trump administration

Trump gets data center companies to pledge to pay for power generation

Biz & IT, coal, data centers, Energy, natural gas, nuclear, Policy, renewables, trump administration / Mike M. / March 5, 2026

On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that a large collection of tech companies had signed on to what it’s calling the Ratepayer Protection Pledge. By agreeing, the initial signatories—Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI—are saying they will pay for the new generation and transmission capacities needed for any additional data centers they build. But the agreement has no enforcement mechanism, and it will likely run into issues with hardware supplies. It also ignores basic economics.

Other than that, it seems like a great idea.

What’s being agreed to

The agreement is quite simple, laying out five points. The key ones are the first three: that the companies building data centers pledge to pay for new generating capacity, either building it themselves or paying for it as part of a new or expanded power plant. They’ll also pay for any transmission infrastructure needed to connect their data centers and the new supply to the grid and will cover these costs whether or not the power ultimately gets used by their facilities.

The companies also pledge to consider allowing the local grid to use on-site backup generators to handle emergency power shortages affecting the community. They will also hire and train locally when they build new data centers.

The agreement suggests that these promises will protect American consumers from price hikes due to the expansion of data centers and will somehow “lower electricity costs for consumers in the long term.” How that will happen is not specified.

Also missing from the agreement is any sort of enforcement mechanism. If a company decides to ignore the agreement, the worst it is guaranteed to suffer is bad publicity, something these companies already have experience handling. That said, Trump has been known to resort to blatantly illegal tactics to pressure companies to conform to his wishes, so ignoring the agreement carries risks.

That’s important because the companies will struggle to live up to the agreement. (Though Google, for its part, told Ars that it has typically followed the guidelines as a normal part of its process for building new data centers.)

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Major government research lab appears to be squeezing out foreign scientists

NIST, Science, syndication, trump administration, War on science / 9u50fv / February 21, 2026

One of the US government’s top scientific research labs is taking steps that could drive away foreign scientists, a shift lawmakers and sources tell WIRED could cost the country valuable expertise and damage the agency’s credibility.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) helps determine the frameworks underpinning everything from cybersecurity to semiconductor manufacturing. Some of NIST’s recent work includes establishing guidelines for securing AI systems and identifying health concerns with air purifiers and firefighting gloves. Many of the agency’s thousands of employees, postdoctoral scientists, contractors, and guest researchers are brought in from around the world for their specialized expertise.

“For weeks now, rumors of draconian new measures have been spreading like wildfire, while my staff’s inquiries to NIST have gone unanswered,” Zoe Lofgren, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, wrote in a letter sent to acting NIST Director Craig Burkhardt on Thursday. April McClain Delaney, a fellow Democrat on the committee, cosigned the message.

Lofgren wrote that while her staff has heard about multiple rumored changes, what they have confirmed through unnamed sources is that the Trump administration “has begun taking steps to limit the ability of foreign-born researchers to conduct their work at NIST.”

The congressional letter follows a Boulder Reporting Lab article on February 12 that said international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers would be limited to a maximum of three years at NIST going forward, despite many of them needing five to seven years to complete their work.

A NIST employee tells WIRED that some plans to bring on foreign workers through the agency’s Professional Research and Experience Program have recently been canceled because of uncertainty about whether they would make it through the new security protocols. The staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, says the agency has yet to widely communicate what the new hurdles will be or why it believes they are justified.

On Thursday, the Colorado Sun reported that “noncitizens” lost after-hours access to a NIST lab last month and could soon be banned from the facility entirely.

Jennifer Huergo, a spokesperson for NIST, tells WIRED that the proposed changes are aimed at protecting US science from theft and abuse, echoing a similar statement issued this week to other media outlets. Huergo declined to comment on who needs to approve the proposal for it to be finalized and when a decision will be made. She also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawmakers’ letter.

Preventing foreign adversaries from stealing valuable American intellectual property has been a bipartisan priority, with NIST among the agencies in recent years to receive congressional scrutiny about the adequacy of its background checks and security policies. Just last month, Republican lawmakers renewed calls to put restrictions in place preventing Chinese nationals from working at or with national labs run by the Department of Energy.

But Lofgren’s letter contends that the rumored restrictions on non-US scientists at NIST go beyond “what is reasonable and appropriate to protect research security.” The letter demands transparency about new policies by February 26 and a pause on them “until Congress can weigh in on whether these changes are necessary at all.”

The potential loss of research talent at NIST would add to a series of other Trump administration policies that some US tech industry leaders have warned will dismantle the lives of immigrant researchers already living in the US and hamper economic growth. Hiking fees on H-1B tech visas, revoking thousands of student visas, and carrying out legally dubious mass deportations all stand to push people eager to work on science and tech research in the US to go elsewhere instead. The Trump administration has also announced plans to limit post-graduation job training for international students.

Pat Gallagher, who served as the director of NIST from 2009 to 2013 under President Barack Obama, says the changes could erode trust in the agency, which has long provided the technical foundations that industry and governments around the world rely on. “What has made NIST special is it is scientifically credible,” he tells WIRED. “Industry, universities, and the global measurement community knew they could work with NIST.”

