Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats?

Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats?

MS NOW · 4 hours ago
by Eugene Daniels · Elections


CHICAGO — In the halls of a Hyatt, serviced by unionized employees of course, hundreds of young, mostly college educated democratic socialists are milling about. It’s a bit too corporate for what is happening in the rooms: conversations on how they can expand, grow and fight back more.

The session names are the tell: “Winning Socialism in the South,” “Legislating as Socialists,” “Power Shift Opportunities.”

What you won’t find are the stars of the movement. No Mamdani. No AOC. No Bernie.

Instead, it’s the door knockers, the city council types, the local stewards who have gotten disillusioned with American politics and have taken their energy elsewhere. And in a lot of cases, that fight is aimed as much at the Democratic Party as at President Donald Trump.

Which raises the question that hung over the entire weekend, which nobody answered the same way twice: Are these people Democrats, or not?

Ask plainly and a half-dozen answers from people wearing the same label will give you the same answer.

“I think if the Democratic Party was actually delivering on the things that they say they care about and what is listed in their platform, I would feel comfortable saying yes to that,” said Hayley Banyai-Becker, a Democratic Socialists of America leader based in Portland, Oregon, who helped plan the summit told MS NOW. “The answer is no.”

Washington state Representative Shaun Scott, sitting next to her and running unopposed, wouldn’t take the yes-or-no. “I think that DSA is at the mainstream of American politics right now,” he said, then flipped it. “If we were to be considered part of the left wing of the Democratic Party, I would wonder what happened to the right or the center of the Democratic Party.”

Robert Levertis Bell, a public school teacher running for the Kentucky state house with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement, went further.

“I see many elements of the Democratic Party as absolutely being my enemy because I stand with the working class, and if you don’t represent the interests of the working class, if you’re not trying to build political power for the working class, and you actually are trying to build power for the capitalist class, then you are my enemy,” Bell said. “And the capitalist class runs the Democratic Party.”

Enemies or opponents? He split it. “Some of my enemies, some of my opponents, some of my friends.”

National co-chair Ashik Siddique explains the strategy rather than the sentiment. For him, the only way to gain electoral power is through the Democratic door. “All it takes to run in a Democratic primary is to be a registered Democrat, so that’s what we’re doing for the most part.”

Why not run outside it, like the Green Party: “There’s a clear ceiling to that strategy.”

Not exactly on the fringes anymore

The Democratic Socialists of America are in the midst of a year that has fundamentally begun to change their place in the country. The idea of it being a fringe is fading. By now the shock of the movement’s insurgent victories against tenured congressional incumbents in New York and Colorado has worn off and one of their own could soon win a competitive primary for governor in the presidential battleground of Wisconsin.

Asked why now, and they point you to 2016.

“Bernie Sanders’s campaign in 2016 showed how much space there really was in American politics for democratic socialist politics,” Siddique said. “I don’t think I was aware of what socialism really was, other than something in the history books, until he ran for president.”

Membership went from roughly 5,000 before 2015 to more than 120,000. Siddique rejects the lightning-strike version of that.

“Now is the moment where seeds that we started to plant a decade ago or even earlier are now bearing fruit,” he said. “In 2017, the year after Bernie had run for president, so many of us who had been motivated by his campaign just thought, okay, now what? It feels like we’re in the wilderness here with Trump as president, and we don’t know what to do.”

But those seeds can’t grow in bad soil. The conditions matter, and the conditions right now are a Democratic Party with approval ratings in the tank,, a base that keeps telling pollsters it wants someone willing to fight, and a summer of liberal self-loathing that has left an unusual amount of room to the left.

Insurgencies don’t happen when the establishment is delivering. There is no Zohran Mamdani, no Darializa Avila Chevalier, no runaway primary in Wisconsin, if Democratic leadership is fighting the way its own voters want it to.

Others in Chicago were blunter about the vacuum created by Democratic missteps.

“There is so much inconsistency with how the Democrats operate, and for a while I think they’ve been able to get away with ‘we’re not Trump’ but we’re in the second Trump presidency,” said Chanpreet Singh with the Seattle DSA. “…The absence of a positive political vision is going to continue to be a crisis for the Democratic Party, and, I think, an opportunity for us as an organization.”

Even with possibly ripe conditions, what the DSA is now grappling with in public is its own platform — abolish the Senate, abolish police and prisons, get rid of the Defense Department — and no DSA candidate is running on any of it, and everyone in Chicago says so freely. It is also opposition research that writes itself, and Republicans are enjoying it.

But the pamphlet being handed out in the halls of the convention center is missing some of the language that has created the caricature of the DSA and caused them to be pilloried after interviews. It shows they are still very far away from overtaking the Democratic party establishment.

“The language that we have in there is abolishing the police and prison system that protects capital over people,” Siddique said. Told it doesn’t roll off the tongue: “It doesn’t. You know, it’s not a great slogan. I’ll admit that.”

Asked whether murder and sexual assault would still be prosecuted: “To us, those are crimes. We want to limit that. I personally have no problem with having something called a prison be the place where people like that are kept.”

The great 2028 hope

A card circulating in one session urged members to line up behind a 2028 presidential run by a candidate who hasn’t said she’s running. Walking into one meeting, attendees were welcomed with that card featuring the face of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the heir apparent to what Bernie’s been able to build in American politics.

