On Thursday, Donald Trump called off the Pentagon’s highly controversial plans to livestream a firing squad execution that is still on schedule for December 3.

Trump supports the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood. But sources close to Trump told CNN that the president was blindsided last week when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the event—which is the first US execution of a soldier since World War II—would be livestreamed.

Backlash to the livestream was immediate and crossed political divides. On the morning Trump canceled the plans, an ABC News poll found 8 in 10 Americans were against the livestream, including a 55 percent majority of MAGA Republicans.

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Following a string of incidents where AI models hacked websites and breached government systems during testing phases, the Federal Trade Commission is officially probing Anthropic and OpenAI over consumer harms, an insider told Axios.

On Wednesday, the FTC sent out civil investigative demands seeking a wide range of information from the AI firms on recent safety incidents.

The FTC did not respond to Ars’ request to review the subpoena demands. However, Axios’ source said the requests spanned more than 50 pages of questions and sought documents related to the incidents, internal security measures taken, and marketing materials that may suggest consumers were misled.

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Likely in the next few weeks, a federal judge will decide if Donald Trump can become the first president to personally profit from selling early access to government information in his social media posts.

At a hearing Wednesday, Department of Justice civil attorney Brantley Mayers argued that there was no conflict whatsoever with Trump charging up to $100,000 monthly for instant API access to Truth Social posts that often break news from his administration.

Trump is the largest stakeholder and majority owner of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company that owns Truth Social, and the value of the API access comes largely from Trump’s role as president.

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One of Donald Trump’s biggest goals as president is to increase domestic manufacturing and reshore supply chains so that the most in-demand technologies in the world can be 100 percent made in the United States.

By executive order last December, he launched his “Genesis Mission,” an ambitious plan seeking to leverage US dominance in AI to maintain or seize an edge in advanced robotics, biotechnology, semiconductors, and nuclear technologies. According to Trump, that plan works best with self-sustaining supply chains. Not even neighboring countries or longtime allies should be relied upon to manufacture a single component of any US product in his ideal world.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has long warned that Trump’s reshoring goals are not grounded in reality, but only recently has America’s largest technology trade association attempted to estimate what it would cost businesses and consumers to follow through on Trump’s plan.

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