Stephen Miran, President Donald Trumps pick to join the Federal Reserve board, said Thursday that he would remain a White House employee even if the Senate confirms him to fill an unexpired term at the central bank.
Miran, who was nominated to fill a gubernatorial term set to expire in January, made the disclosure at a hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
He said that on the advice of his lawyers, he would take an unpaid leave of absence as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Miran later said he would only resign from the Republican administration if he were nominated for a longer term at the Fed.
His answer instantly triggered alarm bells about the Fed’s independence, suggesting that the central bank could ultimately become subservient to Trump’s whims instead of its congressional mandates to keep prices stable and maximize employment. Political control of the Fed could erode the faith that the American population and investors worldwide place in the U.S. economy, which could threaten global markets and national prosperity.
Democrats blasted Mirans plan to keep his day job at the White House.
Your independence has already been seriously compromised, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said. You are going to be technically an employee of the president of the United States but an independent member of the board of the Federal Reserve. Thats ridiculous.
Mirans hearing reflected the broader battle over Trumps efforts to gain control of the Fed. Because of the possible negative impacts on the economy, the Fed has tried to act based on the economic data rather than electoral considerations.
Trump, however, has engaged in a prolonged campaign of pressuring and mocking Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting the benchmark interest rate to Trumps liking, a move that could end up pumping more money into the economy and creating greater inflationary risks. The Fed has yet to reach its 2% inflation target and has held its rates steady in part because of the uncertainties created by Trumps import taxes.
The president has also sought to apply pressure on the Fed over its renovation of its headquarters and other buildings and has tried to fire Lisa Cook as a Fed governor over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud. Cook has said she will not resign and has sued to overturn Trump’s move.
Miran, in his answers to senators, played down the controversy over Trumps desire to control the Fed. Miran said that if he were confirmed to fill the rest of Adriana Kuglers term, he would act based on his own judgments about inflation and employment.
Look, the president nominated me because I have policy views, that, I suppose that he liked, he said told the committee chairman, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. If Im confirmed to this role, I will act independently, as the Federal Reserve always does, based on my own personal analysis of economic data.
Even Republicans saw the risks to the loss of Fed independence. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked Miran to commit to ignore all the rhetoric from all politicians and make his own choices.
But Miran arrives with the baggage of having worked for a president who has expressed disdain for the Fed’s tradition of independence. Trump has argued that he knows more about monetary policy as he has called for the Feds benchmark rate to be cut by a full 3 percentage points.
In June, a Fed forecast of future rates showed emerging divisions among the policymakers. Seven projected no rate cuts at all this year, two indicated one cut and 10 forecast at least two reductions.
This is a crisis moment for the Federal Reserve, for the financial system and for the economic stability of families all across this country, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told reporters before the start of the hearing.
Warren added that the Fed boards independence and their efforts to make decisions based on whats really happening in the economy not what the politics are is something that benefits every single American. Donald Trump wants to burn that to the ground.
Under questioning by Warren, Miran declined to say whether Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, saying only that Congress certified Biden as president. Miran declined under questioning to contradict Trumps unfounded claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had faked jobs numbers for political reasons.
Trump fired the bureau’s head after severe revisions to the July employment report showed the economy was potentially weaker than Trump’s claims of a golden age.
There are also questions about how Miran interprets the Fed’s independence. He said that the president is entitled to express his opinion on monetary policy and that consideration of climate change as an economic force by Fed officials would be a politicization of the central bank.
In a 2024 paper he co-wrote for the Manhattan Institute, Miran argued that the Fed was already politicized by highly political, personnel who move freely between the White House and the central banks headquarters.
In that same paper, Miran wanted to heighten presidential control, saying that having Fed board members serve at the will of the president would confer greater democratic legitimacy on the Fed.
By indicating that he could return to the White House, Miran seemed to undermine one of his own recommendations in his paper.
To further insulate board members from the day-to-day political process, they should be prohibited from serving in the executive branch for four years following the end of their term, the paper said.
Josh Boak, Associated Press
President Donald Trump likes to boast about how much money the U.S. Treasury is raking in from the massive taxestariffshes slapped this year on imports from almost every country in the world.
We have trillions of dollars coming into our country, Trump said Wednesday. If we didnt have tariffs, we would be a very poor nation and we would be taken advantage of by every other nation in the world, friend and foe.
But two courts have now ruled that his biggest and boldest import taxes are illegal. If the Supreme Court agrees and strikes them down for good, the federal government could have to pay back many of the taxes its already collected from companies that import foreign products into the United States.