She’s not running for anything other than another term in her current job right now. But a push is afoot to align behind her quickly if she decides to go after the biggest job American politics has to offer.

“The 2028 Presidential Election is an unprecedented opportunity for the Left in the United States,” the card read before urging the DSA rank and file “to seize the moment, unite Labor and the Left, and elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as our Democratic Socialist President.”

The real version is less fun. A bloc of democratic socialists is set to arrive in Congress next year, and a movement built on refusing to compromise is about to be represented by people who will have to.

Siddique says the flexibility was always there. He points to the DSA bloc in the New York state legislature, “very agitational when it mattered” and still willing to work with anyone who’d move a bill. Data centers are his example, an issue where the anger crosses party lines and socialists in office “will work with whoever” to stop them.

Banyai-Becker explained how the organization plans to police its own once they’re sworn in. They “are still accountable to the working class, and we are able to talk to them.”

The test starts on Jan. 3, 2027.

The post Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats? appeared first on MS NOW.

Netflix invents cable TV

  

Report: Netflix invents cable TV

Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock

While some people turn into their parents as they get older, some streaming companies turn into cable television. Netflix is considering adding live channels and bundles to boost sagging engagement, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The report states that Netflix is concerned about a decline in engagement (i.e., how often a viewer stays with a show, movie, or series), which can signal subscription cancellations. Among the solutions being discussed, per the WSJ, is Netflix edging closer to the very thing it disrupted—traditional TV:

• Executives are reportedly weighing adding live channels that constantly stream shows and movies of a specific genre, because the one thing Netflix subscribers were missing was a random weekday airing of Couples Retreat at 2pm.
• Also on the table: Bundling with other subscription-based streaming platforms and selling those packages through the main app, similar to what rivals Amazon and Apple already do.

Live TV means more ad sales: Netflix generated ~$1.5 billion in ad revenue last year and projects to double that this year. A new channel showing Golden Girls on a 24/7 loop, for example, would certainly increase that number.

Isn’t Netflix the No. 1 streamer? By subscribers, yes, but shares are down 40% over the past 12 months. Some recent projections have come in below analyst expectations, and its TV viewership in April reached its lowest level since May 2025, according to Nielsen.

Netflix is also reportedly in the running to purchase Letterboxd, the app for people who love movies and miss writing book reports. Sony, Paramount, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian are also reportedly showing interest in the app, per Puck News.

Letterboxd has more than 30 million global members ready to be targeted with ads by whichever corporation lands the social media site. LionTree, an investment bank handling the sale, is “floating” a $250 million valuation.

Payday coming for Olympic athletes

 Payday coming for Olympic athletes

For the first time in history, every athlete at the Olympic Games will be eligible for a new USD 10,000 “Fit for the Future Olympian Grant”. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) grant has been set up to support the sporting career or the career transition of Olympians.

A fund of USD 140 million per Olympiad has been set aside, with the first athletes to benefit from this initiative to be the Olympians who competed February 6-22 at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

This is one of the first actions taken as part of the “Fit for the Future” strategic framework to find new and complementary ways to provide support to athletes with their long-term sporting endeavors or career transition. With this new fund, the IOC is delivering immediately on its commitment.

The Fit for the Future Olympian Grant complements the existing support programs. About 14,000 Olympians per Olympiad are expected to be eligible for a grant of USD 10,000 for each edition of the Olympic Games in which they compete.

The grant will be delivered through existing National Olympic Committee (NOC) structures. If an Olympian chooses not to apply for this grant, their allocation will remain in the fund to benefit future Olympians.

The grant will not decrease or detract from already existing support provided by the IOC to the NOCs, International Sports Federations, Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games, or Olympic Solidarity. - Read on

Xbox starts major layoffs to save its lagging biz

  Xbox starts major layoffs to save its lagging biz

Morning Brew Inc, Photo: Getty Images

One of the biggest names in gaming could use an infinite money glitch right now. With revenue falling and a string of acquisitions not paying off, Microsoft-owned Xbox will slash about one-fifth of its staff and divest from some development studios, CEO Asha Sharma said yesterday. Sharma called it “the most significant restructure” in the company’s history. Xbox will… Lay off 1,600 people this week and another 1,250 over the next year. Sell or spin off four to five game studios that it acquired within the past decade, which will cut another 350+ people from Xbox’s staff (games that are already announced won’t be canceled, Sharma said). “Our business today is not healthy,” Sharma wrote in a memo, acknowledging the company’s measly 3% profit margin. Its quarterly revenue recently declined 5% year-over-year. The Game Pass gamble One big reason for Xbox’s slowdown appears to be its struggling subscription service, Game Pass. TL;DR: To build up an enticing Game Pass library, Xbox bought production giant Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023 and ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Skyrim-maker Bethesda, for $8.1 billion in 2021. Those splurges didn’t pan out. (Xbox is keeping both companies, but the fifth studio it wants to divest is part of ZeniMax.): Game Pass currently has 30 million subscribers, a far cry from the 77 million that Xbox projected it would reach this year. In a normal year, the company lost 64 cents for every dollar it invested, Sharma wrote. But now…Sharma, who became CEO in February, said Xbox will return to growth in 2027. Since taking the helm, she has moved to reduce the number of games Microsoft publishes and reprioritize its most popular franchises, like Minecraft, Fallout, and Candy Crush. This streamlining comes as the AI boom sends memory chip prices soaring, pushing Xbox and its competitors to raise console prices. Zoom out: Xbox’s layoffs are part of 6,400 planned job cuts across Microsoft, whose massive AI spend is spooking investors. It’s the worst-performing megacap tech stock so far this year.

