This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Tax season is always a busy time at the IRS. This year has been especially eventful. In February, the agency was told to start firing up to 7,000 workers—before judges ordered that such firings needed to be paused. Some 5,000 more workers have signed up for the government’s deferred-resignation offer, and various departments have been slashed or targeted for cuts. About 50 IT workers were put on administrative leave Friday. Overall, The Washington Post reported, the agency will end May with about 18 percent fewer employees than it had at the start of this year. And people familiar with the matter told The New York Times that the Trump administration’s ultimate goal is to cut the agency’s staffing by half.The stated purpose of these firings, and of DOGE’s other cuts across federal agencies, is to save money. But the cuts may actually translate to a meaningful dip in taxpayer revenue. The IRS is effectively the government’s accounts-receivable department. Staffing cuts set up the IRS to lose money in two ways, Natasha Sarin, a Yale law professor and former Treasury counselor, told me: A reduced IRS has less capacity to collect and enforce taxation, and taxpayers who think they won’t be audited may be more inclined to start cheating. Sarin expects that the agency’s losses will far outweigh the $140 billion DOGE says it has saved (DOGE’s self-reported data is opaque and has been full of errors). She and her colleagues at the Budget Lab at Yale forecast that the plan to cut half of the agency’s workforce alone would conservatively translate to $395 billion in lost revenue in the next decade, and possibly up to $2 trillion.Other expectations have been bleak, too—and have considered factors beyond reductions in force. Amid the chaos of this filing season, the agency is on track to see a more than 10 percent drop in tax receipts by the tax-filing deadline this month, according to predictions from Treasury and IRS officials who spoke anonymously with The Washington Post last month; if that happens, it would translate into more than $500 billion in lost revenue this year. Such changes could be because some people are skirting their duties and hoping that an understaffed IRS will lead to less enforcement, but other people’s filing may just happen later this year. Victims of natural disasters, including the 2025 California wildfires, have received deadline extensions—and, in general, corporate tax receipts may decline if businesses are facing challenges. (A spokesperson for the Treasury department denied that a $500 billion tax-revenue drop is plausible, adding that “baseless claims from those who have promoted wasteful spending for years at the IRS should be dismissed out right.” Representatives of DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)Recent history provides a case study in what happens when the IRS is diminished: In the 2010s, the IRS’s budget was depleted over several years. The number of agents declined by a third from 2010 to 2017, and the audit rate went down by about 40 percent (and down by about 50 percent for people earning more than $1 million) in that period. The number of agency investigations of people who didn’t file returns went from 2.4 million in 2011 to 362,000 in 2017. The total amount of money lost through weak enforcement during those years amounted to some $95 billion, ProPublica estimated.One theme of the late 2010s and early 2020s was general sloppiness in filing, especially from corporations, Michael Kaercher, the deputy director of the NYU Tax Law Center and a former IRS lawyer, told me. That period, Sarin argued, demonstrates the “direct relationship” between reduced capacity for enforcement and loss of revenue—though the cuts then were much smaller and more spread out than DOGE’s current plan. Of course, even if the public starts to get the impression that there won’t be consequences for evasion, many will continue to do their civic duty and make good on their obligations. But if the IRS doesn’t have enough staff to help people with the (often confusing) process of filing, some people may just make mistakes, too, and start accidentally underpaying.The exact amount the IRS may lose in the years to come will depend on a few factors, including which functions and staff end up ultimately being cut. Since January, the IRS has lost nearly 40 percent of the staff of the Global High Wealth unit, which focuses on audits of very wealthy individuals. Those audits have an extremely high return on investment, Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, reminded me—a single audit can lead to millions or tens of millions in revenue. In the 2010s, she noted, the “tax gap”—the amount of taxes that were owed but not paid—rose, which was primarily attributable to high earners underreporting their income. In 2021, the top 1 percent of earners were responsible for more than a third of unpaid taxes, which cost the government nearly $200 billion.As some of the agency’s functions are diminishing, it is being tasked with a new role. The IRS, which holds information about every taxpayer, is close to signing an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in which it would share addresses and names about migrants. Sending sensitive taxpayer information to authorities would cut against a fairly core aspect of the IRS’s culture, Kaercher told me: The agency has always taken data privacy very seriously. For decades, the IRS has told undocumented people that they need to pay taxes, and that it would not share information with immigration authorities. Now that the agency is reneging on that promise, the changes may deter immigrants from paying taxes, leading to further dips in the revenue the agency can collect.In recent decades, Williamson noted, even through lean IRS eras, what’s called “tax morale,” or a willingness to pay taxes, has remained high in the United States. “Americans are traditionally good taxpayers by international standards,” she said. But trust in the system is predictive of compliance. As that trust diminishes, compliance may go with it too.Related: Why DOGE could actually increase the deficit Tax season just got more confusing. Here are four new stories from The Atlantic: An “administrative error” sends a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison. The top goal of Project 2025 is still to come. So much for the MAGA divorce. Xochitl Gonzalez: “Students yelled at me. I’m fine.” Today’s News Voters are heading to the polls in the contentious Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Elon Musk has handed out $1 million checks to two people who signed a petition against judicial activism. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey is delivering a speech on the Senate floor that has gone on for more than 23 hours. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department started issuing notices of dismissal to employees; layoffs are expected to total approximately 10,000 people. Evening Read Illustration by Anna Kliewer The New Marriage of UnequalsBy Stephanie H. Murray Once upon a time, it was fairly common for highly educated men in the United States to marry less-educated women. But beginning in the mid-20th century, as more women started to attend college, marriages seemed to move in a more egalitarian direction, at least in one respect: A greater number of men and women started partnering up with their educational equals. That trend, however, appears to have stalled and even reversed in recent years. Gaps in educational experience among heterosexual couples are growing again. And this time? It’s women who are “marrying down.” Read the full article.More From The Atlantic Long-COVID care is disintegrating. The evermaskers Why we’re still talking about the “trauma plot” “Dear James”: Make the whistling stop. Culture Break Illustration by Liz Hart. Source: Alamy. Read. In a new book, Elaine Pagels searches for the narrative origins of Jesus’s miracles.Listen. In 1966, the conductor Leonard Bernstein arrived in Vienna with a mission: to restore Gustav Mahler’s place in 20th-century music.Play our daily crossword.P.S.I have some personal news to share: This is my last edition of The Daily. I am moving on to pursue other career opportunities.Thank you so much for reading! Whether you have been here for years, or whether you just subscribed this week, I truly appreciate your interest in our work. The Daily is in wonderful hands with David and the team—and now I look forward to joining you among the ranks of The Daily’s loyal readers.— LoraStephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.Explore all of our newsletters here.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET on April 1, 2025One day this fall, while on campus at Brown University, I was met by two students—cellphones raised, cameras recording. They had spun off from a larger group protesting Brown’s decision not to divest from Israel. They recognized me as a trustee of the university and saw an opportunity to take me to task. They followed me for perhaps a block or two, calling me a hypocrite.For at least one of the students, the war in Gaza was not some cause du jour that he’d picked up from TikTok. He has Palestinian relatives on the ground. I knew this because I’d spoken with him before. That time, he was passionate but measured. Now, in protest mode, he was angry. I’m sure he felt betrayed by the decision, and I was one of the only people he could hold—at least verbally—accountable.Understandably, some of my colleagues who were singled out by protesters were more rattled by the experience. But in my view, these were students in America doing what students in America should do: questioning authority (in this case, me) and using their rights to free speech and free assembly to engage with issues they are passionate about.That is not to say I didn’t find this period of campus unrest unpleasant or this particular incident annoying. No one likes to be called a hypocrite and accused of being indifferent to human suffering. And certainly no one wants to be shouted at. But I never for a moment felt that these students were a threat to me, let alone to America’s national security.And yet, that is the justification the United States government is offering for its decision to revoke the visas and green cards of international students who have spoken out against the war in Gaza.When I read about the detention of Rümeysa Öztürk, the first thing I thought is that she must have been very hungry. The Tufts University doctoral student had been fasting since dawn when a group of hooded and masked plainclothes officers surrounded her near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts. I imagine that the friends who were planning to host her for iftar that evening were merrily preparing their table, oblivious that Öztürk had been seized in the street, handcuffed like a criminal, and put inside the back of an unmarked car in what looked, to passersby, like “a kidnapping.” Perhaps, when Öztürk didn’t respond to their texts, the friends—all hungry themselves—began without her. Their concern must have curdled into fear as the night wore on.Öztürk’s friends and colleagues were shocked when they learned what had happened. They must have known, of course, about the detentions of students at other universities that began in early March with the seizure of Mahmoud Khalil from his New York City apartment. Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and a green-card holder born in a refugee enclave in Syria, was a pro-Palestinian activist and one of the organizers of a march where some attendees praised Hamas. Although the Trump administration has not accused Khalil of any crime, it has portrayed him as a radical terrorist.But Öztürk was different. “The only thing I know of that Rümeysa’s organized,” one of her friends told reporters, “was a Thanksgiving potluck.” No one seemed more stunned than Öztürk herself, who was chatting on the phone with her mother when the officers swarmed.Undocumented immigrants are used to living in fear of ICE knocking on their door. But Öztürk is not undocumented. She is one of the roughly 1 million international students studying in the United States this academic year. She came from Turkey at the invitation of an American university, an invitation made possible by the State Department through the student-visa program. As long as Öztürk stayed out of legal trouble (which she had) and remained enrolled in school full-time (which she had), she had no reason to expect that she could be removed from the life she had been building here.Öztürk was apparently detained because she co-wrote an op-ed for The Tufts Daily last year. When a reporter asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio why Öztürk’s visa was revoked, he replied that if a student applying for a visa said up front “that the reason you’re coming is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa.” If a student took part in “that sort of activity” once here, he said, the government has the “right to remove you.” He added, “We’re looking every day for these lunatics.”No one has alleged that Öztürk vandalized or took over any buildings. Did the op-ed create a ruckus? It urged the administration to take more seriously a vote from the student senate calling on the university to divest from Israel. In the context of the Israel-Palestine discourse of spring 2024, the op-ed is civility at its finest. In the context of op-eds, it is a snooze.Rubio has been leaning on a Cold War–era law that he says allows him to personally revoke green cards and visas. The law refers to immigrants whose presence in this country the government has “reasonable grounds” to believe could “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” A former head of America’s Immigration Lawyers Association pointed out that this provision of the law has not been applied since 1997.Welcome to Donald Trump’s America, where the Cabinet texting about war plans on a nongovernmental messaging app is “not a big deal,” but an op-ed in a school paper is a threat to national security.[Read: The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans]Rubio says he has signed off on deporting or revoking the visas of 300 or more people, an unknown portion of whom are student activists. Some have been snatched from their home or the sidewalks outside. Others, such as Rasha Alawieh, a medical-school professor at Brown whose H1-B visa was sponsored by Brown Medicine, have been turned away at the airport. In at least a few cases, more than a day went by before anyone figured out where the disappeared students had been taken.Rubio’s interpretation of the law is just one more example of the Trump administration’s attempts to change America from a nation of rights to a nation of privileges that can at any moment be revoked. “We gave you a visa to come study and get a degree,” Rubio said about the students, “not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”Green cards may be a privilege, but once they reach American soil, these students also have rights—to speak freely, to peacefully convene, to enjoy due process under the law. Those rights don’t depend on citizenship status; they are embedded in the founding of this country. The students do not, as Rubio correctly points out, have the right to “tear up” campuses. But they absolutely can become social activists about any political issue they choose.Criticism—even at its most odious—does not imperil a nation any more than being yelled at by students imperiled me. How could I hold my head high as an American if I didn’t defend their right to tell me what they think?This article originally misstated which institution sponsored Rasha Alawieh’s visa.

My house was dark. Tinfoil covered the windows. The only light I could tolerate came from dimmable red bulbs. Ten weeks before, I had tested positive for COVID. On week three of my infection, I went to the emergency room with a debilitating migraine. On my third trip to the ER, I was hospitalized for seven days. I came home to a changed life. All the clichés about headaches are true—a pile of bricks on the head, a vise grip on the temples, an axe through the skull. The pain altered my consciousness. Trying to move or access a thought was like trying to see past a flashlight shining in my eyes.It was 2024—a point at which most people in America considered the pandemic long since over.  But it wasn’t for me.Some days, I couldn’t stop crying. It was more than despair at my circumstance: Long COVID can dysregulate mood and has been linked with depression. And the disease hijacked my stress-response system, leaving my body in a constant state of alarm. Any unexpected sound, even getting a text message, would set off a jolt of panic through my body, the same sensation as slamming on the brakes while driving. I lost my ability to cope. I broke a window in my house. I put a hole in the wall.Researchers know more about long COVID than they once did, but it is still hard to define. The clearest consensus is that it’s a complex collection of symptoms that can affect almost every organ system in the body. Theories of why COVID can linger abound, and include ongoing inflammation, the virus never fully going away, and tissue damage. Many scientists agree that multiple factors likely contribute. Meanwhile, doctors are still struggling to treat the disease; less than half of doctors know how to diagnose long COVID and even fewer—28 percent—report knowing how to treat it, according to one 2023 survey. Long-COVID patients are still reporting that medical professionals don’t believe them, and though in some cases patients’ self-diagnosis might be off the mark, the reality is that many people living with long COVID simply aren’t getting the care they need.In my case, that person who was in mind-numbing pain, unable to read, unable to write, unable to Google things or look at screens, unable to drive, drained by talking on the phone, spiraling in despair, and barely able to leave the house had to navigate the American health-care system. That I needed care for long COVID only made my predicament worse. From hearing chronically ill and disabled people speak about their experiences, I knew that to be sick in this country is a hell unto itself. But knowing something is true and experiencing it are different. I know that the Grand Canyon is deep, but I have never seen it with my own eyes. For our health-care system, I have been to the bottom.  According to the latest federal survey as of September 2024, more than one in 20 adults in the United States had long COVID—defined as symptoms that last longer than three months. (The survey does not ask about the severity of symptoms.) Vaccines may help protect against the disease, but getting COVID still means risking long COVID. The coronavirus can leave patients with blood clots, brain dysfunction, organ damage, immune problems, and more; about a quarter of people with the disease report that it significantly disrupts their ability to perform daily activities. There are no FDA-approved medications to treat long COVID. Many medical institutions created specialty clinics to see patients with the disease, but much of what even the best clinics can offer is symptom management. Pinning down recovery rates from long COVID has been difficult, but according to several studies, after two years, the majority of people living with long COVID had not fully recovered.Three months into my illness, I had been treated for migraines and a concussion—COVID’s impact can mirror a traumatic brain injury—but not long COVID. The tribe that I belong to, Cherokee Nation, runs the largest outpatient facility of any tribe in the U.S., but my primary-care provider there told me she didn’t know how to treat long COVID. I was referred to my tribe’s specialty clinic for rare and infectious diseases. When I managed to get that appointment, however, the provider told me he knew how to treat only pulmonary long-COVID symptoms (which many long-COVID patients don’t have). Nowhere in Indian Health Services, the treaty-based federal program that serves 2.8 million Native Americans nationwide, is there a long-COVID clinic. (An IHS spokesperson said the Biden administration would have needed to set up such a clinic.)I started looking outside Indian Health Services and found a long-COVID clinic an hour’s drive from my house. When I called, I learned the clinic had shut down. The state where I live, Oklahoma, does not have a long-COVID clinic. My dad found one in Arkansas. Like many long-COVID clinics, it required that patients apply to get in. But after I submitted all the paperwork, I didn’t hear back.I realized that to access care, I would need to travel. At the time, I was unable to drive, and my symptoms limited how much time I spent outside my house. When I called the Cleveland Clinic, I was transferred four times until I was accidentally forwarded to the customer-satisfaction survey. I spoke with one receptionist who told me her clinic didn’t take patients from out of state, and another who warned that traveling to her clinic probably wouldn’t be worth the time and money. (A spokesperson for the Cleveland Clinic wrote that patients should be able to make an appointment without a referral, and that the clinic and its staff “strive to provide patients with timely access to scheduling and care.”)In my first telehealth appointment with a nationally recognized COVID clinic, the doctor wouldn’t discuss her recommendations but said I could read them in the patient visit notes. When I explained that my symptoms made reading impossible, she asked me if someone could read the notes for me. Later, my mom read me a copied-and-pasted list of healthy-lifestyle information, such as the benefits of taking a daily probiotic and the importance of getting enough sleep. The list included the doctor’s favorite bedtime teas. I told my mom to stop reading.A few months into the pandemic, some patients reported that their symptoms weren’t going away. Through their advocacy, long COVID got its name. By 2022, hundreds of long-COVID clinics had opened across the country. There is no standard for what kind of care these clinics provide: Some are multidisciplinary teams, but many are one specialist or one nurse practitioner. This patchwork system of care has only deteriorated as attention on the disease has dwindled.Many of the long-COVID clinics that popped up during the pandemic have closed. As part of my reporting for this story, I compiled a list of 171 clinics, drawing from the Survivor Corps website, a patient-led resource-and-advocacy group, and from searching online for long-COVID clinics by state. I then called each clinic to verify which ones were still operating. Of those, 79 were still open and accepting new patients, five were not accepting new patients or outside referrals, 61 had closed, and 15 were unreachable after two attempts. Eleven more were advertised as long-COVID clinics but don’t have a medical doctor or nurse on staff; they provide services such as speech or occupational therapy. (My assistant Sydney Anderson and intern Cheyenne McNeil, who have been helping me work through my illness, contributed to this reporting.)Based on the list we assembled, 22 states have no long-COVID clinics accepting new patients. Given COVID rates in those states, we estimated that almost 3 million people who currently have long COVID reside there. Because of insurance policies, licensing and telehealth laws, and the cost of travel, not having a nearby clinic can easily mean that patients won’t access care. Of the long-COVID clinics that are still open, some have wait lists, do not accept outside referrals, do not take insurance, treat only specific long-COVID symptoms, or do not take patients from outside of their geographical area.Getting in touch with the long-COVID clinics that are still open is another barrier. I spoke with operators who had never heard of their institution’s long-COVID clinic; I got transferred to the office that schedules COVID tests; I got transferred to disconnected lines; I called numbers that rang and rang and rang and rang. One day, I spent two hours on the phone and spoke with only three people who could provide information. When I called Yale New Haven Health System’s clinic, one of the most well-known in the country, I got transferred to a disconnected line. I called back and got transferred to the customer-satisfaction survey. I called a third time and left a message. I called a fourth time, trying a different number, and spoke with a receptionist who said the clinic was closed. (The clinic is still open; in a statement, Yale New Haven Health said that the phone number for the long-COVID clinic is on its website, that the volume of calls the clinic receives is very high, and that it had not previously heard of patients having difficulty accessing the clinic.)If you are healthy, this might all sound like the familiar nightmare of customer service to which we have all become accustomed. But for people who are sick, it is a wall that stands between them and the care they need. When you are sick, you look at that wall and think, I am not well enough to climb it.The closure of long-COVID clinics in recent years has affected patients who need care. I talked with people who, like me, have been living with long COVID later in the pandemic. Ryan Parker lives in Portland, Oregon; is a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe; and used to work in philanthropy. Like many people with long COVID, Parker tried to work through his illness. He told me he returned from one work trip so sick that he couldn’t get out of bed for a month. Last fall, the long-COVID clinic that was treating him closed. Because of the disease, Maeve Sherry has been disabled and unable to work for three years. They found a long-COVID clinic in Great Falls, Montana, three hours from where they lived at the time, but it closed in December of 2023, they said. There are now no long-COVID clinics in Montana. When Myisha Hill was still struggling to do household chores, take care of her kids, and even talk weeks after a COVID infection, she looked up the long-COVID clinic near where she lives in Las Vegas, she told me. But it, too, had closed. There are now no long-COVID clinics in Nevada.  A spokesperson for the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada wrote that the clinic closed “amid low demand.” Other clinics echoed this response, saying they suspended operations after patient numbers dwindled. A few clinics also stated that they now refer long-COVID patients to primary care. Several spokespeople told me as a reporter that their clinics were still open, but when I called as a patient, I was told the clinic was closed. And even when clinics are open, patients still face barriers: I spoke with people with long COVID who told me they couldn’t access care because a clinic didn’t take their insurance, their doctor didn’t send a referral, or the clinic rejected them as a patient.The alternative to enrolling in a clinic is to try to see a regular neurologist or cardiologist. But many specialists have lengthy wait times, and long-COVID patients are twice as likely as the general public to report that this is why they can’t get care. Parker, for instance, is trying to see a specialist for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a form of debilitating fatigue that is common with long COVID. The first available appointment is nine months out.And when patients are finally seen, the care itself might not be competent. Parker’s primary-care provider suggested that his debilitating fatigue was a product of anxiety. Several doctors have also told Kelly Rider that her problem was just anxiety—and one said it was perimenopause. Sometimes doctors prescribe things that exacerbate symptoms—such as exercise for chronic fatigue. When Diem-Han Dinh’s doctor ordered a stress test, she explained that she was unable to run. He didn’t believe her. At the stress test, she almost fainted.Eight months into my illness, I boarded a plane and traveled with my mother to Rochester, Minnesota. The long-COVID clinic I finally got into was Mayo. The off-label medication they prescribed didn’t do much, but I learned about my illness and how to manage my symptoms, which has improved my quality of life. Other things have helped too. Thanks to an arsenal of migraine treatments, my headache—although not gone—is less severe. Thanks to eight months of vision therapy, I can now focus my eyes and am practicing reading. And, in writing this article, I have gotten back to reporting. What I had to go through to get here, I would not wish on anyone.The resources our system of medical care can offer to those wanting to learn about, cope with, and heal from what COVID has done to their body are beyond inadequate, and are likely to get worse. In February, the Trump administration ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to dissolve its advisory committee on long COVID. In March, the department announced it would close its Office for Long COVID Research and Practice, and began canceling grants from the National Institutes of Health for COVID studies.Sick and disabled people have been pushed to the margins of our society for a long time. There was a moment during the pandemic when I saw our collective concern focused on the ill. Living with long COVID, I sometimes wonder where that concern went. I feel like the wounded antelope picked off from the herd. Everyone else has moved on, while I am stuck in my illness. I could be angry at each individual hypocrisy—each person who preached the importance of masks only to go back to normal without me—but I am not. Instead, I am sad that what is more powerful than our concern for the sick is the indifference of our health-care system.

