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President Donald Trump appears to have walked back plans for the U.S. State Department to scrutinize and revoke visas for Chinese students studying in the country.
On June 11, 2025, Trump posted on his social media platform TruthSocial that visas for Chinese students would continue and that they are welcome in the United States, as their presence has always been good with me!
The announcement came weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that his department would begin scrutinizing and revoking student visas for Chinese nationals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, or whose studies are in critical fields.
The contradictory moves have led to confusion among Chinese students attending college or considering studying in the United States.
Over time, Chinese nationals have faced barriers to studying in the U.S. As a scholar who studies relations between the two nations, I argue that efforts to ban Chinese students in the United States are not unprecedented, and historically they have come with consequences.
Student visas under fire
Since the late 1970s, millions of Chinese students have been granted visas to study at American universities. That total includes approximately 277,000 who studied in the United States in the 20232024 academic year.
It is difficult to determine how many of these students would have been affected by a ban on visas for individuals with Chinese Community Party affiliations or in critical fields.
Approximately 40% of all new members of the Chinese Communist Party each year are drawn from Chinas student population. And many universities in China have party connections or charters that emphasize party loyalty.
The critical fields at risk were not defined. A majority of Chinese students in the U.S. are enrolled in math, technology, science, and engineering fields.
A long history
Yung Wing became the first Chinese student to graduate from a U.S. university in 1852.
Since then, millions of Chinese students have come to the United States to study, supported by programs such as the Chinese Educational Mission, Boxer Indemnity Fund scholarships, and the Fulbright Program.
The Institute for International Education in New York estimated the economic impact of Chinese students in the U.S. at over US$14 billion a year. Chinese students tend to pay full tuition to their universities. At the graduate level, they perform vital roles in labs and classrooms. Just under half of all Chinese students attending college in the U.S. are graduate students.
However, there is a long history of equating Chinese migrants as invaders, spies or risks to national security.
After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the U.S. Department of Justice began to prevent Chinese scholars and students in STEM fieldsscience, technology, engineering, and mathfrom returning to China by stopping them at U.S. ports of entry and exit. They could be pulled aside when trying to board a flight or ship and their tickets canceled.
In one infamous case, Chinese rocket scientist Qian Xuesen was arrested, harassed, ordered deported, and prevented from leaving over five years from 1950 to 1955. In 1955, the United States and China began ambassadorial-level talks to negotiate repatriations from either country. After his experience, Qian became a much-lauded supporter of the Communist government and played an important role in the development of Chinese transcontinental missile technology.
During the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice raided Chinatown organizations looking for Chinese migrants who arrived under false names during the Chinese Exclusion Era, a period from the 1880s to 1940s when the U.S. government placed tight restrictions on Chinese immigration into the country. A primary justification for the tactics was fear that the Chinese in the U.S. would spy for their home country.
Between 1949 and 1979, the U.S and China did not have normal diplomatic relations. The two nations recognized each other and exchanged ambassadors starting in January 1979. In the more than four decades since, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. has increased dramatically.
Anti-Chinese discrimination
The idea of an outright ban on Chinese student visas has raised concerns about increased targeting of Chinese in the U.S. for harassment.
In 1999, Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested on suspicion of using his position at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to spy for China. Lee remained imprisoned in solitary confinement for 278 days before he was released without a conviction.
In 2018, during the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice launched its China Initiative. In its effort to weed out industrial, technological, and corporate espionage, the initiative targeted many ethnic Chinese researchers and had a chilling effect on continued exchanges, but it secured no convictions for wrongdoing.
rump again expressed concerns last year that undocumented migrants from China might be coming to the United States to spy or build an army.
The repeated search for spies among Chinese migrants and residents in the U.S. has created an atmosphere of fear for Chinese American communities.
Broader foreign policy context
The U.S. plan to revoke visas for students studying in the U.S. and the Chinese response is being formed amid contentious debates over trade.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian accused the U.S. of violating an agreement on tariff reduction the two sides discussed in Geneva in May, citing the visa issues as one example.
Trump has also complained that the Chinese violated agreements between the countries, and some reports suggest that the announcement on student visas was a negotiating tactic to change the Chinese stance on the export of rare earth minerals.