Were talking about hundreds of billions of dollars potentially in refunds affecting thousands and thousands of importers, said trade lawyer Luis Arandia, a partner with the law firm of Barnes & Thornburg. Unwinding all that will be the largest administrative effort in U.S. government history.
Ordinary Americans, who’ve had to pay higher prices on some products because of the tariffs, are unlikely to share in the windfall. Any refunds would go instead to the companies that paid the levies in the first place.
The refunds would also reverse the flow of tariff revenue the president has counted on to help pay for the massive tax-cut bill he signed July 4 and would threaten, he warns, to literally destroy the United States of America.
At issue are revenues raised from tariffs Trump imposed this year by invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). One set of IEEPA tariffs targeted almost every country on earth after he declared that the United States massive and persistent trade deficits amounted to a national emergency. Another was aimed at Canada, China and Mexico and was meant to counter the illegal flow of drugs and immigrants across U.S. borders.
But a specialized federal trade court in New York ruled in May that the president overstepped his authority by ignoring Congress and imposing the IEEPA tariffs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week largely upheld the trade courts decision, though it also ordered the lower court to re-consider whether there was any legal fix short of striking down the tariffs completely.
The appellate judges also paused their own ruling until mid-October to give the administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court something that it did on Wednesday. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to take up the case and hear arguments in early November.
If the high court strikes down the IEEPA tariffs, importers could be entitled to refunds. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reports that it had collected more than $72 billion in IEEPA tariffs through Aug. 24.
For importers, Ted Murphy, co-leader of the international trade practice at the Sidley Austin law firm, said: Its a question of what youre going to have to do to get the refund.
And the options are everything from nothing the government may just automatically refund it; I dont think this is likely, but thats one option. There could be an administrative process, so you have to go to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and apply for a refund of your IEEPA tariffs. Or you could have to file your own court case.
Theres a precedent for courts setting up a system to give companies their money back in trade cases. In the 1990s, the courts struck down as unconstitutional a harbor maintenance fee on exports and set up a system for exporters to apply to get their money back.
Companies got refunds, Murphy said. One hitch: In that case, the government did not have to pay interest on the tax it collected and had to pay back. Its unclear whether the government would have to pay interest on any IEEPA tariff refunds.
The Trump administration might balk at paying back the tariffs its collected. Trump has already said he doesnt want to pay the money back, posting on his social media site in August that doing so would be 1929 all over again, a GREAT DEPRESSION!
I would anticipate that if the administration did lose, they would turn around and start arguing why it would be impossible to give refunds to everybody, said Brent Skorup, legal fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. I think there will a lot of litigation about the nature of refunds and whos entitled one. And I expect the administration will raise all sorts of objections.”
To make sure they can successfully claim refunds, said Barnes & Thornburg partner Clinton Yu, importers really need to have their records in order.
Adding to the uncertainty is the chaotic way that Trump has rolled out his tariffs announcing and then delaying or altering them, sometimes conjuring up new ones. Occasionally, the administration has decided that importers that have already paid one of his tariffs dont have to pay a different one.
Tariff are paid by importers, who often then try to pass the cost on to their customers through higher prices. But consumers would not have recourse to ask for refunds for the higher prices they had to pay.
Its the importer of record that is legally liable for paying tariffs and duties, Arandia said. They would be the only one to have standing to even get that money back.
Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer
AP Writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Josh Boak contributed to this story.
Prepare to pay (even) more for your daily cup of joe: Coffee prices have spiked in recent months, primarily because of global supply issues, though U.S. tariffs are adding some heat to this market.
Coffee futures, the global benchmark for arabica coffee, have risen more than 33% since July and nearly hit a four-month high in late August as traders have become concerned about the prospect of a slump in coffee supplies coming out of major markets like Brazil and Vietnam amid volatile weather in these regions. Conab, Brazils crop forecasting agency, this week slashed the estimate for its 2025 arabica coffee crop by nearly 5% and warned that U.S. tariffs could drive further price gains.
The 50% tariffs that President Donald Trump imposed on Brazil took effect last month and put upward pressure on coffee prices, according to an August report from the International Coffee Organization.
Those factors are likely to mean that consumers will have to pay even more to make coffee at home or buy a cup on the go. Ground coffee prices hit a record high of $8.41 per pound in July, up 33% from a year ago, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. After eggs, coffee experienced the second-highest inflation rate in any category of the consumer price index in July.
