Policy

Author and journalist Malcolm Harris found a bag filled with Project 2025 merch and documents on the street this week — apparently nothing top secret, but interesting nonetheless.

The Washington Post reports that the Heritage Foundation, the right wing think tank spearheading Project 2025, filed a police report for “theft.” Then the cops showed up.

In a new filing, DOJ says it’s “not trying to litigate in secret,” but that the court should be able to review classified information that led Congress to determine the divest-or-ban bill was necessary. In its own filing, TikTok says the government’s arguments for the bill are riddled with errors and omissions.

The Danish minister feared by Big Tech and who Donald Trump called the EU’s “tax lady,” will not be reappointed for a third term, the FT reports. 

“She is astonishing in terms of stamina,” said one EU official who regularly worked with Vestager. “It’s absolutely crazy. She read all the stuff . . . round the clock and had hundreds of meetings and she is still alive.”

US tech CEOs shouldn’t celebrate too quickly, though, as the attention-seeking Musk-baiting French commissioner Thierry Breton is said to be in contention for the role

Wired has a cool interactive piece highlighting some of the content creators on the right and left who drive political discourse and change. The size of the bubbles corresponds to the number of followers the individual has on their social media platform of choice. Check out the full story for details on each person.

The internet service provider filed a petition with the highest court in its case with Sony Music and other labels, framing it as a fight for internet access. A jury sided with the labels in 2019, finding Cox liable for piracy infringement for failing to remove bad actors from its services, but an appeals court denied the $1 billion damages award.

Specifically, about $60 million — a hefty civil penalty to settle allegations that the telecom giant failed to report incidents of unauthorized access to sensitive data, violating a national security agreement it made to acquire Sprint in 2020.

It’s the largest fine ever imposed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, and just one of many data breaches T-Mobile has faced in recent years.

Citizen Lab and Access Now linked a “sophisticated spear phishing campaign” to a group associated with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). The campaign has allegedly targeted exiled opposition figures as well as non-governmental organization staff in the US and Europe. Threat actors would allegedly email their targets, pretending to be a colleague or funder, the groups say.

After Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit against the trio for its upcoming Venu streaming service, Puck’s Eriq Gardner sat in on an evidentiary hearing overseen by NY District Judge Margaret Garnett:

From the several days of testimony I witnessed — packed with executives, consultants, and economists — it feels like a preliminary injunction might just be on the table... Garnett seems genuinely concerned by the extraordinary influence that could be wielded by an alliance of the sector’s behemoths. 

The most likely targets to be spun out are Google’s Android mobile operating system or its Chrome browser, Bloomberg reports. DOJ’s antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter has long signaled he prefers structural remedies (legal speak for breakups) in many cases. Either way, Bloomberg says DOJ is likely to ask for a ban on exclusive contracts the judge found helped reinforce Google’s monopoly. A DOJ spokesperson said it’s evaluating the ruling and “No decisions have been made at this time.”

Vance, who was an investor, board member, and spokesman, claimed AppHarvest was “a great business that’s making a big difference in the world.” It declared bankruptcy last year.

Several former employees told CNN they thought Vance and other board members should have recognized and responded to warning signs that company officials were misleading the public and their own investors.

The Democratic National Convention will stream from Chicago next week on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, Axios reported. That’s in addition to Twitch, Amazon Prime Video, X, and on streaming operating platforms like Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon’s Fire TV. So if you’re hoping to avoid political content next week, good luck.

This time, it’s not House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) calling for a probe of platform censorship. His ranking member, Jerry Nadler (D-NY), is the one calling on Jordan to probe Elon Musk’s X for political censorship of Democrats on the platform. Jordan is typically the one raving about conservative censorship by Meta and others. I guess two can play that game.

Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) handed down the ~$600,000 fine in favor of Gary Rooney, who was fired from Twitter in 2022 after failing to click “yes” in an email asking employees to accept Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” work culture or leave.

As reported by RTE, the WRC found Rooney’s choice to not click “yes” was “not capable of constituting an act of resignation.”

Grok, X’s AI assistant, summed up how X users have evaluated Musk’s skills as an interviewer: not good.

He’s both not engaged enough and constantly butting in, trying to flex his knowledge on topics he knows little about. At one point he asked for a job!

Good thing he told us this would be a conversation, not an interview.

Elon is sticking with the DDOS excuse, which multiple sources at X tell The Verge is almost certainly untrue.

Trump adviser Roger Stone told The Washington Post that “a couple” of his personal email accounts had been compromised.

As for phishing emails sent to three Biden-Harris campaign staffers, the publication reports that “investigators have not found evidence that those hacking attempts were successful.”

Fort Worth, Texas Judge Reed O’Connor, who is presiding over Elon Musk-owned X’s antitrust lawsuit against advertisers and one against Media Matters, has invested as much as $50,000 in Tesla stock, NPR reports.

O’Connor is known for conservative-friendly rulings, such as one calling Obamacare unconstitutional (later overturned because he didn’t have jurisdiction).