“It breaks my brain sometimes,” Dennis Rosloniec told me. For half a decade now, the 44-year-old media technician and mountain biker from Green Bay, Wisconsin, has done everything he can to understand the risks of getting COVID. He’s read the published studies. He’s looked at meta-analyses. And here’s the truth as far as he can tell: Each time he’s infected, the chances that something really bad will happen to his body ratchet up a little higher.Dennis is not immunocompromised. He doesn’t have a chronic illness. He’s not obese or hypertensive or unvaccinated. He’s just a thoughtful autodidact, the kind of guy who references both The Simpsons and the Stoics as he talks. “I’m a fairly large, fit, white dude, for lack of a better term,” he said. But even now, in 2025, Dennis Rosloniec is afraid of COVID. Someone else might say he’s strangely so.Dennis is still masking quite a bit. He’s wary of attending indoor social gatherings unless they seem especially important. And he’s been taking sundry extra measures to protect himself, based on fledgling research that he’s either heard about or read online, since 2020, when he bought a tube of ivermectin, the antiparasitic drug that was repurposed as a highly suspect COVID treatment, “out of anxiety” while awaiting the vaccines. Later on, he tried iota-carrageenan nasal spray, which he used as a hedge against COVID infection until “the science became sort of iffy on it.” These days, he keeps a bottle of cetylpyridinium-chloride mouthwash in his desk, so he can gargle when he thinks he might have been exposed. And he’s got a prophylactic nasal rinse, which, actually, he’s come to sort of like for reasons that don’t have much to do with COVID. “I breathe better through my nose when I use it.”As a masker—and as a mouthwash guy and a nasal-rinser—Dennis knows he’s out of step with almost everyone he sees in person. “You feel pressure from the world,” he told me. “It makes you question, Is this really worth it?” But he also knows that certain others share his sense of caution, or even worry more than he does. He interacts with them online, on message boards for “COVID conscious” conversation. Theirs is a kind of shadow world where the fears and obligations felt by everyone in early 2020 never really went away, and lockdowns still persist in private.Members of these groups say they’re only doing what they’ve always done since the start of the pandemic: In the parlance of the boards, they’re “still COVID-ing.” But some are also going further to protect themselves than they did in 2020, and seeking out new strategies for staying safe. They share tips online for how to fit their N95 masks, or for taping filters to the spouts of snorkels so they can safely visit indoor pools. They talk about the challenges of COVID-conscious parenting, and meet up for COVID-conscious church events on Sunday Zooms. They share lists of COVID-conscious therapists who would never try to tell you that you’re too afraid of getting sick, or that your risk perception is distorted, or that the problem here is not the world’s but your own.The pressure that they feel from others used to be a little worse. Not so long ago, just the sight of someone in a mask was read as a reproach, a sanctimonious demand that lockdowns should continue for us all. Or maybe it was taken as “a reminder of how awful the last few years had been,” Lauren Wilde, a COVID-conscious therapist in Washington State, told me—“of how many people had died, of how much it sucked to get COVID.” But now that tension has started to subside. When people walk around in masks in 2025, or insist on having lunch outside even in the dead of winter, they find that their cautious habits earn them fewer angry looks. They’re less reviled than they used to be. They’re more often just ignored.   Amid the nation’s mass indifference, their isolation has only gotten more intense. Their epistemic bubble has been shrinking too. This used to be the group that was most attuned to what “the science” said; the ones who paid attention to the dots painted on the sidewalk, six feet apart. In the past few years, as official rules for social distancing have been revoked, they’ve had to make up new ones for themselves. As standard COVID medicines grew ever more expensive, they’ve had to scour for alternatives. And as basic research on the virus hit a wall, they’ve had no choice but to do their own. “The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said last week, as local health departments braced themselves for funding cuts.The COVID-conscious people have not abandoned science, Dennis told me. It’s the opposite: They’ve come to think that science has abandoned them.If the evermaskers seem a little weirder every year, that’s because, in many ways, they haven’t changed at all. At a basic level, their COVID-conscious attitudes may not be so far from the mainstream. Twenty-one percent of Americans still think of the disease as “a major threat” to public health, according to a recent poll from Pew Research Center. Thirty-nine percent say we’re not “taking it seriously enough.” But if 50 million to 100 million adults harbor such concerns, very few are doing much about them. Masking rates were once as high as 88 percent; now they’re close to nil.For those who still maintain their masking habit—4 percent, says Pew—the whiplash in social norms has been a shock. When masking mandates went away for public transportation, in the spring of 2022, viral videos showed people cheering as they ripped the fabric off their face. Wilde told me she remembered feeling how “it was like, nothing has actually changed, apart from the fact that someone with authority has said you don’t have to do this anymore. COVID is still risky; it’s still a new disease; we don’t know what happens 10 years after you’ve had it.” Why was everyone so quick to abandon those concerns?The coronavirus never stopped its killing rampage: Hundreds of Americans die from it every week, even now in March of 2025, when the pandemic emergency is over and the virus is theoretically offseason. Nearly 50,000 people died from COVID in the U.S. last year, too. (The disease remains among the nation’s leading causes of death, on par with traffic accidents and suicides.) Yet even those alarming figures seem to matter less to COVID-conscious people than the vaguer risk of long-term complications. “It’s less about death, because if you die that sucks but you’re dead,” said Tess, a 35-year-old public-health researcher who asked to use her first name only, so that her professional work would not be connected to her COVID advocacy. “It’s disability. It’s living through it.” Tess told me that she already has long COVID, with brain fog and some loss of function in her lungs. “I want to maintain whatever health I have, and not make it worse,” she said.Nancy, a 69-year-old woman who runs two weekly Zooms for COVID-conscious people from her home, and who requested to be identified by only her first name out of concern for her privacy, said that she and many members of her groups were less afraid of death than of a “reduction in our quality of life.” “Some of the data shows that if you keep catching it over and over and over again, that your chances of developing long COVID increase,” she told me, “and it also gradually weakens your immune system.”[Read: Long COVID could be a ‘mass deterioration’ event]Other data tell a different story, though. Some studies do suggest an ever-growing threat of long-term symptoms with each new SARS-CoV-2 infection. But according to the U.K.’s Office of National Statistics, which did perhaps the most thorough tracking of long-COVID rates through late 2022, the risk of long-term complications had been going down with reinfection. And although the coronavirus has produced several major spikes of new infections across the past five years, the proportion of those in the U.S. who report having disabilities has been either stable or increasing at a steady pace (depending on which agency’s data and definitions you consult). That means it hasn’t tracked each COVID wave the way that deaths have. According to one sensible interpretation, the risk of long-term disability was greatest early on in the pandemic, but long COVID’s threat, like the threat of COVID overall, has been fading over time.The truth, or its best approximation, may be, to some extent, irrelevant. How any given person will perceive a threat is “a deeply psychological phenomenon,” Steven Taylor, a clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia and the author of The New Psychology of Pandemics, told me, and one that is “influenced by values, your past history, your medical history, and your mental-health history.” (In the U.S., at least, people’s sense of risk from COVID, in particular, also has a strong connection to their politics.) Unless someone’s COVID-cautious habits have been causing major problems in their life, there’s no point in trying to discourage them, Taylor said. “I would let people choose their level of comfort with threats. That’s their decision.”Yes, the evermaskers have assessed the costs and benefits of keeping up precautions. And yes, they say they’re happy with the trade-off, despite the many people who claim to know they’ve chosen wrong.“There are some things that I miss,” Tess told me. “I miss a good punk-rock show where we’re all sweaty in the pit and that kind of stuff. That’s not necessarily something I’m gonna do now, but I have an approximation of it when I go to an outdoor punk show and I let everybody else go in the pit.” Nancy told me that she and her husband still have active social lives. They converse with neighbors from a distance: “We just holler and say hi to each other. It’s not like we’re living as monks or something, in total isolation.” And then she has all the people from her Zoom groups. “I think I have more friends now than I ever had in my life,” she said.Certain challenges persist. Private or domestic disagreements over COVID-conscious choices—how to navigate the holidays, what to say to friends, which rules apply to kids—never go away. Nancy and her husband have two grown children and nine grandkids, all of whom have “gone on” from COVID, as she puts it. “There’s always a child that’s sniffling or coughing and you don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “We don’t like to make a big deal about it, so if we meet with them, we usually meet outside and do things outside together, but it’s hard.” Tess said she separated from her husband last year, in part because at one point he’d taken off his mask at work without telling her, got infected, and then passed along the illness. “Somebody who, literally, I just got married to, who I’m supposed to trust, lied to me, took away my agency, and got me sick,” she said. But moving out has not been easy: Any roommate she might find would need to share her views on COVID safety. (For now, she’s still living with her ex in a small apartment in the Bronx.)Politics provide another potent source of conflict. Many COVID-conscious people are progressives and identify as advocates for those with disabilities. On Instagram, calls for staying COVID safe may be tethered to appeals to anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Zionism. For a set of people who feel a broader sense of crisis in America and despair at recent actions of the U.S. government, these concerns are additive. Having to accept the risk of getting COVID, Wilde told me, is just one more way “to feel like someone is trying to force something on you that you don’t want.”A version of that complaint was once associated with people on the opposite end of COVID caution: those who resisted lockdowns and refused to wear masks. They voiced frustration, like the evermaskers do today, at a government that neglected their concerns, and at a public-health establishment that failed to meet their needs. Like the evermaskers, they felt forced to find their own approach to staying safe while other people yelled that they were wrong. I asked Wilde if she thought there might be some affinities between her own mindset and the one of parents who are opposed to vaccination, still another group of those who have come to trust their own judgment more than the government’s. “There’s a lot of overlap there. There just is,” she said. “That isn’t to say the people who are anti-vax have valid points at all. It’s just saying—and I say this a lot to the people I work with—being human is really hard.”People tend to make it easier on themselves by remaining settled in the cultural mainstream. Those who break from that current may end up drifting past the limits of what’s agreed upon by scientists. Wilde gargles mouthwash when she feels at risk of an exposure to COVID; she also uses a nasal spray. She understands the weakness of the evidence—published trials of the cetylpyridinium-chloride mouthwash, for example, have found only the barest hints of its potential as a prophylactic—but what other tools does she have at her disposal? “Maybe these things don’t have any impact at all,” she said. Still, they’ve helped her get through some scary situations—and when it comes to scary situations, she treasures any help at all.Dennis has a similar attitude. “Does it do anything? I’m not convinced,” he said of the mouthwash. “But, you know, it’s something that I can do.” He doesn’t trust everything he sees on COVID-conscious message boards, but at the very least, they let him know that other people in the world see risks the way he does. That’s important in itself. He said he took a recent flight to Ireland, and a small contingent of people were masking on the plane. One couple even tried to kiss each other with their masks in place. “Their faces did this high-five kind of thing … I was like, That’s really sweet. It just made me smile,” Dennis said. “We’re human beings, we want to belong to a tribe, right? We want to feel that sense of belonging.” Five years ago, it felt like everyone was in his tribe; it felt like all Americans were together in their fear of the unknown. Now that fear provides a rarer bond: togetherness in eccentricity, the communion of avoiding crowds.

Steve Bannon seems resigned to sharing power with the “tech bros,” as he calls them. Last week, when I spoke with President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and continued ally, he was clear about his disagreements with Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley elites on the so-called tech right. “Nationalist populists,” Bannon’s self-identified political clan, “don’t trust these oligarchs,” he told me. But, he added, “we see the usefulness of working together on broad things.”It was a noticeably different tone for Bannon. In recent months, he has taken every opportunity to bash Musk. In January, Bannon said that the billionaire is a “truly evil guy, a very bad guy,” and that he’d have Musk “run out” of Trump’s inner circle by Inauguration Day. Musk and other “techno-feudalists,” Bannon said later that month, “don’t give a flying fuck about the human being.” In February, he called Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant.” (Musk seemingly isn’t a fan of Bannon, either: “Bannon is a great talker, but not a great doer,” he posted on X in February. “What did he get done this week? Nothing.”)The nationalist right and the tech right came together to elect Trump in November, but the MAGA coalition has seemed on the verge of falling apart ever since. The nationalist right sees social conservatism—such as mass deportations, heavy immigration restrictions, and a more explicitly Christian government—as paramount, even if it comes at the expense of free markets. Prominent members of the tech right, including the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, prioritize private-sector technological progress above all else. In December, during a public spat with the nationalists over highly skilled immigrants, Musk posted on X that anyone who disagreed with him should “fuck” themselves “in the face.” Billionaire cosmopolitans who want to hire immigrants don’t mix easily with vehemently nativist populists who want to ratchet up taxes on said billionaires. Last month, in a speech at a tech summit in Washington, D.C., Vice President J. D. Vance said that he would “like to speak to these tensions as a proud member of both tribes.” This is not a thing you would feel the need to say about a relationship that is running smoothly.[Read: The MAGA honeymoon is over]But to assume that a fallout is inevitable is a mistake. The two sides don’t love each other, but for now, they are still together. Musk continues to be one of the most consequential people in government, and Bannon and other nationalists continue to hold sway over a White House that is cracking down on immigrants. Rather than split up, this new MAGA coalition might persist for years to come.What the tech right and nationalist right are going through looks like an update to how conservatism has long worked. Especially before the Trump era, being “conservative” meant a commitment to free markets and traditional social views. This alliance wasn’t always a given. During the mid-20th century, traditionalists were suspicious of the potential harms of unchecked businesses, while libertarians saw excessive government encroachment as constraining the lives of Americans. But in spite of the difference, they still managed to stay together under one coalition. “Fusionism,” as the National Review editor Frank Meyer famously called it, worked because both sides had a clear, binding tie: opposition to communism.  The current moment looks a lot like fusionism 2.0: The uniting through line of opposing communism has been replaced by an opposition to “wokeness,” as the University of Virginia historian David Austin Walsh has observed. The similarities between the political moments provide a rough model for how the new MAGA coalition might persist. In the original fusionism, communism was almost always a bigger deal than whatever libertarians and social conservatives didn’t see eye to eye on. This worked because “communism” never just meant one thing. It could be invoked to oppose the Soviet Union and the literal ideology of communism, to thwart the supposedly communist-infilitrated civil-rights and anti-war movements, or to refer to anything related to left-wing politics.Wokeness now serves that function on the right. It’s no coincidence that wokeness is a rebranded version of the right’s previous bogeyman: “cultural Marxism.” As Musk has ripped up federal agencies in a supposed effort to reduce government waste, a lot of what DOGE has actually focused on is rooting out perceived wokeness. Musk has enthusiastically helped carry out Trump’s anti-DEI executive order by targeting related programs for cuts, sometimes taking this to an almost-comic level of absurdity: DOGE reportedly placed one government worker whose job involved managing relationships with private-equity firms on administrative leave, seemingly mistakenly believing that the employee’s work was related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Andreessen, who played an early role in staffing DOGE, has also railed against wokeness. Charlie Kirk, the right-wing podcast host and member of the conservative power elite, loves to talk about how much he hates wokeness, and has applauded DOGE for “hunting down those insane DEI departments.”[Read: Charlie Kirk is the right’s new kingmaker]In many cases, the two factions detest wokeness in the same specific ways. Joe Lonsdale, a Palantir co-founder and tech investor who is also a large donor to right-wing causes, recently posted that Columbia University “delenda est,” Latin for “must be destroyed.” Similarly, Bannon told me that he has urged Trump and other administration officials to target public universities such as the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Purge the faculties and purge the administrators,” he said. “The states have no money to back up universities, so hold federal funding until they purge.”Wokeness is even vaguer and more malleable than communism, which makes it especially useful. DEI hiring practices and critical race theory in schools count as wokeness on the right, but depending on whom you talk to, so is something as simple as a TV show or a movie with gay people. It can be bent into a passionate opposition to anything that might have the faintest traces of being liberal, left-wing, or progressive. “As long as there are common enemies,” Walsh, the UVA historian told me, the new MAGA coalition “will remain stable.”People within the coalition at least partially agree. To the right, wokeness “is the glue that holds the left together,” Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, told me. Carl, a self-proclaimed nationalist who worked in the first Trump administration, explained that both factions of the right sincerely don’t like the rough assemblage of things they deem to be woke, but they also lean on it because they see it as a unifying point. “My nationalist group chats are not filled with people spewing anger at Elon,” he said. “They like Elon. They think he’s doing a great job."None of this means that the tech right and nationalist right are destined to stay together. The groups in the original fusionism were often on a similar footing in terms of power. That’s not the case now. The tech elites hold a disproportionate amount of leverage in their ability to influence elections through massive donations. Musk is still throwing his money around, funneling millions of dollars to try to sway a Wisconsin Supreme Court race. His influence does not seem to be waning, even as he has continued to pursue an agenda at DOGE that has reportedly irritated a number of Trump’s other senior administration officials. This power imbalance gives the tech right an advantage. Even if the relationship still benefits the nationalists, they become the political equivalent of a group of suckerfish riding a whale.When we spoke, Bannon rejected the entire idea of fusionism 2.0. “Let me say it bluntly: Fuck fusionism,” he said. At another point in the conversation, he referred to Silicon Valley as an “apartheid state” in which white-collar tech jobs are filled by immigrants instead of native-born Americans. In Bannon’s view, MAGA is not fusing together so much as begrudgingly forced to stick together—the way that the Democratic Party was once a coalition between northern liberals and southern Dixiecrats.But even if Bannon’s view is right, it still suggests a MAGA coalition that is far more robust than it seemed just a few months ago. The Silicon Valley elite, Musk especially, has already moved closer to the nationalist right over the past several years. The nationalists, however wary of the tech right, have welcomed them. They understand that Musk and the rest of the tech right are deep-pocketed, powerful allies against wokeness in all its forms. Each faction still has every reason to keep putting its differences aside.

