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Federal Judge Revives Michigan Parents' Religious-Freedom Claim Over School's Transgender Name Policy

A federal judge in Michigan reversed course and reinstated a free exercise claim from parents who sued Rockford Public Schools after staff used a different name and pronouns for their middle-school daughter without telling them. The reversal came after the Supreme Court's March 2026 ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta cast doubt on how lower courts had been analyzing these cases.

Disney Plus Begins Testing AI-Powered Search With Small Group of Subscribers

Disney is testing a natural-language search tool on Disney Plus that builds custom rows of recommendations from typed queries, voice, or prompts. It is a limited beta with a small subscriber group, part of a wider industry scramble by Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Peacock to use AI to help people find something to watch.

Senate Confirms Pentagon Comptroller After 18 Months With No One in the Job

The Senate voted 51-47 to confirm Jules Hurst as Pentagon comptroller, filling a post that sat without a Senate-confirmed leader for a year and a half. Lawmakers also confirmed Erich Hernandez-Baquero to run Space Force acquisition and Roger Mason to lead the National Reconnaissance Office, clearing a batch of 74 nominees in one vote.

Texas Police Officer Charged in Mexico With Killing Three People During Custody Dispute

Chad Eberle, a 35-year-old police officer from Santa Anna, Texas, was arrested at the Piedras Negras border crossing after allegedly shooting four people, killing three, during a fight over his three-year-old son in Saltillo, Mexico. He's now in a Mexican penitentiary facing femicide and homicide charges, and the surviving victim remains in critical condition.

Citi Raises Q3 Brent Forecast to $80 a Barrel as Iran Standoff Drags Past Five Months

Citi bumped its third-quarter Brent forecast to $80 from $75 on Friday, citing a stalled U.S.-Iran conflict now in its fifth month with no real fix for Strait of Hormuz shipping disruptions. The bank still thinks prices crater to $65 by 2027 once a deal happens, but Wall Street is split hard on timing, and nobody actually knows when Tehran and Washington sign anything.

Doximity Stock More Than Doubles After CEO Claims AI Search Tool Beats Anthropic on Safety and Margins

Doximity shares briefly spiked over 200% in premarket trading Friday, then settled up 33% for the day, after CEO Jeff Tangney said the company's AI tools post better safety scores than Anthropic and earn 10 times their operating cost per search. A modest earnings miss on EPS got buried under the AI hype, and analysts are already warning the rally outran the actual numbers.

Crypto Companies Bet AI Agents, Not Humans, Will Be Their Next Customers

Coinbase, Kraken and Circle are rebuilding products so AI agents can hold wallets, trade and pay each other without a human clicking a button. The pitch is that crypto finally has a natural, technical use case instead of a marketing pitch to humans who never bought in. Whether AI agents actually need a permissionless blockchain over faster traditional infrastructure is still unproven.

Electricity and Gas Prices Are Now a Bigger Midterm Issue Than Climate Change

Residential electricity rates jumped 7% nationally in 2025 and gas prices are running roughly a dollar higher per gallon than a year ago, according to S&P Global and AAA. Both parties are ditching climate purity for affordability messaging, and Democrats are trying to pin the blame on Trump's Iran war and tariff policies while Republicans push more drilling.

Army Removes V Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, No Reason Given

The Army pulled Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza from command of V Corps in Europe, the service confirmed, but hasn't said why. No charges, no investigation announcement, no public explanation, just a quiet removal of one of the Army's top commanders on the continent.

Oklo's Groves Reactor Hits Criticality: Fifth New U.S. Reactor Design Validated Since June

Oklo's Groves Isotope Test Reactor reached criticality on August 5 in Lockhart, Texas, the fifth new small modular reactor design validated in the U.S. since June after none were certified for over 50 years. Trump's target of licensing 10 new reactor types by 2030 is now half-met, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright predicting up to seven by year's end.