Like much of the federal government, NIST has been in turmoil for most of the past year. Parts of it were paralyzed for months as rumors of DOGE cuts spread. Ultimately, the agency lost hundreds of its thousands of workers to budget cuts, with further funding pressure to come.

As of a couple of years ago, NIST welcomed 800 researchers on average annually from outside the US to work in its offices and collaborate directly with staff.

Lofgren expressed fear that rumors may be enough to scare away researchers and undermine US competitiveness in vital research. “Our scientific excellence depends upon attracting the best and brightest from around the world,” she wrote in the letter.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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Lawsuit: EPA revoking greenhouse gas finding risks “thousands of avoidable deaths”

climate change, climate denial, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, greenhouse gas emissions, Policy, trump administration / Kelly Newman / February 18, 2026

EPA sued for abandoning its mission to protect public health.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency was accused of abandoning its mission to protect public health after repealing an “endangerment finding” that has served as the basis for federal climate change regulations for 17 years.

The lawsuit came from more than a dozen environmental and health groups, including the American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Clean Air Council, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The groups have asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the EPA decision, which also eliminated requirements controlling greenhouse gas emissions in new cars and trucks. Urging a return to the status quo, the groups argued that the Trump administration is anti-science and illegally moving to benefit the fossil fuel industry, despite a mountain of evidence demonstrating the deadly consequences of unchecked pollution and climate change-induced floods, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes.

“Undercutting the ability of the federal government to tackle the largest source of climate pollution is deadly serious,” Meredith Hankins, legal director for federal climate at NRDC, said in an EDF roundup of statements from plaintiffs.

The science is overwhelmingly clear, the groups argued, despite the Trump EPA attempting to muddy the waters by forming a since-disbanded working group of climate contrarians.

Trump is a longtime climate denier, as evidenced by a Euro News tracker monitoring his most controversial comments. Most recently, during a cold snap affecting much of the US, he predictably trolled environmentalists, writing on Truth Social, “could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain—WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?”

The EPA’s final rule summary bragged that “this is the single largest deregulatory action in US history and will save Americans over $1.3 trillion” by 2055. Supposedly, carmakers will pass on any savings from no longer having to meet emissions requirements, giving Americans more access to affordable cars by shutting down expensive emissions and EV mandates “strangling” the auto industry. Sounding nothing like an agency created to monitor pollutants, a fact sheet on the final rule emphasized that Trump’s EPA “chooses consumer choice over climate change zealotry every time.”

Critics quickly slammed Trump’s claims that removing the endangerment finding would help the economy. Any savings from cheaper vehicles or reduced costs of charging infrastructure (as Americans ostensibly buy fewer EVs) would be offset by $1.4 trillion “in additional costs from increased fuel purchases, vehicle repair and maintenance, insurance, traffic congestion, and noise,” The Guardian reported. The EPA’s economic analysis also ignores public health costs, the groups suing alleged. David Pettit, an attorney at the CBD’s Climate Law Institute, slammed the EPA’s messaging as an attempt to sway consumers without explaining the true costs.

“Nobody but Big Oil profits from Trump trashing climate science and making cars and trucks guzzle and pollute more,” Pettit said. “Consumers will pay more to fill up, and our skies and oceans will fill up with more pollution.”

If the court sides with the EPA, “people everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zalzal, EDF’s associate vice president of clean air strategies, said.

EPA argued climate change evidence is “out of scope”

For environmentalists, the decision to sue the EPA was risky but necessary. By putting up a fight, they risk a court potentially reversing the 2009 Supreme Court ruling requiring the EPA to conduct the initial endangerment analysis and then regulate any pollution found from greenhouse gases.

Seemingly, that reversal is what the Trump administration has been angling for, hoping the case will reach the Supreme Court, which is more conservative today and perhaps less likely to read the Clean Air Act as broadly as the 2009 court.

It’s worth the risk, according to William Piermattei, the managing director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. He told The New York Times that environmentalists had no choice but to file the lawsuit and act on the public’s behalf.

Environmentalists “must challenge this,” Piermattei said. If they didn’t, they’d be “agreeing that we should not regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act, full stop.” He suggested that “a majority of the public, does not agree with that statement at all.”

Since 2010, the EPA has found that the scientific basis for concluding that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and welfare of current and future US generations is robust, voluminous, and compelling.” And since then, the evidence base has only grown, the groups suing said.

Trump used to seem intimidated by the “overwhelming” evidence, environmentalists have noted. During Trump’s prior term, he notably left the endangerment finding in place, perhaps expecting that the evidence was irrefutable. He’s now renewed that fight, arguing that the evidence should be set aside, so that courts can focus on whether Congress “must weigh in on ‘major questions’ that have significant political and economic implications” and serve as a check on the EPA.

In the EPA’s comments addressing public concerns about the agency ignoring evidence, the agency has already argued that evidence of climate change is “out of scope” since the EPA did not repeal the basis of the finding. Instead, the EPA claims it is merely challenging its own authority to continue to regulate the auto industry for harmful emissions, suggesting that only Congress has that authority.