When Trump announced his trade deal with China on June 11, he added a statement welcoming Chinese students.
However, past practice shows that the atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion may have already damaged the climate for Chinese international students, and at least some degree of increased scrutiny of student visas will likely continue regardless.
Meredith Oyen is an associate professor of history and Asian studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Gen Z, the youngest generation of workers, is embracing artificial intelligence at the office. Still, according to a new survey, while AI may help with productivity and automating tasks, the technology also has big impacts on mental health and it allows for some sneaky work behaviorwith men being the worst offenders.
Resume Genius recently surveyed 1,000 full-time Gen Z employees on how they’re using AI at work and how they feel about its place at the office. Overall, 60% said AI helps them work faster and with less effort, and 56% said the technology improved the accuracy and quality of their work. Meanwhile, 42% believed AI had helped them get new opportunities on the job.
The dark side of AI
Using AI isn’t all sunshine and rosesor, rather, whirlwind productivity. There are personal drawbacks: 37% of respondents said they feel replaceable, and 18% said they could no longer perform their tasks without AI and would have to quit their jobs if it was banned. AI is also taking a hefty toll on mental health: 23% of Gen Zers believe the technology is negatively impacting their mental health, while 39% said that the constant updates that come with AI are “burning them out.” Nearly half of Gen Z workers (49%) believed that the technology could lead to unfair biases.
Alarmingly, Gen Z employees are also using AI in ways that are unethical. Almost a third (31%) have used AI in ways that they know break company policies, including sharing internal data. A staggering 39% said they use AI to automate tasks without their managers permission, and 14% said they are doing so often or always. And nearly one-third of workers (30%) are straight-up using AI to generate fake work in an effort to look more productive.
The gender gap widens
Theres a large gender gap with AI use: 71% of Gen Z men surveyed said they used AI to prioritize tasks and organize their schedule, compared with 48% of Gen Z women. Meanwhile, 69% of Gen Z men said they use AI to check their work or to get feedback, versus 48% of Gen Z women.
With great use also comes more opportunity for wrongdoing. More men are using AI and more men are also using AI to cheat: 40% of Gen Z men said they have passed AI-generated work off as their own. Only 20% of Gen Z women said the same.
Interestingly, men also feel less secure at work. Over 40% of Gen Z men said they worried AI could take their jobs. Only 33% of Gen Z women said the same. And while 23% of Gen Z men said they couldnt do their jobs without AI, only 14% of Gen Z women felt similarly.
“Its clear that AI is becoming an everyday support system for many Gen Z professionals,” said Eva Chan, a career expert at Resume Genius. “But its also becoming their go-to solution when they dont know what to say or do, and how to handle tough situations. The concern is when workers start outsourcing not just tasks, but their judgment, confidence, and even their voice. If were not careful, we could see a generation that struggles to make decisions without AI hand-holding.
Public servants today face a double burden: Theyre simultaneously charged with running our most important community functionslike disaster preparedness and administering electionswhile the technology at their disposal is outdated and ill-fitted to the job.
The rise of AI has upended how private companies operate, but public servants across agencies lack AI tools designed specifically with government work in mind.
In a perfect world, public servants could trust mass-market AI. But provisioning critical services requires a high bar. Quickly deploying technology prone to generating inaccuracies is an unacceptable tradeoff for those solving societys hardest problems. Few of us would be happy to get our mail a day earlier if it meant 10% of our mail never came. The tradeoff is more acute when public servants are working to end homelessness or reinvigorating economic development.
AI is more accurate and useful for government employees when it’s built atop core data assets like documents and emails and the contextual metadata around those assetsinformation like who shared documents, when they were shared, and the conversations that surrounded them.
Public sector AI requires context
The massive opportunity to empower public servants and improve government operations with functional, reliable AI tools comes not from training larger, smarter models, but ensuring AI has context.
Context is everything because government operations depend upon the local partners, procedures, history, and regulations of a community of practitioners. For AI to work for public servants, it must understand the context well enough to generate accurate information.
Todays AI tools fall short because they lack contextual metadata. Without this information, AI is not fit for purpose. Public servants cannot sacrifice accuracy for speed.