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.Dear James,My husband whistles constantly. His whistling is the first sound I hear in the morning and often the last sound I hear at night. He has three types: the standard whistle, with lips pursed; the tongue-between-the-teeth whistle, which is more high-pitched; and a “lazy” whistle, where he’s sort of blowing air with no real tune—which may be the most grating one. When he does whistle a tune, it varies from whatever song is in his head, to whatever song is playing on the air, to whatever commercial jingle is on TV. All of which is to say: I’m losing my mind.We had a houseguest who teased him about this one morning at breakfast. I was grateful—what a relief to know I wasn’t the only one noticing. But it had no effect on my husband’s behavior.You might wonder: Why don’t you just talk with your husband about this, adult to adult? Or simply explain that it’s hard to have that much whistling in one’s life? I’ve tried many times over the years, and it has not gone well.My husband, you see, fancies himself a kind of performer. In stints over the course of about six years, during elementary and high school, he was in a theater ensemble and did a small amount of acting, plus one childhood commercial. I think he still strongly identifies as a person who was a child actor. So whenever he hears a comment or request about anything he deems performative, he gets angry and offended—enough so that it can feel as if, by asking him to limit the whistling, I’ve initiated World War III. It has not been worth it to me to fight in front of our children or even when they’re away at school, because the tension will just carry over to when they’re home.I don’t know what else to do. Any advice?Dear Reader,In another mood, in another mode, I might be exhorting you to appreciate the different tones and timbres of your husband’s whistling. I might compare it to birdsong. I might be encouraging you to embrace it as the sound of natural high spirits, of unreflective biological gaiety. How nice, I might say, to have a cheerful man about the house.But that’s not how I’m feeling, and it’s clearly not how you’re feeling. This is driving—has already driven—you mad. It must stop.The mailman can whistle. The passing tradesman, he can whistle. Paul McCartney in 1963—so the legend goes—woke up to hear a milkman whistling “From Me to You” and knew in that instant that the Beatles had achieved pop immortality. But the point about the milkman and the mailman is that they’re outside. They keep moving; they’re making their rounds. They’re not standing by the fridge, whistling their heads off.Whistling can be musical, of course. Meat Puppets’ “The Whistling Song” is beautiful. But more often, what the whistling expresses, with sometimes a strange vehemence, is a kind of mental vacancy or mild automatism, something quite impersonal. I’m not thinking, it says. I refuse to think. And for your husband to be wandering from room to room in this state of militant mindlessness, whistling away—I can quite see how that would play upon your nerves.I sense a lot of backed-up marriage stuff here too—his reaction to your reaction to your reaction to his reaction, and so on—which I think is probably closer to the core of the problem. One of your husband’s whistles might be a just-getting-through-it whistle, a passive-aggressive whistle, or a whistle of dangerous forbearance, like a kettle close to the boil. Is he telling you something, however unconsciously, with his whistles? Could that be a way to approach the subject? Not: I don’t like these noises you’re making. Instead: Why are you making them? Why are you whistling instead of talking to me?Also: Get that houseguest back.Tuned to the music of the spheres,JamesBy submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

On Monday, March 24, The Atlantic published a story detailing how editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been inadvertently added to a Signal group chat of Trump-administration officials discussing attack plans on Houthi targets in Yemen. After the president and numerous officials downplayed the significance of the breach, The Atlantic published a second story with the full transcript. The fallout from “Signalgate” included congressional hearings, denials and attacks on The Atlantic from the White House, and hundreds of memes.This week, Goldberg will discuss his reporting on the breach with Atlantic staff writer Ashley Parker in a virtual event just for subscribers. To join their conversation, return to this page on Thursday, April 3, at 11:30 a.m. ET.If you’re a subscriber, you’ll receive an email reminder before the event starts. Or add the event to your calendar.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.“Freedom is a fragile thing, and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction,” Ronald Reagan said in 1967, in his inaugural address as governor of California. Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, approvingly quotes the speech in his foreword to Project 2025, the conservative think tank’s blueprint for the Trump administration. Roberts writes that the plan has four goals for protecting its vision of freedom: restoring the family “as the centerpiece of American life”; dismantling the federal bureaucracy; defending U.S. “sovereignty, borders, and bounty”; and securing “our God-given individual rights to live freely.”Project 2025 has proved to be a good road map for understanding the first months of Donald Trump’s second term, but most of the focus has been on efforts to dismantle the federal government as we know it. The effort to restore traditional families has been less prominent so far, but it could reshape the everyday lives of all Americans in fundamental ways. Its place atop the list of priorities is no accident—it reflects the most deeply held views of many of the contributors—though the destruction of the administrative state might end up imperiling the Trump team’s ability to actually carry out the changes the authors want.A focus on heterosexual, married, procreating couples is everywhere in Project 2025. “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-­ordered nation and healthy society,” writes Roger Severino, the author of a chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services and a former HHS and Justice Department staffer. (The document is structured as a series of chapters on specific departments or agencies, each written by one or a few authors.) He argues that the federal government should bolster organizations that “maintain a biblically based, social-­science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” saying that other forms are less stable. The goal is not only moral; he and other authors see this as a path to financial stability and perhaps even greater prosperity for families. This article has been adapted from David A. Graham’s new book, The Project. Project 2025’s authors identify a range of ways to achieve the goal across the executive branch. Changes to rules for 401(k)s and other savings programs would be more generous to married couples. HHS would enlist churches and other faith-­based organizations to “provide marriage and parenting guidance for low-­income fathers” that would “affirm and teach” based on “a biological and sociological understanding of what it means to be a father—­not a gender-neutral parent—­from social science, psychology, personal testimonies, etc.” Through educational programs, tax incentives, and other methods, the child-support system “should strengthen marriage as the norm, restore broken homes, and encourage unmarried couples to commit to marriage.” Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the lead federal welfare program, would track statistics about “marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy.”[Jonathan Rauch: One word describes Trump]In this vision, men are breadwinners and women are mothers. “Without women, there are no children, and society cannot continue,” Max Primorac writes in his chapter on USAID, where he served in the first Trump administration. (Primorac calls for ridding the agency of “woke” politics and using it as an instrument of U.S. policy, but not the complete shutdown Trump has attempted.) Jonathan Berry writes that the Department of Labor, where he previously worked, would “commit to honest study of the challenges for women in the world of professional work” and seek to “understand the true causes of earnings gaps between men and women.” (This sounds a lot like research predetermined to reach an outcome backing the traditional family.) The Labor Department would produce monthly data on “the state of the American family and its economic welfare,” and the Education Department would provide student data sorted by family structure. Severino suggests that the government either pay parents (most likely mothers) to offset the cost of caring for children, or pay for in-­home care from family members; he opposes universal day care, which many on the right see as encouraging women to work rather than stay home with kids.All of this fits a very conservative worldview, but in some places common ground emerges that might cut across typical partisan lines. For example, in a convergence of the crunchy left and natalist right, Severino wants doulas to be available to all expectant mothers. Contra Severino, Berry suggests that the Labor Department create incentives for on-site child care at work. He also wants Congress to require employers to let workers accumulate paid time off when working overtime, in place of time-and-­a-half pay, and to encourage rest time for workers by mandating time-and-a-half compensation on a Sabbath. (The suggested default would be Sunday, but the rule would allow for alternatives such as a Jewish Sabbath, running from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.)Turning these ideas into reality would require substantial engagement from the federal bureaucracy. Yet Trump and Elon Musk have spent the first months of the presidency haphazardly demolishing large swaths of the workforce at just the departments that would be necessary to make these things happen. Trump is attempting to dissolve the Education Department altogether; HHS has offered a buyout to every employee.The parts of this family-oriented agenda that the Trump administration has already moved to enact are some of those that enforce a strictly binary concept of gender, aiming to drive trans and nonbinary people underground; open them up to discrimination at work, at school, and in the rest of their lives; and erase their very existence from the language of the federal government.“In the past, the word ‘gender’ was a polite alternative to the word ‘sex’ or term ‘biological sex,’” Primorac writes. “The Left has commandeered the term ‘gender,’ which used to mean either ‘male’ or ‘female,’ to include a spectrum of others who are seeking to alter biological and societal sexual norms.”On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that purports to define sex as binary. “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” the order states. “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.” The order also dissolved the White House Gender Policy Council, created by former President Joe Biden.Trump also signed an executive order banning transgender women from women’s sports. The Defense Department says it will not accept transgender recruits for the armed forces, and will begin kicking out transgender service members currently in the military. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has moved to drop a discrimination case focused on gender identity, and the Education Department says it will enforce Title IX only to consider “biological sex.”[Peter Wehner: Trump’s appetite for revenge is insatiable]Right-wing leaders have made attacks on trans people and nontraditional expressions of gender a cornerstone of right-wing politics over the past few years. They have spread disinformation about trans people and panicked over the prospect of children adopting different gender identities or names at school. What is the reason for so much fear? Transgender people make up less than 2 percent of the population, and their presence in society doesn’t evidently harm other people. Project 2025’s pro-­family orientation helps explain why the right considers them such a threat. A worldview that sees gender roles as strictly delineated and immutable cannot acknowledge the existence of trans people or anything else that contemplates an alternative to a total separation between what it means to be male and what it means to be female.Trump has not yet made stricter abortion policies a focus in his new term. Though he has boasted about appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, he seems wary of pushing further, for fear of political backlash. Project 2025 has no such qualms. Severino recommends withdrawing FDA approval for abortion drugs, banning their prescription via telehealth, and using 1873’s Comstock Act to prohibit their mailing. He also recommends a strong federal surveillance program over abortion at the state level. Project 2025 also calls for the return of abstinence-only education and the criminalization of pornography.With a little imagination, we can glimpse the America that Project 2025 proposes. It is an avowedly Christian nation, but following a very specific, narrow strain of Christianity. In many ways, it resembles the 1950s. While fathers work, mothers stay at home with larger families. At school, students learn old-­fashioned values and lessons. Abortion is illegal, vaccines are voluntary, and the state is minimally involved in health care. The government is slow to police racial discrimination in all but its most blatant expressions. Trans and LGBTQ people exist—­they always have—­but are encouraged to remain closeted. It is a vision that suggests Reagan was right: Freedom ­really is a fragile thing.This article has been adapted from David A. Graham’s new book, The Project.

Nothing amplifies a popular trend more than a prominent critic making a noisy case against it. In her 2021 polemic, “The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” the literary critic Parul Sehgal argued that trauma had become a central feature of contemporary literature. In too many recent novels, she observed, characters looked to the buried pain of the past as an explanation for the present; this type of story, she said, “flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom.” The essay sparked an ongoing debate in the literary community: Has trauma indeed become the dominant plot, and is fiction worse off for it? Or is processing a difficult past on the page still valuable, both for the writer and the reader?Jamie Hood defiantly sets out to reclaim the trauma plot by doubling down on it, beginning with the title of her debut memoir, Trauma Plot: A Life. Implicit in her project is an acknowledgment that human beings will always have deeply upsetting experiences, and they will always write about them. The only question is how. Hood tries to answer that question through an utterly original recounting of her own past.Hood is a shrewd critic, and she is informed by the work of authors including Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, whose writings allow her to challenge the idea that there’s something uniquely contemporary about trauma plots (or indeed in the criticism of them). Hood is troubled by Sehgal’s framing of the phenomenon, which seems to “exile” writers “from self-knowledge.” She identifies what she sees as an underlying assumption guiding arguments against this kind of writing—that those who write books about their pain are not producing art: “Like there’s no reason to write about trauma except to make a buck. Like if you talk about having lived through something awful, that’s all you’ve ever talked about or ever will. Like you have no agency inside a story you yourself choose to tell.”[Read: Trauma is everywhere. Write about it anyway.]In Trauma Plot, Hood investigates her past and present with startling honesty and curiosity. “I began writing this book in 2016, a year after five men gang raped me and around the time the Access Hollywood tapes were leaked to the public,” she writes. The #MeToo movement demonstrated to Hood that experiences of sexual assault were not “exceptional,” and that they could be spoken about and shared. The accounts she read broke the silence that frequently surrounds rape, and refused to fall into existing narratives of shame or victimhood.“For most of my life no one I knew talked about rape,” Hood writes, “so there were many years when I thought it happened to every heroine of every Lifetime movie and to me.” These kinds of films, she writes, smooth over the experience of rape into straightforward cause and effect: Sexual assault leads to grieving and then healing, which a brave heroine can achieve by looking for some kind of lesson. Hood searches for new ways to tell her story, forms that depart from familiar scripts.One place where Hood finds such inspiration is in the myth of the Athenian princess Philomela, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. While on her way to visit her sister, Philomela is deceived and raped by Tereus, her brother-in-law. When she threatens to reveal what he did, Tereus cuts out her tongue, leaving her mute. But Philomela learns to weave, creating a tapestry that tells the story of her assault. Hood imagines herself as Philomela, finding alternative means of expressing the truth: “I had a need of my own to reckon with the way rape resists testimony or explodes the containers of its own telling, without in turn surrendering to the convention that trauma is, as it were, altogether intelligible. With tongue or without, the story will out.”Like Philomela, Hood experiments with structure to speak the unspeakable and show the splintering effects of sexual assault (in her case, what she describes as several separate incidents of rape). Trauma Plot is divided into four parts, each of which is written from a different perspective: “She,” “I,” “You,” “We.” In each section, Hood doesn’t just try to understand her own experiences; she wrestles with the limits of language when trying to represent deep personal pain.Part I, “She,” is an homage to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, following a character Hood calls Jamie H. (in the third person) on the day she and her roommate are planning to throw a party. In Boston in October 2012, Jamie wakes up, commutes to Waltham, teaches classes, meets with an adviser, and, yes, buys the flowers herself, all while she is haunted by what she calls the “Specter”—a leering, disembodied smile that has followed her since that summer. She searches for traces of a “fracturing” June night in her diary; though she knows what happened to her, she is “unable to look on it directly, for it signaled a kind of cognitive eclipse.” Near the end of the section, Jamie finally confronts the event, revealing that a man she calls the Diplomat raped her. Here, the perspective snaps from “she” to “I,”; Jamie reflects that she “must yield the mantle of the third person” in order to “face the Diplomat stripped of distance.”This “I” is the dominant voice of Part II, which begins, “Two months before the bombing of the Boston Marathon I was raped again.” Here, Hood employs the kind of first-person testimony common to the trauma plot. But she tells her story at a slant, intertwining her second rape and its aftermath with an account of the Boston Marathon bombing, a triple murder in Waltham, and her decision to leave Boston for New York City. In February 2013, Hood describes being drugged and assaulted by “the Man in the Gray Room,” who then offers to drive her home the next morning. The entire chapter seems to snag on that detail, as Hood imagines it undermining her account: “That accepting this from him would undercut the veracity of my victimization didn’t matter, because nothing did. The decision was automatic, and marvelously practical. I’d no clue where I was, no money, and could barely walk. I knew already I wouldn’t report, so there’d be no rape kit, no interrogation or lawyers, no judge, no testimony, no jury.”Yet Hood knows that her book is a testimony. She writes about her memories carefully, always aware that her reader is forming judgments about her credibility. To such people, Hood shows viscerally how the idea of the perfect victim, beyond reproach or doubt, is a fantasy. After all, she still has to live: “In the movies, they make it seem like your whole life stops when you get raped, but I kept arriving at the awful truth that nothing about it would stop, and I still had to wake up each day and do the same stupid, boring shit I did every other day and would have to go on doing until the end.” As she juggles teaching, writing a dissertation, grading papers, and working extra hours as a transcriptionist, Hood dissociates, turning to alcohol, drugs, and calorie restriction.In the introduction to her book, Hood writes that “I am, I confess, not a theorist of rape, only an archivist of my own.” In the final two sections, she fully embraces this role: Part III, “You,” set in New York in August 2013, revisits her journals from that period, separating Hood the diarist (earnest, hurting, recently arrived in a new city) from Hood the biographer (critical, distant, seasoned). Here she wryly quotes passages from her old writings, puncturing her past fantasies: “It seems to me,” she writes to her earlier self, “you’ve no notion of what you yourself desire.”Part IV, “We,” is set in the present, as Hood begins therapy. Perhaps the most gripping part of “We” is when Hood assembles a chronology of her “life and trauma” for her therapist, Helen. “What if I pretended that the plot was linear, and of a piece?” she writes. Hood never shows this chronology to Helen, but lays it out—with some redactions—for the reader. This document is powerful to read toward the end of the memoir: It makes clear just how much Trauma Plot resists linear storytelling in order to reflect the disordered, fragmented experience of sexual assault.[Read: In search of the book that would save her life]   Hood doesn’t indicate whether she feels like she has healed from her past, or what it would look like if she had. But Trauma Plot unambiguously demonstrates her growth as a writer. Like Philomela, Hood alchemizes her suffering into something new. In her first book, the essay-poetry hybrid How to Be a Good Girl: A Miscellany, she mentioned the memoir she was trying to write. “I bite the inside of my cheek & say (again) this is not my rape / book this is not my rape book this is not my rape book / every book is my rape book,” she wrote; “my rape book is 300 pages long & / i will never finish writing it.” I was moved to reach the end of Trauma Plot and realize that Hood has finished her “rape book” (or one of them) and written it according to her own rules. In a session with Helen, Hood talks about her sense of wasted time. “I’m nearly forty and I’ve only just started living,” she reflects. “I want to be OK with this. But it’s hard not to dream of other lives, and maybe that dream is the current that carries me to writing.” This is the parallel plot of the book—Hood’s artistic development alongside her pain. She ends with a burst of hope that calls to mind Molly Bloom’s ecstatic soliloquy at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “I have hope again! I do! I don’t know my desire, yes, and yet I’m filled with it. And I think, yes, of all I still have to write. Everything left to do.” Hood’s engagement with her own trauma plot doesn’t flatten or distort her story; instead, it expands her craft, her ambition, her desire, and her life.

