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Yesterday’s announcement from Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shows just why the 2026 midterms will matter so much, and why the 11 months of waiting to get there could be so disastrous. We need a Congress that will stand up and snatch back the purse strings as the Founding Fathers originally intended.

In the United States Constitution, Congress is granted the power of the purse: the right to decide how much to spend and on what. Also, importantly, it gets to decide when to remove funding. In the 70s, that was used to pull funding from the Vietnam War. That power does not belong with the Executive Branch, which the Constitution says must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Several of Waymo's autonomous vehicles were seen stuck in the middle of San Francisco streets following a significant power outage that took out the city's traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending its ride-hailing services in the city, but images and videos on social media showed the self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights on.

"We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage," Suzanne Philion, a spokesperson for Waymo, told Engadget in an email. "Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon."

As Republicans in his state’s legislature considered joining a Donald Trump-backed effort to redraw congressional maps in the GOP’s favor, Rep. Frank Mrvan kept quiet.

The new lines would have doomed the low-key Democrat representing Indiana’s northwest corner, but only now — after Republicans in the state Senate roundly rejected the Trump push — is he speaking out with a message for both parties: It’s time to lay down arms on redistricting.

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Everywhere you look right now, there’s a gaggle of nerds foaming at the mouth to share their list of the very best video games of 2025. (And we’re no exception!) But what about the stinkers, the flops, the dead-on-arrival turds? We want to take a few moments to honor the low achievers of 2025, the absolute worst games of the year according to review aggregator Metacritic. Are all of these games truly as terrible as the reviews say? Is there a hidden gem or two hidden among the bunch? Let’s find out.

1. MindsEye
2. Tamagotchi Plaza
3. Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator
4. Scar-Lead Salvation
5. Captain Blood
6. Neptunia Riders Vs Dogoos
7. Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact
8. Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection
9. Rennsport
10. Switch 2 Welcome Tour

At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Even with LG’s concession, it may become more difficult to avoid chatbots on TVs.

LG says it will let people delete the Copilot icon from their TVs soon, but it still has plans to weave the service throughout webOS. The Copilot web app rollout seems to have been a taste of LG’s bigger plans to add Copilot to some of its 2025 OLED TVs. In a January announcement, LG said Copilot will help users find stuff to watch by “allowing users to efficiently find and organize complex information using contextual cues.” LG also said Copilot would “proactively” identify potential user problems and offer “timely, effective solutions.”

Some TVs from LG’s biggest rival, Samsung, have included Copilot since August. Owners of supporting 2025 TVs can speak to Copilot using their remote’s microphone. They can also access Copilot via the Tizen OS homescreen’s Apps tab or through the TVs’ Click to Search feature, which lets users press a dedicated remote button to search for content while watching live TV or Samsung TV Plus. Users can also ask the TV to make AI-generated wallpapers or provide real-time subtitle translations.

This month, OpenAI announced "up to $2 million" in funding for research studies on AI safety and well-being. At its surface, this may seem generous, but following in the footsteps of other tech giants facing scrutiny over their products’ mental health impacts, it's nothing more than grantwashing.

This industry practice commits a pittance to research that is doomed to be ineffective due to information and resources that companies hold back. When grantwashing works, it compromises the search for answers. And that's an insult to anyone whose loved one’s death involved chatbots.

OpenAI's pledge came a week after the company's lawyers argued that the company isn't to blame in the death of a California teenager who ChatGPT encouraged to commit suicide. In the company's attempt to disclaim responsibility in court, they even requested a list of invitees to the teen's memorial and video footage of the service and the people there. In the last year, OpenAI and other generative AI companies have been accused of causing numerous deaths and psychotic breaks by encouraging people into suicide, feeding delusions, and giving them risky instructions

Thursday afternoon House Democrats publicly released a new trove of photographs they’ve obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein via Dropbox. They left the comments on so anyone who is signed into Dropbox and browsing the material can leave behind their thoughts.

Given that the investigation into Epstein is one of the most closely followed cases in the world and a subject of endless conspiracy theories, and that the committee released the trove of photographs with no context, it’s not surprising that people immediately began commenting on the photographs.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes “AI agents” to rapidly track down targets. The company claims the “skip tracing” AI agents help agencies find people of interest and map out their family and other associates more quickly. According to the procurement records, the company’s services were specifically for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE that identifies, arrests, and deports people.

The contract comes as ICE is spending millions of dollars, and plans to spend tens of millions more, on skip tracing services more broadly. The practice involves ICE paying bounty hunters to use digital tools and physically stalk immigrants to verify their addresses, then report that information to ICE so the agency can act.

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Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, testifying Wednesday before a Senate committee, said the regulatory body is not an independent government agency — a position that counters his previous public statements and the office’s own website.

In an exchange with Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., Carr said the FCC is “not formally an independent agency” because, he said, commissioners can be removed by the president.

Apple announced it will allow alternative app stores in Japan and will permit developers to process payments for digital goods and services outside of its own in-app purchase system in iOS. The iPhone maker is not making these changes because it wants to be more open; it’s being forced — in this case, to comply with the country’s Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA), which is now going into effect.

With this update, Apple’s App Store revenues are being impacted in another major market due to anticompetition laws and regulations. The company already has to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which previously required the tech giant to allow for alternative app stores and other changes.