Siloed technology destroys context
Government work is inherently collaborative. Cybersecurity officials work with state and federal counterparts, and homelessness coordinators work with public health departments. But there is a fundamental mismatch between the collaborative nature of government work and the silos of most technology.
Todays AI tools generally serve single organizations, lacking functionality to enable cross-agency collaboration. When FEMA responds to disasters, utilities, hospitals, shelters, and community organizations all play key roles. Public servants coordinate these nongovernment partners, but isolated AI systems can only access information within their own agenciesmissing the context that lives across organizations.
And the work doesn’t happen in siloed agency folders. It happens in email threads, texts, unshared working documents, and view-only, versioned, and immediately outdated shared documents. These disconnected digital workspaces destroy context. But this is a technology problemwhat does a context-rich technology look like?
The government operations tech stack
Effective government AI must be attentive to the different technology layers that underpin the work of public servants. We can visualize the government operations tech stack in four layers:
Layer 1: SystemsThe first, foundational, layer comprises the file storage systems: OneDrive, SharePoint, local folders, Outlook, and other repositories. While this is where key information often lives, it is rarely well-organized or accessible to outside partners.
Layer 2: ResourcesThis refers to the resources themselves. Think individual files like memos, spreadsheets, SOPs, and more. While enterprise AI systems can access one organizations documents, they miss the critical context of how and why these resources were shared, who created them, and what discussions they generated.
Layer 3: Coordination The coordination layer encompasses emails, texts, events, direct messages, and video communications. This is where cross-organization collaboration happens and where ongoing discussions shape decisions. It contains the three sentence email from the 30-year department veteran, who succinctly explained where an internal policy originated, why it was created, and which parts no longer apply. This is institutional knowledge shared in real-time. AI tools without access to the coordination layer are set up for failure.
Layer 4: InterfaceThe interface layer is where public servants make use of the data across layers. And this is where purpose-built AI can make an impact. Government officials should be able to get immediate answers without needing to recall whether information lives in a shared drive, email, video call, or calendar event. And the interface layer doesnt end with a search it should enable the next step, whether thats drafting a policy, connecting with a subject matter expert, or reaching out to partners.
Atop digital layers are public servants making decisions and taking action. This is where policy meets practice, where coordination becomes execution, and where community needs are met.
Only context-rich AI can reliably scale public impact
An AI interface with the full contextual metadata of government operationsthe systems, resources, and coordination layersbecomes transformative. An elections official searching for polling center volunteers finds not just the sign-up sheet in their drive, but also the follow-up email from a facilities manager identifying the correct entrance, the text from a sick volunteer needing replacement, and the recent listserv discussion correcting the record about the polling location entrance. AI with this context provides a complete operational picture, not isolated documents that become outdated as soon as theyre created.
During emergency response, an AI with contextual access can connect FEMA policies with real-time partner communications, community feedback, and operational updates. Instead of just knowing what documents exist, the AI understands who shared critical information, when situations changed, and why certain decisions were made, enabling more effective coordination and faster response times.
This contextual AI doesn’t just provide informationit provides traceable, auditable insights that public servants can trust and act upon. It connects users not only to the right documents but to the right people and the right conversations, embedded within their specific community and operational context.
The vision is clear: AI that lives where government work happens, with access to the full collaborative environment across organizations. When deployed with complete contextual metadata, AI can empower public servants to make a bigger impact while maintaining the accuracy and accountability needed. Government operations are fundamentally about coordination and context, and AI must reflect this reality to succeed in the public sector.
Madeleine Smith is cofounder and CEO of Civic Roundtable.
The healthcare industry has many ills. The payer-provider disconnect creates confusion, limits access, and exacerbates inefficiencies. Doctor and nurse burnout has led to widespread staffing shortages. This is compounded by aging infrastructure, outdated regulation, fragmented care delivery, and overly-complicated legacy systems. The list goes on. But there is a particular cancer that we could eliminate tomorrow: big consulting firms.
Every year, American healthcare systems spend hundreds of millions of dollars on consulting firms that deliver PDFs instead of solutions. While patients suffer and clinicians burn out, these legacy firms collect their checks and move onleaving implementation challenges to healthcare institutions they’ve diagnosed but failed to treat.