How should we understand miracles? Many people in the near and distant past have believed in them; many still do. I believe in miracles too, in my way, reconciling rationalism and inklings of a preternatural reality by means of “radical amazement.” That’s a core concept of the great modern Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel. Miracles, insofar as Heschel would agree with my calling them that—it’s not one of his words—do not defy the natural order. God dwells in earthly things. Me, I find God in what passes for the mundane: my family, Schubert sonatas, the mystery of innate temperament. A corollary miracle is that we have been blessed with a capacity for awe, which allows us “to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance,” Heschel writes.Every so often, though, I wonder whether radical amazement demands enough of us. Heschel would never have gone as far as Thomas Jefferson, who simply took a penknife to his New Testament and sliced out all the miracles, because they offended his Enlightenment-era conviction that faith should not contradict reason. His Jesus was a man of moral principles stripped of higher powers. But a faith poor in miracles is an untested faith. At the core of Judaism and Christianity lie divine interventions that rip a hole in the known universe and change the course of history. Jesus would not have become Christ the Savior had he not risen from his tomb. Nor would Jews be Jews had Moses not brought down God’s Torah from Mount Sinai.[From the November 2020 issue: James Parker on reading Thomas Jefferson’s Bible]Those who wish to engage with religious scriptures are not relieved of the obligation to wrestle with how miracles should be understood. Do we take them literally or symbolically? Are they straightforward reports of events that occurred in the world, perhaps ones that are no longer possible, because God no longer acts in it? Or are they encoded accounts of things that happened on some other, less palpable level, but were no less real for that?In her book Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus, Elaine Pagels asks different questions about New Testament miracles. She is less interested in whether Jesus performed them than in what accounts for their power. Her larger quest is to understand the enduring appeal of Jesus to so many people “as a living presence, even as someone they know intimately.” Pagels, now 82, is a historian of early Christianity who also writes about her own efforts to find an experience of Christianity, a sense of intermittent grace, consonant with her experience of extreme loss: Her first son died at 6 of a rare disease; her husband died in a hiking accident shortly thereafter. She has spent a lifetime thinking about the multiple dimensions of the gospel truth.Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels (1979) is a liberal theologian’s cult classic—it has gone through more than 30 printings. Though not her first work of scholarship, it marked the beginning of a long career as a gifted explainer of abstruse ideas. Her overarching ambition has been to restore a lost heritage of theological diversity to the wider world. The Gnostic Gospels reintroduced forgotten writings of repudiated Jesus sects, produced over the course of the first and second centuries, before a welter of competing perceptions of Jesus’s story were reduced to a single dogma, codified in the apostolic creed, and before the New Testament was a fixed canon. Sounding faintly Buddhist to the modern ear, those writings interpreted miracles as symbolic descriptions of real spiritual revelations and transformations, available only to those with access to secret knowledge (gnosis). “Do not suppose that resurrection is an apparition,” one gnostic teacher wrote in his Treatise on Resurrection. “It is something real. Instead, one ought to maintain that the world is an apparition.”[From the August 1993 issue: Cullen Murphy on women and the Bible]The subtitle of Miracles and Wonder is slightly misleading: The Historical Mystery of Jesus seems to imply that Pagels will revisit the old debate over whether Jesus existed. That he did is settled doctrine, at least among historians. Rather, she takes us back to what biblical scholars call the Sitz im Leben, the “scene of composition,” in an effort to reconstruct where miracle narratives came from and how they evolved. Using the tools of the historian as well as the literary critic, she tries to unearth the writers’ concerns and influences, and she considers miracles from a bluntly instrumentalist perspective: What problems did they solve; what new vistas did solving them open; what religious function did they serve?Among their other uses, miracles helped the evangelists overcome challenges to the authority of the Christ story. For all his enigmatic teachings and at times mystifying behavior, Jesus the man is not that hard to explain: He was one among many Jewish preachers and healers prophesying apocalypse in a land ravaged by Roman conquest and failed uprisings. But Jesus the man-god was more difficult for outsiders—Roman leaders, Greco-Roman philosophers, other Jews—to accept. They asked a lot of hostile questions. Why worship a Messiah whose mission had apparently failed? Didn’t his ignominious end—crucifixion was Rome’s punishment for renegades and slaves—contradict his claim to be divine? The Romans were incredulous that anyone would glorify a Jew. To the Jewish elite, he was a rube from the countryside.Mark, the first known writer of a Christian gospel, could have produced a traditional hagiography. Instead, wishing to publicize Jesus’s singular power—to spread the “good news”—he appears to have invented the gospel genre, the Greek biographical novella as a work of evangelical witness; the subsequent chroniclers followed his lead. Writing around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, in 70 C.E., he gave Jesus’s story cosmic dimensions. Now it was the tale of “God’s spirit contending against Satan, in a world filled with demons,” in Pagels’s words. Mark may have been recording oral stories developed by Jesus’s followers to convey perceptions of real experiences, but Mark, and they, would also have wanted to defend their certainties against the skeptics.[Read: Where science and miracles meet]Pagels isn’t trying to shock the faithful. Reading sacred texts as the products of history, rather than the word of God, has been standard practice in biblical scholarship for more than a century. Her book demonstrates that the Wissenschaftliche, or “scientific approach” (the pioneering Bible scholars were German), doesn’t have to be reductive; indeed, critical scrutiny may make new sense of difficult texts and yield new revelations. As Pagels portrays them, the evangelists were men of creative genius, using their defense of Jesus as an occasion to draft the outlines of a new world religion. “What I find most astonishing about the gospel stories,” she writes, “is that Jesus’s followers managed to take what their critics saw as the most damning evidence against their Messiah—his crucifixion—and transform it into evidence of his divine mission.”In some cases, recontextualizing the old stories gives them an unexpected poignancy. A good example is her analysis of the virgin birth. It yields a less sanctified Mary, but by highlighting darker currents in the text perhaps obscured by tradition, Pagels imbues the young mother with a haunting sadness. We think of the virgin birth as a basic element of Christian faith, yet only two of the four canonical Gospels refer to it: Matthew and Luke. Mark doesn’t mention Jesus’s birth and says little about his family background. When we first encounter Jesus, he’s a full-grown Messiah being baptized in the wilderness. John’s Gospel has a bit more on Jesus’s family, but no birth scene. When we first see Jesus in the Gospel of John, he is already both the Son of God and a man—that is to say, not an infant.Matthew and Luke, by contrast, not only depict Jesus’s birth, but herald it at length. They supply genealogies that stretch back to King David, the founder of Israel’s dynasty, giving Jesus a lineage commensurate with his stature. Matthew stresses royalty, prefacing the birth with heavenly portents; afterward, Magi bear royal gifts to a future king. Luke’s version is more rustic but heightens the dramatic tension between Jesus’s humble background and his divinity. Joseph and Mary are turned away from an inn. Mary gives birth in a barn, and shepherds worship him. Both feature an Annunciation, in which an angel appears and announces that Mary, a virgin who is engaged to Joseph, is to have a son by God. In Matthew, the angel comes to Joseph, who has already discovered that Mary is with child, and advises him to marry her—he was planning to send her away before she disgraced them both. Luke’s angel goes directly to Mary.Why did Matthew and Luke add all this material? Among the many possible answers, Pagels focuses on the likelihood that after Jesus’s death, talk began to circulate that he was the illegitimate son of an unwed mother. The second-century Greek philosopher Celsus used the charge to discredit the Gospels. In an anti-Christian polemic citing Jewish sources, he writes, “Is it not true … that you fabricated the story of your birth from a virgin to quiet rumors about the true and unsavory circumstances of your origins?”That Mark himself seems to have called Jesus’s paternity into question complicates matters. When his Jesus comes home to Nazareth to preach at the local synagogue, his former neighbors mock him for his wild ideas. “Where did this man get all this?” they sneer. “What miracles has he been doing? Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon?” (The italics are Pagels’s.) Mark’s readers, who knew how Jewish patronymics worked, would have understood what the villagers were throwing in Jesus’s face. They would not have said “son of Mary” if they’d known the name of Jesus’s father—even if his father was dead.Matthew and Luke excise that “son of Mary” and make Jesus not just legitimate but doubly legitimate. His mother acquires both a husband, Joseph, and a father, God, for her child. Her marriage and Jesus’s divine paternity purge the implied stain of wantonness. And yet disturbing hints of sexuality still run beneath the surface of the evangelists’ Gospels. In Luke’s Annunciation, after the angel Gabriel delivers his message, Mary asks, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Gabriel replies, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the Power of the Most High will overshadow you.”Pagels doesn’t cite this exchange or address the disconcerting aggressiveness of “come upon you” and “overshadow you,” but she does look closely at Mary’s response: “I am the Lord’s slave; so be it.” This is Pagels’s translation; the word she gives as slave, doule, is in this context more often translated as “servant” or “handmaid.” Soon after, Luke has Mary, thrilled about the pregnancy, burst into song. But her first response, Pagels says, sounds more resigned than joyous: “An enslaved woman was required to obey a master’s will, even when that meant bearing his child, as it often did.” At a minimum, “a girl with no sexual experience might be startled and dismayed to hear that she is about to become pregnant, given the potential embarrassment and shame she might suffer.”Pagels goes so far as to conjecture how Mary got pregnant, a thesis very much based on circumstantial evidence. Around the time of Jesus’s birth, tens of thousands of Roman soldiers marched into Judea to suppress an insurrection, a brutal campaign recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus. As they fanned out through the countryside to hunt down rebels, they kidnapped and raped any women they could find. Pagels asks, “Was Mary, as a young girl from a humble rural family,” one of those women? “We have no way of knowing,” she adds, though she is struck by one coincidence. Unfriendly rabbinic sources from the first few centuries after Jesus’s death cited slanderous gossip claiming that Mary was promiscuous and had a lover who was a soldier named Panthera, and that he was Jesus’s father. Modern scholars have found the gravestone of a soldier with that name, said to have served in Judea until 9 C.E.; Pagels wonders whether he could have been one of those rapists. Thinking of Mary as a victim of sexual assault is horrifying; it feels sacrilegious. But that she gave birth to her son in an age of cataclysmic violence does make his ultimate triumph seem even more miraculous.An appreciation of context also yields a new reading of the Passion of the Christ. This account of Christ’s trial and torture in the days leading up to the crucifixion, which shows the Jews baying for his death, has been thought by some to have contributed to centuries of anti-Semitism. In Pagels’s version, the evangelists are motivated less by sheer hatred of Jews than by the need to solve some difficult theological and political problems. What leads them to demonize the Jewish priests and elders, even as they turn Pontius Pilate, Judea’s Roman governor, into an honorable man who perceives Jesus’s innocence and is loath to sentence him?That the leader of a notoriously cruel occupying power would have shown such compassion for a militant rebel strains credulity and defies the historical record. Pilate was infamous for his “greed, violence, robbery, assault, frequent executions without trial, and endless savage ferocity,” according to the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo, among many others. “I find no simple answer” to the conundrum of the revisionist Pilate, Pagels writes. But she has her theories. For one thing, by acknowledging Jesus’s innocence, the Pilate of the Gospels safeguards Jesus from the charge that he died a criminal.A good Pilate is implausible though not impossible—that is to say, not miraculous—but he plays a crucial role in the larger miracle of the crucifixion, the transfiguration of a degrading death into the salvation of all mankind. Another reason for the evangelists to absolve Pilate of blame, according to Pagels, would have been to protect themselves. The Roman authorities persecuted Christians harshly, subjecting them to torture and deaths even more gruesome than crucifixion. To vilify a high Roman official was to invite retribution. As the Christians grew more Gentile, the Gospel writers made Pilate more sympathetic and the Jews less so. The writers could not have foreseen that their scapegoating of the Jews would have such lethal consequences and for so long.I should stress that the Christian miracle narratives have multiple sources. Most important, they interpret other texts. Sure that Jesus was the Messiah, his followers scoured the Jewish Bible for prophecies that foretold his coming. The virgin birth elaborates on a verse from Isaiah that could be construed as predicting it: A virgin “shall conceive, and bear a son.” (“Virgin” is a famous mistranslation. The Hebrew word is almah, or “young woman.” But Matthew would probably have been reading the Hebrew Bible in Greek, where the word appears as parthenos, “virgin.” ) Drawing on existing holy writ was in no way scandalous. Even as Christians moved away from Judaism, the evangelists continued to work within a Jewish scriptural tradition that expected later writers to build on earlier ones. The presence of the old texts in the new ones served as validation. In Matthew and Luke’s view—and in the view of Christians throughout the ages—Isaiah proved them right.What do biblical miracles do for believers today? In Pagels’s final chapter, she visits Christian communities around the world, many of them poor and subject to political oppression, to explore some of the ways in which the story of Jesus continues to offer comfort and inspiration. In the Philippines, for example, she finds the Bicolanos, Catholics living in remote villages, who worship a syncretistic Jesus inflected with Filipino tradition; they are particularly focused on Easter week, because to them, Jesus represents the promise of a glorious afterlife.Miracle stories also have applications outside a strictly religious context. They are indispensable fictions, tales to live by. They re-enchant the world. Or so I feel. I read the Bible, Christian as well as Jewish, not for spiritual nourishment—or not for what is generally considered spiritual nourishment—but to be reminded that the universe once held more surprises than it does now and that hoping when all seems hopeless is not unreasonable, at least from the vantage point of eternity. Miracles are useful insofar as we take their poetry seriously. We are talking about encounters with the Almighty. Human language falters in the face of the indescribable, which reaches us only through the figures of speech we are able to understand.This article appears in the May 2025 print edition with the headline “What to Make of Miracles.”

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that he hopes to replace Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee with Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland and aims to set up a floor vote on the issue this afternoon, which Republicans are expected to block.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy traveled to Wall Street on Monday to deliver a fresh warning that the House GOP majority will refuse to lift a cap on government borrowing unless Biden agrees to spending cuts that would effectively neutralize his domestic agenda.

The US has sensitive nuclear technology at a nuclear power plant inside Ukraine and is warning Russia not to touch it, according to a letter the US Department of Energy sent to Russia's state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom last month.

Atiq Ahmed, a former lawmaker in India's parliament, convicted of kidnapping, was shot dead along with his brother while police were escorting them for a medical check-up in a slaying caught on live television on Saturday. CNN's Vedika Sud reports.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended the terms of its emergency use authorizations for the Pfizer and Moderna bivalent vaccines on Tuesday, allowing people ages 65 and older and certain people with weakened immunity to get additional doses before this fall's vaccination campaigns.

Maine authorities have detained a person of interest and continue to investigate after two shooting incidents that appear to be connected left at least four people dead and three others injured, state police said.

• Delta Air Lines reports record bookings for summer travel • Air France and Airbus acquitted in trial over 2009 plane crash

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who has been cleared to resume football activities, said Tuesday his cardiac arrest during an NFL game in January was caused by commotio cordis.

Polish pilot Lukasz Czepiela made history after landing a plane on a helipad at the top of a 56-story hotel in Dubai.

The top US Navy admiral ardently defended a non-binary sailor on Tuesday amid some criticism from Republican lawmakers, saying he is "particularly proud of this sailor."

The Fulton County District Attorney's office said some fake electors for Donald Trump have implicated each other in potential criminal activity and is seeking to disqualify their lawyer, according to a new court filing.

High speed trains have proved their worth across the world over the past 50 years.

It's April 18, the official deadline to file your federal and state income tax returns for 2022. (It is also, apparently, National Animal Crackers Day for those who celebrate.)

It's a surprising fact that's often overlooked in the immigration debate.

Tuesday is Tax Day in America, one of the most stressful days of the year, when many taxpayers will finally end their procrastination, file their federal returns, and hope for a refund from the IRS. But for many of the nation's wealthiest, it's just another Tuesday.

There are many ways to explore the seven mountains that surround the picturesque UNESCO World Heritage city of Bergen on Norway's fjord-studded west coast. The newest, however, might well be record-breaking.

A German artist has rejected an award from a prestigious international photography competition after revealing that his submission was generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society has found two of three ships that sank in the same Lake Superior storm more than a century ago, locating one in 2021 and the other in 2022.

What does intimacy look like for seniors? There's no end to sex scenes and other steamy content featuring the young and unwrinkled, but past a certain age, popular culture largely draws a blank — or treats sex as a punchline.

China's economy is off to a solid start in 2023 following its emergence from three years of strict pandemic restrictions.

• Four out of the five US metro areas with the lowest unemployment are in Florida. Here's why • Opinion: The overlooked problem with raising the retirement age for Social Security

McDonald's, which has been focusing on upgrading its core items to boost sales, is rolling out a series of changes designed to improve its signature burgers.

Shares of Google-parent Alphabet fell more than 3% in early trading Monday after a report sparked concerns that its core search engine could lose market share to AI-powered rivals, including Microsoft's Bing.

The ruling earlier this month by a Texas federal judge to suspend the US Food and Drug Administration's approval of a drug that is used frequently for medication abortions, is very personal for me.

On Monday, the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee — chaired by Donald Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan — is set to hold a field hearing in New York City called "Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan." A statement bills the hearing as an examination of how, the Judiciary Committee says, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's policies have "led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents."

In 1917, British analysts deciphered a coded message the German foreign minister sent to one of his country's diplomats vowing to begin "unrestricted submarine warfare" and seeking to win over Mexico with a promise to "reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona" if the US entered the world war. When it became public, the Zimmerman Telegram caused a sensation, helping propel the US into the conflict against Germany.

Four years ago, almost to the day, the people of Sudan were celebrating a revolution after overthrowing longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Now the East African country faces the possibility of a complete collapse similar to the chaos we see today in Yemen or Libya.

Live long and prosper, Michelle Yeoh.

After the shock came the aftershocks, the power vacuum, and perhaps most significantly and impressively, the laughs, as "Succession" pivoted to face life after Logan Roy, in an episode that finally put the HBO show's title into full flower.

Of the many dark gifts Showtime's eerie hit series "Yellowjackets" serves up for us, the juiciest this season is by far the music.

Jeremy Renner is continuing his recovery after his devastating snowplow accident in January, and recognizing those who've helped him along the way.

"Barry" has taken chances from the very beginning, which is certainly true of a fourth and final season that picks up where the third left off, with its hitman-turned-wannabe actor getting arrested. That paves the way for an even darker season that accentuates the show's ensemble aspect while leaning a little too heavily on blurring lines with flights of fancy.

Investigators are looking for a 35-year-old woman suspected in a fatal north Denver shooting in March, police officials said Tuesday. Related Articles Man pleads guilty to second-degree murder in 2022 homicide in Aurora Woman dies in Bruce Randolph Street shooting in north Denver Nebraska man arrested on suspicion of Frederick mom’s cold-case murder Denver gang leader pleads guilty to murder, DA says 2 suspects arrested on suspicion of murder in Greenwood Village RTD station shooting Nyeesha Jackson, 31, died at the hospital after she was shot in the 2200 block of East Bruce Randolph Avenue the night of March 20, according to the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner. Her death from a gunshot wound was a homicide, according to the medical examiner.  The Denver Police Department identified Kasia James as a suspect in the case. James is described as a Black woman; 5 feet, 4 inches tall and 140 pounds with brown eyes and black hair. Anyone with information can contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

The second of two men who escaped from an immigration detention center in Aurora during a power outage was arrested in Denver on Tuesday, federal officials said. Related Articles ICE violated Jeanette Vizguerra’s First Amendment rights by detaining her, attorneys argue Federal prosecutors defend ICE’s ability to deport Colorado immigration advocate Jeanette Vizguerra Adams County deputies capture 1 of 2 Aurora ICE facility escapees Federal judge orders ICE not to deport Jeanette Vizguerra with court case still pending Aurora ICE detention facility escape response disputed by local, federal officials Geilond Vido-Romero was arrested on a bus near East Colfax Avenue and Cherry Street in Denver, the U.S. Marshals Service said on social media. Vido-Romero is “a suspected Tren de Aragua associate” who escaped from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Denver Contract Detention Facility on March 18 after a power outage unlocked a set of doors. Joel Jose Gonzalez-Gonzalez also escaped during the power outage and was arrested by Adams County Sheriff’s Office deputies on March 21. The escape sparked a dispute between ICE and Aurora police after the federal agency said local law enforcement declined to help search for the men. Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain later pushed back on the claim but stood by the agency’s partnership with federal law enforcement. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

The Nuggets didn’t let an apron keep Christian Braun from cooking. But when you ask Dennis Scott about Denver and the playoffs, the kitchen gets uncomfortably … quiet. When you ask about the ceiling for the Nuggets’ schizophrenic season, Scott admits he can’t stop thinking about the shoes Braun left behind when the former Kansas star shifted to the starting lineup. “That is the question,” the NBA TV analyst told me before the Nuggets hosted the suspension-addled Timberwolves on Tuesday night at Ball Arena. “How does this bench respond? “We know (Nikola Jokic) and Jamal (Murray) are going to do what they do. Obviously, (Aaron) Gordon has to be close to 100%. With that (said), it’s all about the bench. “Think about it. What if the bench stepped up like (Jordan) Poole stepped up with Golden State when they beat the Celtics (in the ’22 Finals)?” Do the Nuggets have the depth to swim with a Poole of their own? The Warriors’ 6-foot-4 combo guard came off the bench three Finals ago in the Bay’s last great championship run, torching Boston to the tune of 13.2 points, 1.8 boards and 1.8 assists over six games. He was 22 then. Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther are 22 now. Coincidence? Probably. But did you know that Strawther went into Tuesday evening averaging more points per game (9.4) and more treys per game (1.5) than Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (8.6 and 1.4, respectively) was with Orlando? Or that Watson as of Monday night, was shooting 3-pointers at a better clip (37.1%), averaging more points (8.3), more steals (0.8) and more blocks (1.3) than Bruce Brown? Barring injury, Russell Westbrook is shaping up to play the role of Brucey B in the postseason, for better or for worse. Odds are he’s the swing starter, the kind who may not start every win-or-go-home game but is trusted by coach Michael Malone to finish them. He’s not the kind of shooter Poole was (and is), though. Beastbrook started the week connecting on 32.7% of his treys and 55.9% of his free throws versus Western Conference opponents this season. It stands to reason that will be very high up on more than a few playoff scouting reports in a few weeks. Watson, meanwhile, started the week as a 35.5% shooter from deep and 63.0% shooter at the stripe versus the West. Strawther went into Tuesday as a 34.8% 3-point marksman against the West and a 29.5% one against divisional foes, which nudges us against the other elephant in the room: Namely, that while general manager Calvin Booth’s kids have been all right, they’ve done quite a bit of fattening up on the dregs of the Association, too. The Nuggets went into Tuesday night having their bench outscore the opponents’ reserves in just 19 games. Denver won 13 of those (.684 winning percentage). Other than Jokic’s indefatigable brilliance, this roster is the proverbial box of chocolates — you never know what you’re going to get. And the young’uns on the bench have called more maybes than Carly Rae Jepsen. Maybe they play defense. Maybe they listen to Malone. Maybe they make it rain. “I think one reason is, if they had to do it over again, I think they would have spent some of that money to keep a veteran guy or two and went into the luxury tax,” Scott continued. “Sometimes, you’ve got to step (up) and take a penalty … in order to stay relevant.” Or to stay sane. The Nuggets posted a nine-game win streak from Jan. 31 through Feb. 20. In the 19 tilts after that, though, the ones right before Tuesday’s tussle with a Minnesota team minus Donte DiVincenzo and Ball Arena bad-boy Naz Reid, they’d gone 10-9. Related Articles Michael Malone: Timberwolves have approached Nuggets games “like it’s a rivalry” Nuggets Journal: NHL playoff format gets all the hate, rightfully. But what if NBA was seeded 1 to 16? Peyton Watson continues to show he can be stopper for Nuggets: “I’m a gamer. I’m a riser” Nikola Jokic flicks one-handed highlight in Nuggets’ blowout win over Jazz Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic on leg injury that sidelined him five games: “It was really painful” They’d followed a loss with a win or a win with a loss 12 different times. Scott’s got a theory for that one, too. Which harkens back to depth, back to the same question as before. “Can the bench step up,” the former Magic guard pondered, “like Golden State and Poole and the Warriors did with their bench three years ago?” He’s about to find out. Because if we’ve learned anything from the last five springs, it’s that it takes more than one cook in May for everybody to eat. Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.

