Bye Donald

Articles from: The Verge

407 articles

Trump DOJ goon threatens Wikipedia

Ed Martin, interim US attorney for DC, has written a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, threatening its status as a nonprofit entity.

The Verge by The Verge

Trump claims the US-China trade war is over

President Donald Trump says he has reached a deal with China that will ensure the US receives rare earth materials, keeps tariffs at a total of 55 percent, and allows American universities to keep accepting Chinese students. Trump announced the news of the ag…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Big Tech quietly sponsors Trump’s military parade party

The US taxpayer is going to be on the hook for all the soldiers, tanks, and planes that appear in Donald Trump's military parade. But several major tech companies are paying for the festivities along the parade route. According to recent statements from Ameri…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Google has a new AI model and website for forecasting tropical storms

Google is using a new AI model to forecast tropical cyclones and working with the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) to test it out.  Google DeepMind and Google Research launched a new website today called Weather Lab to share AI weather models that Google is…

The Verge by Justine Calma

USDOT wants more self-driving cars without pedals or steering wheels

The US Department of Transportation wants to make it easier for automakers and tech companies to deploy self-driving cars without traditional controls like steering wheels and pedals. In a letter sent to stakeholders, the department said it would streamline r…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

No Kings: protests in the eye of the storm

As President Donald Trump kicked off a birthday military parade on the streets of Washington, DC, what's estimated as roughly 2,000 events were held across the US and beyond - protesting Trump and Elon Musk's evisceration of government services, an unpreceden…

The Verge by Verge Staff

Tanks, guns and face-painting

Of all the jarring things I've witnessed on the National Mall, nothing will beat the image of the first thing I saw after I cleared security at the Army festival: a child, sitting at the controls of an M119A3 Howitzer, being instructed by a soldier on how to …

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Your next phone could run on Trump Mobile

Donald Trump might be planning to launch a mobile network and a Trump-branded phone. DTTM Operations LLC, the company Trump uses to manage his trademarks, has applied to use both “Trump” and “T1” for telecoms, mobile accessories, and even phones themselves. T…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Trump Mobile is a bad deal

Trump Mobile launched this morning with a single prepaid wireless plan and the promise of nationwide coverage for $47.45 per month. For that price, you get unlimited talk and texting, international calling, plus 20GB of "high-speed" cell and hotspot data, whi…

The Verge by Jacob Kastrenakes

Senate confirms Trump’s FCC pick, Olivia Trusty

The Senate confirmed Republican Olivia Trusty to serve on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday, installing another nominee by President Donald Trump and ending the brief lack of quorum at the agency. The vote was 53-45, with Sen. John Fetter…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Senate passes GENIUS stablecoin bill in a win for the crypto industry

In a 68-30 vote on Tuesday evening, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the GENIUS Act with bipartisan support. Eighteen Democrats joined the majority of Republicans in passing the bill, which is the first to establish a federal regulatory framework for stableco…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Even Klarna is launching a mobile phone service now

Klarna, the buy-now-pay-later service, is launching a mobile phone service. The $40 per month phone plan is launching in the US in the “coming weeks,” offering unlimited 5G data, calls, and texts on AT&T’s network — making it yet another MVNO in an increasing…

The Verge by Emma Roth

The whiplash of covering Summer Game Fest 2025 in LA

I love going to Summer Game Fest. It's a rare opportunity to connect with my colleagues and friends in person, as well as listen to developers talk about why they make their games. In some ways, this year's SGF gave me everything I love about the event. But w…

The Verge by Ash Parrish

Inside Microsoft’s complicated relationship with OpenAI

Beyond the selfies between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and the friendly conversations between the pair on stage, all is not well with Microsoft's $13 billion AI investment. Over the past year, multiple reports have painted a picture…

The Verge by Tom Warren

Truth, lies, and the Trump Phone

The idea behind Trump Mobile is relatively straightforward. It's easy to launch a mobile carrier these days, and it can be extremely lucrative - just ask Ryan Reynolds! You should know, though, that Trump Mobile is a pretty bad deal. And the network's suppose…

The Verge by David Pierce

Inside the courthouse reshaping the future of the internet

The future of the internet will be determined in one building in Washington, DC - and for six weeks, I watched it unfold. For much of this spring, the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in downtown Washington, DC, was buzzing with lawyers, reporters, and interes…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

The new lies spreading about climate change

New strains of misinformation about climate change are spreading, meant to slow the growth of renewable energy needed to fix the problem. Rather than flat-out denying the mountains of evidence that show that humans are causing climate change, more recent talk…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Trump’s FTC will approve an ad merger — with a gift to Elon Musk’s X

The all-Republican Federal Trade Commission agreed to approve a $13.5 billion ad merger if it includes a ban on steering ad dollars away from platforms or publishers based on “political or ideological viewpoints.” The order, which was reported by The New York…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Hinge CEO Justin McLeod says dating AI chatbots is ‘playing with fire’

Today, I’m talking with Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod. Hinge is one of the biggest dating apps in the United States — it’s rivaled only by Tinder, and both are owned by the massive conglomerate Match Group, which has consolidated a huge chunk of the onl…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

The US is stripping its forests of decades-old protections

The Trump administration wants to open up tens of millions of acres of national forest to development. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced yesterday that it’s rescinding a landmark rule that prevents road construction and timber harvesting in th…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Tesla’s robotaxis are operating in a regulatory vacuum

This week, Tesla launched its long-promised robotaxi service in Austin, and almost immediately its vehicles were caught fucking up. In a YouTube video, a Tesla robotaxi briefly drives on the wrong side of the road. Another video shared by Ed Niedermeyer, the …

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Hideo Kojima sees Death Stranding 2 as a cautionary tale

For once, the unflappable Hideo Kojima was overwhelmed. Even close to four decades of game-making experience didn't prepare him for his biggest tribulation so far: developing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach during the covid-19 pandemic. "I thought I can't pul…

The Verge by Khee Hoon Chan

What Meta and Anthropic really won in court

A lot of the future of AI will be settled in court. From publishers to authors to artists to Hollywood conglomerates, the creative industry is picking a big copyright fight over the vast quantities of data used to train AI models - and the ultimate output of …

The Verge by David Pierce

Google’s carbon emissions just went up again

Google’s carbon emissions jumped yet again as the company continues to push ahead in AI. The company’s 2025 sustainability report emphasizes that its “ambition-based emissions” grew 11 percent last year to reach 11.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide poll…

The Verge by Emma Roth, Justine Calma

Google’s Doppl app took off my socks

I just tried on five different outfits in about 10 minutes — or at least my AI lookalike did. That’s all thanks to Doppl, a new app that Google is testing, which I used to create AI-generated clips of myself wearing outfits that I found across the web. It mos…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Canada drops Big Tech tax to appease Trump

Canada has scrapped its tax targeting Big Tech companies in the US after President Donald Trump threatened to cut off trade talks in response to the fee. On Sunday, the Canadian government announced that it will no longer implement the Digital Services Tax as…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Trump says he’ll look into deporting Elon as fight over bill escalates

Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s dysfunctional cycle of fighting over the president’s “Big Beautiful” domestic policy bill has returned to the spotlight, with the president telling reporters Tuesday morning that “we’ll have to take a look” into deporting the bill…

The Verge by Richard Lawler

The FCC won’t enforce a ban on ‘exorbitant’ prison phone call prices

The Federal Communications Commission will suspend the enforcement of a rule that would lower the price of prison phone and video calls. On Monday, the Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr announced that prisons won’t have to comply with the pricing rules u…

The Verge by Emma Roth

The GOP’s big spending bill could kill renewable energy projects

Senate Republicans today passed a sweeping spending bill that narrowly avoided punitive tax measures on renewable energy but still threatens to stall its growth in the US.  After wrangling over hundreds of amendments for more than 24 hours in a so-called “vot…

The Verge by Justine Calma

ICE-tracking app tops App Store

ICEBlock, an app that lets users anonymously report sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, has soared up App Store charts after receiving criticism from the Trump administration. On Monday, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Tesla reports 14 percent drop in second-quarter vehicle deliveries

Tesla sales hit a new low, with the company reporting a 14 percent drop in second-quarter vehicle deliveries compared to a year ago.  The company said that it produced a total of 410,244 vehicles between April–June of this year, including 396,835 Model 3 and …

The Verge by Andrew Hawkins

Here are the letters that convinced Google and Apple to keep TikTok online

A Freedom of Information Act request has produced letters that the US Department of Justice sent to Google, Apple, Amazon, and several other companies in order to assuage their concerns about breaking a law that banned US web services from working with TikTok…

The Verge by Adi Robertson

The Verge’s summer ‘in’ and ‘out’ list

Here at this website, my colleagues and I follow our beats closely, from wearable tech and laptops to influencer culture and federal policy. Last year, I asked a bunch of staff at The Verge to pretend to be trend forecasters for a lighthearted collection of w…

The Verge by Mia Sato

TikTok’s ‘ban’ problem could end soon with a new app and a sale

Even with the TikTok divest-or-ban law officially in effect since January, the app has only shut down service in the US for one day. Now, The Information reports that an agreement for a sale satisfying the law’s requirements is close and would come with a new…

The Verge by Richard Lawler

Apple’s 5th Ave store spray-painted to protest ‘climate hypocrisy’

A climate change activist was arrested after spray-painting Apple’s 5th Avenue store as part of a protest against Big Tech’s “climate hypocrisy.” Protestors from the Extinction Rebellion environmental group staged a demonstration at the New York City storefro…

The Verge by Emma Roth

xAI updated Grok to be more ‘politically incorrect’

Grok, the chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, was updated over the weekend with instructions to “assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased” and “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect” — part of Musk’s ongoing a…

The Verge by Hayden Field

Why it’s so hard to warn people about flash floods

By definition, flash floods are notoriously difficult to warn people about well in advance. They form rapidly, giving forecasters hours of lead time at best to figure out where they might hit with specificity. We've seen this with devastating effect in Texas,…

The Verge by Justine Calma

How The New York Times is (still) getting gamed by the right

Lately, it has been difficult to ignore a tendency at The New York Times to make astonishingly bad news judgments. The paper's obsession with a view from nowhere is long-standing, but as Republicans increasingly circulate insane conspiracy theories and racist…

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto

The Columbia hack is a much bigger deal than Mamdani’s college application

On June 24th, Columbia University experienced an hourslong system-wide outage. Its internal email service went down. Students couldn't log in to the platform where professors post assignments and course materials. Library catalogs went offline. Zoom was unava…

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto

The brutal realities of ICE Air

In Donald Trump's second term, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has escalated its enforcement operations in extremely public ways, conducting surprise raids, arresting lawmakers, and launching a new Florida detention center with an alt-right media bl…

The Verge by Darryl Campbell

Musk makes grand promises about Grok 4 in the wake of a Nazi chatbot meltdown

Elon Musk’s live demo of Grok 4, the latest big-ticket model from his AI startup, began with high-intensity music, claims of a “ludicrous rate of progress,” and a lot of chatter on X about Grok’s scandal-filled week.  Musk pronounced it to be “the smartest AI…

The Verge by Hayden Field

Why are liberals cozying up to race scientists?