The J.M. Smucker Co., which owns Folgers and Café Bustelo, has raised coffee prices twice this year and is likely to do so again this winter as a result of Trumps tariffs, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
WEATHER VOLATILITY
Tariffs have become a new ingredient in a coffee market thats been roiled by weather volatility in recent years. There have been severe droughts in both Brazil and Vietnam, and these two countries are the worlds top two coffee producers, according to Bernstein analysts.
But there could be some reasons to be optimistic that coffee prices will start to stabilize. Rains in Brazil could allay some of the concerns about the impact of the drought in the South American country, while the outlook from Vietnam has also improved as the country has forecasted a higher crop output for this year.
Price pressures should be easing off in the near term, Danilo Gargiulo, a senior research analyst at Bernstein, told CNBC. Improving weather and capital investment to boost productivity signal lower prices ahead, while the impact of tariffs on Brazilian imports may be somewhat limited for consumers who buy coffee from the major chains, he added.
BRAZIL-U.S. TRADE TALKS
Finally, there could be some hope for changes on the horizon in terms of Brazil-U.S. trade negotiations.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazils president, is convening a virtual meeting of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations next week to discuss Trumps trade policy, according to Bloomberg. The Brazilian president has repeatedly called on Trump to negotiate on trade after Trump imposed the second-highest tariffs on the nation in retaliation for its prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro. But Lula has also authorized a retaliation process against Trumps tariffs, in an attempt to bring the U.S. president back to the negotiation table.
Spirit Airlines said it is ending service to a dozen U.S. cities, a week after filing for bankruptcy for a second time in less than a year. The first bankruptcy came in November 2024.
The discount carrier flies throughout the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean with an all-Airbus fleet.
The news comes a day after Spirit Aviation Holdings, Inc., parent company of Spirit Airlines, announced its Chapter 11 filing was approved. That will enable the low-cost airline to keep flights running and the business afloat.
In an open letter to Spirit customers, the company said it will continue to operate and passengers can continue to book flights and use tickets, credits, and loyalty points.
What routes are being canceled?
Spirit Airlines told Fast Company that “as part of our efforts to transform our business and position Spirit for long-term success, we are adjusting our network to focus on our strongest performing markets.”
On October 2, it will discontinue service to Albuquerque, New Mexico; Birmingham, Alabama; Boise, Idaho; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Oakland, California; Columbia, South Carolina; Portland, Oregon; Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; San Diego, California; and San Jose, California, the airline confirmed to Fast Company.
Spirit Airlines financials
On Tuesday, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced it had begun the process of delisting the company, which trades under the ticker symbol FLYY, effectively suspending trading.
Spirit Airlines reported a Q2 2025 net loss of $245.8 million with revenue down 20%, leading to “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue to operate.
Coco Gauff was surprised at how much tinier the replica trophy she got to keep after winning this year’s French Open was than the trophy she posed with on court at Roland-Garros for all the world to see. She even did a TikTok about the discrepancy, drawing more than 2 million views.Why was Gauff so taken aback by what she called the “miniature version”?“I honestly did not know the size it was going to be. I know you never really take the original, but when I won the U.S. Open, they gave me the same size (trophy), with my name engraved on it,” Gauff told The Associated Press. “So I just assumed that Roland Garros would be the same.”Actually, it turns out Gauff’s 2023 championship at the U.S. Open marked the first time the women’s singles winner in New York was given a silver cup significantly larger than the one that is used in the postmatch ceremony. Her replica hardware is 19 1/2 inches tall, the same as both the original and keepsake men’s trophies and 7 1/2 inches bigger than the original women’s trophy.That one, like the original men’s, is displayed during the tournament in a locked glass box near where players enter the event’s main arena and will be briefly handed to, then taken away from, whoever wins the women’s final in Arthur Ashe Stadium this Saturday.From 1987, when the tradition of providing keepsakes at Flushing Meadows began, until two years ago, the female champion took home a 12-inch-tall copy. But the U.S. Tennis Association asked Tiffany & Co. to create replicas for the women to match the size of what the men are allowed to keep. That change coincided with the 50th anniversary of the tournament’s 1973 move to pay equal prize money to women and men at then-player Billie Jean King’s urging.“Equality is in our DNA here at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Everything we do, we’re very intentional about equality and we wanted to do the same as it relates to the champion’s trophies,” U.S. Open tournament director Stacey Allaster said in an interview.“We had a very robust conversation: Should we recreate a new women’s singles champion’s trophy? In the end, we made the decision to stay with history and to not change the trophy itself, but to ensure that the replica trophy was of the same size as the men’s,” said Allaster, who is the chief executive of professional tennis at the USTA. “Trophies are so iconic to the history of this championships, and we just didn’t feel it was the right thing to move away from that history, but (we wanted) to be able to award the singles champions the same sizes.”King wasn’t aware of the switch until the AP asked her about it.“I did not know they did that. It’s fantastic. It’s equal,” King said. “It sends very positive messaging that we matter just as much. Our trophy’s just as big.”
Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Howard Fendrich, AP Tennis Writer
Artificial intelligence, apparently, is the new fake news.”
Blaming AI is an increasingly popular strategy for politicians seeking to dodge responsibility for something embarrassing among others. AI isn’t a person, after all. It can’t leak or file suit. It does make mistakes, a credibility problem that makes it hard to determine fact from fiction in the age of mis- and disinformation.
And when truth is hard to discern, the untruthful benefit, analysts say. The phenomenon is widely known as the liar’s dividend.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump endorsed the practice. Asked about viral footage showing someone tossing something out an upper-story White House window, the president replied, No, that’s probably AI after his press team had indicated to reporters that the video was real.
But Trump, known for insisting the truth is what he says it is, declared himself all in on the AI-blaming phenomenon.
If something happens thats really bad,” he told reporters, maybe Ill have to just blame AI.
He’s not alone.
AI is getting blamed sometimes fairly, sometimes not
On the same day in Caracas, Venezuelan Communications Minister Freddy áez questioned the veracity of a Trump administration video it said showed a U.S. strike on a vessel in Caribbean that targeted Venezuelas Tren de Aragua gang and killed 11. A video of the strike posted to Truth Social shows a long, multi-engine speedboat at sea when a bright flash of light bursts over it. The boat is then briefly seen covered in flames.
Based on the video provided, it is very likely that it was created using Artificial Intelligence, áez said on his Telegram account, describing almost cartoonish animation.
Blaming AI can at times be a compliment. (Hes like an AI-generated player, tennis player Alexander Bublik said of his U.S. Open opponent Jannik Sinner’s talent on ESPN ). But when used by the powerful, the practice, experts say, can be dangerous.
Digital forensics expert Hany Farid warned for years about the growing capabilities of AI deepfake images, voices and video to aid in fraud or political disinformation campaigns, but there was always a deeper problem.
Ive always contended that the larger issue is that when you enter this world where anything can be fake, then nothing has to be real, said Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. You get to deny any reality because all you have to say is, Its a deepfake.
That wasn’t so a decade or two ago, he noted. Trump issued a rare apology (“if anyone was offended”) in 2016 for his comments about touching women without their consent on the notorious Access Hollywood” tape. His opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, said she was wrong to call some of his supporters a basket of deplorables.
Toby Walsh, chief scientist and professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said blaming AI leads to problems not just in the digital world but the real world as well.
It leads to a dark future where we no longer hold politicians (or anyone else) accountable, Walsh said in an email. It used to be that if you were caught on tape saying something, you had to own it. This is no longer the case.”
Contemplating the liars dividend’
Danielle K. Citron of the Boston University School of Law and Robert Chesney of the University of Texas foresaw the issue in research published in 2019. In it, they describe what they called the liar’s dividend.
If the public loses faith in what they hear and see and truth becomes a matter of opinion, then power flows to those whose opinions are most prominentempowering authorities along the way,” they wrote in the California Law Review. A skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence.
Polling suggests many Americans are wary about AI. About half of U.S. adults said the increased use of AI in daily life made them feel more concerned than excited, according to a Pew Research Center poll from August 2024. Pews polling indicates that people have become more concerned about the increased use of AI in recent years.
Most U.S. adults appear to distrust AI-generated information when they know thats the source, according to a Quinnipiac poll from April. About three-quarters said they could only trust the information generated by AI some of the time or hardly ever. In that poll, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they were very concerned about political leaders using AI to distribute fake or misleading information.
They have reason, and Trump has played a sizable role in muddying trust and truth.
Trump’s history of misinformation and even lies to suit his narrative predates AI. He’s famous for the use of fake news, a buzz term now widely known to denote skepticism about media reports. Leslie Stahl of CBS’ 60 Minutes has said that Trump told her off camera in 2016 that he tries to discredit journalists so that when they report negative stories, they won’t be believed.