The Clean Air Act “does not provide EPA statutory authority to prescribe motor vehicle emission standards for the purpose of addressing global climate change concerns,” the EPA said. “In the absence of such authority, the Endangerment Finding is not valid, and EPA cannot retain the regulations that resulted from it.”

Whether courts will agree that evidence supporting climate change is “out of scope” could determine whether the Supreme Court’s prior decision that compelled the endangerment finding is ultimately overturned. If that happens, subsequent administrations may struggle to issue a new endangerment finding to undo any potential damage. All eyes would then turn to Congress to pass a law to uphold protections.

EPA accused of abandoning its mission

By ignoring science, the EPA risks eroding public trust, according to Hana Vizcarra, a senior lawyer at the nonprofit Earthjustice, which is representing several groups in the litigation.

“With this action, EPA flips its mission on its head,” Vizcarra said. “It abandons its core mandate to protect human health and the environment to boost polluting industries and attempts to rewrite the law in order to do so.”

Groups appear confident that the courts will consider the science. Joanne Spalding, director of the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, noted that the early 2000s litigation from the Sierra Club brought about the original EPA protections. She vowed that the Sierra Club would continue fighting to keep them.

“People should not be forced to suffer for this administration’s blind allegiance to the fossil fuel industry and corporate polluters,” Spalding said. “This shortsighted rollback is blatantly unlawful and their efforts to force this upon the American people will fail.”

Ankush Bansal, board president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, warned that courts cannot afford to ignore the evidence. The EPA’s “devastating decision” goes “against the science and testimony of countless scientists, health care professionals, and public health practitioners,” Bansal said. If upheld, the long-term consequences could seemingly bury courts in future legal battles.

“It will result in direct harm to the health of Americans throughout the country, particularly children, older adults, those with chronic illnesses, and other vulnerable populations, rural to urban, red and blue, of all races and incomes,” Bansal said. “The increased exposure to harmful pollutants and other greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel production and consumption will make America sicker, not healthier, less prosperous, not more, for generations to come.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Under Trump, EPA’s enforcement of environmental laws collapses, report finds

Environmental Protection Agency, Policy, pollution, Science, syndication, trump administration / DJ Henderson / February 7, 2026

The Environmental Protection Agency has drastically pulled back on holding polluters accountable.

Enforcement against polluters in the United States plunged in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, a far bigger drop than in the same period of his first term, according to a new report from a watchdog group.

By analyzing a range of federal court and administrative data, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that civil lawsuits filed by the US Department of Justice in cases referred by the Environmental Protection Agency dropped to just 16 in the first 12 months after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. That is 76 percent less than in the first year of the Biden administration.

Trump’s first administration filed 86 such cases in its first year, which was in turn a drop from the Obama administration’s 127 four years earlier.

“Our nation’s landmark environmental laws are meaningless when EPA does not enforce the rules,” Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement.

The findings echo two recent analyses from the nonprofits Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Earthjustice, which both documented dwindling environmental enforcement under Trump.

From day one of Trump’s second term, the administration has pursued an aggressive deregulatory agenda, scaling back regulations and health safeguards across the federal government that protect water, air and other parts of the environment. This push to streamline industry activities has been particularly favorable for fossil fuel companies. Trump declared an “energy emergency” immediately after his inauguration.

At the EPA, Administrator Lee Zeldin launched in March what the administration called the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history”: 31 separate efforts to roll back restrictions on air and water pollution; to hand over more authority to states, some of which have a long history of supporting lax enforcement; and to relinquish EPA’s mandate to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.

The new report suggests the agency is also relaxing enforcement of existing law. Neither the White House nor the EPA responded to a request for comment.

A “compliance first” approach

Part of the decline in lawsuits against polluters could be due to the lack of staff to carry them out, experts say. According to an analysis from E&E News, at least a third of lawyers in the Justice Department’s environment division have left in the past year. Meanwhile, the EPA in 2025 laid off hundreds of employees who monitored pollution that could hurt human health.

Top agency officials are also directing staff to issue fewer violation notices and reduce other enforcement actions. In December, the EPA formalized a new “compliance first” enforcement policy that stresses working with suspected violators to correct problems before launching any formal action that could lead to fines or mandatory correction measures.

“Formal enforcement … is appropriate only when compliance assurance or informal enforcement is inapplicable or insufficient to achieve rapid compliance,” wrote Craig Pritzlaff, who is now a principal deputy assistant EPA administrator, in a Dec. 5 memo to all enforcement officials and regional offices.

Only in rare cases involving an immediate hazard should enforcers use traditional case tools, Pritzlaff said. “Immediate formal enforcement may be required in certain circumstances, such as when there is an emergency that presents significant harm to human health and the environment,” he wrote.

Federal agencies like the EPA, with staffs far outmatched in size compared to the vast sectors of the economy they oversee, typically have used enforcement actions not only to deal with violators but to deter other companies from breaking the law. Environmental advocates worry that without environmental cops visible on the beat, compliance will erode.