The New York Times' recent report on Zohran Mamdani's Columbia University application raised a lot of questions, such as: In what universe does this fall under the umbrella of news that's fit to print? Why did the paper of record report on hacked materials it…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

DOJ paves the way for a legal war on fact-checking

Newspapers and social media platforms that agree to deprioritize misinformation could be violating US antitrust law if they exclude rivals or lead to anticompetitive effects, the Justice Department says in a new legal filing.  President Donald Trump’s DOJ Ant…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Even crypto execs fall for crypto scams

It’s not every day you hear of cryptocurrency executives falling for crypto scams, but here we are. A complaint filed by the Department of Justice appears to reveal that a pair of MoonPay executives lost $250,000 worth of Ethereum when donating to what they t…

The Verge by Emma Roth

xAI explains the Grok Nazi meltdown as Tesla puts Elon’s bot in its cars

Several days after temporarily shutting down the Grok AI bot that was producing antisemitic posts and praising Hitler in response to user prompts, Elon Musk’s AI company tried to explain why that happened. In a series of posts on X, it said that “…we discover…

The Verge by Richard Lawler

The MAGA backlash over Epstein isn’t dying down

On July 12th, the political world experienced an unprecedented phenomenon: President Donald Trump got ratioed on his own social media platform, and it was on a post about Jeffrey Epstein - someone who, according to Trump, "nobody cares about." Clearly, his fo…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

What Big Tech got out of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill

The massive budget bill signed into law by President Donald Trump on Independence Day didn't include everything on Big Tech's wishlist, but the industry's largest players stand to gain significantly from several provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. T…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

The crypto industry got what it paid for

The crypto industry is beginning to see a return on one of its most prescient investments: Donald Trump. On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed three bills that industry supporters believe will bring more legitimacy and predictability to the digital…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

One of the Democrats Trump unlawfully fired from the FTC is back

Four months after President Donald Trump defied Supreme Court precedent to remove two Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission without cause, one of those commissioners is returning to work. US District Court Judge Loren AliKhan called the a…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Meta snubs the EU’s voluntary AI guidelines

Meta says it won’t sign the European Union’s artificial intelligence code of practice agreement, warning that “Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI.” The code published by the EU on July 10th is a voluntary set of guidelines to help companies follow th…

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

Why tech billionaires want a ‘corporate dictatorship’

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Jon Fortt, CNBC journalist, cohost of Closing Bell: Overtime, and creator of the Fortt Knox streaming series on LinkedIn. I’m guest-hosting for a couple more episodes of Decoder this summer while Nilay is out on parental…

The Verge by Jon Fortt

Democrats are desperately trying to revive the click-to-cancel rule

Democratic lawmakers are taking multiple routes to try to revive the Federal Trade Commission's "click-to-cancel" rule after an appeals court blocked it on procedural grounds right before it was set to take effect. Democrats already introduced legislation ear…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Trump is bringing back the AI law moratorium

The White House unveiled its long-awaited “AI Action Plan” on Wednesday, and it included a zombie: A resurrected form of the controversial AI law moratorium that died a very public death.  The failed congressional moratorium would have stipulated that no stat…

The Verge by Hayden Field

Tesla’s earnings hit a new low, with largest revenue drop in a decade

Tesla released its second quarter financial earnings today, offering the latest evidence of the damage Elon Musk’s political activities have done to his flagship company. Tesla said it earned $1.17 billion in net income on $22.5 billion in revenue. That’s abo…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

The White House orders tech companies to make AI bigoted again

After delivering a rambling celebration of tariffs and a routine about women's sports, President Donald Trump entertained a crowd, which was there to hear about his new AI Action Plan, with one his favorite topics: "wokeness." Trump complained that AI compani…

The Verge by Adi Robertson

We are not ready for better deepfakes

If you’re like me, then lately you’ve scrolled past something on social media and thought, “Wait, was that real?” Deepfakes are everywhere, and they’re getting a lot more convincing.  That brings me to my Decoder guest today: Gaurav Misra, the CEO of Captions…

The Verge by Alex Heath

Breaking down Trump’s big gift to the AI industry

President Donald Trump's plan to promote America's AI dominance involves discouraging "woke AI," slashing state and federal regulations, and laying the groundwork to rapidly expand AI development and adoption. Trump's proposal, released on July 23rd, is a swe…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner, Justine Calma, Hayden Field, Adi Robertson

ChatGPT can be a disaster for lawyers — Robin AI says it can fix that

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! I’m Jon Fortt — CNBC journalist, cohost of Closing Bell: Overtime, and creator of the Fortt Knox streaming series on LinkedIn. This is the last episode I’ll be guest-hosting for Nilay while he’s out on parental leave. We have an…

The Verge by Jon Fortt

Microsoft reports strong cloud earnings, with Windows and Xbox up too

Microsoft just posted the fourth and final quarter of its 2025 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $76.4 billion in revenue and a net income of $27.2 billion during Q4. Revenue is up 18 percent, and net income has increased by 24 percent. Like c…

The Verge by Tom Warren

Why Nintendo didn’t raise the price of the Switch 2 (yet)

Just about every piece of hardware that Nintendo sells is getting a little more expensive in the US - with the exception of the Switch 2. That includes all models of the original Switch, a bunch of accessories, and even a motion-activated alarm clock. The cha…

The Verge by Andrew Webster

Brendan Carr declares victory over the First Amendment

On Monday, the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a complaint against Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr. The filing, sent to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel at the DC Court of Appeals, alleges that Carr had repeatedly broken basic …

The Verge by Adi Robertson

Tesla proposes giving Elon Musk $29 billion so he stays CEO

Tesla approved a restricted stock award of 96 million shares, worth about $29 billion, to “incentivize” the controversial billionaire to remain at the head of the company during a protracted legal battle over his original pay package. Last year, a Delaware co…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Democrats ask how Trump’s government will regulate Trump Mobile

When a Trump-branded phone on a Trump-branded mobile network launches sometime this year (if all goes according to plan), US regulators will face what's become a recurring conundrum in Donald Trump's presidency: how to regulate a product with ties to the head…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

40 years later, Brazil is as prescient as ever

Brazil opens with a bureaucratic error. A fly gets stuck in a typewriter, changing the surname of Archibald Tuttle to Archibald Buttle, a misprint on a form that dictates the government forcibly detain a suspected terrorist (Tuttle) but instead leads to the a…

The Verge by Kevin Nguyen

Trump demands CEO of Intel resign over ties to China

President Donald Trump has called for Lip-Bu Tan to immediately resign as Intel’s CEO over his reported ties to Chinese tech firms. The demand follows Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton questioning Intel’s board chairman whether Tan’s alleged connections to China wo…

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

Truth Social’s new AI search engine basically just pushes Fox News

Donald Trump’s Truth Social has launched a new AI search feature that consistently pushes conservative media sources. The feature, Truth Search AI, is powered by the AI startup Perlexity and is now available on the web version of Trump’s social media platform…

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

Paramount is now a Skydance Corporation

It’s official: Skydance Media’s deal to purchase CBS parent company Paramount Global for $8 billion is complete, and incoming chairman / CEO David Ellison’s first order of business is a massive restructuring. In an open letter about his plans for Paramount, a…

The Verge by Charles Pulliam-Moore

What is Laura Loomer?

For the uninitiated, watching a Jeffrey Epstein truther such as Laura Loomer have such influence over the White House's decisions is nothing short of baffling. ABC News attributes "the ouster of at least 15 individuals from Trump's second administration" to L…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Why Donald Trump’s environmental data purge is so much worse this time

Now that we're about halfway into the first year of President Donald Trump's second term, we can take stock of his administration's destruction of online environmental resources. It's worse than last time. It's also, seemingly, just the beginning - paving the…

The Verge by Justine Calma

US demands cut of Nvidia sales in order to ship AI chips to China

The Trump administration has ordered Nvidia and AMD to pay the federal government a 15 percent cut of their AI chip sales revenue to China, according to reports from The New York Times and The Financial Times. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly reached an agr…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Ford is doubling down on EVs — the timing is awful

On Monday, Ford introduced an innovative new manufacturing process that it says will help make its EVs more sustainable, more desirable, and more importantly, more affordable. The timing couldn't have been worse. EV tax credits were set to expire at the end o…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Chatbots aren’t telling you their secrets

On Monday, xAI's Grok chatbot suffered a mysterious suspension from X, and faced with questions from curious users, it happily explained why. "My account was suspended after I stated that Israel and the US are committing genocide in Gaza," it told one user. "…

The Verge by Adi Robertson

Elon Musk’s gangster tech regulation comes for Apple

Elon Musk is calling in another return on his investment in American politics: he's threatening Apple with a lawsuit because neither X nor xAI's Grok have been recommended on the iOS App Store. How serious this threat is - well, that's hard to say, as it was …

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto

PBS is slashing its budget in response to Trump’s attack on public media

Now that Congress has passed a bill that will defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS is taking drastic measures to stay alive. In an email sent out to PBS station managers on Wednesday, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger announced that the organi…