Denver will spend $15 million to study how Peña Boulevard could be widened in hopes of accommodating more traffic to the airport after the City Council on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a five-year contract. The contract, with Lakewood-based Peak Consulting, will consider ways to widen the road west of E-470 as well as potential environmental impacts. The study, a requirement under the federal National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, is a precursor to an eventual construction project on the corridor. The proposal highlighted differences among council members, some of whom see the widening as an intuitive step to ease congestion while others say widening roads doesn’t improve the problem in the long term. With a 9-2 vote, support for advancing the project grew from a closer 7-6 vote on funding a year ago. Several council members who had opposed studying the widening supported the concept Tuesday. “I have been going back and forth on this,” Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez said. “I agree that expanding the highway doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. … I am also concerned about what this means for residents in that area.” She added that the council will still have a chance to vote on whether to approve any widening project — which would likely cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars — after the study is complete. While Gonzales-Gutierrez voted against a related matter in 2024, she voted in support of the study Tuesday. Council members Paul Kashmann and Darrell Watson, who also had voted against it in the past, voted in favor, too. Council members Amanda Sandoval, Kevin Flynn, Jamie Torres, Amanda Sawyer, Flor Alvidrez and Stacie Gilmore all supported the 2024 measure and the one approved Tuesday. Several council members spoke about the importance of improving the highway — not just for employees and travelers headed to Denver International Airport, but also for the residents who live nearby and use it for many reasons. “For me and my neighbors, it’s our lifeline,” said Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore, who represents neighborhoods around Peña Boulevard. Related Articles Should Denver pay $15 million to study widening Peña Boulevard? The council will finally decide. In rare move, Denver council rejects Salvation Army contract over homeless shelter safety Denver’s 911 calls aren’t being answered fast enough; City Council hopes a bump in phone fees will help Denver will spend $1.9 million trying to attract people to 16th Street Mall this summer Denver will pay $800,000 settlement in fatal police shooting of Pueblo man Councilwomen Sarah Parady and Shontel Lewis have voted against advancing the project both times. On Tuesday, they said they opposed the contract because it wouldn’t include a study of ways to boost transit ridership on the A-Line, a commuter-rail train that runs from Union Station to Denver International Airport. “These investments, or some combination of them, could allow Denver to escape the seemingly endless cycle of highway expansions that will inevitably fill up with more traffic,” she said. Flynn, for his part, said he would like to see the A-Line studied separately. The Peña Boulevard study process will include public engagement, scoping, analysis of alternatives, environmental effects and possible mitigation. Peak Consulting’s team will also perform some design work under the contract. An airport official said earlier that the process was expected to take less than the maximum five years. Councilwoman Diana Romero Campbell abstained from the vote, citing that a family member works for one of the team’s subcontractors. Councilman Chris Hinds was absent Tuesday. Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The FBI is sending extra agents, analysts and other personnel to field offices in Colorado and nine states over the next six months to help investigate unsolved violent crimes in Indian Country, marking a continuation of efforts by the federal government to address high rates of violence affecting Native American communities. The U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday that the temporary duty assignments began immediately and will rotate every 90 days in field offices that include Albuquerque, Phoenix, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Portland, Oregon, and Jackson, Mississippi. The FBI will be working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs Missing and Murdered Unit, tribal authorities and federal prosecutors in each of the states. “Crime rates in American Indian and Alaska Native communities are unacceptably high,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “By surging FBI resources and collaborating closely with U.S. attorneys and tribal law enforcement to prosecute cases, the Department of Justice will help deliver the accountability that these communities deserve.” Work to address the decades-long crisis stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first term, when he established a special task force aimed at curbing the high rate of killings and disappearances among Native Americans and Alaska Natives. President Joe Biden issued his own executive order on public safety in 2021, and then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched efforts to implement the Not Invisible Act, charging a federal commission with finding ways to improve how the government responded to Indian Country cases. Public meetings were held around the country as part of the effort. Related Articles Regis University professor’s wife beaten to death in “sustained, vicious attack,” DA says As ICE claims it’s ramped up immigration enforcement, the number of Colorado arrests, deportations is still unclear Scammers are stealing personal information with online document converters, FBI warns Denver, Fort Collins and Lakewood are Colorado’s most vulnerable cities for federal lease terminations Burglars who busted through Cherry Creek jeweler’s wall stole $12M in goods In 2023, the Justice Department established its Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons outreach program, dispatching more attorneys and coordinators to certain regions to help with unsolved cases. In past years, the FBI’s Operation Not Forgotten had deployed about 50 people. This year, it’s 60. According to federal authorities, the FBI’s Indian Country program had 4,300 open investigations at the beginning of the fiscal year. That included more than 900 death investigations, 1,000 child abuse investigations, and more than 500 domestic violence and adult sexual abuse cases. The operation in the past two years has supported more than 500 investigations, leading to the recovery of 10 children who were victims and the arrests of more than 50 suspects. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Cam Ward believes he solidified his shot to become the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. The Tennessee Titans have the first crack to make the Heisman Trophy finalist from Miami their franchise quarterback. Or they could choose Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders, Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter or two-way star Travis Hunter, the Heisman winner. The Cleveland Browns have the second pick followed by the New York Giants. The Browns still need a franchise quarterback while the Giants still could select a QB despite signing Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston in free agency. Here’s the second edition of the AP’s 2025 mock draft without trade predictions: 1. Tennessee Titans: CAMERON WARD, QUARTERBACK, MIAMI The Titans didn’t address their need for a quarterback in free agency. Ward, who rewrote Miami’s record book in 2024, could be the team’s long-term solution. Ward led the nation with 39 touchdown passes, finished second with 4,313 yards passing and tied for first with 74 throws of 20-plus yards while leading the Hurricanes to a 10-3 record. 2. Cleveland Browns: TRAVIS HUNTER, CORNERBACK/WIDE RECEIVER, COLORADO The Browns need help at cornerback and wideout. Hunter wants to play both sides in the NFL. After trading for Kenny Pickett, they’ll likely sign a veteran QB. 3. New York Giants: SHEDEUR SANDERS, QUARTERBACK, COLORADO With Wilson and Winston in New York, the Giants wouldn’t have to rush Sanders. He won’t be intimidated by high expectations and can handle the pressure of playing in the Big Apple. Giants general manager Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll are both on the hot seat. Developing a rookie QB could buy them extra time. 4. New England Patriots: WILL CAMPBELL, OFFENSIVE TACKLE, LSU The Patriots bolstered their defense through free agency and added wide receiver Stefon Diggs to give Drake Maye a top receiver. They need a left tackle to protect the young QB’s blindside. The 6-foot-6, 319-pound Campbell is athletic and agile. He faced elite talent and is ready for NFL battles. 5. Jacksonville Jaguars: ABDUL CARTER, EDGE RUSHER, PENN STATE The Jaguars get the premier pass rusher in the draft. Even with Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker, they finished 28th in sacks last season. Carter had 12 sacks and 24 tackles for a loss last year for Penn State. 6. Las Vegas Raiders: ASHTON JEANTY, RUNNING BACK, BOISE STATE Jeanty is a special talent who would immediately upgrade a rushing attack that was among the worst in the NFL last season. The Raiders acquired Geno Smith to address their need for a QB and an elite back would balance the offense. 7. New York Jets: TETAIROA McMILLAN, WIDE RECEIVER, ARIZONA The Jets have several needs but can’t pass up the top wideout in the draft. Pairing McMillan with Garrett Wilson gives Justin Fields a dynamic receiving duo. 8. Carolina Panthers: JALON WALKER, EDGE RUSHER, GEORGIA The Panthers had a historically bad defense, allowing an NFL-record 534 points and 3,057 yards rushing. Adding a skill player is tempting but that defense desperately needs a boost. Drafting players from Georgia worked for the Philadelphia Eagles so either Walker or Mykel Williams would fit. Walker’s leadership ability gives him an edge for a team that needs to learn how to win. 9. New Orleans Saints: MASON GRAHAM, DEFENSIVE TACKLE, MICHIGAN The versatile Graham could be the best interior defensive lineman in the draft. He’s a potential top 5 pick who is too talented to pass up if he falls. 10. Chicago Bears: MYKEL WILLIAMS, EDGE RUSHER, GEORGIA The Bears upgraded their offensive line by acquiring two-time All-Pro guard Joe Thuney and former Pro Bowl guard Jonah Jackson in trades. Those deals allow them to focus on the opposite side of the line. Williams teams up with Montez Sweat to fortify the defensive line. 11. San Francisco 49ers, SHEMAR STEWART, DEFENSIVE LINEMAN, TEXAS A&M Stewart is an elite athlete who wowed scouts at the combine. He has potential to be a disruptive force anywhere on the defensive line. The 49ers need to target the defensive line. 12. Dallas Cowboys: WILL JOHNSON, CORNERBACK, MICHIGAN The Cowboys have many needs and cornerback is among them. Johnson, despite his injury history, is among the best prospects at his position in the draft. 13. Miami Dolphins: JAHDAE BARRON, CORNERBACK, TEXAS Barron is a proven, tested and versatile player who can fit nicely opposite Jalen Ramsey. 14. Indianapolis Colts: TYLER WARREN, TIGHT END, PENN STATE Warren is a do-it-all tight end who is projected in the top 10 on many draft boards. The Colts will snag him quickly if he slips to their spot. 15. Atlanta Falcons: KENNETH GRANT, DEFENSIVE TACKLE, MICHIGAN The Falcons get an immensely talented athlete who has the rare power (6-4, 331 pounds) and speed to be a major force in the middle of Atlanta’s defense. The Falcons were bottom third on defense in 2024 and Grant would replace Grady Jarrett. 16. Arizona Cardinals: JIHAAD CAMPBELL, LINEBACKER, ALABAMA Campbell is a versatile player who can excel off-ball or on-ball and has strong coverage skills. 17. Cincinnati Bengals: WALTER NOLEN, DEFENSIVE TACKLE, MISSISSIPPI Nolen is a plug-and-play starter with the potential to make an immediate impact for a defense that finished 25th in the league. With Joe Burrow and a dynamic offense, the Bengals need to focus on improving the defense. 18. Seattle Seahawks: ARMAND MEMBOU, OFFENSIVE TACKLE, MISSOURI Though he played right tackle in college, Membou has the size (6-foot-4, 332 pounds) and athleticism to move to guard and potentially switch to left tackle to replace Terron Armstead. Membou ran a 4.91-second 40-yard dash at the combine, second fastest of all linemen. He gives Sam Darnold and a new-look offense more protection. 19. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: JAMES PEARCE JR., EDGE RUSHER, TENNESSEE The Buccaneers upgraded their pass rush by adding Haason Reddick in free agency. Pearce would be another excellent addition. He had an impressive combine, running a 4.47-second 40 and showed his versatility. 20. Denver Broncos: OMARION HAMPTON, RUNNING BACK, NORTH CAROLINA He’s a big, strong back with speed who gives the Broncos another playmaker around Bo Nix. 21. Pittsburgh Steelers: DERRICK HARMON, DEFENSIVE TACKLE, OREGON The Steelers acquired DK Metcalf to address their need for a wideout. The 6-foot-4, 313-pound Harmon is considered one of the better defensive prospects in the draft. 22. Los Angeles Chargers: DONOVAN EZEIRUAKU, EDGE RUSHER, BOSTON COLLEGE Ezeiruaku gives the Chargers an athletic and productive pass rusher to help replace Joey Bosa. 23. Green Bay Packers: MATTHEW GOLDEN, WIDE RECEIVER, TEXAS The Packers give Jordan Love a dynamic, explosive deep threat receiver. 24. Minnesota Vikings: TYLER BOOKER, OFFENSIVE GUARD, ALABAMA Booker is an immediate starter who provides a big boost to Minnesota’s offensive line. He was among the most impressive performers at the combine. 25. Houston Texans: KELVIN BANKS JR., OFFENSIVE LINEMAN, TEXAS The Texans traded away Laremy Tunsil and added veteran tackles Cam Robinson and Trent Brown, along with veteran guards Laken Tomlinson and Ed Ingram. They have to protect C.J. Stroud now and in the future. Banks could be a top-10 pick. Houston can’t pass him up if he slips. 26. Los Angeles Rams: BENJAMIN MORRISON, CORNERBACK, NOTRE DAME A versatile cornerback who can play outside or in the slot, Morrison gives the Rams depth, especially with three cornerbacks entering the final year of a contract. 27. Baltimore Ravens: AZAREYE’H THOMAS, CORNERBACK, FLORIDA STATE Thomas provides immediate help for a defense that finished second worst against the pass. 28. Detroit Lions: MIKE GREEN, EDGE RUSHER, MARSHALL Green is a talented pass rusher the Lions could pair opposite Aidan Hutchinson. 29. Washington Commanders: NICK EMMANWORI, SAFETY, SOUTH CAROLINA Emmanwori’s stock soared at the combine. He could be a difference-maker in the secondary for Washington, which lost Jeremy Chinn. 30. Buffalo Bills: MALAKI STARKS, SAFETY, GEORGIA Starks is an elite safety who would boost a secondary that lost starters in the secondary. 31. Kansas City Chiefs: GREY ZABEL, OFFENSIVE LINEMAN, NORTH DAKOTA Protecting Patrick Mahomes is a priority after the Eagles dominated the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Zabel helps replace Thuney. 32. Philadelphia Eagles: JOSH SIMMONS, OFFENSIVE LINEMAN, OHIO STATE Simmons, who is coming off a torn patellar tendon in October, would be a higher pick if he wasn’t rehabbing his knee. He’s super talented and has played both tackle spots. He could eventually succeed Lane Johnson. Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.

How passengers, some with their carry-on luggage in hand, evacuated an American Airlines plane that caught fire at Denver International will be part of the federal investigation into the incident, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Photos showed passengers scrambling out on a wing above the smoke as ground crew members tried to get the bridge to DIA in place and positioned slides and ladders. “Evacuation procedures will be part of the investigation,” an NTSB email said. The role of the bridge, in particular, “is something the investigators are looking into.” An NTSB-led team has been investigating at DIA since the incident on March 13, when American Airlines Flight 1006 took off from Colorado Springs at 4:52 p.m., bound for Dallas-Fort Worth. It diverted at 5:14 p.m. to DIA after crew members reported engine vibrations. The aircraft landed safely and taxied to gate C38, where the fire broke out. DIA ground crews went to the gate and doused the flames as 172 passengers escaped. A dozen passengers were taken to the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora for treatment of smoke inhalation and minor injuries. An NTSB study done 25 years ago of 46 evacuations over a two-year period found engine fires are the most common cause and that, even when flight attendants commanded passengers to “leave everything,” passengers often took their belongings. Nearly 50% of passengers interviewed for the study reported trying to remove a bag during the evacuation. The FAA sets standards for airlines to follow in emergencies. “Airlines determine how to do that, and flight attendants typically instruct passengers to leave all carry-on luggage in the cabin if they evacuate,” FAA spokeswoman Cassandra Nolan said. “FAA regulations require passengers to obey crewmembers’ safety instructions,” Nolan said. American Airlines officials did not respond to requests to discuss what happened. Airline crews undergo training to prioritize passenger safety and quick movement of people off the plane. Related Articles Widening of Peña Boulevard gets green light for study phase as City Council support grows Passenger sues American Airlines after plane catches fire at DIA Colorado weather: Up to 2 feet of snow expected in mountains by Wednesday Should Denver pay $15 million to study widening Peña Boulevard? The council will finally decide. Chef Jeff Osaka’s last-standing Denver restaurant, a conveyor-belt sushi spot, is closing At Metropolitan State University of Denver, Aviation and Aerospace Science professor and FAA chief instructor Chad Kendall, a former commercial airline pilot for American Eagle and other airlines, saw the incident as a case study in the complexities of evacuating aircraft. Beyond the question of which exits were used and crew members’ actions, “a crucial and unpredictable element is human behavior,” Kendall said. “Passengers often react instinctively under stress, which can either aid or hinder the process, he said. “Even if the jet bridge was in use for passengers deplaning through the forward exits, the urgency and panic inside the cabin may have led passengers to independently initiate an evacuation through the over-wing exits,” he said. “Instinct takes over, and their primary focus becomes finding the nearest available exit to ensure their safety.”  Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.