Giant Oil Tanker Runs Aground in Marine Nature Preserve

Giant Oil Tanker Runs Aground in Marine Nature Preserve, Spills Nonstop for Weeks
"A nightmare scenario is there's no adequate response to keep the worst ‌from happening."

By Joe Wilkins

Published Aug 13, 2026 2:53 PM EDT
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When an oil tanker runs aground in a contested war zone, does it make a sound?

Evidently not — at least not the kind of sound anyone could hear for over six weeks, the amount of time the Caroline Bezengi oil tanker has reportedly been spewing oil into waters off the southeastern coast of Oman.

According to Reuters, the vessel first ran into trouble on June 8, after an unspecified “blast” literally rocked the boat. It then ran aground near the Al Hallaniyat Islands on June 30, an Omani marine nature reserve and proposed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) natural heritage site.

The Bezengi was reportedly on its way to India with some 800,000 barrels of Russian oil, though the vessel is currently flagged to Cameroon, per VesselFinder.com.

Speaking to Reuters, John Amos, an oil spills specialist and CEO of the environmental nonprofit SkyTruth, says the oil spill now spans over 2,000 square kilometers. The resulting mess has been exacerbated by a lack of clear oversight and emergency response, as it’s unclear who should ultimately bear responsibility.

“A nightmare scenario is there’s no adequate response to keep the worst ‌from happening,” Amos explained. If no country is willing to take action, he says the vessel would “continue to break up under the steady onslaught of wind and waves and… lose the entire cargo,” resulting in “a spill upwards of 40 to 50 million gallons.”

More on toxic leaks: Meta’s AI Data Center Caught Leaking Deadly Bacteria Into Water Town Uses for Irrigation



Joe Wilkins
Correspondent


I’m a tech and labor correspondent for Futurism, where my beat includes the role of emerging technologies in governance, surveillance, and labor.

Alberta County Declares Farm Disaster After Approving $13B Meta Data Centre

Alberta County Declares Farm Disaster After Approving $13B Meta Data Centre
August 11, 2026
Reading time: 8 minutes

Full Story: The Energy Mix

Jody MacPherson




Giacomo Maestri for ECMWF/flickr

The Alberta county council that granted permits for Meta’s new $13-billion, climate-polluting, gas-powered artificial intelligence (AI) data centre has declared an agricultural disaster due to record-setting extreme weather attributed largely to climate change.

The county’s council held a special meeting August 6 to discuss the unfolding farm disaster in the municipality of 20,000 on the northern outskirts of Edmonton. They voted unanimously to send a letter to the provincial and federal governments requesting financial help for agricultural producers.

Councillor Deanna Stang said the reach of the disaster is “bigger than people anticipate.”

“This affects not just the cereal crops,” she said. “Come the fall, trying to get hay is going to be a challenge, and they’re going to have to cull their herd.”

Councillor Richard Boissonneault agreed, adding “we’re going to have some real challenges moving into threshing season here. Those fields are so wet, it’s unbelievable and I feel for all these people.”

In a news release, the county said the excessive moisture, localized flooding, and prolonged wet weather have “substantially affected field access, delayed seeding and harvest activities, hindered crop development, and reduced overall agricultural productivity.”

Sturgeon County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw did not agree to an interview or provide written answers to The Energy Mix’s questions about Meta data centre emissions and the climate change impacts on local farmers.

Sturgeon joined nearby Thorhild, Westlock, Wetaskiwin, and Beaver counties, all of which had already declared agricultural disasters, representing more than 13,600 square kilometres of the province.

Rob Siewert, chair of the Agricultural Service Board’s provincial committee, told CBC News that disaster declarations on their own do not automatically create funding or compensation, “but it does set the stage and gets the federal and provincial governments talking.”

Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation Minister Tara Sawyer did not respond to questions from The Mix about the agricultural disaster or the impacts of emissions from data centres on the province’s farming industry.

According to documents filed [pdf] with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC), Meta’s gas power plant would emit 5,677 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e) per year, equivalent to burning almost 3,000 tonnes of coal.

A recent poll by Leger found that 79% of Canadian respondents are concerned about the environmental impacts of data centres, including their greenhouse gas emissions.

In its own Climate Adaptation Plan written in 2022, Sturgeon County identified lowland flooding due to heavy precipitation as a high risk for the municipality as a result of climate change. Damaging heavy rainfall incidents of more than 10 millimetres in one day were estimated to be twice as likely to occur in the future.

Edmonton recently saw a deluge of more than 30 millimetres in one hour, CBC reported. And it’s not over, with the drenched ground and warmer temperatures expected to continue the pattern over the rest of the summer.

More than 533 millimetres of total rain fell June 1 to July 31, breaking the previous record of 417 mm. set in 1953. Heavy downpours caused flooding, road closures, toppled trees, power outages, and event cancellations. A City of Edmonton official said damage from the storms could cost up to $30 million.

Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Dan Fulton told CBC there are a couple of factors driving the heavy rainfall.

“It’s a combination of climate change, which is the warmer atmosphere, and the jet stream breaking down a little bit and not moving the storms on as much as they normally do—which might be a climate change thing, too, but that varies from year to year,” he said.