The Verge by Charles Pulliam-Moore

Laura Loomer and the limits of posting everything

For all the power she wields with the White House's affairs, Laura Loomer does not have the traditional tools that her rivals in the MAGA influencer industrial complex have - the highest follower count, the most political power, the most internet platforms, e…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Fujifilm is raising the prices of its cameras again

Just two weeks after raising the prices of its cameras by up to $800, Fujifilm is warning customers about another increase for US customers. In a statement provided to DPReview, the Japanese company says it will “further adjust prices” as it contends with “vo…

The Verge by Emma Roth

How the MAGA goon squad became tech lobbyists

Hello there, world! Welcome to the second issue of Regulator, a newsletter about the collision between Big Tech and Washington. If you enjoy this, consider subscribing to get this newsletter weekly and everything The Verge has to offer. Lobbying might be a du…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Palestine was the problem with TikTok

In the last month, the war in Gaza has become an inescapable facet of the public consciousness as a new surge of images of Palestinian children - their faces impossibly sunken, their limbs reduced to skin and bone - flooded the internet. As the pictures becam…

The Verge by Sarah Jeong

Trump says the US is taking a 10 percent stake in Intel

President Donald Trump has confirmed that the US will take a 10 percent stake in Intel. During a press conference on Friday, Trump said Intel CEO Lip Bu-Tan agreed to give the government the stake, which is valued at around $10 billion. Earlier this month, Tr…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Florida man orders beautification of America after gold-plating the White House

President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Thursday to improve the “usability and aesthetics” of US government services by creating “first-class online and offline experiences for Americans.” “It is time to update the Government’s design language …

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

Will Trump help 4Chan escape the UK’s internet police?

After the United Kingdom began enforcing its sweeping Online Safety Act in April, British regulator Ofcom served violation notices to three notorious sites: 4chan, Gab, and Kiwi Farms, each of which risked multimillion-dollar fines. Late last week, Preston By…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

AI super PACs, the hottest investment in tech

Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter about the collision between Big Tech and Washington (last week of summer edition). If you enjoy this, consider subscribing to get this newsletter weekly and everything The Verge has to offer. Ever since the US Supr…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

The winners and losers of Taylor Swift’s engagement announcement

The world’s most famous celebrity couple got engaged, and the first place the news broke was on Instagram. By now, it’s not much of a surprise that pop star Taylor Swift and football player Travis Kelce opted to announce their engagement on the platform on Tu…

The Verge by Mia Sato

4Chan and Kiwi Farms file joint lawsuit against the UK

On Wednesday, 4Chan and Kiwi Farms, two of the most controversial social media sites on the internet, filed a federal lawsuit against the British government, arguing that the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act infringe on their Constitutional rights a…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Trump is moving Space Command to Alabama

President Donald Trump is moving US Space Command’s headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, he announced during a press conference on Tuesday. The change reverses former President Joe Biden’s 2023 decision to leave it in Colorado Springs, where its temporary h…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Ousted Democratic FTC commissioner can return (again) for now

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the Democratic Federal Trade Commissioner fired by President Donald Trump without cause, can at least temporarily return to work while her legal case plays out. This happened once before when Slaughter briefly returned to her office m…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Tesla’s new ‘Master Plan’ sounds like AI slop

Tesla's latest "Master Plan" makes a few things clear right out of the gate: the company that was once known for accelerating the push toward a brighter future by popularizing electric vehicles and renewable energy is no longer interested in that quotidian st…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Tech leaders take turns flattering Trump at White House dinner

Several of the most powerful business leaders in the country gathered around a table last night to fawn over President Donald Trump for his AI policies. “You and your policies are really helping a lot,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the president. AMD CEO …

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Columbia tries using AI to cool off student tensions

Can AI help "smooth over" discussion on abortion, racism, immigration, or Israel-Palestine? Columbia University sure hopes so. The Verge has learned that the university recently began testing Sway, an AI debate program currently in beta. Developed by two rese…

The Verge by Hayden Field

Silicon Valley’s most powerful alliance just got stronger

Eddy Cue deserves a raise. As the executive overseeing Apple's services division, he's highly incentivized to protect the tens of billions of dollars a year that Google pays to be the default search engine in Safari. "I've lost a lot of sleep thinking about i…

The Verge by Alex Heath

OpenAI reportedly signs $300 billion Project Stargate cloud deal with Oracle

OpenAI and Oracle signed a deal “to purchase $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years,” one of the largest cloud computing deals ever, reports the Wall Street Journal. In July, the two companies revealed their partnership to build data centers …

The Verge by Elissa Welle

Republicans pledge censorship crackdown to avenge Charlie Kirk’s death

In the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's fatal shooting, some political figures are threatening a crackdown on free speech - a cause Kirk claimed to fight for. Members of Congress, the State Department, and President Donald Trump have all attacked pe…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Even killings are content

Minutes after news that right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk had been shot at a planned campus event at Utah Valley University, the wheels of social media engagement farming and clout chasing had already begun to grind to life. Kirk, despite being in his 30s, w…

The Verge by Mia Sato

The US and China might finally have a TikTok deal

The US and China have reached a “framework” deal to divest TikTok from its Chinese parent company, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters during trade talks in Madrid on Monday. As noted by Reuters, Bessent confirmed that “the framework is for a swit…

The Verge by Emma Roth

The China-US deal for TikTok could take another month to work out

TikTok might not finalize its deal to sell its US operations for at least another month. Sources tell CNBC’s David Faber that the US and China might close on an agreement within the next 30 to 45 days, while Oracle will remain the app’s cloud partner, allowin…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Can Luigi Mangione get too big to jail?

The first people in line on Tuesday, I was told, started camping out on the sidewalk two days ago. Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024, was due in court at 9AM ET for a hearing in one of three c…

The Verge by Mia Sato

Hyundai to invest $2.7 billion in Georgia factory hit by ICE raid

Undeterred by the recent ICE raid that rounded up hundreds of its workers in Georgia, Hyundai announced a fresh slate of investments in the US, including $2.7 billion into the EV battery factory where the raid took place. The automaker also plans to release a…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Hyundai CEO distances company from ICE raid: ‘not our facility’

Today, the CEO of Hyundai sought to distance his company from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid earlier this month at the company’s battery factory in Georgia, which resulted in the arrest of hundreds of South Korean workers.  The factory is operat…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Wildfire smoke is an insidious and growing public health threat

Wildfire smoke is the air quality nightmare of our generation, eating away at previous gains made by cracking down on industrial emissions and tailpipe pollution. Constant exposure to smoke is becoming a chronic threat even in places that historically haven't…

The Verge by Justine Calma

So… is there a TikTok deal or not?

China and the US have “made progress” on granting permission for ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American consortium, fulfilling a nine-months-overdue legal requirement. After saying a tentative deal had been reached Monday and that approval would come Friday,…

The Verge by Adi Robertson

Meta’s quest to own your face

Meta obviously believes in smart glasses. It's not alone: Google, Apple, Samsung, and others all appear to be heavily invested in the idea that the next big gadget will be on your face. But at least for now, it appears Meta is the company building the best, m…

The Verge by David Pierce

Trump announces skilled worker visas will now cost $100,000

All the fawning by tech CEOs wasn’t enough to convince Donald Trump to back off his crusade against immigrants. Yesterday the president announced that the government would be adding a $100,000-a-year fee on all H-1B visas in an effort to discourage their use.…

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

The Trump administration just can’t stop leaking its chats

Months into an administration that has already suffered several basic security slipups, it's not exactly surprising to see President Donald Trump airing complaints in a public Truth Social post that seemed intended for Pam Bondi's DMs. In the post, Trump dire…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Inside Charlie Kirk’s megachurch memorial service

Hello and welcome to Regulator. According to a rough transcript of Charlie Kirk's memorial service, the word "martyr" was uttered less than 10 times. But to the 90,000-plus people watching live in Glendale, Arizona, and the 100 million who reportedly watched …

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Microsoft’s AI CEO on the future of the browser

The AI browser wars are heating up. Google has Gemini in Chrome, Perplexity is building its Comet AI browser, and The Browser Company just got acquired by Atlassian for $610 million. Now, Microsoft wants to be part of the AI browser conversation. I sat down w…

The Verge by Tom Warren

Kimmel returns to television to mock FCC Chair Brendan Carr

Jimmy Kimmel made a triumphant return to television (in most, but not all, cities) on Tuesday night, devoting his monologue to his short but shocking removal from the air. The comedian tackled the uproar head-on, directly naming Brendan Carr, the Federal Comm…

The Verge by Sarah Jeong

Disney sure picked a terrible time to raise prices

Disney is in a tangled web of its own making. In just one week, the entertainment giant managed to anger both sides of the political spectrum, and then topped it all off with a Disney Plus price hike that made just about everyone mad. Now, Disney's facing cri…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Trump signs executive order approving TikTok deal

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order approving a TikTok deal that will save it from a nationwide ban. (We haven’t actually seen the order yet, only watched Trump sign it — we’ll update once we’ve seen the full text.) The deal values TikTok’s U…

The Verge by Emma Roth, Tina Nguyen

The TikTok deal raises more questions than answers

Following months of delays, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that's supposed to "save" TikTok. Trump claims the deal will make the app "American-operated," fulfilling the divest-or-ban law that threatened the China-owned app's presence in …

The Verge by Emma Roth, Lauren Feiner

Trump’s new target: Microsoft head of global affairs Lisa Monaco

After successfully manipulating Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and eventually failing to cancel Jimmy Kimmel, President Donald Trump has named his next target for retribution: Microsoft head of global affairs Lisa Monaco. He’s calling for her to be fired. On Truth Soci…

The Verge by Sean Hollister

Larry Ellison’s quest to run the world

For most of his career Larry Ellison has been content to quietly let Oracle be the company, behind the company, behind the technology that makes headlines. Its biggest products being cloud computing and database products that it sells to enterprise customers …

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

YouTube caves to Trump with $24.5 million settlement

YouTube has settled a lawsuit President Donald Trump filed against the company in 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal. Trump filed sweeping lawsuits against Google-owned YouTube, Meta (then Facebook) and X (then Twitter) after he was suspended from the…