Proponents of the Big Five consulting model would argue that sclerotic institutions need an untainted outsider to parachute in. Someone who isn’t married to the nuances of an existing system. But theorizing is easy to do when you’re not tethered to the results. In healthcare, it’s not just financial results the consultants are off the hook for, it’s people’s lives.
What do providers get with a legacy consulting firm? Well, a sizable stack of documents. With massive fees to match. While a 300-page PDF may impress at first blush, it won’t lead to actionable, sustainable solutions. It certainly won’t allow the health system to rapidly test and refine new models of care delivery, proving which ideas do and dont work in practice.
Time pressure and fitting solutions in boxes
At Cactus, the design firm I cofounded, one of our clients was let go from a major health system as part of a big consulting cost-cutting round. He had been working to reduce staffing shortages and developed a novel method for care teams to work together more efficiently, freeing up precious time for overworked nurses. Despite having proven results, he was let go because the consultants couldnt fit his already-implemented, already-proven solution into their model. He has now founded a business to sell that same method to health systems as a SaaS business.
Traditional consulting firms also worsen a key challenge in healthcare: time pressure. Most health systems plan year-to-year based on government reimbursements. With revenue cycles already complex, consultants often default to short-term cost cuttingan easier sell than long-term change. The result? Innovation stalls, patient experience suffers, and the cycle repeats.
If it’s so difficult, why not just leave healthcare alone?
Because clearly, patients want better services. And by and large, those closest to the patient aren’t the problem. There is an abundance of clinical excellence in the United States but this doesn’t always translate to the best outcomes or patient experiences. The disconnect lies in how we approach system-level change.
While working with a leading cancer center, my team found a big pain point for doctors: low compliancein other words patients werent following instructions. Research revealed that while treatment plans (housed in large binders) were technically sound, they werent tailored to patients. As a result, patients would underperform. We found that clearer communication, organized around actionable items and digestible content, could drive meaningful improvement. This user experiencefirst investigation, which centered on the needs of both doctors (frustrated by low compliance) and patients (overwhelmed by information), is rarely prioritized in traditional consulting models but is core to a more modern, design-led approach.
The house renovation problem
Imagine you’re renovating a Victorian mansion with a funky layout. The big consulting approach would be to tell the construction team to spend the allotted budget on turning the largest bedroom into two bedrooms, thereby increasing the home value. Maybe they’d advise a fresh coat of light grey paint, chosen to be least likely to offend potential buyers. But what if the person buying the home doesn’t have people to fill those bedrooms? What if they would be happier with a bolder color? What if in the process of splitting the bedroom, the floorboards are found to have mold? Well, the suit-clad consultants are already gone. You’re on your own, kid.
Now imagine a design-led approach. In this scenario, the firm leading strategy is also the one implementing the changes. They spend the budget shifting the plumbing, dealing with mold issues as they arise. They don’t add another bedroom because it’s not needed, even if it would theoretically increase value. They try out a few paint swatches and see market appetite for bolder colors. Buyers are happierthey’re willing to pay more! Everyone wins.
From slide decks to solutions
Apply this rubric to healthcare. A design-led approach can balance strategic and business goals with the realities of user experience and complexities of implementation. Consultants that also build can pilot innovations faster, see results faster, reducing overall risk and cost. This type of team can rapidly experiment and improve in a virtuous cycle like the best startups do.
Design-led consulting firms that implement their own changes also have a higher stake in outcomes. They create working prototypes before prescribing final solutions. They iterate based on real-world feedback. This way mistakes are found fast and plans are adjusted before scaling, saving cost and allowing faster and more thorough implementation.
A call to healthcare leaders
To healthcare leaders, I ask: What could you ship in the next 90 days with a design-led approach? What might still be sitting in a binder three years from now with traditional consulting? If the answer is something that could change people’s lives, and I suspect it is, it might be time to ditch the big guys.
Design-led firms offer a fundamentally different relationship: partners who share your risk, commit to real-world results, and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty implementing solutions. They bring technical talent alongside strategic thinking. They work in weeks, not quarters. Most importantly, they are judged by what they build, not what they recommend.