Law enforcement officials arrested five suspects last week in the burglaries of 21 homes in Aurora, police announced Tuesday. The suspects, all identified as Colombian nationals, were part of a “highly sophisticated crew” that over the last year surveilled potential victims and used WiFi jammers to bypass home alarm systems, the Aurora Police Department said in a social media post. The suspects targeted their victims by following and watching them, putting trackers on their vehicles and placing cameras around their homes to see when they would leave, said Joe Moylan, Aurora police spokesman. “The suspects went to the great lengths… to ensure they were burglarizing homes when no one was home,” Moylan said in an email. Moylan said the suspects are in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, though he does expect state charges to be filed by the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. Related Articles Suspect wanted in fatal north Denver shooting on East Bruce Randolph Avenue Second man who escaped from Aurora ICE facility arrested in Denver FBI sending extra agents to 10 states including Colorado to work unsolved violent crimes in Native American communities Passengers evacuated plane at DIA onto wing and with their luggage. The NTSB is investigating why. Fatal Pueblo train derailment likely caused by faulty welding, feds say The suspects were arrested on felony charges of attempted second-degree burglary or conspiracy to commit second-degree burglary, according to the post. The Aurora Police Department led the multi-agency operation to arrest the crew on Thursday. Police and officials from the Arapahoe and Douglas county sheriff’s offices served search and arrest warrants in central Aurora in the 1400 block of Fairplay Street and the 1400 block of Altura Boulevard. During the operation, officials said they recovered stolen weapons, including handguns and rifles, as well as cash, jewelry, high-priced clothing and accessories. The investigation also involved the Department of Homeland Security and the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office’s Organized Crime Unit. The burglaries are still under investigation, and people can contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867 with any information. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

A massive coal train derailment near Pueblo that killed a truck driver after railcars collapsed a bridge and crashed onto Interstate 25 was likely caused by a welder using incorrect materials, according to a final report from federal transportation officials. The southbound BNSF Railway freight train jumped the track the afternoon of Oct. 15, 2023, after hitting a broken rail near a track switch just north of a bridge over I-25, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a final report. The area is about five miles north of Pueblo. Twenty-one hopper cars loaded with coal derailed, hitting the bridge and causing it to collapse. Six railcars crashed onto the highway, killing 60-year-old California resident Lafollette Henderson, who was driving a semitruck under the bridge at the time. The crash caused $15.6 million in damage and also closed I-25 in both directions for four days. The broken rail was likely caused by a mismatched weld that failed because a welder did not use the right materials, NTSB officials said. BNSF welders are supposed to use a specific kit, known as a compromise kit, when welding rails that are slightly different heights – even as little as a fraction of an inch. It doesn’t appear a kit was used when the rail was welded in May 2023, five months before the crash, leaving a gap at the base of the rail that filled with molten material, leading to cracks and the eventual break, according to the NTSB report. “When interviewed by the NTSB, the welder who made the weld did not recall performing this weld several months earlier,” federal officials said in the report. “He was properly trained, demonstrated knowledge of when a compromise kit should be used according to BNSF procedures and reported that he had used them in the past.” The rail broke after a test vehicle traveled over the track earlier that day, according to previous reporting. Related Articles I-25 likely to be closed at least for several days after train derailed north of Pueblo, killing truck driver Both directions of I-25 near Pueblo reopen after deadly train derailment Broken rail caused fatal train crash and bridge collapse near Pueblo, NTSB says After the accident, BNSF created a policy to analyze failed welds and retrain employees as needed. Welding supervisors also started conducting random monthly audits to confirm the correct materials are used, the NTSB said. In a statement, BNSF officials said the company regularly conducts extensive inspections related to tracks, bridges, rails and weather events. “…We are committed to continuous improvement and will carefully consider the NTSB’s final report and recommendations to more fully understand what lessons can be learned from this incident,” BNSF said in a statement. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the crash, according to court records. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was not involved in the derailment investigation and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office does not comment on or confirm investigations, according to the agencies. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day. Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter. Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

One of Colorado’s oldest craft breweries has sold to a locally based craft beverage conglomerate. On Tuesday, Wilding Brands announced it had acquired Great Divide Brewing Co., which opened in 1994 and has since become one of Colorado’s most well-known and well-loved brands. The acquisition includes Great Divide’s wholesale business and any future brick-and-mortar locations. Production of beers like Yeti imperial stout and Titan IPA will move to Wilding’s facility in Denver’s Sunnyside neighborhood, the announcement states. Wilding Brands is a new company that formed in late 2024 through the merger of local beverage makers Stem Ciders, Denver Beer Co. and Funkwerks brewery. Its portfolio includes the founding companies plus Howdy Beer, Easy Living sparkling hop water, Cerveceria Colorado and Formation Brewing, a new concept in Phoenix. The Sunnyside production facility formerly belonged to DBC as well. Wilding Brands plans to honor Great Divide’s legacy as one of the leaders of Colorado’s craft beer movement while also “bringing new energy and resources to help the brand grow,” Charlie Berger, Denver Beer Co.’s co-founder, said in a statement. Wilding Brands pledged no changes to Great Divide’s two taprooms in Denver or its three branded restaurants in Castle Rock, Lone Tree, and Lakewood. The bar at Denver International Airport is also expected to remain open. Brian Dunn, Great Divide’s founder and president, will still be involved with the business, helping oversee the transition and operating the brewery’s two Denver locations at 2201 Arapahoe St., near Coors Field, and 1812 35th St. in River North. He will also be the point of contact for the managers of its three suburban restaurants, which license Great Divide’s brand. In an interview, Dunn said he has entertained conversations about selling his brewery over the years, but Wilding Brands felt like the first good fit that would allow him to make the leap. (Dunn declined to disclose the sale price.) “It’s been my only job for the past 31 years and it’s been great. I think we’ve accomplished a lot, we have an amazing team, but I also don’t want to do it when I’m 80. So, at some point, you need to consider transitioning it to someone else,” Dunn said. Wilding Brands understands Colorado’s craft beer culture, Dunn added, and he feels confident their team will continue to brew Great Divide beer at the level of quality it’s known for. Tapping into Wilding’s resources and leveraging efficiencies will not only benefit the beer, but also drinkers by getting Great Divide into more retail stores — and potentially new taproom locations — across the state. “Something that we’ve always struggled with being midsized is we cannot afford to have 10 salespeople in Colorado,” Dunn said. “Currently, we have no salesperson who’s located in the mountains. We’re at a certain volume where we can’t afford that, but Wilding will have those economies of scale.” Related Articles Centennial brewery closing after a decade Say goodbye to the Mercury Cafe, and other things to do in Denver Brewery closing north Denver location, consolidating in Central Park Opinion: Buy alcohol while grocery shopping? This bill aims to make that a little harder Denver airport’s luxury lounges getting upgrades like new menus, children’s playrooms and more local beers on tap The deal puts two of Colorado’s biggest craft beer makers under the same umbrella. In 2023, Denver Beer Co. was the state’s fourth-largest beer producer by volume, making 21,849 barrels, per data from the Brewers Association. Great Divide ranked seventh-largest that year with an annual production of 18,407 barrels. The acquisition also comes at a challenging time for the beer industry. In 2024, beer sales in Colorado dropped 3.2%, according to the state’s Liquor Enforcement Division. In 2023 and 2024, a collective 76 Colorado breweries closed, the division reported. However, these trying times have spurred innovative approaches to collaboration in Colorado and beyond. TRVE Brewing in Denver, for instance, closed its manufacturing plant and moved beer production to New Image Brewing in Wheat Ridge. Tilray, a global cannabis company, has been on an acquisition blitz, buying several well-known craft brands in recent years, including Breckenridge Brewery. Tilray is now the sixth-largest craft beer company in the U.S., according to the Brewers Association. Subscribe to our new food newsletter, Stuffed, to get Denver food and drink news sent straight to your inbox.

A Manhattan judge rejected a majority of motions by OpenAI and Microsoft to dismiss parts of a lawsuit accusing the tech companies of swiping stories from The Denver Post, the New York Times and other newspapers to train their artificial intelligence products. The Post, its affiliated newspapers in MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, the Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting have accused OpenAI and Microsoft of stealing millions of copyrighted news stories to benefit popular AI products like ChatGPT. Manhattan Federal Judge Sidney Stein’s ruling Wednesday preserves the core elements of the lawsuit, which will now go forward to trial. While Stein rejected efforts to dismiss claims related to statute of limitations, trademark dilution and stripping content management information from the content in question, he dismissed CMI claims against Microsoft along with a secondary CMI claim against OpenAI, and one other unfair competition claim against both defendants. The judge dismissed additional claims for the Center for Investigative Reporting and the New York Times. “We get to go forward with virtually all of our claims intact, including all of the copyright filings,” Steven Lieberman, a lawyer for The Daily News and the Times, said. “It’s a significant victory, albeit a preliminary stage of the case.” A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment. In a statement, a spokesperson for OpenAI said “hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on ChatGPT to improve their daily lives, inspire creativity, and to solve hard problems. We welcome the court’s dismissal of many of these claims and look forward to making it clear that we build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner grounded in fair use, and supportive of innovation.” Microsoft and OpenAI don’t deny they depend on copyrighted material, instead arguing that it’s under their rights to do so under the fair use doctrine. Under that doctrine, the use of copyrighted materials are permitted under certain circumstances, including using the materials for educational purposes. The Post and affiliated newspapers filed the suit in 2024, challenging that notion, alleging the companies “simply take the work product of reporters, journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts, much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on which local communities rely.” “This decision is a significant victory for us,” said Frank Pine, executive editor at MediaNews Group. “The court denied the majority of the dismissal motions filed by OpenAI and Microsoft. The claims the court has dismissed do not undermine the main thrust of our case, which is that these companies have stolen our work and violated our copyright in a way that fundamentally damages our business.” The Post brought its suit alongside its sister newspapers, MediaNews Group’s The Mercury News, The Orange County Register and the St. Paul Pioneer Press; and Tribune Publishing’s Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, The New York Daily News and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Pine also addressed recent efforts by Big Tech to lobby the Trump administration to weaken copyright protections. Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms “OpenAI lobbying the government to loosen copyright laws to make their thievery legal is shameful and un-American. They have a $150 billion valuation for a product they acknowledge could not have been built without the copyrighted content they stole from journalists, authors, poets, scholars and all manner of creatives and academics. Makers pay for their raw materials, and good businesses bolster their communities by creating economies and industries, not by destroying them.” Microsoft and OpenAI are accused in the litigation of harming the newspapers’ subscription-based business model by misappropriating journalists’ work and providing it for free. The cases allege that the AI models also risk tarnishing reporters’ reputations by sometimes misstating their reporting or attributing it to others. The papers are seeking unspecified damages, restitution of profits and a court order forcing the companies to stop using their materials to train chatbots. “We look forward to presenting a jury with all the facts regarding OpenAI and Microsoft copying and improper use of the content of newspapers across the country,” Lieberman said. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

JUBA, South Sudan — After being gang-raped by armed men while collecting firewood, the 28-year-old tried in vain to get help. Some clinics were closed, others told her to return later and she had no money to access a hospital. Five months after the assault, she lay on a mat in a displacement camp in South Sudan’s capital, rubbing her swollen belly. “I felt like I wasn’t heard … and now I’m pregnant,” she said. The Associated Press does not identify people who have been raped. Sexual assault is a constant risk for many women in South Sudan. Now one aid group is trying to bridge the gap with technology, to find and help survivors more quickly. But it’s not easy in a country with low connectivity, high illiteracy and wariness about how information is used. Five months ago, an Israel-based organization in South Sudan piloted a chatbot it created on WhatsApp. It prompts questions for its staff to ask survivors of sexual assault to anonymously share their experiences. The information is put into the phone while speaking to the person and the bot immediately notifies a social worker there’s a case, providing help to the person within hours. IsraAID said the technology improves communication. Papers can get misplaced and information can go missing, said Rodah Nyaduel, a psychologist with the group. When colleagues document an incident, she’s notified by phone and told what type of case it is. Tech experts said technology can reduce human error and manual file keeping, but organizations need to ensure data privacy. “How do they intend to utilize that information, does it get circulated to law enforcement, does that information cross borders. Groups need to do certain things to guarantee how to safeguard that information and demonstrate that,” said Gerardo Rodriguez Phillip, an AI and technology innovation consultant in Britain. IsraAID said its data is encrypted and anonymized. It automatically deletes from staffers’ phones. In the chatbot’s first three months in late 2024, it was used to report 135 cases. When the 28-year-old was raped, she knew she had just a few days to take medicine to help prevent disease and pregnancy, she said. One aid group she approached scribbled her information on a piece of paper and told her to return later to speak with a social worker. When she did, they said they were busy. After 72 hours, she assumed it was pointless. Weeks later, she found she was pregnant. IsraAID found her while doing door-to-door visits in her area. At first, she was afraid to let them put her information into their phone, worried it would be broadcast on social media. But she felt more comfortable knowing the phones were not personal devices, thinking she could hold the organization accountable if there were problems. Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms She’s one of tens of thousands of people still living in displacement sites in the capital, Juba, despite a peace deal ending civil war in 2018. Some are afraid to leave or have no homes to return to. The fear of rape remains for women who leave the camps for firewood or other needs. Some told the AP about being sexually assaulted. They said there are few services in the camp because of reduced assistance by international aid groups and scant government investment in health. Many can’t afford taxis to a hospital in town. U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to freeze USAID funding during a 90-day review period is exacerbating the challenges. Aid groups have closed some services including psychological support for women, affecting tens of thousands of people. Technology isn’t widely used by aid groups focused on gender-based violence in South Sudan. Some organizations say that, based on survivors’ feedback, the ideal app would allow people to get help remotely. Stigma surrounding sexual assault further complicates efforts to get help in South Sudan. It’s especially hard for young girls who need to get permission to leave their homes, said Mercy Lwambi, gender-based violence lead at the International Rescue Committee. “They want to talk to someone faster than a physical meeting,” she said. But South Sudan has one of the lowest rates of mobile access and connectivity in the world, with less than 25% of market penetration, according to a report by GSMA, a global network of mobile operators. People with phones don’t always have internet access, and many are illiterate. “You have to be thinking, will this work in a low-tech environment? What are the literacy rates? Do they have access to devices? If so, what kind? Will they find it engaging, will they trust it, is it safe?” said Kirsten Pontalti, a senior associate at Proteknon Foundation for Innovation and Learning, an international organization focused on advancing child protection. Pontalti has piloted two chatbots, one to help youth and parents better access information about sexual reproductive health and the other for frontline workers focused on child protection during COVID. She said technology focused on reporting abuse should include an audio component for people with low literacy and be as low-tech as possible. Some survivors of sexual assault say they just want to be heard, whether by phone or in person. One 45-year-old man, a father of 11, said it took years to seek help after being raped by his wife after he refused to have sex and said he didn’t want more children they couldn’t afford to support. It took multiple visits by aid workers to his displacement site in Juba before he felt comfortable speaking out. “Organizations need to engage more with the community,” he said. “If they hadn’t shown up, I wouldn’t have come in.” ___ For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse ___ The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

According to Margo Harrison, the 1911 invention of Midol was the last time a new period pain product hit the market. That was until last week, when her company, Wave Bye, launched its line of supplements to promote cycle regularity and help curb bleeding and cramps. “(Women) are not trying to be superhuman,” the OB-GYN said. “They just want to feel normal.” Wave Bye, which Harrison founded in 2023, sells a “backbone” daily supplement called Bye Irregularity to make periods more predictable. Those are intended to treat several symptoms, including potential migraines, fatigue and irritability that come from premenstrual syndrome. Once you know your schedule, the company’s period-specific products, called Bye Cramps and Bye Bad Cramps, are more effective, she said.  They prevent messengers from telling the uterus to contract and bleed, she added. “You need to take the supplement every day to regulate your cycle, and then what differentiates our (other) products is they need to be taken two days before bleeding,” Harrison explained. “If you block symptoms two days before, you totally change the period experience.” Other medications and remedies are sparse, Harrison said. Though women will use Midol and Tylenol for relief, those pills target the brain rather than the uterus directly, she said. There are also gummies on the market for PMS, but she added that there’s nothing like Wave Bye’s two-pronged, premenstrual attack on irregularity and period pain using its Vitamin E-based product. Heating pads and relief patches only do so much, too, Harrison added. She hopes that Wave Bye can be a more encompassing approach to the menstruation problem about half the population manages for decades of their lives. The company sells the products in four bundles — each for different severities of symptoms – on its website. They cost between $70 and $80 on a monthly subscription, with one-time purchases and three-month and 12-month packs also available. Harrison is also in negotiations to sell Wave Bye at yoga studios and health shops including Bridget’s Botanicals in Littleton. The company also offers revenue sharing or discount opportunities for health care professionals such as OB-GYNs and nurses. “There’s no benefit from bleeding just to bleed. If you cut your hand, are you supposed to just let it keep bleeding? You’re not getting any benefit from not turning off the faucet,” Harrison said. “It’s not necessarily bad – it’s meant to support a pregnancy. But we want to reduce period pain and bleeding and make that period experience better in order to give people their time back.” Harrison was a clinical researcher at Columbia University and the University of Colorado Anschutz, focusing on pregnancy in poor countries. She then went to consult VC-backed women’s health firms three years ago. Through that and her work as an abortion provider for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains over the last two-and-a-half years, she saw the need for Wave Bye. “I’d have patients sit up from an abortion and hear them say, ‘Well, at least that was less painful than my period,’” she said. “People get gaslit, and the OB-GYNs don’t deal with period pain until it’s really profound. It feels like there’s this gap. They just do what their moms or friends or community are doing.” Wave Bye has so far raised $300,000 out of what Harrison hopes is an $875,000 round. Most of that is angel funding, she said, along with one Denver-area institutional investor. She hopes to close the round in the next couple of months. The money will mostly be used to develop another product, which Harrison said will likely take at least two years, and continue work on a yet-to-be-released app to help users schedule their doses. Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms Wave Bye already saw some traction from a small batch of users late last year, so Harrison is confident sales will take off now that her business is officially off the ground. Of the 25 units Wave Bye has sold, she said about half came from three- and 12-month purchases. “If people trust the product,” she said, “they’re gonna get more.” Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

After a few years of writing what she called a “niche newsletter for Washington insiders,” political journalist Tara Palmeri decided she wanted to reach a wider audience. A much wider audience. She’s taking her reporting to YouTube. Palmeri said she is leaving the startup Puck to strike out on her own, focusing much of her effort on the streaming giant. She joins a slew of other journalists who have left news organizations to build their own businesses around podcasts and newsletters. But in politics, the most successful of these independent media stars have strong views and clear allegiances. Conservative hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly remain atop the podcasting charts, and anti-Trump media collectives are rapidly growing; two of them, The Contrarian and MeidasTouch, each have more than 500,000 newsletter subscribers, many of them paid. That is not Palmeri. “I’m not on a crusade,” said Palmeri, 37, the type of political journalist who proudly abstains from voting in elections while she’s covering them in order to maintain objectivity with her audience. “I’m not sold on either party, and that’s why I don’t really have a lot of friends.” In her new venture, Palmeri wants to speak to audiences from the underdeveloped territory of “the middle,” she said, without a political agenda. “There isn’t really anyone there yet, and I want to try.” In focusing on YouTube, Palmeri is also taking a slightly a different tack from many of the journalists who have recently left media companies — whether voluntarily or through layoffs or firings — to release their own content, typically on Substack. (Although she will have a Substack newsletter, too.) YouTube says its viewers want more long-form news analysis, especially via podcasts. It recently announced having more than 1 billion monthly podcast listeners, outpacing any other media platform. (Watching and listening to podcasts is an increasingly fuzzy distinction.) Palmeri is part of a program meant to support “next generation” independent journalists on the platform with training and funding. But whether “news influencers” like Palmeri can succeed at the same scale of popular partisan commentators is still untested. Many people say they want more unbiased news. Do they really? Adam Faze, an emerging-media guru known for producing TikTok shows who is informally advising Palmeri, said he wasn’t aware of other political journalists approaching YouTube quite like her. Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms “Not with her access,” he said. Piers Morgan has been successful, Faze pointed out, but his YouTube channel is largely reminiscent of his cable news days, with cacophonous cross-talking panels and a green-screen cityscape backdrop. “I don’t want you to go to this YouTube page and think, ‘I could have watched that on a cable channel,’” Palmeri said. She aspires to “speak like a normal person,” rather than a news anchor, and also “be more gritty.” Palmeri takes pride in her grit. She often describes herself as “feared and fearless” — a daughter of New Jersey whose parents did not go to universities. Her zeal for scoops has made her variously unpopular among both Democrats and Republicans and occasionally other journalists. Before Puck, while working for Politico, Palmeri reported on an investigation into a gun owned by Hunter Biden, a story that she said had “ostracized” her from her newsroom. In 2021, a deputy White House press secretary resigned after telling Palmeri that he would “destroy” her for reporting on his relationship with an Axios journalist who had covered the president. An old-school tabloid sensibility drives Palmeri, who in her 20s door-knocked a couple of White House gate-crashers for The Washington Examiner and chased a “cop-killer” in Cuba for The New York Post. On her new Substack, The Red Letter, she plans to include blind gossip items, Palmeri said. “She has a cadence that makes you feel like you’re just talking to a girlfriend” rather than a journalist, said Holly Harris, a veteran Republican strategist who encouraged Palmeri to go independent. This disposition can prove “a little dangerous,” Harris added: “All of a sudden you realize you’ve given up the state secrets.” In November, at a cocktail party in Washington, a former congressional staff member approached this reporter with the warning not to trust Palmeri, who was also at the party. (“I love that,” Palmeri later said.) Palmeri has at times struggled to fit in while working at more traditional newsrooms, such as ABC News, where she spent about two years as a White House correspondent — the first of which she appeared infrequently on the air. “I’ve always felt like there’s never really been a place that I’ve been at home,” she said. After ABC, she hosted investigative podcasts for Sony about disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and the wealthy family of his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. She intends to continue making podcasts; her current show, “Somebody’s Gotta Win,” an election collaboration between Puck and Spotify’s The Ringer, is set to end in April, she said. Puck, which she joined in 2022, was more suited to her self-driven (and self-promotional) streak than any other employer. “We’re kind of renegades,” Palmeri said, crediting Puck with helping find her voice. “It was the closest place I had gotten to me writing directly to an audience, but it was still edited in a style that was not me,” she said. The tone was more “elite and impressive” than her natural voice; one example she offered was the frequent use of the word “indeed.” To go independent, she is giving up her $260,000 base salary at Puck and funding her new venture with her savings. The dining table of her one-bedroom New York City apartment in brownstone Brooklyn has become her recording studio. With an initial grant from YouTube, Palmeri bought about $10,000 worth of equipment, and tested and hired editors. (She and YouTube both declined to disclose the size of the grant.) In return, she has committed to publishing about four videos per week. Investors are also interested in Palmeri, she said, though she has not decided whether or when to take their money. She would prefer to accept “squeaky clean” funding from both ends of the political spectrum, she said: “This is a trust business.” She has also considered a new line of credit or a small-business loan. “I’m willing to bet on myself,” Palmeri said. “There’s no one over me telling me, ‘This is the headline, this is the angle.’ You don’t like it? It’s me. There’s no one else to blame.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