The Verge by Jay Peters

The Trump phone is late

I’ve got bad news if you’ve been impatiently awaiting the release of the Trump Mobile T1: it looks like the gold-tinted, bargain basement smartphone with “American values” is running late. It was initially meant to launch in September, but with only a few hou…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia

Google appears to have blocked AI search results for the query “does trump show signs of dementia” as well as other questions about his mental acuity, even though it will show AI results for similar searches about other presidents. When making the search abou…

The Verge by Jay Peters

TikTok, #freedom edition

Hello and welcome to Regulator. Today is the last day of The Verge's very good subscription sale: $4 for a month and $35 for the year, for full access to the entire site. Don't delay! When we launched Regulator two months ago, the premise was that I'd write a…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Trump’s solution for high drug prices is a discount portal called TrumpRx

President Donald Trump is launching a new government-run website that he says will let Americans buy medications at lower prices. The new website, called TrumpRx, is expected to launch in 2026 and will direct consumers to discounts on drugmakers’ online store…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Everything is terrorism in Trump’s America

The Trump administration declared war on the "terrorist organization" of "antifa" and the supposed "networks" associated with it last week. Antifa is not so much a vast national conspiracy as it is simply an abbreviation for anti-fascism - but don't point out…

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto, Sarah Jeong

Jane Goodall’s death triggered the premiere of Netflix’s new show

For the last several years Netflix has been quietly banking episodes of a new show called Famous Last Words, interviews with famous people entering their twilight years. The catch is that episodes will only air after the subject passes away. The full list of …

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

CBS News was just taken over by a Substack

Paramount is acquiring The Free Press, an independent media publication started on Substack. As part of the deal, Paramount is installing The Free Press’s founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, according to an announcement on Monday. Before …

The Verge by Emma Roth

Trump’s vague and confusing immigration policies are the point

In August, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that adjudicates and grants immigration benefits like visas, residency, and naturalization, put out a bizarre three-page policy alert. Among other things, it noted vaguely that the agency woul…

The Verge by Felipe De La Hoz

OpenAI wasn’t expecting Sora’s copyright drama

When OpenAI released its new AI-generated video app Sora last week, it launched with an opt-out policy for copyright holders - media companies would need to expressly indicate they didn't want their AI-generated characters running rampant on the app. But afte…

The Verge by Hayden Field

How trans visibility became a trap

I renewed my passport the day after Trump won again. It wouldn’t expire for years, but I did it anyway, along with many trans people I knew who could scrape together the fee. We all had the same thought: get your documents in order now, while you still can. F…

The Verge by Parker Molloy

Senate Democrats want to know: was YouTube’s Trump settlement a bribe?

A group of Democratic lawmakers are asking questions about YouTube’s $24.5 million settlement with President Donald Trump. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, five Senators — Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Bernie Sa…

The Verge by Adi Robertson

‘New media’ is just right-wing media

Hello and welcome to a post-October Federal Holiday edition of Regulator. Last week, I caught wind that House Speaker Mike Johnson, along with several top House Republican leaders, had held an exclusive press briefing about the government shutdown that was re…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Judge orders immigration agents in Chicago to use body cams

Judge Sara L. Ellis of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said during a hearing Thursday morning that she would require ICE agents in Chicago engaged in “Operation Midway Blitz” to use body cameras.  But the logistics of enforcin…

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

The US has a new roadmap for fusion energy, without the funds to back it up

The Department of Energy (DOE) released a new roadmap for the US to realize the decades-long dream of harnessing fusion energy. It’s a commitment to support research and development efforts and pursue public-private partnerships to finally build the first gen…

The Verge by Justine Calma

How Apple’s walled garden protects ICE

Hello and welcome to Regulator. Of all the strange, unintended consequences stemming from major lawsuits, I never thought that the Trump administration's power to force Apple to remove ICE-tracking mobile apps from its stores could have been connected to a le…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

The weather disaster database that Trump killed has a new home

The national database on billion-dollar weather and climate disasters has found a new home after the Trump administration decided to ax it earlier this year. Thanks to researchers continuing the work despite a lack of federal support, we can keep the tally go…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay

We’ve got a special episode of Decoder today. I’m talking to General Motors CEO Mary Barra and new GM Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson about a lot of big news the company just announced. That includes a Google Gemini-powered AI assistant that’s coming …

The Verge by Nilay Patel

Trump pardons disgraced Binance founder Changpeng Zhao

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, was pardoned by President Trump today, according to the Wall Street Journal. The move comes after months of lobbying by the company and Zhao’s own efforts to boost the Trump family’s crypto venture, Worl…

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

Elon Musk says he needs $1 trillion to control Tesla’s ‘robot army’

Well, that’s not very subtle. In an earnings call last night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he needs more control over Tesla, as well as a pay package that could be worth nearly $1 trillion, in exchange for building a “robot army.” Otherwise, he could get ousted a…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Trump’s got Big Tech and crypto bankrolling White House ballroom

Trump is demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make way for a gilded grand ballroom. The president says taxpayers won’t be footing the $300 million bill and that private donors, himself included, will pick up the tab.  Big Tech will be paying for a …

The Verge by Robert Hart

Trump’s DHS is recruiting ICE officers with a Halo meme

After using the original Pokémon theme song in a montage of ICE raids, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using another popular video game franchise to promote itself on social media: Halo. This morning, the DHS posted an image featuring Halo charac…

The Verge by Jay Peters

ExxonMobil accuses California of violating its free speech

ExxonMobil is suing California over state laws that compel large companies to share a more comprehensive picture of their greenhouse gas emissions, as well as disclose financial risks that climate change might pose to their investors. The oil and gas company …

The Verge by Justine Calma

The FCC just gave itself the power to make a DJI drone ban stick

This morning, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-0 to let itself retroactively ban gadgets and radio components that it previously approved for entry into the United States, if the company that makes them is deemed a national security risk. O…

The Verge by Sean Hollister

Halo on PlayStation might be what Xbox needs to survive

Halo coming to PlayStation is one of those events that, five years ago, would have been the tell that "something is not right here" in a show about time travel or alternate universes. Looking at the state of Xbox with its layoffs, game cancellations, price hi…

The Verge by Ash Parrish

Influencers have fractured reality in Portland

The legal fight over whether the president can send troops into Portland, Oregon, depends on whether judges believe their own eyes or their smartphones. Even before inception, the lawsuit has been dogged by a war on reality fueled by social media influencers,…

The Verge by Sarah Jeong

Trump re-nominates billionaire Jared Isaacman to lead NASA

President Donald Trump has once again picked tech billionaire Jared Isaacman to be the next NASA Administrator, five months after pulling the initial nomination he made last year. Isaacman, an Elon Musk ally and commercial astronaut who has travelled into orb…

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

Zohran Mamdani won because he knew when to be online — and when not to

Zohran Mamdani owes his win as New York City mayor substantially to his internet presence. Mamdani - as numerous writers have outlined - is good on social video. He picked a message, stuck to it, and adapted that platform to snappy soundbites across multiple …

The Verge by Adi Robertson

Baseball broke containment during the World Series

With the swing of a bat, another October came and went for those of us who love baseball. As languid and habitual as the rest of the season can feel, October baseball at its best is pure chaos: Night after night, there's a promise of something new, that you m…

The Verge by Mia Sato

How deep-sea mining could threaten a vital ocean food source

The race to mine battery minerals from the ocean floor would create a new stream of waste that could rob sea life of a critical food source, according to new research published today in the journal Nature Communications. That could have far-reaching effects a…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Tesla shareholders approve Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package

Tesla shareholders voted Thursday to approve Elon Musk’s staggering new pay package, in a move aimed at retaining the controversial CEO’s leadership during a time of great upheaval for the automaker. Over 75 percent of shares voted in favor of the proposal. T…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Anthropic will invest $50 billion in building AI data centers in the US

Anthropic just announced plans to put $50 billion toward bolstering computing infrastructure in the US. As part of the initiative, the company is working with the AI cloud platform Fluidstack to build datacenters in Texas and New York, “with more sites to com…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Why we’re going to keep talking about the Trump phone

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been asking — repeatedly — where the promised Trump phone is, whether it exists, and what happened to all the money people have already paid for deposits. And I’m going to keep doing that every week for the foreseeable futur…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Senator Warren presses Trump admin on potential AI bailout plans

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is pressing the Trump administration for more information on potential plans to “prop up” major AI companies with money from taxpayers. In a letter to David Sacks, the White House special advisor for AI and Crypto, and Michael …

The Verge by Emma Roth

Here’s the Trump executive order that would ban state AI laws

President Donald Trump is considering signing an executive order as soon as Friday that would give the federal government unilateral power over regulating artificial intelligence, including the creation of an "AI Litigation Task Force" overseen by the Attorne…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Europe is scaling back its landmark privacy and AI laws

After years of staring down the world’s biggest tech companies and setting the bar for tough regulation worldwide, Europe has blinked. Under intense pressure from industry and the US government, Brussels is stripping protections from its flagship General Data…

The Verge by Robert Hart, Dominic Preston

The new silicon valley (literally)

Arizona's economy was once dominated by the "five C's": cotton, cattle, citrus, copper, and climate. But a new C has emerged that could grow to overshadow the rest: chips. New semiconductor manufacturing facilities are springing up across the greater Phoenix …

The Verge by Justine Calma

UN climate negotiations burned up and then fizzled out

"It's a wrap … Don't forget to buy an 'i survived Belém' shirt," reads the opening line of an email I got Saturday, the final day of highly anticipated United Nations climate negotiations in Belém, Brazil. The email was sent from Shravya Jain-Conti, the US cl…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Why college students prefer News Daddy over The New York Times

Ankit Khanal gets his news from News Daddy. More than 20 times a day, Khanal, a sophomore at George Mason University, opens TikTok to have the biggest stories of the day delivered to him by a bleach-blonde 26-year-old named Dylan Page, one of the leading face…

The Verge by Victoria Le

What the leaked AI executive order tells us about the Big Tech power grab

Hello and welcome back to Regulator. It's been a very long two weeks away from your inboxes, but luckily for us, Big Tech and Big Government did not stop fighting. In fact, it's gotten even spicier. Let's get into it. Last week, I was following up on several …