The question isn’t whether you can afford this approach. The question is whether you can afford not to try it. Because while big consulting firms continue collecting their checks for delivering their slide decks, your patients and workforce are waiting for something better. They deserve it. And with the right partners, you can finally deliver it.
Noah Waxman is CEO and cofounder at Cactus.
America’s behavioral health workforce is in crisis. Burnout is accelerating, waitlists are expanding, and clinicians are transitioning away from the field at alarming ratesnot because their passion has diminished, but because the administrative burden has become overwhelming. These departures represent one of the most significant labor challenges in our industry with its impact felt across communities nationwide.
Every week, I talk to leaders running certified behavioral health agencies across the country, and their message is consistent: Leaders aren’t seeking technological disruption. They’re desperate for breathing room to retain staff, serve more clients, and maintain compliance without drowning in documentationa fundamental workforce sustainability issue.
When artificial intelligence enters the conversation, many approach it with justified skepticism. This caution stems from two critical concerns: First, behavioral health has endured its share of overhyped technology that promised transformation but delivered frustration; second, and equally important, is the critical issue of regulatory compliance, privacy, and data security in this intensely regulated field.
Documentation: The critical foundation for reimbursement and compliance
In behavioral health, documentation forms the foundation for intake, clinical interactions, reimbursement, compliance, and broader care accountability. Providers rightfully question whether AI-generated notes (where technology assists in creating clinical documentation) will withstand audits or satisfy complex regulatory requirements. AI technology not only facilitates the creation of clinically relevant documentation but also enhances oversight capabilities and ensures full auditability of all generated content.
The daily reality for most providers involves hours of note-taking, repetitive scheduling, and navigating documentation systems never designed for behavioral health’s unique compliance demands. We call this “administrative burden,” but the term fails to capture the resulting exhaustion that drives talented clinicians from the field.
According to a recent study by Google Cloud and The Harris Poll, U.S. clinicians spend nearly 28 hours weekly on administrative tasksover half of their work week, with 82% reporting burnout. In behavioral health’s already resource-constrained environment, this burden often becomes the breaking point for dedicated professionals, contributing to a sector-wide labor shortage.
Find solutions in thoughtful AI implementation
With clinicians overwhelmed with documentation that causes burnout, behavioral health professionals need solutions that work for them. This is where carefully designed AI tools show great promise. Early AI implementations focused on documentation and administrative workflows are demonstrating measurable benefits when developed with clinician input and compliance requirements at the forefront.
Organizations deploying these tools thoughtfully see tangible impact: In our current deployments, clinicians are reporting up to 80% reduction in clinical note-taking time as technology listens and drafts notes in the background. Smart assistants help staff locate resources without interrupting care. Intake workflows become more efficient, shortening the gap between a client’s first call and first session. These tools don’t put an end to compliance complexitythey help manage it while creating space for providers to be present.
Care gets better when clinicians are supported
I remember hearing directly from a patient that during his initial session, his provider never once made eye contact with him. Instead, they were focused on their computer, furiously typing notes and immersed in updating his electronic health record (EHR).
Fortunately, thats where we repeatedly see that AI can improve care delivery. By removing needless administrative work, behavioral health clinicians have more time to form connections and spend more time with their clients, achieving better outcomes. According to our customers, 50% say they feel more connected to their clients without increasing hours and 60% say they feel more connected to their patients now that theyre not documenting during sessions. I also hear from clinicians that they see greater consistency in their care plans with fewer missed handoffs.
These aren’t merely efficiency gains, but restoration of human capacity essential for building trust, ensuring continuity, and addressing complex behavioral health needsall critical factors in workforce retention.
AI won’t fix everything
To be clear, AI isn’t a silver bullet. It won’t resolve funding challenges, address workforce shortages, rebuild trust between providers and policymakers, or guarantee that alternative payment models work effectively for behavioral health.
What it can do is create breathing room and greater capacity by providing clinicians with the margin needed to practice what they are trained for. In a field where every additional hour with a client, every prevented resignation, and every accelerated intake process can transform a life, that support matters profoundly.
3 critical elements for success
For AI to deliver on its promise in behavioral health, its important to focus on three critical elements: clinical expertise driving development, seamless integration into existing workflows, and evaluation against regulatory standards.
The most effective AI tools are designed with clinicians informing their development, refined with their feedback, and tested against compliance standards and regulations during audits.
