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The Federal Communications Commission has persuaded another major telecom company to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.

AT&T wrote a letter to FCC chairman Brendan Carr Monday that it is eliminating its DEI initiatives, “not just in name, but in substance.”

As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.

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I looked at the slave shackles in the exhibit. My ancestors wore chains like this one. A bone-deep sorrow hit. When I researched my family history, names began to vanish as I traced it to Indigenous and African slavery. Here, right in front of me was material proof of the horror they survived. What is my responsibility to them?

The Slavery and Freedom exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. is a soul-shaking experience. Going from the bottom level to the higher exhibits, visitors take the journey from slavery to freedom. I went years ago, and decided to go again with family and friends. During the government shutdown, the closed museum doors were symbolic of a larger right-wing attack. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have censored Black history, pulled Black books, removed Black Lives Matters icons, and led to a mass firing of Black federal employees.

Trump, the White House, and congressional Republicans have spent nearly the entire first year of the president’s second term pushing an ever-expanding number of contradictory narratives about not just what’s in the files, but why Democrats and even staunch conservatives like Rep. Thomas Massie have been demanding their release.

There’s a very simple reason for this: Trump and Republicans have no idea how to cover for a president who is clearly all over the files.

Trump has been under mounting criticism for failing to bring down inflation, with Americans continuing to report high prices on groceries and essentials. Even as Trump insists he has lowered costs, his campaign’s Black Friday fundraising emails undercut that message by promoting so-called “deal” prices that were actually higher than the prices listed on his own merchandise website.

In one email, the Trump team claimed the price of a red MAGA hat ornament had been “reduced” to $37, though the official campaign store simultaneously listed it for $30. The email claimed the MAGA trinket new price was a "30% off deal."

Waymo might be expanding its autonomous taxi services to northern cities like Minneapolis and Detroit, but back in Santa Monica, the company’s strained relationship with local residents has reached a breaking point.

According to the Santa Monica Daily Press, the city council has issued a formal demand that Waymo end overnight operations at two charging facilities there. City counselors unanimously approved the measure, which doesn’t mention Waymo by name, but instead orders two lots the company uses to charge and dispatch vehicles to cease nighttime operations.

Intelligencer political columnist Ross Barkan says President Donald Trump appears to be singing the same old tune from his first term.

“After spending much of the year on a sort of revanchist blitzkrieg that terrified the left and convinced many that his second term would far outpace his first, Trump has begun to genuinely fail,” said Barkan. “And the failure, for those who followed the last time closely, is familiar: Rising autocracy is headed off by rank incompetence.”

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Before an Afghan refugee, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, yesterday shot and seriously injured two National Guard members who had been deployed by President Donald Trump to Washington, D.C., military commanders had warned that their deployment represented an easy “target of opportunity” for grievance-based violence. The troops, deployed in an effort to reduce crime, are untrained in law enforcement; their days are spent cleaning up trash and walking the streets in uniform. Commanders, in a memo that was included in litigation challenging the high-visibility mission in D.C., argued that this could put them in danger. The Justice Department countered that the risk was merely “speculative.” It wasn’t. There are costs to performatively deploying members of the military—one of which is the risk of endangering them.

Lakanwal’s exact motives are still unknown; he worked for the CIA during the Afghan War. He is now in custody but apparently refusing to speak. Trump offered a predictable response to the shooting: pausing immigration for anyone from Afghanistan, a move that conveniently ignored how Lakanwal had gotten to the United States. He came as part of Operation Allies Welcome, admitted for his assistance to U.S. troops, and was reportedly granted asylum status after vetting by the Trump administration earlier this year.

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