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

DJI ban: how the world’s biggest dronemaker is getting shoved out of the US

December 23rd, 2025. That’s the day DJI will automatically be banned from the United States — unless Trump steps in. You’ll still be able to fly your existing DJI drones and film with existing Osmo cameras. But DJI will be barred from importing any new produc…

The Verge by Sean Hollister

It’s their job to keep AI from destroying everything

One night in May 2020, during the height of lockdown, Deep Ganguli was worried. Ganguli, then research director at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, had just been alerted to OpenAI's new paper on GPT-3, its latest large language model. This new AI…

The Verge by Hayden Field

Elon Musk is on a racist posting spree again

Billionaire Elon Musk — who’s long used his X (formerly Twitter) platform to stoke anger at immigrants and support antisemitic conspiracy theories — has spent the past day spreading and praising claims that “White people are on the verge of extinction,” Somal…

The Verge by Adi Robertson

Trump invites ‘cute’ Japanese kei trucks to come to America

Tiny kei trucks from Japan have a new fan: President Donald Trump. Trump expressed admiration for the pint-sized autos during a briefing with reporters to announce his plan to gut fuel economy standards. “They’re very small. They’re really cute,” Trump said. …

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

Microsoft has been publishing data about the gender, race, and ethnic breakdown of its employees for more than a decade. Since 2019 it's been publishing a full diversity and inclusion report annually, and at the same time made reporting on diversity a require…

The Verge by Tom Warren

Netflix CEO made a visit to the White House before buying Warner Bros.

In November, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO made a trip to the White House for a lengthy meeting with Donald Trump. According to Bloomberg, the two discussed a number of topics, but chief among them was Netflix’s plan to bid on Warner Bros. At the end of thei…

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

Square’s product chief on the death of the penny and the future of money

Today, I’m talking with Willem Avé, who’s head of product at Square. You know Square — it was started by billionaire Jack Dorsey, of Twitter fame, more than 15 years ago, and it got big on the back of that little magnetic reader that plugged into the headphon…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

The war on disinformation is a losing battle

As he called the House Judiciary Committee into session on a cold and snowy February day in Washington, DC, Chairman Jim Jordan was ready to take a victory lap. American free speech had been critically threatened, and now it was saved - in large part thanks t…

The Verge by James Ball

Donald Trump reminds the entire world he has no idea what 6G means

When business leaders spout buzzwords like "AI," "8K" and "5G," sometimes in the same sentence, we often get a sneaking suspicion they don't know what they mean! With President Donald Trump, there's no need to wonder: he clearly has no idea. "What does [6G] d…

The Verge by Sean Hollister

There are no good outcomes for the Warner Bros. sale

Netflix is the frontrunner to become Warner Bros.' new owner, but the war for control of the legacy studio isn't over just yet. Paramount Skydance has made its own outsize offer for the company that would give CEO David Ellison even more control over the news…

The Verge by Charles Pulliam-Moore

We’re still talking about the Trump phone

Every week at The Verge, we’re tracking what’s happening with Trump Mobile’s promised and yet undelivered Android phone. Why? Because we cover phones. We also cover vaporware, which the T1 Phone 8002 (gold version) very well may be. The smartphone has now bee…

The Verge by Verge Staff

Trump is recruiting Big Tech workers for the government

President Donald Trump will recruit workers from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other tech giants to form the US Tech Force, a new program that aims to "modernize the federal government," according to an announcement on Monday. Under the new prog…

The Verge by Emma Roth

What 1,000 pages of documents tell us about DOGE

Months after staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency were found in the Federal Communications Commission directory, the FCC is being accused of slow-walking demands for information about what they did there. On February 24th, advocacy group Freq…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Larry Ellison’s big dumb gift to his large adult son

Media is a business about dreams, and Larry Ellison's son is dreaming big. This might explain why the case for Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros. Discovery is so incoherent. In October, Warner Bros. put itself up for sale, leading to a number of bids. The…

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto

Billionaire Jared Isaacman confirmed as new head of NASA

The Senate confirmed Jared Isaacman's appointment as the head of NASA on Wednesday, a decision that comes just months after President Donald Trump pulled his nomination before picking him yet again in November, as reported earlier by CNBC. Isaacman, the found…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Brendan Carr doesn’t regret his threats to broadcasters

A defiant Brendan Carr testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday in his first public appearance before lawmakers since threatening broadcasters who aired comedian Jimmy Kimmel's show. Over the course of nearly three hours, the Federal Commun…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Jimmy Wales trusts the process

Wikipedia will be 25 years old in January. During that time, the encyclopedia has gone from a punchline about the unreliability of online information to the factual foundation of the web. The project's status as a trusted source of facts has made it a target …

The Verge by Joshua Dzieza

Trump Media is merging with a nuclear fusion company

Trump Media, the company that runs social network Truth Social, is pivoting to nuclear fusion. It has announced a merger with California-based fusion power company TAE Technologies, and plans to start construction on a fusion power plant in 2026. Trump Media …

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Trump’s war on offshore wind faces another lawsuit

Dominion Energy, an offshore wind developer and utility serving Virginia's "data center alley," filed suit against the Trump administration this week over its decision to pause federal leases for large offshore wind projects. The move puts a sudden stop to fi…

The Verge by Justine Calma

The Trump phone just missed another release date

Where's the Trump Phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump Phone's whereabouts. As usual, we're still waiting for a response. In the meantime, it's missed yet another of its promised release d…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Samsung adds much needed brightness to its Freestyle projector

The Freestyle Plus all-in-one portable projector features 430 ISO Lumens, or "nearly twice the brightness of the previous generation," according to Samsung. Great! But also a little strange since both the original and second generation Freestyle projectors li…

The Verge by Thomas Ricker

The robots, phones, and Lego of CES 2026

This year's Consumer Electronics Show is only just getting into full swing, and we've already seen a deluge of gadget announcements. There are the staples, of course: gigantic TVs, smart home sensors, phone accessories, weirdly elaborate ways to charge your d…

The Verge by David Pierce

Grok is undressing children — can the law stop it?

Grok began 2026 as it began 2025: under fire for its AI-generated images. Elon Musk's chatbot has spent the last week flooding X with nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors. Circulating screenshots show Grok complying with requests to put re…

The Verge by Hayden Field

X’s deepfake machine is infuriating policymakers around the globe

X's Grok chatbot hasn't stopped accepting users' requests to strip down women and, in some cases, apparent minors to AI-generated bikinis. According to some reports, the flood of AI-generated images includes more extreme content that potentially violates laws…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

America’s new era of energy imperialism is about more than oil

President Donald Trump has no shame in admitting what he wants to get out of attacking Venezuela and threatening other energy resource-rich nations. "We're gonna get the oil flowing the way it should be," he said January 3rd, soon after his administration stu…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards

Since X's users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple's and Google's app stores. The fact that it hasn't happened yet tells me something …

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto

Democrats should reject tech influence to win elections, Warren says

The path forward for the Democratic party after its 2024 defeat includes less tech influence and more populist policies, according to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Warren delivered this message in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on Monda…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

WeatherTech founder might be the newest US consumer protection official

President Donald Trump made an unconventional pick for his nomination to the Federal Trade Commission: WeatherTech founder and CEO David MacNeil. MacNeil founded the company, which makes weather-resistant car floor mats, in 1989, according to its website, and…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Microsoft scrambles to quell fury around its new AI data centers

It looks like the wave of campaigns against data centers are getting under big tech companies' skin - and Microsoft is the latest giant to promise to address frustrations on the ground in communities around their data centers. The company announced a five-poi…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Democrats push FTC to investigate Trump Mobile

Elizabeth Warren and other Democrat lawmakers have written an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking for an investigation into alleged "false advertising and deceptive practices" from Trump Mobile. The company first announced its T1 Phone mo…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Microsoft is closing its employee library and cutting back on subscriptions

Microsoft's library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft's digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, a…

The Verge by Tom Warren

Minnesota wants to win a war of attrition

As masked and armed men in combat armor swarmed throughout the Twin Cities, Gov. Tim Walz took to primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The videos, he said, would "create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans - not just to establish …

The Verge by Sarah Jeong

How much can a city take?

I live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE age…

The Verge by Scott Meslow

FTC says it will appeal Meta antitrust loss

The Federal Trade Commission will appeal its loss in a landmark antitrust case against Meta, the agency announced Tuesday. US District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled in November that the government failed to prove that Meta had an illegal monopoly over a su…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Trump is steamrolling global calls for a moratorium on deep-sea mining

The Trump administration took the next step toward unilaterally jumpstarting deep-sea mining this week, announcing a "consolidated" permitting process for both searching for and commercially extracting minerals that have so far remained relatively untouched. …

The Verge by Justine Calma

The state attorneys general are as mad as you are

The sun was already beginning to set as Portlanders in weatherproof jackets and fleeces lined up around Revolution Hall. It wasn't yet 5PM on a Wednesday but the crowd was gathering well before the town hall was scheduled to begin. Just a day earlier, news ou…

The Verge by Sarah Jeong

Hang on, there’s a Trump Phone Ultra coming too?