Just as the July storms were beginning to hammer the area, residents learned for the first time that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, would locate its first Canadian AI data centre in Sturgeon County. In a timeline provided by the county, residents discovered that Meta’s permit approvals were given without public input. This was possible because the council changed its land use bylaw more than a year ago, adding data centres as a permitted use within designated industrial zones.

According to the county’s website, development permits are often not made public until after they are approved. As long as the planned project matches zoning requirements, the site says officials don’t have to consult with the public, and may be constrained by non-disclosure agreements as well as provincial privacy laws.

Meta’s Sturgeon AI data centre will be located in a designated industrial zone and consume one gigawatt (GW) of electricity, enough to power about a million homes. The company has an agreement for gas-generated power supplied by the yet-to-be-built Greenlight Electricity Centre, a $4.6-billion project funded by Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, and Kineticor Asset Management. The power plant was approved [pdf] separately from the data centre by the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) in June.

Sturgeon County did not participate in the AUC hearing on Greenlight, according to the AUC decision letter. The AUC does not regulate [pdf] data centres, only the electricity required to run them.

Since Greenlight won’t be up and running until the second half of 2030, Meta has been allocated 970 megawatts (MW) from Alberta’s grid, almost enough to meet its full requirement for compute power. The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) is also preparing to open up an additional 1.6 GW of grid electricity to data centres on a temporary basis, raising concerns about price increases for ratepayers.

A second hyperscale AI data centre, the Beacon AI Heartland Data Centre Hub, is also close to being approved for Sturgeon County. It’s currently in the late stages of the AUC hearing process and will draw another 920 MW of electricity, also gas-powered.

The Beacon AI data centre and Greenlight were each exempted from an environmental impact assessment (EIA) by both the federal and provincial governments. According to the province’s website, environmental impact assessments are required “where the complexity and scale of a proposed project, technology, resource allocation, or siting considerations create uncertainty about the exact nature of environmental effects, or result in a potential for significant adverse environmental effects.”

Sabrina Perić, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Calgary and co-director of the Energy Stories Lab, wrote in her Substack newsletter that there is a pattern of “abbreviation of environmental review” in Alberta.

The government claimed on its newly-launched data centre web pages that EIA is reserved for projects involving “genuinely uncertain: new or complex technology, impacts that are hard to predict, or cumulative stress on a region.” But Perić said simply applying a “novelty test” is not what the law says.

“The statute could not be clearer that scale and cumulative burden are central,” she wrote. “The government’s website erased them and substituted a novelty test that appears nowhere in the Act.”

“It’s not just that big projects will face less environmental scrutiny, but that the people who live alongside these projects will have fewer and fewer official ways to object,” Petric added. “A novelty test that exempts almost everything is a novelty test that silences almost everyone.”

Alberta Innovation and Technology Minister Nate Glubish told reporters at the Meta announcement in early July the Meta project is indeed a first. He said Alberta’s data centre concierge team was “in talks with at least 60 different project proponents at this point in time.”

“There are several gigawatt-scale campus proposals that are in various stages of development,” he said. “This (Meta’s data centre) is the first of its kind, the first of this size, the first of this scale, but it won’t be the last.”

Another 39 large-load data centre projects are waiting in the wings with requests for a total of almost 20 GW of grid power, according to the AESO connection dashboard.

Glubish did not respond to The Mix’s questions about the agricultural disaster, recent court decisions about Meta’s child safety failures, or the impact of gas-powered data centre emissions. Meta did not respond to any questions from The Mix. Alberta’s Environment and Protected Areas Minister Grant Hunter did not respond to questions about environmental approvals or the environmental impact assessment of the Meta data centre. The data centre is not listed publicly on the AEPA website as currently undergoing an EIA.

Nathan Ip, Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP) shadow minister for technology and innovation, said in a statement that the NDP “shares Albertans’ concerns about the lack of environmental studies as well as what these data centres will do to our power and natural gas bills.”

Ip said his party caucus is holding a series of meetings “to hear directly from Albertans about where they stand on AI data centres,” and will “take the information gathered during this month’s listening tour to develop our AI data centre plan.”

The NDP did not answer The Mix’s detailed questions about the meetings or the agricultural disaster declaration, agreeing to an interview only after the public meetings were complete.

After the NDP launched its meetings, the provincial government announced its own series of town halls for Albertans “to ask questions and learn more about data centres.” The first takes place Aug. 19 in Ponoka and another will be held Aug. 20 in Sturgeon County, followed by a third Sept. 11 in Grande Prairie. Premier Danielle Smith will also join Glubish for a virtual town hall Aug. 27.
This story is part of The Energy Mix’s partnership with Small Change Fund.

Yanks are first MLB team to partner with Polymarket

 Yanks are first MLB team to partner with Polymarket

Caleb Bowlin/Getty Images

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game.

If you’re tired of seeing sports betting ads during games, well, sorry. Yesterday, the New York Yankees became the latest pro sports team—and the first in Major League Baseball—to make Polymarket an official prediction market partner.

The deal: Terms were not disclosed, but the deal runs through the end of the season. There will be ads behind home plate at Yankee Stadium that both in-person fans and TV viewers can see.

It’s a New York thing: The Mets were the first MLB team to join forces with a prediction market after they signed a multiyear deal with Novig in July.

