confidentiality and candor of its advice, putatively to address a legal question that never should have necessitated discovery in this case at all." The nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed FOIA requests seeking information about DOGE and sued after DOGE officials refused to provide the requested records. US District Judge Christopher Cooper has so far sided with CREW. Cooper decided in March that "USDS is likely covered by FOIA and that the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records CREW seeks," ordering DOGE "to process CREW's request on an expedited timetable." Judge: DOGE is not just an advisor DOGE then asked the district court for a summary judgment in its favor, and CREW responded by filing a motion for expedited discovery "seeking information relevant to whether USDS wields substantial authority independent of the President and is therefore subject to FOIA." In an April 15 order, Cooper ruled that CREW is entitled to limited discovery into the question of whether DOGE is wielding authority sufficient to bring it within the purview of FOIA. Cooper hasn't yet ruled on the motion for summary judgment. "The structure of USDS and the scope of its authority are critical to determining whether the agency is 'wield[ing] substantial authority independently of the President,'" the judge wrote. "And the answers to those questions are unclear from the record." Trump's executive orders appear to support CREW's argument by suggesting "that USDS is exercising substantial independent authority," Cooper wrote. "As the Court already noted, the executive order establishing USDS 'to implement the President's DOGE Agenda' appears to give USDS the authority to carry out that agenda, 'not just to advise the President in doing so.'" Not satisfied with the outcome, the Trump administration tried to get Cooper's ruling overturned in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appeals court ruled against DOGE last week. The appeals court temporarily stayed the district court order in April, but dissolved the stay on May 14 and denied the government's petition. "The government contends that the district court's order permitting narrow discovery impermissibly intrudes upon the President's constitutional prerogatives," the appeals court said. But "the discovery here is modest in scope and does not target the President or any close adviser personally. The government retains every conventional tool to raise privilege objections on the limited question-by-question basis foreseen here on a narrow and discrete ground." US argues for secrecy A three-judge panel at the appeals court was unswayed by the government's claim that this process is too burdensome. "Although the government protests that any such assertion of privilege would be burdensome, the only identified burdens are limited both by time and reach, covering as they do records within USDS's control generated since January 20," the ruling said. "It does not provide any specific details as to why accessing its own records or submitting to two depositions would pose an unbearable burden." Yesterday, the District Court set a discovery schedule requiring the government to produce all responsive documents within 14 days and complete depositions within 24 days. In its petition to the Supreme Court today, the Trump administration argued that DOGE's recommendations to the president should be kept secret: The district court's requirement that USDS turn over the substance of its recommendations—even when the recommendations were "purely advisory"—epitomizes the order's overbreadth and intrusiveness. The court's order compels USDS to identify every "federal agency contract, grant, lease or similar instrument that any DOGE employee or DOGE Team member recommended that federal agencies cancel or rescind," and every "federal agency employee or position that any DOGE employee or DOGE team member recommended" for termination or placement on administrative leave. Further, USDS must state "whether [each] recommendation was followed." It is difficult to imagine a more grievous intrusion and burden on a presidential advisory body. Providing recommendations is the core of what USDS does. Because USDS coordinates with agencies across the Executive Branch on an ongoing basis, that request requires USDS to review multitudes of discussions that USDS has had every day since the start of this Administration. And such information likely falls within the deliberative-process privilege almost by definition, as internal executive-branch recommendations are inherently "pre-decisional" and "deliberative." Lawsuit: “No meaningful transparency” into DOGE The US further said the discovery "is unnecessary to answer the legal question whether USDS qualifies as an 'agency' that is subject to FOIA," and is merely "a fishing expedition into USDS's advisory activities under the guise of determining whether USDS engages in non-advisory activities—an approach to discovery that would be improper in any circumstance." CREW, like others that have sued the government over DOGE's operations, says the entity exercises significant power without proper oversight and transparency. DOGE "has worked in the shadows—a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight," CREW's lawsuit said. "USDS has provided no meaningful transparency into its operations or assurances that it is maintaining proper records of its unprecedented and legally dubious work." The Trump administration is fighting numerous DOGE-related lawsuits at multiple levels of the court system. Earlier this month, the administration asked the Supreme Court to restore DOGE's access to Social Security Administration records after losing on the issue in both a district court and appeals court. That request to the Supreme Court is pending. There was also a dispute over discovery when 14 states sued the federal government over Trump "delegat[ing] virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities." A federal judge ruled that the states could serve written discovery requests on Musk and DOGE, but the DC Circuit appeals court blocked the discovery order. In that case, appeals court judges said the lower-court judge should have ruled on a motion to dismiss before allowing discovery. Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 73 Comments