Where's the Trump Phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump Phone's whereabouts. As usual, we're still waiting for a response. In the meantime, it turns out we might have two Trump Phones to wo…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Congress doesn’t seem to know if the TikTok deal complies with its law

TikTok finally closed a deal meant to bring it into compliance with the law that should have banned it a year ago, and the lawmakers who passed that law still don't seem to know what's going on. The company announced Tuesday that its US service is now part of…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Creators and communities everywhere take a stand against ICE

It's not surprising when the guy who's been yelling about the horrors of late-stage capitalism on Instagram for the last five years turns his ire towards ICE. But something different has been happening over the week or so, following the most recent shootings …

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

OpenAI’s president is a Trump mega-donor

OpenAI's co-founder and longtime president, Greg Brockman, didn't just make a run-of-the-mill donation to the main pro-Trump super PAC - together, he and his wife Anna's September 2025 donations equaled the largest of them all, totaling $25 million to "MAGA I…

The Verge by Hayden Field

TikTok blames its US problems on a power outage

TikTok says a power outage is causing ongoing issues and outages that started in the US early Sunday morning. In an email to The Verge, TikTok USDS spokesperson Jamie Favazza pointed to a statement posted to the joint venture's newly-created X account, which …

The Verge by Emma Roth

TikTok broke in its first weekend with US ownership

TikTok has suffered from extensive problems on its first weekend after completing the sale of its US arm, though some issues appear to have spread globally. TikTok has yet to confirm any issues a day after troubles began, making it difficult to surmise the ex…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Payment processors were against CSAM until Grok started making it

For many years, credit card companies and other payment methods were aggressive about policing child sexual abuse material. Then, Elon Musk's Grok started undressing children on X. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found 101 sexualized images of children…

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto

All the ways TikTok is broken: here’s what’s real and what’s not

While social media rumors have suggested the errors are examples of censorship, more than a day after the issues began, TikTok USDS says the problems are the result of a power outage at a data center that it is working to resolve. Rumors of censorship targeti…

The Verge by Richard Lawler

The crypto bill is falling apart in Congress

Hello and welcome to Regulator, the Verge newsletter about the technology politics happening in our nation's capital. I hope our snowstorm-affected readers are safe, warm, and haven't reenacted The Shining at home yet. Do you know what prevents that? Subscrib…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Netflix is eating Hollywood — because it has to

On today’s episode of Decoder, I’m talking about the bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the biggest story in the entertainment industry right now, and for good reason. It has pretty much everything you could want in a buzzy Hollywood saga — big…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

ICE invades Minnesota and Minnesotans fight back

The Trump administration has flooded Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota with federal agents as part of its immigration crackdown, Operation Metro Surge — detaining children, intimidating protestors and community organizers, and killing multiple people. …

The Verge by Adi Robertson

Melania documentary creators say its big price tag wasn’t bribery

The makers of Amazon's Melania documentary have defended its exorbitant cost following accusations of bribery to appease the Trump empire. Amazon paid $40 million to Melania Trump's production company for the film rights and another $35 million for marketing …

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

How to tear gas children

The day after the second general strike in Minneapolis, the labor unions of Portland, Oregon, marched in solidarity. It was the warmest day that Portland had seen in a while, with sun peeking out from the clouds here and there. Many people had brought their e…

The Verge by Sarah Jeong

Why is the Trump administration really appealing its Meta loss?

After a federal judge ruled that Meta was not an illegal monopolist in a blow against the Federal Trade Commission, the agency issued what was in part a typical statement of disappointment. Another part of the statement was anything but: a political attack on…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Section 230 turns 30 as it faces its biggest tests yet

Thirty years ago today, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a bill credited with creating the groundwork for the modern internet, became law and set off a chain of events that would make it a lightning rod for the techlash. The statute has survived…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Siemens CEO Roland Busch’s mission to automate everything

Today, I’m talking with Roland Busch, who is the CEO of Siemens. Siemens is one of those absolutely giant, extremely important, but fairly opaque companies we love to dig into on Decoder. At a very basic, reductive level, Siemens makes the hardware and softwa…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

This whistle fights fascists

Kit Rocha and Courtney Milan have a knack for drawing attention to a cause. The bestselling romance novelists helped raise half a million dollars for Georgia voting rights in 2020. Now, their cause is whistles, because whistles let neighbors alert each other …

The Verge by Sean Hollister

ICE is pushing Minneapolis underground

Minneapolis was not the war zone I expected to find. Depending on who you are and where you live, things can seem, for a few fleeting moments, almost normal, like a few blocks or neighborhoods over people aren't being tear gassed or rounded up by ICE or, in t…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

It’s MAGA v Broligarch in the battle over prediction markets

Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about the love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship between Silicon Valley and Washington. I hope everyone got to celebrate George Washington's birthday in their preferred manner: skiing, stayc…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

America is at risk of becoming an automotive backwater

For decades, America's auto industry was the envy of the world, driven by mass production, the rise of Detroit's Big Three automakers, and the iconic stylings of the 1950s and '60s. Then, through a series of blunders and missteps, things started to unravel. T…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Democrats to introduce bill aimed at resurrecting IRS Direct File

160 Democratic lawmakers from across the country are backing a soon-to-be-introduced bill that would reverse the Trump administration's decision to eliminate IRS Direct File. The Direct File Act, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Trump orders federal agencies to drop Anthropic’s AI

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, accusing Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, of attempting to "STRONG-ARM" the Pentagon and directing federal agencies to "IMMEDIATELY CEASE" use of its products. At issue is Anthropic CEO Dario A…

The Verge by Hayden Field, Richard Lawler

CISA is getting a new acting director after less than a year

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, is getting a new acting director, as reported by ABC, less than a year after Madhu Gottumukkala took charge of the agency as deputy director …

The Verge by Stevie Bonifield

FedEx promises to refund customers for ‘illegal’ tariffs

FedEx plans to pass along any refunds resulting from the Supreme Court's ruling that some of President Donald Trump's tariffs are "illegal." In a statement on its website, FedEx notes that while "no refund process has been established by the courts," the comp…

The Verge by Emma Roth

We don’t have to have unsupervised killer robots

It's the day of the Pentagon's looming ultimatum for Anthropic: allow the US military unchecked access to its technology, including for mass surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons, or potentially be designated a "supply chain risk" and potentially l…

The Verge by Hayden Field

How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance

On Friday evening, amidst fallout from a standoff between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that his own company had successfully negotiated new terms with the Pentagon. The US government had just moved to blacklist Anth…

The Verge by Hayden Field

What Trump’s war on Iran means for the US energy crunch

Fuel prices surged after the Trump administration launched strikes against Iran on Saturday, immediately raising questions about whether the war would increase energy costs for Americans, put more pressure on power grids, and push companies to pump out more o…

The Verge by Justine Calma

Here’s how journalists spot deepfakes

In the days that followed the US and Israel's joint military strike on Iran on Saturday, floods of images and videos that supposedly document the war have appeared online. Some are old or depict unrelated conflicts, are made or manipulated with AI, and in som…

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

AI is now part of the culture wars — and real wars

Hello and welcome to Regulator, the newsletter for Verge subscribers that goes inside Washington's increasingly existential clashes between tech and politics. If this was forwarded to you, can I interest you in a full-fledged subscription to The Verge for onl…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

The world’s biggest automaker has one of the dirtiest supply chains: report

Tesla, Ford, and Volvo occupy the top three spots in a new ranking of 18 global automakers based on their efforts to eliminate carbon emissions, environmental harms, and human rights violations from their supply chains. Toyota, meanwhile, lurks near the botto…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Inside the secret meeting that led to the AI political resistance

In early January, a group of 90 or so political, community and thought leaders gathered in a New Orleans Marriott for a secret conference on artificial intelligence - so secret, in fact, that no one knew who else had been invited until they walked into the ro…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Prediction markets in the news are a dangerous gamble

Today on Decoder, let’s talk about prediction markets, which continue to insert themselves into the news cycle and the news itself in increasingly weird, unsettling, and potentially illegal ways.  My guest today is Liz Lopatto, senior reporter at The Verge, w…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

The Pentagon formally labels Anthropic a supply-chain risk

After weeks of failed negotiations, public ultimatums, and lawsuit threats, the Defense Department has formally labeled Anthropic a "supply-chain risk", escalating its fight with the AI company over their acceptable use policies and potentially bringing their…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense

Anthropic has sued the US government over its designation as a supply-chain risk, the latest move in a weekslong battle between it and the Pentagon over the acceptable use cases for its military AI tech. The suit, filed in a California district court, accuses…

The Verge by Hayden Field

Hasbro’s CEO has an AI Peppa Pig help design toys

Today, I’m talking with Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro. You know, Hasbro — the toy and game company that makes some of the most iconic products in the world, from toy lines like Transformers and My Little Pony to board and tabletop games like Monopoly, Magic: The…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

Every influencer eventually becomes a merch store

Tucker Carlson's online store sells right-wing apparel and home goods, like hoodies in the Supreme streetwear style mocking Somali people or mugs with The Godfather puppetmaster iconography edited to feature AIPAC. But last week, a handful of other products c…

The Verge by Mia Sato

Anthropic doesn’t trust the Pentagon, and neither should you

Today we’re talking about the messy, fast-moving situation at Anthropic, the maker of Claude that now finds itself in a very ugly legal battle with the Pentagon.  The back-and-forth is complicated, but as of a few days ago, the Pentagon had deemed Anthropic a…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

Trump administration is allegedly collecting $10 billion on the TikTok deal

In September, Donald Trump claimed that "the United States is getting a tremendous fee" for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is suppose…

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

AI Czar David Sacks wants Trump to ‘get out’ of Iran

David Sacks, the White House's AI and crypto czar, has warned that a continued war in Iran could be catastrophic. On the All In podcast, Sacks said that "we should try to find the off-ramp." He expressed concern that Iran could demolish oil and gas infrastruc…

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

Benjamin Netanyahu is struggling to prove he’s not an AI clone

Social media platforms are currently awash with conspiracy theories claiming that Benjamin Netanyahu has been killed or injured and replaced by AI-generated deepfakes. Between clips that supposedly show the Israeli Prime Minister sporting extra fingers and dr…

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

Teens sue Elon Musk’s xAI over Grok’s AI-generated CSAM

Three Tennessee teens are suing Elon Musk's xAI over claims that the company's Grok AI chatbot generated sexualized images and videos of themselves as minors, as reported earlier by The Washington Post. The proposed class action lawsuit, filed on Monday, accu…

The Verge by Emma Roth

I went to the Pentagon to watch Pete Hegseth scold war reporters

It is day 13 of America's surprise war with Iran - by sheer coincidence, it's Friday the 13th - and I am delirious. I haven't had a coffee since I woke up at 5AM, because I'm not allowed to bring outside beverages into the Pentagon (the security screening cut…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

The great EV pullback: all the obstacles, cancellations, and delays

The auto industry bet big on electric vehicles, but now those ambitious goals are falling apart. Demand was already slowing down when Donald Trump took office and took an ax to pro-EV policy: the elimination of the federal EV tax credit, kneecapping clean ene…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Trump takes another shot at dismantling state AI regulation

The Trump administration on Friday unveiled its new legislative blueprint for AI regulation, and the seven-point plan includes a clear message: The federal government should avoid many AI regulations beyond a set of child safety rules, and it should bar state…

The Verge by Hayden Field

What is ICE actually doing at the airport?

I arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport nearly five hours before my domestic flight. This is not my way - usually I roll up to the airport 30 minutes before boarding - but not even I have enough hubris to think that my good luck is more powerful th…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

NASA wants to put a $20 billion base on the Moon

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has big plans for the future of the agency, including the construction of a $20 billion lunar base that he said will establish an "enduring presence" on the Moon. Isaacman announced the news during NASA's Ignition event on Tu…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang are part of Trump’s new ‘tech panel’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin will be the first four members of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), according to the Wall Street Journal. The p…

The Verge by Stevie Bonifield

The United States router ban, explained

You've probably heard the US government has banned foreign-made consumer Wi-Fi routers over national security fears. You might be wondering: WTF is going on? Just another day in America under Donald Trump and FCC chairman Brendan Carr. You're probably fine fo…

The Verge by Sean Hollister

The TSA is broken — is privatization next?

KC Guidry usually gets to the airport two hours before a flight to give herself enough time to get through security. But she knew her flight on the morning of Monday, March 23, out of Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport was going to be anything but…

The Verge by Darryl Campbell

Everyone hates Ticketmaster. Why’d Trump go easy on them?

Today on Decoder, we’re talking about the major antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, and what it might mean for antitrust and competition law in general now that the Justice Department under Trump has decided to settle its part of the case. That’s even as m…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

Wait, the Trump phone might actually exist

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. This week I think I've found an FCC listing for the phone, showing it's received certification to launch in the …

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Sony is raising PS5 prices by $100 in April

Sony is raising the price of its PlayStation 5 consoles globally starting April 2nd. In an announcement on Friday, Sony says that the standard PS5 will now cost $649.99, up from $549.99. Meanwhile, the PS5 Digital Edition now costs $599.99 instead of $499.99,…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Trump fires attorney general Pam Bondi.

Taking a break from calling Bruce Springsteen a boring loser on Thursday, Donald Trump followed that up with another Truth Social post saying "loyal friend" Pam Bondi will transition to a yet-to-be-announced job in the private sector. CNN, the New York Times,…

The Verge by Richard Lawler

The boring, insidious world of the womanosphere

Usha Vance has a new podcast: Storytime with the Second Lady. It's exactly what it sounds like. Each episode begins with a brief introduction, after which JD Vance's wife reads a children's story. The first three episodes were released Monday, and none is lon…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

Despite EV headwinds, Rivian’s sales are up

It's rough out there for the pure EV companies, but despite all the challenges, Rivian says its on target for a historic year. Ahead of the launch of the company's more affordable R2 electric SUV, Rivian released its sales and production report for the first …

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

It’s not easy to get depression-detecting AI through the FDA

For the past seven years, the California-based startup Kintsugi has been developing AI designed to detect signs of depression and anxiety from a person's speech. But after failing to secure FDA clearance in time, the company is shutting down and releasing mos…

The Verge by Robert Hart

Rising gas prices are good news for EV sales, for now

It's become an American truism: Once you buy an SUV, there's no going back. And our love affair with pickups has been documented in a million country songs and TV commercials. But a brutal spike in gasoline prices - nipping $4 nationwide for a gallon of unlea…

The Verge by Lawrence Ulrich

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins wants data centers in space

Today, I’m talking with Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco. Cisco is one of those big companies that everyone has heard of but that most of us don’t have to interact with very much; it’s not really a consumer brand. But all of us are in some way using Cisco’s produc…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

Anthropic is launching a new AI model for cybersecurity

Anthropic is debuting a new AI model as part of a cybersecurity partnership with Nvidia, Google, Amazon Web Services, Apple, Microsoft, and other companies. Project Glasswing, as it's called, is billed as a way for large companies, and potentially even the go…

The Verge by Hayden Field

OpenAI made economic proposals — here’s what DC thinks of them

Happy ceasefire day and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about Big Tech's rocky journey through the world of politics. If you're not a subscriber yet, you can do so here, but my only request is that you sign up before Donald Trump deci…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Tesla is un-canceling its plan to build a smaller, cheaper EV: report

It looks like a smaller, cheaper Tesla is back on the menu. Today, Reuters is reporting that the electric automaker is calling around to suppliers about building an all-new - that is, not based on the Model 3 or the Model Y - electric SUV that would be more a…

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

A jury is about to decide the fate of Ticketmaster

Consumer complaints about Ticketmaster are so voluminous at state attorneys general offices that Pennsylvania's comes with an explicit plea for residents lodging a grievance about the company to be patient for a response. That kind of pressure has driven more…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Trump Mobile isn’t giving up just yet

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. We're back to being ignored, but the company is showing signs of life. It's been nine months since Trump Mobile …

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Congress can finally close a mass surveillance loophole — but will they?

A warrantless wiretapping authority that has facilitated surveillance for decades is up for renewal in Congress. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), last reauthorized in 2024, is set to expire on April 20th. A bipartisan coalition…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

The new Trump Phone design is here

Trump Mobile has overhauled its website, introducing a new logo, new design language, and a new version of the T1 Phone. The redesigned phone is the same one that two company executives showed me over a video call two months ago, seemingly now confirmed to be…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Trump’s posting even more AI-generated Trump-Jesus fanart

Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about Big Tech power plays in Washington and beyond. (And when I say beyond, I mean the great beyond, like Heaven, maybe.) If you've found your way to this newsletter from the wild, annual sub…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Ballmer gives $80 million to NPR, with strings attached.

Connie Ballmer, wife of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and co-founder of the Ballmer Group, has given $80 million to NPR. That's roughly seven years' worth of government funding ($11.2m) after Trump and Congress cut funds for public media, but only a frac…

The Verge by Sean Hollister

The ‘AI is inevitable’ trap

In the latest sign of AI silly season, Allbirds, the shoe company, told the world it was now an AI company and briefly managed to septuple its stock price. The Newbird AI story is really just one of a bunch of things this week that made us wonder: have we rea…

The Verge by David Pierce

We translated the Palantir manifesto for actual human beings

Palantir CEO Alex Karp is a man in charge of one of the most important and frightening companies in the world. Karp's new book, co-written with Nicholas Zamiska, is called "The Technological Republic." After claiming "because we get asked a lot", Palantir pos…

The Verge by TC. Sottek, Adi Robertson

Spirit is broken

The bright yellow livery of Spirit Airlines may soon disappear from the skies. The country's seventh-largest airline has been in financial trouble for years: It hasn't turned a profit since 2019 and filed for bankruptcy twice in the last two years. Despite al…

The Verge by Darryl Campbell

Brendan Carr’s war on wokeness targets inclusive children’s television

Under the guidance of consummate bully / chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is taking steps towards cracking down on children's entertainment that in any way explores the complexities of gender identity. On Wednesday, the FCC's Media Bureau announced that it is s…

The Verge by Charles Pulliam-Moore

Democrats want to ban ICE from turning warehouses into detention centers

A bill introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) would prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from converting warehouses and similar buildings into immigrant detention centers, an attempt to slow President Donald Trump's mass deportations campaign. The Ba…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

Trump fires the entire National Science Board

Multiple sources are reporting that the Trump administration has dismissed the entire National Science Board (NSB). The NSB advises the president and Congress on the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has already been funding research at historically lo…

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

The AI-designed car is taking shape

The auto design world is full of advanced 3D visualization tools and VR sculpting platforms, but your average new car still enters the world as a sketch. Those sketches traditionally see endless iteration and refinement from all angles before being turned int…

The Verge by Tim Stevens

That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks

Today, I’m talking with Jennifer Scanlon, who is the CEO of UL Solutions. That’s Underwriters Laboratories – you know, the UL logo listed on all your electronics? That symbol means it’s been tested and found safe in a variety of ways. UL’s been around for 100…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

The FCC is going after the broadcast licenses of Disney-owned ABC stations

The Federal Communications Commission has ordered the ABC stations owned and operated by Disney to file for an early license renewal, as reported earlier by The New York Times. In a filing on Tuesday, the FCC claims it made the decision as part of an investig…

The Verge by Emma Roth

Larry’s risky business

If you want to know whether the AI bubble is bursting, there's only one publicly traded company that will tell you: Oracle. That's right, the database company. Oracle has burned its boats and pivoted to AI, but not in any kind of usual way. It is not a founda…

The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto

Rivian downsizes its goals for its EV factory in Georgia

Rivian announced some changes today with regard to the factory its building in the state of Georgia. The company was planning to build the facility in two phases, each resulting in 200,000 vehicles of annual production capacity, for a total of 400,000 units. …

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

How to win — and lose — Decoder

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.  Hello and welcome to Decoder, Nilay’s show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Statt, senior producer, and I’m joined by host and very occasional guest, Nilay Patel. Nilay, welcome b…

The Verge by Nick Statt, Nilay Patel

ABC and Disney accuse Trump admin of violating First Amendment rights

ABC is accusing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of violating its First Amendment rights by making "major shifts in policy and practice" that the network claims will chill free speech. The network is asking the FCC to "affirm its long-standing appr…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

The Trump phone starts shipping this week, CEO claims

The Trump phone may finally be here: Trump Mobile's CEO told USA Today that the phone will begin shipping to buyers this week. The announcement comes as reports have gone viral this week alleging that preorders for the phone have been canceled. Trump Mobile C…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Fighting Trump will make or break Disney’s new CEO

A week ago, newly appointed Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro was busy regaling investors with plans to turn Disney Plus into the company's "digital centerpiece." By last Friday, though, his attention had presumably shifted to a fight with the Trump administration over…