Pritzlaff joined the EPA last fall after five years heading up enforcement for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, where nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen noted that he was known as a “reluctant regulator.” Public Citizen and other advocacy groups criticized TCEQ under Pritzlaff’s leadership for its reticence to take decisive action against repeat violators.

One example: An INEOS chemical plant had racked up close to 100 violations over a decade before a 2023 explosion that sent one worker to the hospital, temporarily shut down the Houston Ship Channel and sparked a fire that burned for an hour. Public Citizen said it was told by TCEQ officials that the agency allowed violations to accumulate over the years, arguing it was more efficient to handle multiple issues in a single enforcement action.

“But that proved to be untrue, instead creating a complex backlog of cases that the agency is still struggling to resolve,” Public Citizen wrote last fall after Pritzlaff joined the EPA. “That’s not efficiency, it’s failure.”

Early last year, TCEQ fined INEOS $2.3 million for an extensive list of violations that occurred between 2016 and 2021.

“A slap on the wrist”

The EPA doesn’t always take entities to court when they violate environmental laws. At times, the agency can resolve these issues through less-formal administrative cases, which actually increased during the first eight months of Trump’s second term when compared to the same period in the Biden administration, according to the new report.

However, most of these administrative actions involved violations of requirements for risk management plans under the Clean Air Act or municipalities’ violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Trump administration did not increase administrative cases that involve pollution from industrial operations, Environmental Integrity Project spokesperson Tom Pelton said over email.

Another signal of declining enforcement: Through September of last year, the EPA issued $41 million in penalties—$8 million less than the same period in the first year of the Biden administration, after adjusting for inflation. This suggests “the Trump Administration may be letting more polluters get by with a slap on the wrist when the Administration does take enforcement action,” the report reads.

Combined, the lack of lawsuits, penalties, and other enforcement actions for environmental violations could impact communities across the country, said Erika Kranz, a senior staff attorney in the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, who was not involved in the report.

“We’ve been seeing the administration deregulate by repealing rules and extending compliance deadlines, and this decline in enforcement action seems like yet another mechanism that the administration is using to de-emphasize environmental and public health protections,” Kranz said. “It all appears to be connected, and if you’re a person in the US who is worried about your health and the health of your neighbors generally, this certainly could have effects.”

The report notes that many court cases last longer than a year, so it will take time to get a clearer sense of how environmental enforcement is changing under the Trump administration. However, the early data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project and other nonprofits shows a clear and steep shift away from legal actions against polluters.

Historically, administrations have a “lot of leeway on making enforcement decisions,” Kranz said. But this stark of a drop could prompt lawsuits against the Trump administration, she added.

“Given these big changes and trends, you might see groups arguing that this is more than just an exercise of discretion or choosing priorities [and] this is more of an abdication of an agency’s core mission and its statutory duties,” Kranz said. “I think it’s going to be interesting to see if groups make those arguments, and if they do, how courts look at them.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Court orders restart of all US offshore wind construction

department of the interior, green, injunction, lawsuit, offshore wind, Policy, renewable energy, Science, trump administration, wind power / Mike M. / February 2, 2026

Based on reporting elsewhere, some of the judges viewed the classified report that was used to justify the order to halt construction, but they didn’t find it persuasive. In one case, the judge noted that the government wasn’t acting as if the security risks were real. The threat supposedly comes from the operation of the wind turbines, but the Department of the Interior’s order blocked construction while allowing any completed hardware to operate.

“If the government’s concern is the operation of these facilities, allowing the ongoing operation of the 44 turbines while prohibiting the repair of the existing turbines and the completion of the 18 additional turbines is irrational,” Judge Brian E. Murphy said. That once again raises the possibility that the order halting construction will ultimately be held to be arbitrary and capricious.

For now, however, the courts are largely offering the wind projects relief because the ruling was issued without any warning or communication from the government and would clearly inflict substantial harm on the companies building them. The injunction blocks the government’s hold on construction until a final ruling is issued. The government can still appeal the decision before that point, but the consistency among these rulings suggests it will likely fail.

Several of these projects are near completion and are likely to be done before any government appeal can be heard.

Court orders restart of all US offshore wind construction Read More »

US officially out of WHO, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unpaid

health, trump administration, WHO, World Health Organization / Shannon Garcia / January 24, 2026

“The United States will not be making any payments to the WHO before our withdrawal on January 22, 2026,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The cost [borne] by the US taxpayer and US economy after the WHO’s failure during the COVID pandemic—and since—has been too high as it is. We will ensure that no more US funds are routed to this organization.”

In addition, the US had also promised to provide $490 million in voluntary contributions for those two years. The funding would have gone toward efforts such as the WHO’s health emergency program, tuberculosis control, and the polio eradication effort, Stat reports. Two anonymous sources told Stat that some of that money was paid, but they couldn’t provide an estimate of how much.