Trump’s claim on Tuesday that AI was behind the White House window video wasn’t his first attempt to blame AI. In 2023, he insisted that the anti-Trump Lincoln Project used AI in a video to make him look bad.
In the spot titled Feeble, a female narrator taunts Trump. Hey Donald … youre weak. You seem unsteady. You need help getting around. She questions his manhood,” accompanied by an image of two blue pills. The video continues with footage of Trump stumbling over words.
The perverts and losers at the failed and once-disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, Trump posted on Truth Social.
The Lincoln Project told The Associated Press at the time that AI was not used in the spot.
Laurie Kellman, Associated Press
Associated Press writers Ali Swenson, Matt O’Brien, Linley Sanders, and Jorge Rueda contributed to this report.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here.
AI is starting to reshape the workforce
If you want a glimpse of how AI could reshape corporate staffing, look to Salesforce.
CEO Marc Benioff said during a Labor Day podcast that the company has already cut 4,000 customer support roles after deploying its own AI agents. Ive reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads, Benioff said, calling the past eight months the most exciting of his career. (A Salesforce spokesperson later clarified that many of the affected jobs were support engineers who were shifted into other roles.)
Still, Salesforce may be an outlier. Benioff was likely promoting his own AgentForce platform. Gartner predicted back in March that half of all organizations will abandon plans to shrink their customer service staff because of AI. In a poll of 163 customer service leaders, 95% said they intend to keep human agents and use AI more strategically.
Customer service is a particularly sensitive area for automation, since it involves direct contact with customers. Many companies may prefer a human touch. Other roles behind the sceneslike software engineeringmay prove easier to replace. Junior developers, for example, are increasingly vulnerable as coding agents such as Cursor and Claude Code take on much of the basic work. A recent Stanford study found that employment for 22- to 25-year-old software engineers fell nearly 20% between late 2022 and July 2025, even as hiring for older engineers grew.
Other research points to broader disruption. A new study from the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity estimates that AI will put 45 million U.S. jobs at risk by 2028, including roles such as retail managers, HR coordinators, and administrative assistantsoften the rungs younger workers climb toward stable, middle-income careers. The Fund warns that this hollowing out of entry-level jobs threatens long-term mobility for an entire generation. It advocates for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a cushion for displaced workers.
Reskilling remains another challenge. Research from LinkedIn found that many professionals feel overwhelmed by the pressure to learn new AI tools, describing it as another job added to their workload. Nearly half said they arent using AI to its full potential, and 30% admitted they rarely or never use it (31% acknowledged exaggerating their AI skills at work). Meanwhile, more than a third of executives say they plan to hire and evaluate employees based on AI expertise.
For many workers, theres no simple path through this AI-powered transition. While its human nature to ignore major disruptions, experts say there are real advantages to embracing AI and exploring the possibilities. The best strategy may be to expand their use of AI beyond general chatbots like ChatGPT, and find specialized toolsperhaps including new AI agentsthat can handle mundane, low-skill tasks. Doing so frees up time for higher-order, uniquely human work, much of which requires creativity and empathy.
What the Google antitrust decision means for AI search companies
A federal court in Washington, D.C., decided that Google will not have to sell off its Chrome browser after being found guilty of monopolistic practices in internet search and advertising last year. The remedies chosen by Judge Amit Mehta are more surgical: Google will no longer be able to ink exclusive deals that establish its search service as the default on other platforms.
That change directly impacts one of Googles most lucrative arrangements: its multibillion-dollar payments to Apple to keep Google Search as the iPhones default. Google will likely go on paying Apple to put Google Search on the popular devices, but it will no longer be able to pay Apple to be the only search service on the devices. This opens the door for other search providersincluding new AI search upstartsto pay for a presence on Apple devices too.
Mehtas decision also compels Google to periodically share its search indexincluding data on the quality and popularity of linkswith competitors. Google built its whole company around its search index, a vast and ever-changing database of all the sites and content on the internet (or at least everything that Googles web crawlers can reach). Now Google will have to share that crown jewel, including data about the quality and popularity of indexed web content, with a new wave of AI search providers like OpenAI and Perplexity. These new playerswhich deliver fully fleshed answers to users, not just a list of linkscan use the index data to improve the quality and accuracy of their own search results.
Activists are using AI to unmask ICE agents
The federal government has long failed to pass any meaningful legislation to protect peoples privacy from surveillance technologies. Now, in a strange twist, the government has become a victim of its own inaction. As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids spread and become more bold, activists are attempting to use AI to unmask, then publicly identify, ICE agents.
