John Paczkowski

So antifa could be a kid in a black mask tossing a brick at a CCTV camera at an ICE facility. Antifa could be the grandma on the sidewalk holding a sign reading “DONALD TRUMP IS A FASCIST.” Antifa is ACAB. Antifa is Fuck ICE. Antifa is No Kings. Antifa might be a reading group, a teach-in, an Instagram solicitation for mutual aid. Antifa could be the ICEBlock app, and the App Store could be providing material support for terrorism.

Just to be clear, we wrote that paragraph long before the App Store removed ICEBlock. www.theverge.com/policy/79051...

Government Shutdown Leaves US Cyber Defenses Weaker, Insiders Say Already understaffed and now further diminished, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is scrambling to investigate a spate of cyber attacks. The lapse of the Cybersecurity Information ...

NEW - CISA insiders tell me about "chaos" in the agency since the shutdown began, exacerbated by major leadership departures and the expiration of the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act.

“It's just a matter of time before something major happens,” says one.

www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Why The TrumpRx Deal Is A Big Win For Pfizer The pharmaceutical giant’s deal with Trump to cut prices has little impact on the bottom line–but removes a lot of regulatory uncertainty. Investors love it.

New from me and @amyfeldman7.bsky.social : Why Pfizer's deal with the Trump Admin is a win for the company.

www.forbes.com/sites/alexkn...

This was all found in hundreds of emails obtained via public records requests for comms between various police departments and Amazon's law enforcement and school safety lead, an ex-cop himself.

Yes, Amazon has also been pushing AI surveillance at schools.

Legal AI Startup Legora Is In Talks To Raise Funding At A $1.8 Billion Valuation Just four months after its Series B funding round, the Stockholm-based legal AI startup is picking up more capital.

SCOOP: Legal AI startup Legora is in talks to raise funding at $1.8 billion valuation, multiple sources told Forbes. The startup is raising between $100 million to $150 million, one of the sources said. With @iainmartin.bsky.social.
www.forbes.com/sites/rashis...

Grafana Labs Is Cleaning Up On The Vibe Coding Boom With a client list that includes Nvidia, Anthropic and Uber, the $6 billion-valued Grafana Labs is flexing with $400 million in annualized revenue — and new investment from a tender offer of up to $15...

New: Grafana Labs, which helps companies monitor their data and internal systems, has hit $400 million in ARR and closed a tender offer of up to $150 million.
www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

My TikTok book is out in stores today!

Why should you read it? Because 1 in 5 Americans now get their news from this thing. We should all understand how it works.

It was inevitable that strongmen would seek to control a tool this powerful. The book is the story of what happened when they did.

Trump’s TikTok Deal Seems Like The One The Biden White House Rejected Trump appears poised to accept a set of terms similar to Project Texas, a ByteDance proposal that Biden felt perpetuated an unacceptable risk to national security.

new from me: time is a flat circle

www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

Briefing: YouTube bends the knee Plus:

Today's Indicator Briefing is full of insight and tips:

📍How YouTube bent the knee to the Trump admin
📍Anti-slop policies at Spotify & new Community Notes research
📍Inside a viral prompt injection trick that exposed an AI recruiter

Subscribe for free:

Will TikTok’s Parent Company's Other Apps, Be Saved, Or Banned? U.S. law requires a ban of CapCut, Gauth, Lemon8, Coze, and many other ByteDance- owned apps, unless they are sold in the TikTok deal that President Trump announced today.

Just checkin in about the fate of CapCut and a bunch of other apps that millions of Americans use

www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

Trump’s $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee Is A Gift To European AI Startups Hiring foreign workers just got more expensive for American tech companies. But that’s opened up new recruiting opportunities for non-U.S. AI startups.

We chatted with European startup founders who think Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee could be a boon for the region: “We almost say thank you to Trump, in a way. He’s really helping us keep our talent.” With @rashis.bsky.social
www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

Thank you.

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Trump’s Unproven Claims About Tylenol And Autism Are Reaching Millions On TikTok Even as medical groups push back on Trump’s unfounded claims about autism, they're going viral on the world's biggest video platform.

www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

ISIS Kids Planned A Violent 'Caliphate Revival' On Discord Hundreds of pages in classified NCIS files were left out for the trash collectors, a search warrant reveals.

🚨NEW🚨 A recently-unsealed warrant shows how teens from a dozen countries used Discord to discuss plans for terror attacks across the world in the name of ISIS.

They were serious, buying and learning how to make deadly weapons.

Cops caught them in time.

www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

Tesla’s Full-Self Driving Software Is A Mess. Should It Be Legal? Elon Musk hypes the AI-enabled system, and getting more people to buy it is key to his new pay package. But in a recent test, it ignored some street signs and squashed a mannequin child.

NEW: Elon Musk keeps hyping Tesla’s FSD software, and getting more people to buy it is key to his new pay package. But in a recent test, it ignored standard street signs and even a flashing school bus stop sign – squashing mannequin child “Timmy.” Why is it legal? www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh...