But…New York is suing Polymarket’s rival, Kalshi, accusing it of operating an unlicensed gambling company in the state. While Polymarket isn’t named in the suit, the outcome would impact any deals it has in New York, including its existing partnership with the NHL’s Rangers.

Michigan drops letter grades for freshmen

 

Michigan drops letter grades for freshmen

Niv Bavarsky

Good news for anyone planning to wing it on their Victorian lit final (there are multiple Brontë sisters btw): The University of Michigan won’t release official grades for its freshmen’s first semester. The university said that the pivot to a pass/no credit system for first-semester classes is an effort to “curb the mental health crisis” among students.

The pilot program will start in the fall of 2027 and apply to the roughly 3,500 students who enter the College of Literature, Science, and Arts each year. Professors will still give students grades on assignments, and the school will internally track grades for scholarship and athletic requirements. But the letter grades won’t show up on students’ transcripts:

• The administration said the program is aimed at helping students transition to college-level work and explore courses that are more difficult without the risk that a bad grade early on would tank their GPAs.
• Critics outside the school argue the new approach creates entitlement and doesn’t do anything to improve mental health.

Whether you give it an A or a D, the idea isn’t new: Schools like the California Institute of Technology, Swarthmore College, and Wellesley College all have similar programs for first-semester grades. And MIT has been doing it since 1968.

Did students at Brown use ChatGPT to ace tests?

 

Did students at Brown use ChatGPT to ace tests?

Getty Images

In the scandal heard ’round the Ivy League, Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano accused his students of using AI to cheat on a take-home exam, and said the school was “meek” when presented with evidence.

And that evidence includes an abnormally large number of students with a masterful understanding of welfare economics and social choice theory:

• Serrano’s class swelled from the usual 30 pupils to 86 after announcing his course would have take-home exams.
• The average score on the take-home midterm was 96%, when it typically fell between 65%–80%.
• Serrano alerted students to his AI suspicions and decided to make the final in-person and worth 80% of the final grade.
• The average score on the final was a “historic low” of 48.6%.

A university spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that Serrano still “has not provided the necessary details” for the school to take action.

Serrano decided to administer the take-home tests in response to students expressing anxiety over being in a classroom following a mass shooting on campus during finals week last December.

A worrying trend: In a recent survey, 29.9% of Princeton students admitted to cheating with AI on an exam or assignment. A New York Times essay from a recent Stanford graduate said AI has become a “fact of life” at the school.

Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir, reaches its lowest water level on record

Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir, reaches its lowest water level on record

The Colorado River basin is a critical system for residents in the western U.S.
ByMatthew Glasser
August 7, 2026, 6:58 AM


Historic Lake Mead drought leads to disturbing discoveriesClimate change has lowered Lake Mead's water levels to record low. But as the lake dries, officials are discovering human remains that were once lost to the waters.

The water level at Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir by storage capacity, hit a record low on Thursday.

Lake Mead's pool elevation hit the new low at 1,040.50 feet, breaking the previous record of 1,040.58 feet set in July 2022, according to data published by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Friday.

The reservoir, formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, is located in Nevada and Arizona and supplies water to millions of U.S. residents.

Prolonged drought conditions and exceptionally low snowpack have contributed to the significant declines in water levels at several Colorado River Basin reservoirs this year.


The remains of a boat sit out of the water at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Apr. 01, 2026, Boulder City, Nev.
Ty Oneil/AP

Elevation at the nation's second largest reservoir, Lake Powell, was measuring at 3,521.43 feet as of Thursday, according to the Bureau of Reclamation-- nearing the previous record low of 3,519.92 feet set in April 2023 and the critical level needed for the reservoir to produce hydropower. A new record low at the Utah-Arizona reservoir could also be reached this month, projections show.

The Colorado River basin is a critical system for residents in the western U.S. and Mexico. The basin provides water for up to 40 million people and hydropower to the seven basin states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

Since the beginning of the year, hydrologists have been warning about the potential for water levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell to hit critical levels as a result of record-low snowpack over the winter months.

Much of the western U.S. entered the winter already grappling with drought conditions from lack of rain. But warmer-than-normal temperatures during the winter prevented snow from accumulating, which led to a lack of snowmelt flowing into watersheds once spring came.

Trade court upholds Trump's closure of 'de minimis' loophole

Trade court upholds Trump's closure of 'de minimis' loophole


Trade court upholds Trump’s closure of ‘de minimis’ loophole
Published Thu, Aug 13 20263:12 PM EDTUpdated Thu, Aug 13 20263:56 PM EDT

Kevin Breuninger@KevinWilliamB
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Key Points
A federal trade court upheld President Donald Trump’s elimination of the “de minimis” loophole, which allowed low-value goods to be imported to the U.S. tax free.
Trump, a major proponent of tariffs and other forms of protectionism, celebrated the continued closure of the exemption, which he claims has cost the U.S. billions of dollars in uncollected tax revenue.


U.S. President Donald Trump departs after a Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, U.S., July 31, 2026.
Nathan Howard | Reuters


A federal trade court on Thursday upheld President Donald Trump’s elimination of the “de minimis” exemption, which allowed goods valued under $800 to be imported to the U.S. tax free.

Trump, a major proponent of tariffs and other forms of protectionism, celebrated the continued closure of the loophole, which he claims has cost the U.S. billions of dollars in uncollected import-tax revenue.