The loss of both past and future financial support from the US has been a hefty blow to the WHO. Immediately upon notification last January, the WHO began cutting costs. Those included freezing recruitment, restricting travel expenditures, making all meetings virtual, limiting IT equipment updates, and suspending office refurbishment. The agency also began cutting staff and leaving positions unfilled. According to Stat, the WHO staff is on track to be down 22 percent by the middle of this year.

In a recent press conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the US withdrawal is a “lose-lose situation” for the US and the rest of the world. The US will lose access to infectious disease intelligence and sway over outbreak responses, and global health security will be weakened overall. “I hope they will reconsider,” Tedros said.

US officially out of WHO, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unpaid Read More »

FBI fights leaks by seizing Washington Post reporter’s phone, laptops, and watch

Policy, press freedom, trump administration, Washington Post / Beth Washington / January 14, 2026

“Extraordinary, aggressive action”

FBI searches home and devices of reporter who has over 1,100 government contacts.

The Washington Post building on August 6, 2013 in Washington, DC, Credit: Getty Images | Saul Loeb

The FBI searched a Washington Post reporter’s home and seized her work and personal devices as part of an investigation into what Attorney General Pam Bondi called “illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

Executing a search warrant at the Virginia home of reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday morning, FBI “agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch,” The Washington Post reported. “One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Washington Post-issued laptop. Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe.”

Natanson regularly uses encrypted Signal chats to communicate with people who work or used to work in government, and has said her list of contacts exceeds 1,100 current and former government employees. The Post itself “received a subpoena Wednesday morning seeking information related to the same government contractor,” the report said.

Post Executive Editor Matt Murray sent an email to staff saying that early in the morning, “FBI agents showed up unannounced at the doorstep of our colleague Hannah Natanson, searched her home, and proceeded to seize her electronic devices.” Murray’s email called the search an “extraordinary, aggressive action” that is “deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”

The New York Times wrote that it “is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to conduct searches at a reporter’s home. Typically, such investigations are done by examining a reporter’s phone records or email data.”

The search warrant said the probe’s target is “Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement,” the Post article said.

“Alarming escalation” in Trump “war on press freedom”

Bondi confirmed the search in an X post. “This past week, at the request of the Department of War, the Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars,” Bondi wrote.

Bondi said the Trump administration “will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information” that “pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”

Searches targeting journalists require “intense scrutiny” because they “can deter and impede reporting that is vital to our democracy,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “Attorney General Bondi has weakened guidelines that were intended to protect the freedom of the press, but there are still important legal limits, including constitutional ones, on the government’s authority to use subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to obtain information from journalists. The Justice Department should explain publicly why it believes this search was necessary and legally permissible, and Congress and the courts should scrutinize that explanation carefully.”

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, called the search “an alarming escalation in the Trump administration’s multipronged war on press freedom. The Department of Justice (and the judge who approved this outrageous warrant) is either ignoring or distorting the Privacy Protection Act, which bars law enforcement from raiding newsrooms and reporters to search for evidence of alleged crimes by others, with very few inapplicable exceptions.”

In April 2025, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era policy that limited searches and subpoenas of reporters in leak investigations. But even the weaker Trump administration guidelines “make clear that it’s a last resort for rare emergencies only,” according to Stern. “The administration may now be in possession of volumes of journalist communications having nothing to do with any pending investigation and, if investigators are able to access them, we have zero faith that they will respect journalist-source confidentiality.”

The Washington Post didn’t say whether Perez-Lugones provided information to Natanson and pointed out that the criminal complaint against him “does not accuse him of leaking classified information he is alleged to have taken.”

Post reporter has over 1,100 government contacts

Natanson does have many sources in the federal workforce. She wrote a first-person account last month of her experience as the news organization’s “federal government whisperer.” Around the time Trump’s second term began, she posted a message on a Reddit community for federal employees saying she wanted to “speak with anyone willing to chat.”

Natanson got dozens of messages by the next day and would eventually compile “1,169 contacts on Signal, all current or former federal employees who decided to trust me with their stories,” she wrote. Natanson explained that she was previously an education reporter but the paper “created a beat for me covering Trump’s transformation of government, and fielding Signal tips became nearly my whole working life.”

In another case this month, the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena journalist Seth Harp for allegedly “doxxing” a Delta Force commander involved in the operation in Venezuela that captured President Nicolás Maduro. Harp called the doxxing allegation “ludicrous” because he had posted publicly available information, specifically an online bio of a man “whose identity is not classified.”

“There is zero question that Harp’s actions were fully and squarely within the protections of the First Amendment, as well as outside the scope of any federal criminal statutes,” over 20 press freedom and First Amendment organizations said in a letter to lawmakers yesterday.

The Trump administration’s aggressive stance toward the media has also included numerous threats from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to investigate and punish broadcasters for “news distortion.”

As for Perez-Lugones, he was charged last week with unlawful retention of national defense information in US District Court for the District of Maryland. Perez-Lugones was a member of the US Navy from 1982 to 2002, said an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Keith Starr. He has been a government contractor since 2002 and held top-secret security clearances during his Naval career and again in his more recent work as a contractor.