LONDON — If you’ve got a smartphone, you probably spend too much time on it — checking Instagram, watching silly TikTok videos, messaging on WhatsApp or doomscrolling on X. It can be hard to curb excessive use of smartphones and social media, which are addictive by design. Reducing your screen time is often more than just a matter of willpower, especially for younger people whose brains and impulse control are still developing. If you’re a phone addict who wants to cut down on the hours a day spent looking at your device, here are some techniques you can try to free up more IRL time: Delete apps An easy first step is getting rid of any apps you’ve been wasting time on. Over the past year, I’ve deleted Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from my phone because I wanted to use them less. Now and then I’ll have to go the app store and reinstall one because I need to do something like post a photo I took on my phone. (Sometimes I’ll transfer the photo to my laptop and then post it to the web from there, but usually, it’s too much hassle.) The danger with this approach is that if you do reinstall the app, you won’t bother deleting it again. Use built-in controls Both iPhones and Android devices have onboard controls to help regulate screen time. They can also be used by parents to regulate children’s phone usage. Apple’s Screen Time controls are found in the iPhone’s settings menu. Users can set overall Downtime, which shuts off all phone activity during a set period. If you want a phone-free evening, then you could set it to kick in from, say, 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. The controls also let users put a blanket restriction on certain categories of apps, such as social, games or entertainment or zero in on a specific app, by limiting the time that can be spent on it. Too distracted by Instagram? Then set it so that you can only use it for a daily total of 20 minutes. The downside is that the limits aren’t hard to get around. It’s more of a nudge than a red line that you can’t cross. If you try to open an app with a limit, you’ll get a screen menu offering one more minute, a reminder after 15 minutes, or to completely ignore it. Android users can use turn to their Digital Wellbeing settings, which include widgets to remind users how much screen time they’ve had. There’s also the option to create separate work and personal profiles, so you can hide your social media apps and their notifications when you’re at the office. Don’t be distracted There are other little tricks to make your phone less distracting. I use the Focus mode on my iPhone to silence notifications. For example, If I’m in a meeting somewhere, I mute it until I leave that location. Android also has a Focus mode to pause distracting apps. Change your phone display to grayscale from color so that it doesn’t look so exciting. On iPhones, adjust the color filter in your settings. For Android, turn on Bedtime Mode, or tweak the color correction setting. Android phones can also nag users not to look at their phones while walking, by activating the Heads Up feature in Digital Wellbeing. Block those apps If the built-in controls aren’t enough, there are many third-party apps, like Jomo, Opal, Forest, Roots and LockMeOut that are designed to cut down screen time. Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms Many of these apps have both free and premium versions with more features, and strongly push you toward signing up for a subscription by minimizing the option to “skip for now” on the payment screen. I tested out a few on my iPhone for this story. To try out Opal, I reinstalled Facebook so I could block it. Whenever I tapped the Facebook icon, Opal intervened to give me various inspirational messages, like “Gain Wisdom, Lose Facebook,” and tallied how many times I tried to open it. To get around the block, I had to open Opal and wait through a six-second timeout before requesting up to 15 minutes to look at Facebook. There’s an option to up the difficulty by increasing the delay before you can look again. Jomo, which I used to restrict my phone’s Reddit app, worked in a similar way: tap the Unlock button, which took me to the Jomo app, where I had to wait 20 seconds before I could tap the button to unlock Reddit for up to 10 minutes. The OneSec app takes a different approach by reminding users to first take a pause. The installation, which involves setting up an automation on the iPhone’s Shortcuts, can be confusing. When I eventually installed it for my Bluesky app, it gave me a prompt to run a shortcut that wiped my screen with a soothing purple-blue and reminded me to take a deep breath before letting me choose to open the app — but in practice it was too easy to just skip the prompt. The Android-only LockMeOut can freeze you out of designated apps based on criteria like your location, how many times you’ve opened an app, or how long you’ve used it. The obvious way to defeat these apps is simply to delete them, although some advise users to follow the proper uninstall procedure or else apps could remain blocked. Use external hardware Digital blockers might not be for everyone. Some startups, figuring that people might prefer a tangible barrier, offer hardware solutions that introduce physical friction between you and an app. Unpluq is a yellow tag that you have to hold up to your phone in order to access blocked apps. Brick and Blok are two different products that work along the same lines — they’re squarish pieces of plastic that you have to tap or scan with your phone to unlock an app. The makers of these devices say that software solutions are too easy to bypass, but a physical object that you can put somewhere out of reach or leave behind if you’re going somewhere is a more effective way to get rid of distractions. What about stashing the phone away entirely? There are various phone lockboxes and cases available, some of them designed so parents can lock up their teenagers’ phones when they’re supposed to be sleeping. Yondr, which makes portable phone locking pouches used at concerts or in schools, also sells a home phone box. See a therapist Perhaps there are deeper reasons for your smartphone compulsion. Maybe it’s a symptom of underlying problems like anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression or low self-esteem. If you think that’s the case, it could be worth exploring therapy that is becoming more widely available. One London hospital treats “technology addiction” with a plan that includes dealing with “discomfort in face-to-face time” with other people, and exploring your relationship with technology. Another clinic boasts that its social media addiction treatment also includes working on a patient’s technology management skills, such as “setting boundaries for device usage, finding alternative activities to fill the void of reduced online interaction, and learning how to engage more with the physical world.” Downgrade your phone Why not trade your smartphone for a more basic one? It’s an extreme option but there’s a thriving subculture of cellphones with only basic features, catering to both retro enthusiasts and people, including parents, worried about screen time. They range from cheap old-school brick-and-flip phones by faded brands like Nokia to stylish but pricier devices from boutique manufacturers like Punkt. The tradeoff, of course, is that you’ll also have to do without essential apps like Google Maps or your bank. ___ Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

LAMAR — The land runs deep in southeastern Colorado. For Bob Bamber, the connection goes back to his great-great-grandfather, who homesteaded north of Pritchett, a tiny Baca County town of barely 100 people not far from the Oklahoma state line. So the 44-year-old rancher took notice when he found out that a portion of the 10,000 acres of ranchland he and his father own and lease in neighboring Prowers County had been placed in a zone designated by the U.S. Department of Energy as a potential high-voltage electric transmission corridor. And he got agitated. “It’s an emotional reaction because of that family connection,” said Bamber, bouncing in his truck along dirt roads that slice through prairie dotted with cedar trees, yucca and prickly pear cactus. “It sounds cliche, but you are part of the land out here.” His worry echoes that of his over-the-fence neighbor. Val Emick fears that a transmission corridor, with towering pylons marching from New Mexico into three rural Colorado counties — Baca, Prowers and Kiowa — could disturb a fragile short-grass prairie landscape in the state’s far-southeast corner, lowering land values and disrupting ranching and farming operations that span generations. “You go out seven days a week, and you build it and want to pass it down to your kids and your grandkids — it seems unfair,” said Emick, who has lived in the same house south of Lamar for 35 years and runs a cow-calf operation on some 5,000 acres. “And they come in with that threat.” That threat is eminent domain — the power the government has to condemn and take land for public uses, like the construction of highways and other infrastructure. It must pay fair market value to the property owner for the land. No determination has been made about the use of eminent domain to accommodate electric transmission lines as part of the Energy Department’s National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors initiative, or NIETC. But people in this part of the state have fresh and raw memories of the specter of condemnation that hung over the U.S. Army’s plan to expand its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, northeast of Trinidad, nearly 20 years ago. After both of Colorado’s U.S. senators expressed opposition to involuntary land sales for the expansion, the idea was scuttled in 2013. “The biggest concern we have is eminent domain,” Prowers County Commissioner Ron Cook recently told The Denver Post inside the county courthouse in Lamar. “We’ve got third- and fourth-generation farmers and ranchers running these properties, and we sure don’t want them run off their land.” The concern over the NIETC proposal brought a crowd out to the same courthouse last month. Some in the room, including Cook, said they had only recently learned of the project. They were frustrated by a lack of communication from the federal government. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert joined the meeting via video link and told the attendees she would push back hard on the corridor designation. In an email to the Post this month, the Republican congresswoman said she reached out to newly confirmed Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a fellow Coloradan, and got the public input period for the project extended from mid-February to April 15. In a Feb. 10 letter to Wright, Boebert said what was started under the Biden administration should be looked at again, with an option for the agency under President Donald Trump’s new administration to “shut this project down.” “We can all agree that access to reliable energy is important for the health and prosperity of rural Coloradans, but that doesn’t mean we need to be forced into a one-size-fits-all approach dictated by D.C. bureaucrats who have failed to include community leaders in this process,” she said. Rancher Bob Bamber drives out to check on a few of his cattle at his family’s ranch outside Lamar on March 10, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) “Very important corridor” for grid The NIETC program, which Congress authorized in 2005, tasks the Department of Energy with identifying areas of the country where transmission is lacking. It’s charged with determining where infrastructure is “urgently needed to advance important national interests, such as increased electric reliability and reduced consumer costs,” according to the program’s website. Impacts from a compromised electric grid include more frequent and longer power outages and higher prices for energy due to a lack of capacity to move lower-cost electricity from where it is produced to where it is needed, the website says. So far, no NIETC corridors have been established in the United States. Click to enlarge The Post asked the Department of Energy for comment via multiple phone and email requests but received no response. The department’s latest designation effort began last May with the release of a list of 10 possible transmission corridors, based on a National Transmission Needs Study that was completed in 2023. That list was winnowed in December to three corridors, including what is known as the Southwestern Grid Connector — which would run up the eastern edge of New Mexico, scrape the western edge of the Oklahoma panhandle and pierce the southeast corner of Colorado. The other two NIETC corridors being considered are in the Lake Erie portion of Pennsylvania and across parts of the Dakotas and Nebraska. The Department of Energy says the Southwest Grid Connector could be anywhere from three miles to 15 miles wide, though the ultimate transmission line built would cover far less land. The corridor, the government says, is designed to follow existing transmission line rights-of-way for parts of its path. “It’s a very important corridor,” said Adam Kurland, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund who specializes in federal energy policy. “It’s probably the one that adds the most value to the grid.” The Southwestern Grid Connector would help link the nation’s eastern and western interconnections, Kurland said, and would provide the ability “to exchange more power and serve a national grid.” According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the eastern interconnection operates in states east of the Rocky Mountains while the western interconnection covers states west of the Rockies. “There’s very limited transfer between these two interconnects,” Kurland said. “There’s a lot of value for doing that, for reliability of the grid and for resilience against weather systems. You could more easily move power and supply power where it’s needed.” An abandoned car rusts in a field near the area where the federal Department of Energy is proposing to expand the electric grid, stretching from southern New Mexico into southeastern Colorado, south of Lamar, on March 10, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) More data centers, fewer coal plants Grid Strategies, a consultant for the power sector, said in a December report that demand for electricity nationwide is forecast to rise by nearly 16% by 2029. Among the main drivers, according to the company, are power-hungry data centers and manufacturing facilities. A study that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden participated in last fall concluded that the U.S. transmission system — consisting of a half-million miles of power lines — will need to at least double in size by 2050 to remain reliable at the lowest cost to ratepayers. And a 2024 report by the nonprofit North American Electric Corp. determined that about half the continent was at elevated or high risk of energy shortfalls over the next five to 10 years. That risk comes as power plants are retired and the pressure for more electricity increases. In Colorado, coal plants across the state have been shut down in recent years as worries about their climate-warming emissions escalate. All are expected to close by the end of 2030. “The more transmission we build, the more flexibility and resilience we create,” said Mark Gabriel, the president and CEO of the Brighton-based electric cooperative United Power. For eight years, Gabriel headed the Western Area Power Administration, a federal agency that sells and conveys electricity across 17,000 miles of transmission lines to 15 western and central states. “As coal goes away, we still need to move electrons,” he said. “How do we meet a growing demand at the same time we’re closing down generator resources?” The state’s future demands on electric power are ambitious. While campaigning for his first term in office, Gov. Jared Polis said he wanted all of the power on Colorado’s electric grid to come from renewable energy sources by 2040. Rules adopted by Denver and the state aim to eventually make buildings all-electric. And Colorado, with its goal of getting nearly 1 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2030, recently moved ahead of California for the nation’s top spot in market share of electric vehicles sold. “You want to have a diverse portfolio of generation resources, and that portfolio is helped by more transmission,” Gabriel said. “And we can’t (achieve that) unless we have projects like this, and others, constructed.” Rancher Val Emick works on her family’s ranch outside Lamar on March 10, 2025. Emick repurposes old wind turbine blades, seen in the background, to help shield her animals from the wind. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) Farmers lament lack of “bargaining power” But it’s how projects are constructed that matters to Steve Shelton, a sixth-generation farmer and rancher who lives about 10 miles south of Lamar. He grows wheat, corn and sorghum on 20,000 acres. Shelton, 69, was on the other side of the transmission debate about 15 years ago, when he joined neighboring ranchers in exploring deals with a wind farm near Kit Carson to string electric wires across land in the state’s southeast corner. “We had some farmers who said ‘No,’ and we’d have to find another path or sweeten the pot,” he said of the effort, which eventually fizzled out. With the shadow of eminent domain in the mix this time, Shelton said, “you have no bargaining power.” “They would get the development rights or the easement, and the farmer and rancher would have no income off of that,” he said. The county’s fiscal health would also be impacted by a condemnation action by the government, said Prowers County Commissioner Roger Stagner, who served as mayor of Lamar for a decade. Taking land off the tax rolls would not only hit the county’s $41 million annual budget but would also have a ripple effect on the local economy, he said. Boebert, in her Feb. 10 letter to the energy secretary, said the contemplated Southwestern Grid Connector would “affect approximately 325,000 acres of private land in Baca, Prowers and Kiowa counties in Colorado.” There are fewer than 20,000 residents combined in the three counties. “Everything revolves around agriculture. If you’re going to take out that much land, it can affect the entire county,” Stagner said. “If there’s no alfalfa grown on that ground, that farmer doesn’t spend as much in town. That’s a big concern for us.” Bamber, the Prowers County rancher, says he has no issue with the deployment of energy infrastructure across his property, so long as it’s done with full disclosure and landowner input. In fact, he and Emick, his neighbor, host dozens of wind turbines on their acreage that power the Twin Buttes wind farm. “We’ve been able to live with the wind farm because they’ve compensated us,” Bamber said. “We’ve made the tradeoff for the money.” Lease agreements they hammered out with the wind energy company to use their land made the deal palatable, Emick said. “There was no hiding anything,” she said. A small windmill pumps water into a stock tank for Val Emick’s cattle at her family’s ranch outside Lamar, Colorado, on March 10, 2025. Large wind turbines in the background generate electricity. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) Broken trust, uncertain future With the NIETC process already in the third of four phases, Cook is frustrated and befuddled that he and his fellow commissioners didn’t catch wind of the project before late January. That uncertainty has been a driving force behind much of the resistance to it among his constituents. “That is what we’re struggling with — we have no idea how this is going to end up and what they’re going to do with it,” he said. The Department of Energy describes the third phase of the designation process as the “public and governmental engagement phase.” During this period, the agency will decide the level of environmental review that applies to each NIETC project. It will conduct any required reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. The agency conducted a webinar on the latest developments with the Southwestern Grid Connector in mid-January. And it issued a news release about the latest phase in December. But many in southeast Colorado think the federal government could have done a better job of outreach to local officials and property owners. Related Articles Can Colorado’s electric grid keep up as coal plants close and data centers open? Demand fueled by electric vehicles, rooftop solar drives Xcel Energy’s $5B plan for system upgrades 80% of new cars and trucks for sale in Colorado would need to be electric by 2032 under new rule Some take hope in the success of opponents in Kansas last year who eliminated the Midwest-Plains and Plains-Southwest NIETC corridors that were part of the original 10 first proposed in the spring. U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann, who represents that state’s 1st Congressional District, issued a statement in December after the Kansas transmission corridors were dropped. “Kansans made it clear from the very beginning that we were not interested in the federal government seizing our private land,” Mann said, adding: “I’m glad our voices were heard in stopping this federal overreach.” Boebert, in her letter to the energy secretary last month, cited Kansas’ resistance and urged the agency to “reconsider and halt further actions on current NIETC designations in Colorado initiated by the previous administration.” That’s the right call, Bamber said. “I’d like to see it just stopped — the trust is broken,” he said. “We’re an afterthought and we should have been partners in this.” Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