Behavioral health needs meaningful innovationtools that honor the work, alleviate friction, and strengthen the relationship between clinician and client. This will help preserve our essential mental health workforce to our social infrastructure
Josh Schoeller is CEO of Qualifacts.
This morning, the worlds largest telescope revealed its first-ever images of spaceand theyre pretty jaw-dropping.
The images come courtesy of the NSFDOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a scientific facility funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Located at the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile, the facility is the product of more than 20 years of work. Its space cameraembedded in the hulking Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)is about the size of a small car and includes a sensor array of 3 billion pixels, the most sensors ever used in a telescope camera.
According to a press release from the Rubin Observatory, its expected to generate an ultrawide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the universe.
It will bring the sky to life with a treasure trove of billions of scientific discoveries, the release reads. The images will reveal asteroids and comets, pulsating stars, supernova explosions, far-off galaxies, and perhaps cosmic phenomena that no one has seen before.
The most efficient Solar System discovery machine ever built
In just its first 10-hour test observation, unveiled today, the LSST managed to capture images that include millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars, as well as more than 2,000 never-before-seen asteroids within our solar system. Taken together, the photos illustrate a technicolor view of space at a mind-boggling scalebut the 10 million galaxies photographed by the LSST represent only 0.05% of the roughly 20 billion galaxies that the camera is expected to record within the next decade.
The primary goal of the LSST is to complete a 10-year survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky, capturing hundreds of images and around 20 terabytes of data per night throughout that period. Per the Rubin Observatory, this massive influx of data will make the LSST the most efficient and effective solar system discovery machine ever built. All of the captured data will be made available online, allowing astronomers across the globe to access countless new findings without physical access to the telescope.
The LSST is designed to advance four main areas of study: understanding the nature of dark matter and dark energy; creating an inventory of the solar system; mapping the Milky Way; and exploring the transient optical sky (studying objects that move or change in brightness). Experts predict that, given its capacity to identify millions of unseen asteroids, comets, and interstellar objects, the camera could even help protect the planet by spotting objects on a trajectory toward the Earth or moon.
NSFDOE Rubin Observatory will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined, Brian Stone, chief of staff at the National Science Foundation, said in a press release. Through this remarkable scientific facility, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe.
This morning, the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk announced the abrupt end of its brief partnership with telehealth company Hims & Hers Health, Inc. (NYSE: HIMS), citing concerns over Hims & Hers knock-off weight loss drugs. Now, Hims & Hers shares are plummeting as investors react to the news.
Its the latest update in a somewhat volatile year for Hims & Hers. Just this April, the companys stock spiked after it initially announced a collaboration with Novo Nordisk that allowed Hims & Hers to sell Novo Nordisks FDA-approved weight loss drug, Wegovy, through its platform. But less than two months later, that partnership is fracturing after Novo Nordisks claim that Hims & Hers engaged in deceptive promotion and selling of illegitimate, knockoff versions of Wegovy that put patient safety at risk.
At the time of this writing, HIMS stock is down 32.6% since market open. Heres what to know about the break-up:
The shortage that fueled knock-off Wegovy
Back in 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared a shortage of GLP-1 medications including Ozempic and Wegovy. Under this shortage notice, pharmacies were permitted to make compounded versions of the brand name drugs using their active ingredient, semaglutide, and sell them at a lower cost. Hims & Hers was one company that took part in selling a compoundedand non-FDA-approvedversion of Wegovy.
Then, this February, the FDA announced that Ozempic and Wegovy were no longer categorized under a shortage. With the brand name drugs fully back on the market, the FDA gave compounders 60 to 90 days to stop making copies of the patented drugs.
At the time, Hims & Hers stated in a regulatory filing that, while it saw pathways to continue offering access to certain compounded GLP-1s after the shortage, it could not “guarantee that we will be able to continue offering these products in the same manner, to the same extent, or at all.” However, an analyst told Reuters that Hims & Hers appeared poised to continue selling compounded semaglutide using personalized doses after the shortage officially ended.
Why is Novo Nordisk cutting ties now?