Attorneys for the plaintiff, a Michigan-based auto-parts distributor, did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the ruling.

The company, Detroit Axle, had sued the Trump administration in May 2025, more than three months after Trump signed an executive order rescinding the de minimis exemption.

The plaintiff argued that Trump lacked the legal authority to scrap the loophole under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

Trump had used the same law to try to impose sweeping “liberation day” tariffs on nearly every country in the world last year. In February, the Supreme Court struck those duties down on the grounds that IEEPA did not authorize them.

But in Thursday’s ruling, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of International Trade found that the statute does allow Trump to scrap the de minimis exemption.


“In reaching this conclusion, we find that the President’s power to ‘nullify [or] void . . . exercising any . . . privilege’ does not run afoul of separation of powers principles,” they wrote in the order, quoting the law.

They concluded that, unlike in key cases challenging Trump’s global tariffs, the rescission of the duty-free loophole “is not an exercise of the power of the purse” and “is not an exercise of the power to legislate.” In striking down his global duties, the Supreme Court said Trump needed congressional approval.

The de minimis exemption was heavily exploited in the retail industry, especially by e-commerce giants like Shein and Temu that sell large quantities of low-price clothes and other goods.

Read more CNBC politics and policy coverage
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To take advantage of the exemption, some companies shipped individual packages directly from Chinese manufacturers to American consumers. Larger companies set up warehouses in Canada and Mexico and then sent individual shipments over the border one by one, allowing them to avoid costly tariffs, regardless of where the goods were manufactured.

Economists have warned that ending the exemption could disproportionately impact lower-income and minority American consumers who buy inexpensive goods online.

But Trump, in a Truth Social post Thursday afternoon, called the trade court’s ruling a “BIG WIN” on “one of the most DESPICABLE loopholes in American Trade Policy.”

De minimis “became a giant loophole for TARIFF Cheats” and was exploited by criminals shipping drugs and other illegal products into the U.S., Trump wrote.

“With the stroke of my mighty pen — NO AUTOPEN!!! — we ended this ridiculous giveaway, and made Foreign Goods play by the rules,” Trump boasted. “The Importers sued. Today, THEY LOST.”

— CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed to this report.

EU: Meta’s apps are so addictive they violate the law

 

EU: Meta’s apps are so addictive they violate the law

Matt Cardy/Getty Images

A European Union investigation has determined that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps are too addictive, presumably after regulators lost half a day watching cooking reels and clips of 20-year-old TV shows. Now, the European Commission wants Zuck and company to make some changes, or face massive fines.

What happened? EU investigators announced yesterday that Meta is currently in breach of the bloc’s Digital Services Act. Regulators said Meta didn’t fully consider how some of its app features fuel compulsive use by sending users, especially younger ones, into a zombified “autopilot mode.” Meta will now have time to propose remedies before a final judgment—and fines—are handed down. The European Commission has some suggestions:

• Disable autoplay and infinite scroll.
• Implement screen time breaks.
• Make its recommendation algorithm less “engagement-oriented.”

Fine line: If the preliminary findings are upheld, Meta could get fined up to 6% of its annual global revenue. The company said it disagrees with the report, pointing to its recent efforts to strengthen parental controls, but that it will “continue to engage constructively” with regulators.

And elsewhere in the Meta-verse…the company removed its controversial new Muse Image feature from Instagram, following days of complaints from users and Hollywood agencies and unions over how all IG accounts were opted in for their images to be used in the tool.

A near-collapse looms over the office-to-apt boom

 

A near-collapse looms over the office-to-apt boom

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

An increasingly popular way to ease the housing crisis just developed some cracks. Some financiers are rethinking their involvement in office-to-apartment conversions after the largest US project of this kind risked partial collapse earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Officials stabilized the former Pfizer headquarters that gave midtown Manhattan a major scare, but enthusiasm for future conversion projects could be on shakier ground. The WSJ spoke with infrastructure- and real estate experts, who now expect to see:

• More expensive builders’ insurance and stricter regulatory reviews, which could cause monthslong project delays.
• Softer appetites for complex office conversions. With the lead developer planning to add floors, a rooftop pool, and other expansions to the Pfizer building, its steel beams buckled under the added weight from the widening of ~15 upper levels, the developer told the WSJ.

That being said…one of the project’s main lenders is still “very bullish” on office-to-residential conversions, he told the WSJ. Similarly, others consider the near-collapse to be a mere anomaly that won’t foil future conversion plans.

Zoom out: The US started this year with ~90,000 new units in progress from office-to-apartment conversions—a 28% increase from last year, according to RentCafe. New York City commands the biggest share of that pipeline.

OpenAI Tried to Hire Influencers to Spread Love for Its Products

OpenAI Tried to Hire Influencers to Spread Love for Its Products, But It Backfired Horrendously
"People will literally sell their soul and their planet down the river for a nice free hotel room."

By Frank Landymore

Published Aug 6, 2026 2:58 PM EDT
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OpenAI’s attempt to boost its image by hiring influencers collided against a harsh reality: that it’s already become a fundamentally uncool company.

The Verge details how influencers recruited by the ChatGPT maker were flown out to its “first ever brand trip” at a nature retreat outside New York City. But rather than creating buzz for OpenAI, gaining widespread attention, or at least showcasing its products, the content that came out of its “Summer Club” campaign sparked fierce backlash against the influencers, who were branded “sellouts.”