CDC Report Finds ER Visits for Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome Jumped 16% After New Diagnosis Code Took Effect

A CDC report released Thursday, August 6, found emergency room visits for cannabis hyperemesis syndrome rose 16% between October 2025 and May 2026. The spike lines up almost exactly with a new diagnosis code introduced October 1, 2025, meaning doctors probably weren't creating new cases, they were finally naming ones that already existed.

Records Show Flock Safety Pitched Plan to Turn 350,000 Uber, Lyft and Delivery Cars Into Roaming License Plate Cameras

A presentation obtained through a Georgia public records request shows Flock Safety pitched a partnership with dashcam company Nexar to turn hundreds of thousands of Uber, Lyft and delivery vehicles into mobile license plate readers. Flock says it never executed the deal, but the document confirms the company built out and marketed the plan to law enforcement clients, and nothing suggests drivers or riders would have been told.

A Notebook Found in Assad's Spy Chief's Abandoned Apartment Is Helping Track Him Down

Bashar al-Assad's regime collapsed in December 2024, and his intelligence chief Hussam Luka, nicknamed 'The Spider,' vanished. A handwritten notebook left behind in his Damascus apartment is now a lead in efforts to find a man accused of orchestrating torture and disappearances during the Syrian civil war.

Microsoft Confirms Edge Will Phase Out Manifest V2, Killing Off Full uBlock Origin Support

Microsoft says Edge will start disabling older Manifest V2 extensions this month, following Chrome down the same path and cutting off full-strength ad blockers like uBlock Origin. Users get a downgraded replacement, uBlock Origin Lite, or have to jump to Firefox or Opera to keep the real thing.

The US Should Invest in Light Crude Refining Before the Next Chokepoint Closes

The Hill published a piece arguing the US should invest in light crude refining capacity before the next chokepoint closes, though the underlying reporting is not available in full.

OpenAI Partners With American Psychological Association After String of Chatbot Suicide Lawsuits

OpenAI announced a partnership with the American Psychological Association to build psychological science into how it designs AI products for young people, following multiple lawsuits alleging ChatGPT contributed to users' suicides and psychotic episodes. Researchers say safety has improved but chatbots still fail at the hardest part: recognizing real risk and pushing people toward actual human help.

Texas Utility Backs Abbott's Data Center Freeze Even With 298 Gigawatts of Demand Waiting

Gov. Greg Abbott froze new data center grid connections this week pending a state audit, and Oncor parent Sempra told analysts Thursday it supports the pause despite having 44 GW of projects caught in limbo. The freeze is Texas trying to get ahead of a real problem: nobody, including the state's own leaders, actually knows how much power these facilities will demand or who's paying for it.

RFK Jr's Food Pyramid Ideas: What the Evidence Actually Backs and What It Doesn't

A medical review from Acibadem Hospitals Group's international health team breaks down RFK Jr-style food pyramid claims and finds a mixed bag: cutting ultra-processed food and pushing whole foods lines up with real science, but not every claim holds up to clinical scrutiny. Common sense here: eat real food, question the miracle-cure hype, and don't let a public figure replace your doctor.

CMS Chief Mehmet Oz Names California Unions as Winners in Medicaid Fraud Fight, DOJ Probing Coercion Claims

CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz says California's home care unions, not just fraudsters, benefit from the state's lax Medicaid oversight because more billing means more dues and more campaign cash. The Department of Justice is now investigating coercion complaints against union organizers, according to a law enforcement source cited by the New York Post. Oz stresses these labor complaints aren't the reason for federal payment deferrals, but he says they explain why state leaders have little incentive to dig into fraud.

Project 2025 Co-Author Dennis Kirk Reportedly Placed Inside Interior Department Watchdog Office

Dennis Kirk, who helped write Project 2025 and previously worked inside the intelligence community's inspector general office, has reportedly been installed at the Interior Department's IG office. That office is under pressure from Democrats to investigate alleged corruption at Interior, and critics say putting a Trump-aligned political appointee inside a watchdog shop defeats the purpose of having one. **The setup here matters: inspectors general exist to be independent of the political appointees running the agency they oversee.** If Kirk's role gives him influence over what gets investigated, that independence is the whole ballgame.