“Currently, Perez-Lugones works as a systems engineer and information technology specialist for a Government contracting company whose primary customer is a Government agency,” the affidavit said. He had “heightened access to classiﬁed systems, networks, databases, and repositories” so that he could “maintain, support, and optimize various computer systems, networks, and software.”

Documents found in man’s car and house, FBI says

The affidavit said that “Perez-Lugones navigated to and searched databases or repositories containing classified information without authorization.” The FBI alleges that on October 28, 2025, he took screenshots of a classified intelligence report on a foreign country, pasted the screenshots into a Microsoft Word document, and printed the Word document.

His employer is able to retrieve records of printing activity on classified systems, and “a review of Perez-Lugones’ printing activity on that dates [sic] showed that he had printed innocuous sounding documents (i.e., Microsoft Word‐Document 1) that really contained classified and sensitive reports,” the affidavit said.

Perez-Lugones allegedly went on to access and view a “classified intelligence report related to Government operational activity” on January 5, 2026. On January 7, he was observed at his workplace taking notes on a yellow notepad while looking back and forth between the notepad and a computer that was logged into the classified system, the affidavit said.

Investigators executed search warrants on his home in Laurel, Maryland, and his vehicle on January 8. They found a document marked as SECRET in a lunchbox in his car and another secret document in his basement, the affidavit said.

Prior video surveillance showed Perez-Lugones at his cubicle looking at the document that was later found in the lunchbox, the affidavit said. Investigators determined that he “remov[ed] the classification header/footer markings from this document prior to leaving his workplace.”

The US law that Perez-Lugones was charged with violating provides for fines or prison sentences of up to 10 years. A magistrate judge ruled that Perez-Lugones could be released, but that decision is being reviewed by the court at the request of the US government.

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.

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Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says

Accenture, AI, Digital Services Act, Donald Trump, elon musk, European Commission, Mistral, Policy, Spotify, trump administration, X / Mike M. / December 17, 2025

Spotify and Accenture caught in crossfire as Trump attacks EU tech regulations.

The US threatened to restrict some of the largest service providers in the European Union as retaliation for EU tech regulations and investigations are increasingly drawing Donald Trump’s ire.

On Tuesday, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) issued a warning on X, naming Spotify, Accenture, Amadeus, Mistral, Publicis, and DHL among nine firms suddenly yanked into the middle of the US-EU tech fight.

“The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against US service providers,” USTR’s post said.

The clash comes after Elon Musk’s X became the first tech company fined for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, which is widely considered among the world’s strictest tech regulations. Trump was not appeased by the European Commission (EC) noting that X was not ordered to pay the maximum possible fine. Instead, the $140 million fine sparked backlash within the Trump administration, including from Vice President JD Vance, who slammed the fine as “censorship” of X and its users.

Asked for comment on the USTR’s post, an EC spokesperson told Ars that the EU intends to defend its tech regulations while implementing commitments from a Trump trade deal that the EU struck in August.

“The EU is an open and rules-based market, where companies from all over the world do business successfully and profitably,” the EC’s spokesperson said. “As we have made clear many times, our rules apply equally and fairly to all companies operating in the EU,” ensuring “a safe, fair and level playing field in the EU, in line with the expectations of our citizens. We will continue to enforce our rules fairly, and without discrimination.”

Trump on shaky ground due to “AI bubble”

On X, the USTR account suggested that the EU was overlooking that US companies “provide substantial free services to EU citizens and reliable enterprise services to EU companies,” while supporting “millions of jobs and more than $100 billion in direct investment in Europe.”

To stop what Trump views as “overseas extortion” of American tech companies, the USTR said the US was prepared to go after EU service providers, which “have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.”

“If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of US service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures,” USTR’s post said. “Should responsive measures be necessary, US law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions.”

The pushback comes after the Trump administration released a November national security report that questioned how long the EU could remain a “reliable” ally as overregulation of its tech industry could hobble both its economy and military strength. Claiming that the EU was only “doubling down” on such regulations, the EU “will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” the report predicted.

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the report said.

However, the report acknowledged that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States.”

“Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity,” the report said. “European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world’s most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.”

At least one expert in the EU has suggested that the EU can use this acknowledgement as leverage, while perhaps even using the looming threat of the supposed American “AI bubble” bursting to pressure Trump into backing off EU tech laws.

In an op-ed for The Guardian, Johnny Ryan, the director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, suggested that the EU could even throw Trump’s presidency into “crisis” by taking bold steps that Trump may not see coming.

EU can take steps to burst “AI bubble”

According to Ryan, the national security report made clear that the EU must fight the US or else “perish.” However, the EU has two “strong cards” to play if it wants to win the fight, he suggested.

Right now, market analysts are fretting about an “AI bubble,” with US investment in AI far outpacing potential gains until perhaps 2030. A Harvard University business professor focused on helping businesses implement cutting-edge technology like generative AI, Andy Wu, recently explained that AI’s big problem is that “everyone can imagine how useful the technology will be, but no one has figured out yet how to make money.”