In the wake of the FDAs shortage notice, Hims & Hers announced in April that it was entering a long-term collaboration with Novo Nordisk to offer Wegovy directly to its consumers. Now, though, Novo Nordisk is breaking off the commitment over claims that Hims & Hers has not acted fast enough to stop selling its compounded GLP-1. Other telehealth companies, like Ro and Noom, have similarly faced criticism for continuing to sell their own compounded GLP-1 despite agreements with Eli Lilly, the maker of Zepbound.
In an email to Fast Company, a Novo Nordisk spokesperson explained that semaglutide compounding is permitted under US compounding laws only in rare instances, adding that other companies its working with have demonstrated a good faith effort to transition patients to authentic, FDA-approved Wegovy.
However, the spokesperson continued, after over one month into the collaboration, Hims & Hers Health, Inc. has failed to adhere to the law which prohibits mass sales of compounded drugs under the false guise of personalization and are disseminating deceptive marketing that puts patient safety at risk. This is unacceptable and that is why we have decided to end the collaboration.
That personalization, involves offering the same drug; however, at different doses.
In a press release published this morning, Novo Nordisk also noted that it is deeply concerned about knock-off drugs made with foreign illicit active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Based on Novo Nordisk’s investigation, the semaglutide active pharmaceutical ingredients that are in the knock-off drugs sold by telehealth entities and compounding pharmacies are manufactured by foreign suppliers in China, the release reads. According to a report from the Brookings Institute, FDA has never authorized or approved the manufacturing processes used by any of these foreign suppliers to make semaglutide, nor has FDA ever reviewed or authorized the quality of the semaglutide they produce.
Hims & Hers did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on Novo Nordisks claims. On X, Novo Nordisk CEO Andrew Dudam said “Novo Nordisks commercial team increasingly pressured us to control clinical standards and steer patients to Wegovy regardless of whether it was clinically best for patients. We refuse to be strong-armed by any pharmaceutical companys anticompetitive demands that infringe on the independent decision making of providers and limit patient choice.” He went on to say “We will continue to offer access to a range of treatments, including Wegovy, to ensure providers can serve the individual needs of patients.”
We are disappointed to see Novo Nordisk management misleading the public. In recent weeks, Novo Nordisks commercial team increasingly pressured us to control clinical standards and steer patients to Wegovy regardless of whether it was clinically best for patients. We refuse to— andrewdudum (@AndrewDudum) June 23, 2025
Two of the nation’s real estate titans are on a collision course.
Compass, one of the largest brokerages in the country, has filed a complaint in a New York federal court against Zillow, alleging the online behemoth is engaging in “anticompetitive tactics” and violating antitrust laws.
The suit accuses Zillow of banning listings that were marketed elsewhere first, saying it has “retaliated against competitive threats by enacting an exclusionary policy.”
This lawsuit is about protecting consumer choice, said Robert Reffkin, Compass founder and CEO, in a statement to Fast Company. No one company should have the power to ban agents or listings simply because they dont follow that companys business model. Consumers should have the right to choose how they sell their homes.
Zillow did not respond to Fast Company’s request for comment about the suit.
The faceoff between the two companies has been brewing for some time. Compass has been growing steadily, most notably with last Decembers acquisition of Christies International Real Estate in a deal worth $444 million. Earlier this year, it was also reported to be in talks to buy the real estate brokerage business of Berkshire Hathaway.
Compass has been promoting its Private Exclusives and Coming Soon online listings for several months, which feature thousands of homes available only to Compass agents and their buyers. Two months ago, Zillow unveiled a new policy that any home put on the market but not made available to Zillow within 24 hours would be banned from the site.
“Instead of competing on the merits for home sellers, home buyers, and the agents who work for them, Zillow has sought to rely on anticompetitive tactics to protect its monopoly and revenues in violation of the antitrust laws,” the filing reads.
The suit says Zillow has become the “vital, go-to destination for consumers looking to purchase homes,” through the “relentless acquisition of competitors” and “the power of network effects.” That, Compass claims, effectively makes it a tollbooth for agents, allegedly collecting up to 40% of the buyer agent commission for referring the buyer. Additionally, it accuses Zillow of charging potential buyers to tour listed propertiessomething that is typically free.