How CoreWeave’s GPU Bet Made Four Risk-Loving Cryptominers AI Billionaires Creative financing and an enormous appetite for risk helped CoreWeave’s Michael Intrator ride the AI data center boom to a $6.7 billion personal fortune. But as bubble fears mount, his reliance on bil...

A series of bold bets and calculated risks helped Michael Intrator turn @CoreWeave from a no-name crypto miner into a $50 billion company, serving compute to the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft. Elated to share my latest @forbes.com cover story with @pheebini.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/rashis...

I dissented from the majority's prior stay orders, and today do so again. Under existing law, what Congress said goes-as this Court unanimously decided nearly a century ago. In Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), we rejected a claim of presidential prerogative identical to the one made in this case. (Indeed, the suit emerged from a discharge at the very same agency.) Con-gress, we held, may restrict the President's power to remove members of the FTC, as well as other agencies performing "quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial" functions, without violating the Constitution. Id., at 629. So the President can-not, as he concededly did here, fire an FTC Commissioner without any reason. To reach a different result requires reversing the rule stated in Humphrey's: It entails overriding

rather than accepting Congress's judgment about agency design. The majority may be raring to take that action, as its grant of certiorari before judgment suggests. But until the deed is done, Humphrey's controls, and prevents the majority from giving the President the unlimited removal power Congress denied him. Because the majority's stay does just that, I respectfully dissent. Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation's separation of powers.

In dissent as to the stay, Justice Kagan — joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson — lays out the lawlessness of the majority plainly.

"Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars."

Order/dissent: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Measles outbreak growing in parts of Arizona and Utah, health officials say Measles vaccination rates have plummeted in the neighboring communities over the last 10 years.

Measles is spreading in Utah and Arizona.

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

Eyeball alien from Alien: Earth

This dude is the Baby Yoda of sci-fi horror

Bizarre AI Generated Anti-Trump Videos Are Getting Billions Of Views On YouTube Violent slapstick videos that glamorize dictators and dunk on Trump have become some of the most watched political content on YouTube in 2025.

Friends, let me introduce you to a new, truly wild genre of YouTube vids

www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

We’re Suing ICE for Its $2 Million Spyware Contract 404 Media has filed a lawsuit against ICE for access to its contract with Paragon, a company that sells powerful spyware for breaking into phones and accessing encrypted messaging apps.

New: 404 Media is suing ICE. We have filed a lawsuit demanding ICE release its $2 million contract with Paragon, a company that makes powerful spyware to break into phones and read encrypted messages. This is expensive for a small outlet but this info is important
www.404media.co/were-suing-i...

Too Soft On China? Congress Has Concerns About Trump’s TikTok Deal The U.S. and China have long fought for control over TikTok’s algorithm. Chinese negotiators suggest a Chinese company will — but Congress says a U.S. company must.

www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

Databricks Is Launching An Accelerator To Fund Early AI Startups After announcing a billion-dollar fundraise last week, the $100 billion AI data storage and analytics company is barreling ahead with new investments and plans for an eventual IPO. “It’s not an if, it...

New: Databricks is launching a startup accelerator for seed and pre-seed companies, offering up to $250,000 to startups in the form of funding and credits
www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

ICE Just Spent Millions On Surveillance Tech Banned By Facebook ICE has spent over $5 million on social media and dark web monitoring software that critics say enables warrantless surveillance.

🚨NEW🚨 ICE this week spent $2m for social media surveillance tech called Tangles.

Created by an Israeli company called Cobwebs, it was banned by Meta for targeting activists across Facebook and WhatsApp in 2021.

Now owned by PenLink, an ICE go-to surveillance vendor.

www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

ICE Just Bought A Robot That Can Climb Stairs And Open Doors ICE can now deploy a robot capable of letting off smoke grenades and navigating obstacles in its raids.

🚨NEW🚨 ICE just bought a $78k robot that can climb stairs, open doors and fire smoke grenades.

The most expensive robot ICE has bought, per contract records.

Comes amid ICE's hiring surge where it's bought a bunch of AI-powered drones among other surveillance kit.

www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Anthropic And OpenAI Pay This $450 Million Startup To Test AI’s Capacity For Evil Frontier AI labs are relying on a small Israeli startup to run their AI through simulations to test its capacity for malicious hacking.

NEW - Irregular, formerly Pattern Labs, has announced $80 million funding at a $450m valuation.

It works with OpenAI, Anthropic and other frontier AI labs to test models for their potential to do evil—in particular how cybercriminals can turn them into hacking tools.

www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

To Solve The TikTok Problem, Trump Has To Give Up His Control A successful TikTok deal would end China’s leverage over the social media app in the U.S. — and Trump’s too.

No more secret TikTok deals.

www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

Airlines Sell 5 Billion Plane Ticket Records to the Government For Warrantless Searching New documents obtained by 404 Media show how a data broker owned by American Airlines, United, Delta, and many other airlines is selling masses of passenger data to the U.S. government.

New from 404 Media: airlines are selling *5 billion* ticketing records to the government for warrantless searching, per new docs we obtained. ARC is a data broker owned by United, American, Delta, etc. Then sells peoples' travel info to ICE, Secret Service, FBI etc www.404media.co/airlines-sel...