To members of his synagogue, the voice that played over the speakers of Congregation Emanu El in Houston sounded just like Rabbi Josh Fixler’s. In the same steady rhythm his congregation had grown used to, the voice delivered a sermon about what it meant to be a neighbor in the age of artificial intelligence. Then, Fixler took to the bimah himself. “The audio you heard a moment ago may have sounded like my words,” he said. “But they weren’t.” The recording was created by what Fixler called “Rabbi Bot,” an AI chatbot trained on his old sermons. The chatbot, created with the help of a data scientist, wrote the sermon, even delivering it in an AI version of his voice. During the rest of the service, Fixler intermittently asked Rabbi Bot questions aloud, which it would promptly answer. Fixler is among a growing number of religious leaders experimenting with AI in their work, spurring an industry of faith-based tech companies that offer AI tools, from assistants that can do theological research to chatbots that can help write sermons. For centuries, new technologies have changed the ways people worship, from the radio in the 1920s to television sets in the 1950s and the internet in the 1990s. Some proponents of AI in religious spaces have gone back even further, comparing AI’s potential — and fears of it — to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Religious leaders have used AI to translate their livestreamed sermons into different languages in real time, blasting them out to international audiences. Others have compared chatbots trained on tens of thousands of pages of Scripture to a fleet of newly trained seminary students, able to pull excerpts about certain topics nearly instantaneously. But the ethical questions around using generative AI for religious tasks have become more complicated as the technology has improved, religious leaders say. While most agree that using AI for tasks like research or marketing is acceptable, other uses for the technology, like sermon writing, are seen by some as a step too far. Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas, used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate an entire service for his church as an experiment in 2023. He marketed it using posters of robots, and the service drew in some curious new attendees — “gamer types,” Cooper said — who had never before been to his congregation. The thematic prompt he gave ChatGPT to generate various parts of the service was: “How can we recognize truth in a world where AI blurs the truth?” ChatGPT came up with a welcome message, a sermon, a children’s program and even a four-verse song, which was the biggest hit of the bunch, Cooper said. The song went: As algorithms spin webs of lies Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms We lift our gaze to the endless skies Where Christ’s teachings illuminate our way Dispelling falsehoods with the light of day Cooper has not since used the technology to help write sermons, preferring to draw instead from his own experiences. But the presence of AI in faith-based spaces, he said, poses a larger question: Can God speak through AI? “That’s a question a lot of Christians online do not like at all because it brings up some fear,” Cooper said. “It may be for good reason. But I think it’s a worthy question.” The impact of AI on religion and ethics has been a touch point for Pope Francis on several occasions, though he has not directly addressed using AI to help write sermons. Our humanity “enables us to look at things with God’s eyes, to see connections, situations, events and to uncover their real meaning,” the pope said in a message early last year. “Without this kind of wisdom, life becomes bland.” He added, “Such wisdom cannot be sought from machines.” Phil EuBank, a pastor at Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, compared AI to a “bionic arm” that could supercharge his work. But when it comes to sermon writing, “there’s that Uncanny Valley territory,” he said, “where it may get you really close, but really close can be really weird.” Fixler agreed. He recalled being taken aback when Rabbi Bot asked him to include in his AI sermon, a one-time experiment, a line about itself. “Just as the Torah instructs us to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Rabbi Bot said, “can we also extend this love and empathy to the AI entities we create?” Rabbis have historically been early adopters of new technologies, especially for printed books in the 15th century. But the divinity of those books was in the spiritual relationship that their readers had with God, said Rabbi Oren Hayon, who is also a part of Congregation Emanu El. To assist his research, Hayon regularly uses a custom chatbot trained on 20 years of his own writings. But he has never used AI to write portions of sermons. “Our job is not just to put pretty sentences together,” Hayon said. “It’s to hopefully write something that’s lyrical and moving and articulate, but also responds to the uniquely human hungers and pains and losses that we’re aware of because we are in human communities with other people.” He added, “It can’t be automated.” Kenny Jahng, a tech entrepreneur, believes that fears about ministers’ using generative AI are overblown, and that leaning into the technology may even be necessary to appeal to a new generation of young, tech-savvy churchgoers when church attendance across the country is in decline. Jahng, the editor-in-chief of a faith- and tech-focused media company and founder of an AI education platform, has traveled the country in the last year to speak at conferences and promote faith-based AI products. He also runs a Facebook group for tech-curious church leaders with over 6,000 members. “We are looking at data that the spiritually curious in Gen Alpha, Gen Z are much higher than boomers and Gen Xers that have left the church since COVID,” Jahng said. “It’s this perfect storm.” As of now, a majority of faith-based AI companies cater to Christians and Jews, but custom chatbots for Muslims and Buddhists exist as well. Some churches have already started to subtly infuse their services and websites with AI. The chatbot on the website of the Father’s House, a church in Leesburg, Florida, for instance, appears to offer standard customer service. Among its recommended questions: “What time are your services?” The next suggestion is more complex. “Why are my prayers not answered?” The chatbot was created by Pastors.ai, a startup founded by Joe Suh, a tech entrepreneur and attendee of EuBank’s church in Silicon Valley. After one of Suh’s longtime pastors left his church, he had the idea of uploading recordings of that pastor’s sermons to ChatGPT. Suh would then ask the chatbot intimate questions about his faith. He turned the concept into a business. Suh’s chatbots are trained on archives of a church’s sermons and information from its website. But around 95% of the people who use the chatbots ask them questions about things like service times rather than probing deep into their spirituality, Suh said. “I think that will eventually change, but for now, that concept might be a little bit ahead of its time,” he added. Critics of AI use by religious leaders have pointed to the issue of hallucinations — times when chatbots make stuff up. While harmless in certain situations, faith-based AI tools that fabricate religious scripture present a serious problem. In Rabbi Bot’s sermon, for instance, the AI invented a quote from Jewish philosopher Maimonides that would have passed as authentic to the casual listener. For other religious leaders, the issue of AI is a simpler one: How can sermon writers hone their craft without doing it entirely themselves? “I worry for pastors, in some ways, that it won’t help them stretch their sermon writing muscles, which is where I think so much of our great theology and great sermons come from, years and years of preaching,” said Thomas Costello, a pastor at New Hope Hawaii Kai in Honolulu. On a recent afternoon at his synagogue, Hayon recalled taking a picture of his bookshelf and asking his AI assistant which of the books he had not quoted in his recent sermons. Before AI, he would have pulled down the titles themselves, taking the time to read through their indexes, carefully checking them against his own work. “I was a little sad to miss that part of the process that is so fruitful and so joyful and rich and enlightening, that gives fuel to the life of the Spirit,” Hayon said. “Using AI does get you to an answer quicker, but you’ve certainly lost something along the way.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

Imagine a scene in an old Western movie where the camera follows a sheriff driving an old pickup truck on a dirt road. The scene then cuts to the sheriff stopping the car on the road, opening the door and stepping onto the dirt road in his leather boots. He reaches for his holster and pulls out a revolver, points at the camera and shoots. All of these sounds in the scene are important and carefully curated: the sound of the old truck, the dirt road, the leather boots and the revolver. “All of these things have context, and that sound is what we’re focused on,” University of Colorado Boulder alum and sound design startup CEO and founder Isaiah Chavous said. “We’re focused on footsteps, door creaks, environmental noise, room tone and transitions.” Chavous and his cofounders have raised $1.8 million to fund their sound design startup company called Noctal. Noctal is a platform that uses artificial intelligence, or AI, to automate the sound design process for content creators and filmmakers. The investment firm Caruso Ventures invested the majority of the $1.8 million, joining other investors including Media Empire Ventures, X’s, formerly known as Twitter, head of original content Mitchell Smith and Major League Baseball player Tony Kemp. “I think these guys could emerge as the leader in applying AI to sound effects,” said Dan Caruso, Caruso Ventures managing director. “And if they do that, they will have a huge impact. There’s going to be a lot of job creation.” Noctal works by identifying the action sequences and events that take place in a video and then accurately placing relevant sound files where they need to go based on the on-screen events. James Paul, Noctal’s chief operating officer and co-founder, said the traditional process of developing sounds in movies is extremely time-intensive. Paul has more than 10 years of media experience working in physical production in Hollywood on films, including the 2016 Ghostbusters movie, and is an active member of the Producers Guild of America. Paul said the process requires a person sitting in a chair watching hours of footage and marking where sounds need to go on a timeline. For example, marking when the sheriff’s truck begins to drive away and when his boots hit the dirt. Then, it requires going into folders, bins or the field to record the sounds. “Using our platform, it automates a lot of that by extracting each of those different events,” Paul said. “The best way we see to use AI is like a creative augmentation. You’re still going to switch things out here and there, but it speeds up that process of having to watch all that footage.” Before founding Noctal, Chavous was a student at CU Boulder. He was student body president, helped co-found the Center for African and African American Studies, co-founded the first-ever police oversight board on campus and received an award from the Colorado Senate for his work with eliminating prison labor contracts with the university. Six days after he graduated in 2021, he moved to California. Chavous led business development and partnerships at an augmented reality game company, working with industry icons such as Lewis Hamilton, Snoop Dogg, Michael Bay, Elton John and Grimes. He said his time at CU Boulder helped him grow and develop important skills, including team management and budget management. “That in and of itself led to being able to create plans you can actually execute under timelines that would be considered impossible, which is the entire objective of building a startup, which is (that) you’re under time constraints that most people would say is impossible with limited resources,” he said. “… and also having conviction over a vision.” Caruso said that when everything in sound design is done by hand, typically, there are one to three main sounds in a scene. But if AI helps, it can help identify background sounds as well, so there are five or six sounds in a scene instead. Related Articles Denver mayor faces questions over Signal use amid national rise in officials’ reliance on private messaging app Feeling overstimulated at Meow Wolf in Denver? Find a stairwell. What is Signal? One Tech Tip: Wasting too much time on social media apps? Tips and tricks to curb smartphone use Construction on Louisville’s huge innovation campus Redtail Ridge to begin this spring “You wouldn’t do that because it would be twice as much work,” Caruso said. “But if AI does it, knows the volume of each, it can make a more enhanced video as well.” Chavous said he hopes to positively impact people’s lives through Noctal’s capabilities. “What we’re doing is redefining a workflow, we’re redefining what it means to create,”  Chavous said. “And being a part of that process to embolden the user or the creative is at the center of our DNA of our why.” For more information, visit noctal.xyz/en. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

LONDON — Unwanted phone calls are out of control. Whether it’s a robocall trying to sell you something or spam calls from scammers trying to rip you off, it’s enough to make you want to stop answering your phone. So what can you do to stop them? The scourge of unwanted phone calls has been branded an epidemic by consumer groups, while the Federal Communications Commission says it’s the top consumer complaint. The calls are a nuisance to many ordinary people, some of whom have complained to The Associated Press. “I need help on getting spam calls to stop,” one reader said in an email. She’s getting up to 14 calls a day despite the countermeasures she’s employed. As the name implies, robocalls are automated calls to deliver recorded messages to a large number of phones. A robocall purely to deliver a message or collect a debt is allowed under U.S. regulations, but the Federal Trade Commission says robocalls with a recorded voice trying to sell you something are illegal unless you’ve given explicit written permission to receive them. Many robocalls are also probably scams, the FTC warns. If you’re flooded by unsolicited calls, here are some ways to fight back. Phone settings Smartphone users can turn on some built-in settings to combat unknown calls. Apple advises iPhone users to turn on the Silence Unknown Callers feature. Go to your “Settings,” then scroll down to “Apps,” and then to “Phone,” where you’ll see it under the “Calls” section. When you turn this on, any calls from numbers that you’ve never been in touch with and aren’t saved in your contacts list will not ring through. Instead, they’ll be sent to voicemail and show up in your list of recent calls. Android has a similar setting that allows you to block calls from private or unidentified numbers, although you will still receive calls from numbers that aren’t stored in your contact list. After this story was first published, a reader wrote in with a workaround for that problem: Leave your Android phone on Do Not Disturb but configure it so that anyone on your Contacts list is allowed to interrupt. Just keep in mind that you could also end up not getting important calls, which sometimes come from unknown numbers. If an unwanted call does get through, both Android and iPhone users can block the individual phone number by tapping on it in the recent callers or call history list. You can also enter numbers directly into your phone’s block list. Do not call Sign up for the national Do Not Call registry, which is a list of numbers that have opted out of most telemarketing calls. The Federal Trade Commission, which runs the registry, says it only contains phone numbers and holds no other personally identifiable information, nor does the registry know whether the number is for a landline or a cellphone. The FTC says there are some exemptions, including political calls, calls from non-profit groups and charities, and legitimate survey groups that aren’t selling anything. Also allowed are calls from companies up to 18 months after you’ve done — or sought to do — business with them. But it also warns that while having your number on the registry will cut down on unwanted sales calls, it won’t stop scammers from making illegal calls. Other countries have similar registries. Canada has its own Do Not Call list while the U.K. has the Telephone Preference Service. Carrier filters Check whether your wireless carrier has a call-blocking service. Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T, three of the biggest U.S. networks, all have their own call filters for customers to block robocalls and report spam. There’s typically a free basic version and an advanced version that requires a subscription fee. Try an app If your phone company’s filters aren’t good enough, try third-party apps to weed out unwanted callers. There are a host of smartphone apps available that promise to block spam calls, like Nomorobo, YouMail, Hiya, RoboKiller, TrueCaller and others. Many charge a monthly or annual subscription fee but some offer a free basic option. Some also can be installed on landline phones, but only if they use VOIP technology, not copper cables. The Associated Press hasn’t tested any of these apps and isn’t making specific recommendations. We recommend you read user reviews and try some out for yourself. Apple says the apps work by comparing a caller’s number with a list of known numbers and labeling them, for example, spam or telemarketing. Then it might automatically block the call. “Incoming calls are never sent to third-party developers,” the company says. Report calls Did you know you can file a complaint with the FCC about specific spam calls? You can do so easily through an online form. It might not give you immediate satisfaction, but the National Consumer Law Center says data on complaints is the best tool federal agencies have for determining how big a problem robocalls are. Just say no While companies you’ve done business with can make robocalls to you, the National Consumer Law Center says it’s probably because you gave consent – possibly hidden in fine print. But you can also revoke your consent at any time. Just tell the company representative that you want to “revoke consent,” and if that doesn’t stop them, contact customer service and tell them that you don’t consent to receive calls and want your number added to the company’s “do not call” list, the center says. Hang up You might be tempted to try to engage with the call in an attempt to get your number off the call list or be put through to a real person. The FTC warns against doing this and recommends that you just hang up. “Pressing numbers to speak to someone or remove you from the list will probably only lead to more robocalls,” the agency says on its advice page. “And the number on your caller ID probably isn’t real. Caller ID is easy to fake” and can’t be trusted, it says. Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms Cybersecurity company Kaspersky advises not even saying anything when you receive what you think is a robocall. We’ve all received scammy calls that start with something like “Hello, can you hear me?” to which you’ve probably replied “yes” without thinking. Scammers “can then store the recording of your confirmation and use it for fraudulent activities,” Kaspersky says. “So, avoid saying yes where possible.” ___ Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

SAN FRANCISCO — Almost every day, Grant Lee, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, hears from investors who try to persuade him to take their money. Some have even sent him and his co-founders personalized gift baskets. Lee, 41, would normally be flattered. In the past, a fast-growing startup like Gamma, an artificial intelligence company he helped establish in 2020, would have constantly looked out for more funding. But like many young startups in Silicon Valley today, Gamma is pursuing a different strategy. It is using AI tools to increase its employees’ productivity in everything from customer service and marketing to coding and customer research. That means Gamma, which makes software that lets people create presentations and websites, has no need for more cash, Lee said. His company has hired only 28 people to get “tens of millions” in annual recurring revenue and nearly 50 million users. Gamma is also profitable. “If we were from the generation before, we would easily be at 200 employees,” Lee said. “We get a chance to rethink that, basically rewrite the playbook.” The old Silicon Valley model dictated that startups should raise a huge sum of money from venture capital investors and spend it hiring an army of employees to scale up fast. Profits would come much later. Until then, head count and fundraising were badges of honor among founders, who philosophized that bigger was better. But Gamma is among a growing cohort of startups, most of them working on AI products, that are also using AI to maximize efficiency. They make money and are growing fast without the funding or employees they would have needed before. The biggest bragging rights for these startups are for making the most revenue with the fewest workers. Stories of “tiny team” success have now become a meme, with techies excitedly sharing lists that show how Anysphere, a startup that makes the coding software Cursor, hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue in less than two years with just 20 employees, and how ElevenLabs, an AI voice startup, did the same with about 50 workers. The potential for AI to let startups do more with less has led to wild speculation about the future. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has predicted there could someday be a one-person company worth $1 billion. His company, which is building a cost-intensive form of AI called a foundational model, employs more than 4,000 people and has raised more than $20 billion in funding. It is also in talks to raise more money. With AI tools, some startups are now declaring that they will stop hiring at a certain size. Runway Financial, a finance software company, has said it plans to top out at 100 employees because each of its workers will do the work of 1.5 people. Agency, a startup using AI for customer service, also plans to hire no more than 100 workers. “It’s about eliminating roles that are not necessary when you have smaller teams,” said Elias Torres, Agency’s founder. Related Articles Olive & Finch picks Golden Triangle for sixth location Ex-Tattered Cover CEO Kwame Spearman buys building for return to bookselling Dealin’ Doug selling former Bronco’s mansion in Cherry Hills Village for $7.7 million For decades, when leaders in metro Denver needed advice, they called Tom Clark Colorado businesses gird for new tariffs as “Liberation Day” looms The idea of AI-driven efficiency was bolstered last month by DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that showed it could build AI tools for a small fraction of the typical cost. Its breakthrough, built on open-source tools that are freely available online, set off an explosion of companies building new products using DeepSeek’s inexpensive techniques. “DeepSeek was a watershed moment,” said Gaurav Jain, an investor at the venture firm Afore Capital, which has backed Gamma. “The cost of compute is going to go down very, very fast, very quickly.” Jain compared new AI startups to the wave of companies that arose in the late 2000s, after Amazon began offering cheap cloud computing services. That lowered the cost of starting a company, leading to a flurry of new startups that could be built more cheaply. Before this AI boom, startups generally burned $1 million to get to $1 million in revenue, Jain said. Now, getting to $1 million in revenue costs one-fifth as much and could eventually drop to one-tenth, according to an analysis of 200 startups conducted by Afore. “This time, we’re automating humans as opposed to just the data centers,” Jain said. But if startups can become profitable without spending much, that could become a problem for venture capital investors, who allocate tens of billions to invest in AI startups. Last year, AI companies raised $97 billion in funding, making up 46% of all venture investment in the United States, according to PitchBook, which tracks startups. “Venture capital only works if you get money into the winners,” said Terrence Rohan, an investor with Otherwise Fund, which focuses on very young startups. He added: “If the winner of the future needs a lot less money because they’ll have a lot less people, how does that change VC?” For now, investors continue to fight to get into the hottest companies, many of which have no need for more money. Scribe, an AI productivity startup, grappled last year with far more interest from investors than the $25 million it wanted to raise. “It was a negotiation of what is the smallest amount we could possibly take on,” said Scribe CEO Jennifer Smith. She said investors were shocked at the size of her staff — 100 people — when compared with its 3 million users and fast growth. Some investors are optimistic that AI-driven efficiency will spur entrepreneurs to create more companies, leading to more opportunities to invest. They hope that once the startups reach a certain size, the firms will adopt the old model of big teams and big money. Some young companies, including Anysphere, are already doing that. Anysphere has raised $175 million in funding, with plans to add staff and conduct research, according to the company’s president, Oskar Schulz. Other founders have seen the perils of the old startup playbook, which kept companies on a fundraising treadmill where hiring more people created more costs that went beyond just their salaries. Bigger teams needed managers, more robust human resources and back-office support. Those teams then needed specialized software, along with a bigger office with all the perks — and so on, which led startups to burn through cash and forced founders to constantly raise more money. Many startups from the funding boom of 2021 eventually downsized, shut down or scrambled to sell themselves. Turning a profit early on can change that outcome. At Gamma, employees use about 10 AI tools to help them be more efficient, including Intercom’s customer service tool for handling problems, Midjourney’s image generator for marketing, Anthropic’s Claude chatbot for data analysis and Google’s NotebookLM for analyzing customer research. Engineers also use Anysphere’s Cursor to more efficiently write code. Gamma’s product, which is built on top of tools from OpenAI and others, is also not as expensive to make as other AI products. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.) Other efficient startups are taking a similar strategy. Thoughtly, a 10-person provider of AI phone agents, turned a profit in 11 months, thanks to its use of AI, said co-founder Torrey Leonard. Payment processor Stripe created an AI tool that helps Leonard analyze Thoughtly’s sales, something he would have previously hired an analyst to do. Without that and AI tools from others to streamline its operations, Thoughtly would need at least 25 people and be far from profitable, he said. Thoughtly will eventually raise more money, Leonard said, but only when it is ready. Not worrying about running out of cash is “a huge relief,” he said. At Gamma, Lee said he planned to roughly double the workforce this year to 60, hiring for design, engineering and sales. He plans to recruit a different type of worker from before, seeking out generalists who do a range of tasks rather than specialists who do only one thing, he said. He also wants “player-coaches” instead of managers — people who can mentor less experienced employees but can also pitch in on the day-to-day work. Lee said the AI-efficient model had freed up time he would have otherwise spent managing people and recruiting. Now, he focuses on talking to customers and improving the product. In 2022, he created a Slack room for feedback from Gamma’s top users, who are often shocked to discover that the CEO was responding to their comments. “That’s actually every founder’s dream,” Lee said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.