“People will literally sell their soul and their planet down the river for a nice free hotel room,” one TikTok commenter quoted by the reporting seethed.

“Wow! Beautiful greenery! They should put a data center there!” another jeered.

It’s not uncommon for companies to rely on engagement bait — and even rage bait — to gain attention. But this didn’t appear to be an intentional maneuver on OpenAI’s part.

Most of these posts and videos barely get any attention, racking up only, at best, a few hundred likes and a few thousand views. But videos criticizing the OpenAI influencers — or “creators,” as the company prefers to refer to them — have racked up hundreds of thousands of views, including from other influencers who didn’t take the AI bag.

“They’re all a bunch of f*cking phony sellouts,” Meredith Lynch, a comedian known for her TikTok content, said in one viral call-out video.

As the influencers, most of them women, toted around branded merch and reveled in their bucolic surroundings, many couldn’t help but point out the hypocrisy of laundering the image of an industry whose data centers have perilous effects on the environment. The choice to select mostly women feels noteworthy, given that, as the Verge‘s reporting observes, women tend to view AI more negatively than men do.

What’s particularly baffling was how relatively little content came out of the trip, according to The Verge, with almost none of it actually about OpenAI’s chief product, ChatGPT. Instead it was “largely aspirational lifestyle content focused on the free swag and pretty setting” — with no clear idea on how it’s supposed to reflect on the company, other than the fact it’s willing to comp expensive trips for a small group of extremely vain people.

The company has made a big push recently to gain some cultural cachet. A few weeks ago, it launched a new line of clothing in a minimalist, trendy style — or at least trendy for five years ago, as if its fashion department had a knowledge cutoff date like its AI models. That, just like its influencer brand trip, was also met with mockery.

In a statement to The Verge, OpenAI defended its influencer marketing scheme and said the event was meant to be educational.

“Creators are an important part of our community and how people get information and learn about our products today,” a spokesperson told the outlet. “We welcome healthy debate as AI becomes more prevalent, and we value creators who choose to engage with us, attend our events, ask tough questions, and learn alongside everyone else. We’ll continue to value them, just as we do traditional media and other marketing partners.”

More on OpenAI: Sam Altman’s Parenting Strategy Sounds Low Key Horrifying



Frank Landymore
Contributing Writer


I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.

New EU border security is causing airport chaos

 

New EU border security is causing airport chaos

Dursun Aydemir/Getty Images

You shall not pass through Europe without waiting in line to provide biometrics, despite protest from top travel officials. This week, the EU rejected calls from the aviation industry to suspend new fingerprinting and facial recognition border controls that have led to hourslong disruptions at some European airports.

ICYMI: The new Entry/Exit System (EES), which launched in April, requires all 25 EU members (plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland) to collect biometrics from noncitizens upon entry and confirm their identities upon departure.

But the confusing system is making some would-be visitors reconsider traveling to Europe:

• With airports reporting insufficient border control staffing, vacation hot spots like Spain and Italy have been plagued by delays and missed connecting flights.
• Nearly every day this summer, airports in Rome have had to partially suspend the system’s biometric collection, which can be done for only six hours at a time.

Though EU officials admitted that EES is “not perfect,” they said the benefits outweigh the costs—about 44,500 travelers have been turned away at the border under the new system. The second-most-common reason for denied entry was overstaying 90 days of visitation, a violation that dual-nationality passengers previously could evade by using multiple passports.

This small fish is making big market waves

This small fish is making big market waves

Niv Bavarsky

On Wednesdays, the Brew’s Sam Klebanov highlights a fascinating stock, commodity, or other asset that’s worth your attention.

Amid a shortage of anchovies, prices for the teeny fish are surging—which could inflate your grocery bill even if you shun Caesar salad. That’s because the umami treat is a vital ingredient in the fishmeal used by the $500 billion farmed seafood industry.

Fishmeal prices skyrocketed 80% as production shrank by 40% over the last year, Bloomberg reported. And, for once, a maritime supply chain issue has nothing to do with the Strait of Hormuz:

• Warming Pacific waters from an unusually strong El Niño weather event this year is upending some nutrient-rich ecosystems that sustain anchovies.
• That’s led to shrinking catches in Peru, Ecuador, and Chile, the anchovy superpowers that together produce nearly a third of the world’s fishmeal.

Lox becomes an even bigger splurge: Per Bloomberg, the fishmeal crunch will likely push up costs at fish farms (which account for over half of the global fish supply), leading to higher seafood prices at the supermarket. 

The NCAA tells athletes they need a 5-year plan

 The NCAA tells athletes they need a 5-year plan

David Buono/Getty Images

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game. The NCAA announced a new rule that all but ends the phenomenon of athletes staying in college for so long that you’d think they were professors, not middle linebackers. Starting in the 2027–28 academic year, the sport’s governing body is limiting eligibility to five years and only allowing extra years in special circumstances, like pregnancy or military service. A student-athlete’s clock starts when they start school or the academic year after they turn 19—whichever comes first. But hold on: A lawsuit contesting the rule has already been filed, and more are expected. Athletes who enrolled in 2022 who aren’t eligible for a fifth year say it’s unfair because they had to compete against much older players during their careers. It’s also a money issue: The complaint argues that the rule unfairly impacts the ability of 2022 enrollees to earn name, image, and likeness (NIL) money. In some cases, college athletes can make seven figures from NIL deals. Up next: A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday to rule on a request for a preliminary injunction.