The Verge by Charles Pulliam-Moore

Trump administration defends right to ban content moderation experts from US

The Trump administration is fighting for the right to keep some social media moderation advocates out of the US. On Wednesday, US District Court Judge James Boasberg heard arguments in a lawsuit between the nonprofit Coalition for Independent Technology Resea…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

The border is everywhere

No one paid attention to the gunshots that echoed through the convention center. They were real enough, and so were the screams that accompanied them, in the sense that they were recordings of real people who, like guest stars on Law and Order, reenacted scen…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

How companies weaponize the terms of service against you

Today, I’m talking with Brendan Ballou, founder of the Public Integrity Project and author of a new book, called When Companies Run the Courts, about the rise of forced arbitration. Brendan’s actually been on the show before — his previous book, Plunder, was …

The Verge by Nilay Patel

X is fighting Andrew Tate’s attempt to unmask his critics

X is fighting for its users' right to anonymity against the far-right influencers and accused human traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are seeking to unmask their online critics. The Tate brothers filed suit against the owners of more than a dozen socia…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Volvo teases a new affordable EV to replace discontinued EX30

Volvo's compact, quirky EX30 had a lot of problems when it was first released. Tariffs essentially erased its affordability, making it more expensive to own, and a battery recall made it dangerous to park indoors. But its discontinuation didn't spell the end …

The Verge by Andrew J. Hawkins

Exclusive: Jonah Peretti explains why he sold BuzzFeed

Today, I’m talking with Jonah Peretti, who is, technically, the CEO of BuzzFeed — although that will be coming to an end very soon. Just days before we spoke, Jonah agreed to sell 52 percent of BuzzFeed for a total of $120 million to Byron Allen, who owns The…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

America’s dangerous, messy deepfakes crackdown is here

A law requiring social networks to quickly remove sexual deepfakes and other nonconsensual imagery is now fully in force. But experts warn the policy could do little to help victims - and at worst could facilitate censorship online. Last May, President Donald…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Trump Mobile may be leaking customer addresses

Just as the T1 Phone is seemingly on the verge of release, Trump Mobile has been accused of insecurely storing customer data, leaving addresses and phone numbers vulnerable. The alleged leak has also revealed how many T1 Phone orders were apparently placed, a…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Trump is waging a silent war on legal immigration

When the member states of the United Nations reviewed their Global Compact on Migration earlier this month, one country was conspicuously absent from the discussions: the United States. In a post on X explaining its reasoning, the State Department said it obj…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

The post-search Google era begins

Google is many things, but most of the time it's a verb: It is what it is to search the internet for information. But what if it's an AI agent doing the searching? And it's doing it proactively? Without even telling you about it? In the world Google imagines,…

The Verge by David Pierce

Microsoft could be the next Big Tech antitrust target

Over the past several years, Microsoft has largely managed to withstand populist calls to break up Big Tech while peers faced sweeping lawsuits. But a probe by the Federal Trade Commission suggests that grace period could be nearing an end. Earlier this year,…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

AI is blowing up music. How should the Grammys handle it?

Today I’m talking with Harvey Mason Jr., who is CEO of the Recording Academy — that’s the outfit that puts on the Grammy Awards. I last talked to Harvey in 2024, when it was obvious that generative AI would upend the music industry, but still not exactly clea…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

Trump goes after green cards

On the Friday before Memorial Day, on the eve of a long weekend, the Trump administration announced that it was further gutting legal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security didn't use this language. "This policy allows our immigration system to func…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

Elon Musk is steamrolling Wall Street to become a trillionaire

Today on Decoder, I’m talking to Ryan Mac, a technology reporter at The New York Times and coauthor of the excellent book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, which came out in 2024. I can’t recommend it enough.  I wanted to have Ryan on the show…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

Why isn’t the Trump phone made in the USA?

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. This week, I'm investigating where it might have been built - and why it definitely wasn't the US. Almost a year…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Congress still can’t decide what to do about warrantless surveillance

The deadline to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is coming up a week from now on June 12th, and legislators seem no closer to reaching a deal. If this sounds like deja vu, it's because we've been here before. Congress reaut…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

What happens when your phone is confiscated at the airport

Even if you've done nothing wrong, it's never a good idea to hand your phone to the cops. But international travelers at American airports often have no choice - even if they're US citizens. When Minnesota labor organizer Janette Zahia Corcelius returned home…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

Congress just gave DHS another $70 billion

Congress narrowly voted to fund President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, giving the Department of Homeland Security $70 billion over the next three years. The house voted 214 to 212 in favor of the reconciliation bill Tuesday, following the Senate's …

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

The bill that would let Jimmy Kimmel sue Brendan Carr is here

Under a new bipartisan bill, Americans could sue for damages if a government official illegally tries to coerce a social media, AI, or broadcasting company to remove their post - regardless of whether the platform actually does it. Senate Commerce Committee C…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Siri is good now??

You'd be forgiven for thinking this day would never come. Siri has spent a decade and half somewhere between "sort of useful at a few things" and "utterly disastrous, why did I even try, can it honestly not even set a timer." But the wildest thing just happen…

The Verge by David Pierce

The world’s first trillionaire is a killer

Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO will probably make him the richest person to ever walk the planet. And while his mountain of horrible personal conduct could fill multiple books, one fact in particular stands out: A year ago, Musk's actions directly led to the deaths o…

The Verge by TC. Sottek

China may have accessed Mythos

According to a new report from Semafor, the White House's decision to impose export restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos was driven in part by fears that it had been accessed by a group linked to China. If the Chinese government actually had access to Mythos 5 …

The Verge by Terrence O’Brien

Happy birthday to the Trump phone

From the day it was announced, on June 16th, 2025, the Trump phone sounded ridiculous. The T1 Phone 8002 (gold version), as it was officially called, was a combination of contradictory specs, product images that were clearly not photographs of a real phone, a…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Big Tech’s desperate last push at AI regulation

For months, Big Tech's Washington lobbyists have chased after the holy grail of pro-AI legislation: preemption. This would be a comprehensive federal law, passed in Congress and signed by the president, applying one set of AI rules across the entire country a…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

Inside the fight over Claude Mythos 5

As the rest of the country celebrated the USA's first World Cup win and the New York Knicks championship, Anthropic spent its weekend fighting the Trump administration over its latest model release. At 5:21 PM on Friday, the company received a US export contr…

The Verge by Hayden Field

The midterms are going to be a data security nightmare

One messy database is threatening to disenfranchise thousands or even millions of registered voters, while leaving even more at risk of intimidation or data breaches, in the name of solving a problem that barely exists. As the 2026 midterm elections approach,…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner

Elon Musk and the plot to hijack America’s broadband

At 9PM ET on the night of May 28th, a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket sat on the launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The craft was in the middle of a hot-fire test awaiting the arrival of Amazon Leo satellites, the first of 24 batches to be shut…

The Verge by Karl Bode, Sean Gonsalves

The Slate Auto pickup truck starts at $24,950

We now know the price of Slate Auto's affordable American-made electric truck, almost a year after the company warned it wouldn't hit its initial "under $20,000" target price. The no-frills pickup starts at $24,950 - matching the revised mid-$20,000 price ran…

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

Charlie Kirk’s legacy is a 30-year sentence for moving zines

Just days after a gunman killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk, it became clear that President Donald Trump would use the assassination to fuel a crackdown on free speech. To avenge Kirk's death, the administration vowed to go after so-called "antifa" (ot…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

The $27 million Al proxy war over Alex Bores ends in a draw

The expensive, $27 million political proxy war between Anthropic and OpenAI came to a draw last night when Alex Bores, a New York state Assemblyman whose popularity surged after being targeted by a pro-AI super PAC, narrowly lost the Democratic primary to rep…

The Verge by Tina Nguyen

OpenAI unveils GPT-5.6 amid US AI regulatory drama

Less than 24 hours after news broke that OpenAI would stagger its next model release at the request of the Trump administration, that model, GPT-5.6, is here. On Friday, the company unveiled the limited preview of its new GPT 5.6 model suite: Sol, the flagshi…

The Verge by Hayden Field

The beautiful shame

While European tourists marvel at ranch dressing, Buc-ee's, and other wonders of Middle America, would-be World Cup attendees from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East have experienced a different American pastime: exclusion. President Donald Trump's nakedly rac…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

Anthropic’s Mythos 5 is back

After a rollercoaster negotiation process with the Trump administration that dragged on for two weeks, Anthropic's Mythos 5 is finally back in action - at least, somewhat, for a select group of organizations, according to a letter from the government to Anthr…

The Verge by Hayden Field

Supreme Court allows firing of FTC commissioners, ends agency independence

The Supreme Court just placed once-independent agencies more firmly under presidential control. The court ruled in Slaughter v. Trump with a 6-3 vote that President Donald Trump had the authority to fire the Federal Trade Commission's two Democratic commissio…

The Verge by Lauren Feiner, Emma Roth

The war against ‘woke’ could end US science as we know it

A sneaky rule change has the potential to blow up scientific research in the United States. But there's still time to fight it. On May 29th, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a 412-page proposal to revise federal financial assistance. The langu…

The Verge by Bethany Brookshire

The Supreme Court stops Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship

The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, ruling 6-3 against President Donald Trump's effort to end the longstanding constitutional right via executive order. Birthright citizenship dates back to Reconstruction. Under the 14th Amendment, which was rati…

The Verge by Gaby Del Valle

I finally got my Trump phone

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. One year on, our phones have finally arrived. 12 months, 16 days, 21 hours, and 54 minutes after I first heard about Trump Mobile's T1 Phone 8002 (gold version), I'm finally holding one…

The Verge by Dominic Preston

Comcast is breaking up with NBCU. Why did it ever buy it in the first place?

Today on Decoder, I’m talking with Peter Kafka, who is chief correspondent at Business Insider and host of Channels, a podcast about the media industry. And it’s a big week for the media industry — Comcast just announced that it’s splitting itself up, into th…

The Verge by Nilay Patel

ICE are heavily armed killers. They’re also huge losers

Donald Trump's Homeland Security regime has been at the center of two critical stories in the past two weeks. In the first, federal agents shot and killed a man and quickly got to work justifying the use of force under the flimsiest of pretenses. In the other…

The Verge by TC. Sottek