“Every time a buyer requests a tour on Zillow, Zillow redirects the buyer away from the listing agent of the property, who would not charge the buyer an incremental commission,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, Zillow directs the buyer to a Zillow-affiliated buyer agent who charges the buyer an incremental commission to show the property.”
Compass argues that it and other realtors should have the right to market homes themselves, without being required to send listings to Zillow. This sometimes involves an extended “coming soon” period, which Compass says allows sellers to showcase homes before they are fully market-ready, gauge early interest, and test demandwithout increasing the “days on market” count or triggering price reductions.
Zillow, in April, argued that everyone should have access to that information, citing the National Association of Realtors’ long-standing clear cooperation policy, which requires agents to list homes on their local MLS within 24 hours of beginning any public marketing.
“Listings shouldnt be used as leverage to control who gets to participate in the home-buying process,” Zillow wrote when announcing the new rules. “Practices that selectively share listings create confusion, harm consumers and erode trust in the marketplace. Its a bait-and-switch move, where agents or brokerages try to get the best of both worlds.”
Compass, in its lawsuit, counters this argument, saying Zillow should not be allowed to ban listings that don’t align with its business model.
“Zillow is so comfortable with its size and power that it has adopted a policy that governs what other real estate companies can do on platforms other than Zillow,” the complaint reads. “It effectively is leveraging its power to promulgate and enforce industry-wide rulemaking like a government regulator, despite being a private company that does not even provide brokerage services, represent home sellers and buyers, or create the listings on which it profits.”
New York state will build a new nuclear power plant that will provide at least one gigawatt of electricityenough to power about a million homes. When announcing the project on Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said it would bring new jobs, result in more affordable electricity bills, and help provide around-the-clock power to support data centers without having to depend on fossil fuels.
The plant would be the first nuclear facility built in New York state since the late 1970s and the first major U.S. plant to break ground in about 15 years. (The last nuclear plants built in the U.S., Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, began operation in 2023 and 2024, respectively, but construction on them began in 2009.)
The project comes as electricity demand is expected to soar, especially due to the increase of data centers to support AI use. Nuclear power has been seen as a clean source of 24/7 power, which wind and solar cannot provide without adequate battery storage, and also as a power source that is insulated from the volatility of oil and gas prices. But some are still concerned about nuclear powers safety.
Hochul acknowledged these fears during her announcement for the new plant, pointing to the concerns and anxiety that led to the shut down of Indian Point, a nuclear power plant in Westchester County, New York. That facility was retired in 2021, but doing so turned off one-quarter of New York Citys power[which] was almost all clean energyovernight without an alternative, Hochul said. To replace that energy, New York state burned more fossil fuels, leading to a rise in emissions.
There was no plan B, Hochul said, and the increase in emission is not a trade-off New York can afford to keep making. And this is not your grandparents nuclear reactor, she added, about the forthcoming project. Safety will be at the forefront of the design, she said, including automatic safety systems and rigorous environmental standards. The forthcoming nuclear power plant will provide 1,600 jobs during construction, and 1,200 permanent jobs once operational.
Nuclear power is seeing a surge as the demand for electricity increases and as municipalities look to get off fossil fuels. Three Mile Island, the site of the countrys worst nuclear disaster, is set to reopen in Pennsylvania in 2028 to support Microsofts energy needs. The Trump administrations support for nuclear power is part of the presidents energy dominance agenda; Trump recently signed an executive order to expedite the licensing process for nuclear reactors.
Hochul has spoken to the president about this New York nuclear project, she said, and is committed to working with the White House to build this plant. You want energy dominance. I want energy dominance. This is how we do it, she said. So with their financial planning and hopeful support, we can move as fast as possible.
The average time it takes to construct a nuclear power plant is about seven years, though the process can take longer with regulatory hurdles and other financial costs. Hochul said she had suggested Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to make that process more efficient.
There is currently no location selected for the New York nuclear power plant, though Hochul said it will be located in upstate New York. The New York Power Authority will help find a site and determine the nuclear reactors design. The state is also considering looking for private partners to help finance the plant.
The number one focus of the project, Hochul said, will be customers paying their electric bills: Ratepayers must know that there’s going to be reliability, no cost escalation. And they’ll be able to see into the future what their bills will look like.