“If the market can keep the faith to persist, it buys the necessary time for the technology to mature, for the costs to come down, and for companies to figure out the business model,” Wu said. But US “companies can end up underwater if AI grows fast but less rapidly than they hope for,” he suggested.

During this moment, Ryan wrote, it’s not just AI firms with skin in the game, but potentially all of Trump’s supporters. The US is currently on “shaky economic ground” with AI investment accounting “for virtually all (92 percent) GDP growth in the first half of this year.”

“The US’s bet on AI is now so gigantic that every MAGA voter’s pension is bound to the bubble’s precarious survival,” Ryan said.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, could exploit this apparent weakness first by messing with one of the biggest players in America’s AI industry, Nvidia, then by ramping up enforcement of the tech laws Trump loathes.

According to Ryan, “Dutch company ASML commands a global monopoly on the microchip-etching machines that use light to carve patterns on silicon,” and Nvidia needs those machines if it wants to remain the world’s most valuable company. Should the US GDP remain reliant on AI investment for growth, von der Leyen could use export curbs on that technology like a “lever,” Ryan said, controlling “whether and by how much the US economy expands or contracts.”

Withholding those machines “would be difficult for Europe” and “extremely painful for the Dutch economy,” Ryan noted, but “it would be far more painful for Trump.”

Another step the EU could take is even “easier,” Ryan suggested. It could go even harder on the enforcement of tech regulations based on evidence of mismanaged data surfaced in lawsuits against giants like Google and Meta. For example, it seems clear that Meta may have violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), after the Facebook owner was “unable to tell a US court that what its internal systems do with your data, or who can access it, or for what purpose.”

“This data free-for-all lets big tech companies train their AI models on masses of everyone’s data, but it is illegal in Europe, where companies are required to carefully control and account for how they use personal data,” Ryan wrote. “All Brussels has to do is crack down on Ireland, which for years has been a wild west of lax data enforcement, and the repercussions will be felt far beyond.”

Taking that step would also arguably make it harder for tech companies to secure AI investments, since firms would have to disclose that their “AI tools are barred from accessing Europe’s valuable markets,” Ryan said.

Calling the reaction to the X fine “extreme,” Ryan pushed for von der Leyen to advance on both fronts, forecasting that “the AI bubble would be unlikely to survive this double shock” and likely neither could Trump’s approval ratings. There’s also a possibility that tech firms could pressure Trump to back down if coping with any increased enforcement threatens AI progress.

Although Wu suggested that Big Tech firms like Google and Meta would likely be “insulated” from the AI bubble bursting, Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn’t seem so sure. In November, Pichai told the BBC that if AI investments didn’t pay off quickly enough, he thinks “no company is going to be immune, including us.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Trump’s UCLA deal: Pay us $1B+, and we can still cut your grants again

Policy, science funding, trump administration, UCLA, universities / Mike M. / October 28, 2025

On Friday, the California Supreme Court ordered the University of California system to release the details of a proposed deal from the federal government that would restore research grants that were suspended by the Trump administration. The proposed deal, first issued in August, had remained confidential as a suit filed by faculty at UCLA made its way through appeals. With California’s top court now weighing in, the university administrators have released the document, still marked “draft” and “confidential attorney work product.”

Most of the demands will seem unsurprising to those familiar with the Trump administration’s interest: an end to all diversity programs and those supporting transgender individuals, plus a sharp crackdown on campus protests. The eye-opening portion comes at the price tag of nearly $1.2 billion paid out, with UCLA covering all the costs of compliance. And, as written, the deal wouldn’t stop the Trump administration from cutting the grants for other reasons or imposing more intrusive regulations, such as those mentioned in its university compact.

Familiar concerns

In many ways, the proposed deal is much more focused than the odd list of demands the administration sent Harvard University earlier this year, in that it targets issues that the administration has focused on repeatedly. These include an end to all diversity programs at both the faculty and student levels. It demands that UCLA agree to “remove explicit or implicit goals for compositional diversity based on race, sex, or ethnicity, including eliminating any secretive or proxy-based ‘diversity’ hiring processes.”

Foreign students are also targeted, with UCLA being told to set up a program to ensure that no “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” are admitted. “UCLA will also develop training materials to socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.” The hospital associated with the university would also be forbidden from engaging in any gender-affirming care, and UCLA would not only prohibit transgender athletes but also strip any prior ones of any achievements.

Trump’s UCLA deal: Pay us $1B+, and we can still cut your grants again Read More »

Trump eyes government control of quantum computing firms with Intel-like deals

chips funding, Policy, quantum computing, trump administration / DJ Henderson / October 23, 2025

Donald Trump is eyeing taking equity stakes in quantum computing firms in exchange for federal funding, The Wall Street Journal reported.

At least five companies are weighing whether allowing the government to become a shareholder would be worth it to snag funding that the Trump administration has “earmarked for promising technology companies,” sources familiar with the potential deals told the WSJ.

IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are currently in talks with the government over potential funding agreements, with minimum awards of $10 million each, some sources said. Quantum Computing Inc. and Atom Computing are reportedly “considering similar arrangements,” as are other companies in the sector, which is viewed as critical for scientific advancements and next-generation technologies.