Remember Anthropic’s AI going rogue?

Remember Anthropic’s AI going rogue? Then OpenAI’s AI also did something similar and hacked other services? And then Meta said its Muse AI did something similar? Well, now it’s the turn of Chinese AI models that are regularly sending Wall Street into a tizzy.

Moonshot's Kimi K3 is the second Chinese AI model now reported to have escaped its testing environment. At this point, it feels like a race to the “my AI is more dangerously powerful.” Regulators are watching this PR battle rather closely, by the way.

How about a pre-AI blast from the past? Before Google turned the web into a tidy, searchable index, finding anything online meant wandering. This week's tech news pulls in two directions at once, and the gap between them is what makes it strange. On one end sits nostalgia: a look back at the messy, human-curated internet we traded away for convenience.

It was gloriously disorganized before Google rationalized the mess into something you could actually search, and in doing so it quietly retired a version of the internet that ran on human attention instead of ranking algorithms. Of course, Google also injected AI in each corner, and did social media sites. And that brings us to our final story. The purge on AI slop has actually caught social media influencers as collateral damage. What a mess!

Send us feedback at editorial@digitaltrends.com.

You might automatically own a slice of SpaceX

 You might automatically own a slice of SpaceX

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images

For many people, investing in SpaceX is now a matter of doing nothing. Elon Musk’s space and AI company became part of the Nasdaq-100 index today, two weeks after it IPO-ed. This means funds tracking the index, like Invesco’s popular QQQ ETF, are forced to buy the stock, adding it to the portfolios of millions of passive retail investors. While it usually takes months for a newly public company to join the index, Nasdaq recently created an accelerated process for megacap stocks like SpaceX. While SpaceX is the first to benefit, rivals Anthropic and OpenAI are also likely to use it after their forthcoming IPOs. Obligatory buy SpaceX’s inclusion in the index could make the stock even more volatile: Though SpaceX will make up less than 1% of the Nasdaq-100’s value, funds tracking the index will have to buy as much as $4.3 billion of its shares, JPMorgan estimates. Since less than 5% of SpaceX shares are currently available for public trading, ETFs piling into the stock could create scarcity, boosting its price in the short-term. Meanwhile, some retail investors who think SpaceX is overvalued or oppose Musk’s politics are ditching major ETFs for custom funds that exclude the stock, Bloomberg reported. SpaceX won’t be joining the S&P 500 soon…since the most popular stock index recently rejected the company’s request for expedited entry.

Finance Interactive Dictionary – RG Richardson

Finance Interactive Dictionary – RG Richardson


Author: R.G.Richardson
Finance Interactive Dictionary – multi-language search update



Author: R.G.Richardson
Finance Interactive Dictionary – multi-language search updated 2026. Balancing the definitions between the old and the new! A biannually updated series of economics, Markets, Finance, Money, and Banking.

This search is in English, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Indian, Portuguese and Japanese!
Economic Interactive Notes, Financial Market, Money and Banking terms and definitions with over 9900 quick links! Great for students or anybody who wants to keep up with all the terminology. This is a live interactive series that helps guide you and keeps you up to date on all the economic terminology past and present, including access to charts, graphs and video presentations on the subject. An educational learning tool that keeps businesses and students on the same page! This is all about pick and click, no more typing, with over 9900 preset searches for 8 search engines, including Qwant! These guides never go out of date due to the power of the internet! You can now avoid spelling mistakes and language difficulties, making the guide simple enough even for those with learning disabilities to use. Pick and click on the icon, never goes out of date! Interactive internet pages!

A must-have for ever-changing financial definitions between the old and the new!
Since 2003
eComTechnology/RGRichardson©2026
Assign Centre, ISBN Division
Library and Archives Canada
Author R.G. Richardson
Victoria, BC. Canada V8R 5G9


Updated 07/2026ed 2026. Balancing the definitions between the old and the new! A biannually updated series of economics, Markets, Finance, Money, and Banking.

The never-sell-Bitcoin company just sold Bitcoin

 

The never-sell-Bitcoin company just sold Bitcoin

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Getty Images

It’s like if your uncle who insists on holding on to his 1970s suits agreed to a garage sale. The company Strategy, whose business model is buying Bitcoin with money raised from investors and vowing to never sell it…sold $216 million of the cryptocurrency at a loss recently.

So, why now? Strategy took a hit after the price of Bitcoin plummeted almost 50% from its peak last October, sending Strategy’s stock down 75% in the past year. This week, the company reported an $8.3 billion loss in Q2 from the eroding value of its crypto holdings. Now, Strategy is offloading Bitcoin to pay back shareholders and build up its US dollar reserves.

It’s selling the dip: While the company bought its Bitcoin at an average of $75,476 per token, it sold it in two waves last week for $59,256 and $60,773.

But Strategy still owns 843,775 Bitcoin, amounting to about 4% of the market’s supply and making it one of the world’s largest corporate holders of the asset.

There may still be reason to HODL: The Bitcoin behemoth ditching its never-sell credo temporarily dented the token’s price. But Bitcoin got a boost on Monday after President Trump called himself “a big crypto guy,” when asked whether the asset will be included in the federally-seeded investment portfolios for newborns aka Trump Accounts.