No deals have been completed yet, sources said, and terms could change as quantum-computing firms weigh the potential risks of government influence over their operations.

Quantum-computing exec called deals “exciting”

In August, Intel agreed to give the US a 10 percent stake in the company, then admitted to shareholders that “it is difficult to foresee all the potential consequences” of the unusual arrangement. If the deal goes through, the US would become Intel’s largest shareholder, the WSJ noted, potentially influencing major decisions that could prompt layoffs or restrict business in certain foreign markets.

“Among other things, there could be adverse reactions, immediately or over time, from investors, employees, customers, suppliers, other business or commercial partners, foreign governments, or competitors,” Intel wrote in a securities filing. “There may also be litigation related to the transaction or otherwise and increased public or political scrutiny with respect to the Company.”

But quantum computing companies that are closest to entering deals appear optimistic about possible government involvement.

Quantum Computing Inc. chief executive Yuping Huang told the WSJ that “the government’s potential equity stakes in companies in the industry are exciting.” The funding could be one of “the first significant signs of support for the sector from Washington,” the WSJ noted, potentially paving the way for breakthroughs such as Google’s recent demonstration of a quantum algorithm running 13,000 times faster than a supercomputer.

Trump eyes government control of quantum computing firms with Intel-like deals Read More »

Trump admin pressured Facebook into removing ICE-tracking group

facebook, ice, Policy, trump administration / Shannon Garcia / October 15, 2025

Trump slammed Biden for social media “censorship”

Trump and Republicans repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for pressuring social media companies into removing content. In a day-one executive order declaring an end to “federal censorship,” Trump said, “the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last week held a hearing on his allegation that under Biden, the US government “infringed on the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to censor Americans that held views different than the Biden administration.” Cruz called the tactic of pressuring social media companies part of the “left-wing playbook,” and said he wants Congress to pass a law “to stop government jawboning and safeguard every American’s right to free speech.”

Shortly before Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, Meta announced it would end the third-party fact-checking program it had introduced in 2016. “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time. Zuckerberg called the election “a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech.”

In addition to pressuring Facebook, the Trump administration demanded that Apple remove the ICEBlock app from its App Store. Apple responded by removing the app, which let iPhone users report the locations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Google removed similar Android apps from the Play Store.

Chicago is a primary target of Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security says it launched Operation Midway Blitz in early September to find “criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois seeking protection under the sanctuary policies of Governor Pritzker.”

People seeking to avoid ICE officers have used technology to obtain crowdsourced information on the location of agents. While crowdsourced information can vary widely in accuracy, a group called the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights says it works to verify reports of ICE sightings and sends text alerts to local residents only when ICE activity is verified.

Last month, an ICE agent shot and killed a man named Silverio Villegas Gonzalez in a Chicago suburb. The Department of Homeland Security alleged that Villegas Gonzalez was “a criminal illegal alien with a history of reckless driving,” and that he “drove his car at law enforcement officers.” The Chicago Tribune said it “found no criminal history for Villegas Gonzalez, who had been living in the Chicago area for the past 18 years.”

Trump admin pressured Facebook into removing ICE-tracking group Read More »

Taiwan pressured to move 50% of chip production to US or lose protection

Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, Policy, semiconductors, Taiwan, trump administration, trump tariffs, TSMC, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / September 29, 2025

The Trump administration is pressuring Taiwan to rapidly move 50 percent of its chip production into the US if it wants ensured protection against a threatened Chinese invasion, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told NewsNation this weekend.

In the interview, Lutnick noted that Taiwan currently makes about 95 percent of chips used in smartphones and cars, as well as in critical military defense technology. It’s bad for the US, Lutnick said, that “95 percent of our chips are made 9,000 miles away,” while China is not being “shy” about threats to “take” Taiwan.

Were the US to lose access to Taiwan’s supply chain, the US could be defenseless as its economy takes a hit, Lutnick alleged, asking, “How are you going to get the chips here to make your drones, to make your equipment?”

“The model is: if you can’t make your own chips, how can you defend yourself, right?” Lutnick argued. That’s why he confirmed his “objective” during his time in office is to shift US chip production from 2 percent to 40 percent. To achieve that, he plans to bring Taiwan’s “whole supply chain” into the US, a move experts have suggested could take much longer than a single presidential term to accomplish.

In 2023, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang forecast that the US was “somewhere between a decade and two decades away from supply chain independence,” emphasizing that “it’s not a really practical thing for a decade or two.”

Deal is “not natural for Taiwan”

Lutnick acknowledged this will be a “herculean” task. “Everybody tells me it’s impossible,” he said.

To start with, Taiwan must be convinced that it’s not getting a raw deal, he noted, explaining that it’s “not natural for Taiwan” to mull a future where it cedes its dominant role as a global chip supplier, as well as the long-running protections it receives from allies that comes with it.

Taiwan pressured to move 50% of chip production to US or lose protection Read More »