Politico reports that a Netherlands-based immigration activist Dominick Skinner and a group of volunteers have developed an AI model that analyzes the faces of ICE agents within screenshots of ICE raid and arrest videos. If at least 30% of the agents face is visible, the AI can generate a reasonable facsimile of the agents whole face. Using the AI-generated image, activists can use image search tools to find the ICE agent on social media or elsewhere, Politico reports. Skinner says his group has now publicly identified at least 20 ICE officials recorded wearing masks during arrests. The AI unmasking project is part of a larger effort called the ICE List, an activist web archive that has published the identities of more than 100 ICE employees and agents.
The Department of Homeland Security insists that the ICE agents wear the masks to avoid being doxxed and harassed. But critics say the sight of masked agents (sometimes displaying no badge or other agency identification) manhandling alleged undocumented immigrants on the street presents a powerful image of callous authoritarianism and unaccountable government force.
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Ford Motor Company is rebranding its motorsports program to Ford Racing.The rebrand and new logo were announced Thursday in a letter to employees by Will Ford, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford.The motorsports arm of the company had previously been called Ford Performance. The company, noted global director Mark Rushbrook, was founded on racing when Henry Ford in 1901 won a race in a car called “Sweepstakes” that catapulted him to form Ford Motor Company two years later.“This is so much more than a simple name change. This is the reintroduction of our racing brand and signals a completely new way of thinking about the business, brand, and products that our racing efforts bring to life,” Will Ford wrote.The new logo consists of the stylized Ford in white lettering inside a solid blue oval, with the capitalized word RACING in a bold blue under the oval.Will Ford said the rebranding will help link the manufacturer’s road and race operations while allowing the development of on- and off-road performance production vehicles, as well as racing vehicles.“Under one global leader, our super-talented engineers, designers and aerodynamicists will find innovative solutions for the track and bring them to our road products and vice versa,” Will Ford wrote. “This dedication extends beyond the paved track; the lessons learned in grueling desert races directly inform the engineering of our performance off-road vehicles like the F-150 Raptor.“All this is being done to bring the best products, technologies, and experiences to our customers.”The first Ford Racing production vehicle will make its debut in January at Ford’s season launch, but the logo and name change implementation will begin immediately. It will be on racing vehicles in January at Dakar and Daytona.“Ford Racing will continue to compete at the highest levels of motorsports,” Will Ford wrote. “The Blue Oval will be in front of a global audience like never before, at venues as diverse as F1, Dakar, Le Mans, Bathurst and Daytona. And we are going in with the same goal we always have at Ford to win them all. After all, we are America’s race team!”Rushbrook said the rebrand was vital in linking personal and performance cars to racing vehicles.“The very core of our company is to have these very passionate products that we can sell to our customers to park in their garage or their driveway or on the street in front of their house that are truly born out of racing,” Rushbrook said. “Everything we are learning in racing we are truly taking that into the products. We’re in the same building between the motorsports team and the Ford Performance production vehicle team. We’re now one team that is working on motorsports and infusing that into our road cars and trucks.”
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Jenna Fryer, AP Auto Racing Writer
An influencer who documents Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents activities on TikTok was arrested by ICE while livestreaming from her car.
Tatiana Martinez was detained last month in Los Angeles while sitting in her Tesla outside her home. The 24-year-old was streaming on TikTok when federal agents approached her vehicle.
Videos of the arrest show Martinez being dragged from the car and restrained face down. Bystanders can be heard calling for medical assistance as she lies motionless on the ground.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek that Martinez was arrested because of a prior DUI conviction. This influencer drove under the influenceand got convicted for it in Los Angeles, the official ICE account posted on X.
Her attorney, Carlos Jurado, has suggested Martinez was targeted for her platform, where more than 40,000 followers on TikTok watch her document ICE raids and share advice on what to do if stopped during enforcement actions. Martinez has also posted under President Donald Trumps push for mass deportations.
@tatianamartinez_02 Hasta cuando Dios mío sonido original – Tatiana martinez
Social media has increasingly been used to alert communities about ICE activity and document arrests across the U.S. Videos capture workers and family members being taken in daylight, but those behind the cameras risk drawing attention from ICE themselves.
“One of the biggest points that was being made to her aggressively by officers was, ‘Did you think that you were going to get away with recording our activities and there wouldn’t be a consequence?’ That was said to her many times by many different people while she was being held in Los Angeles,” Jurado said, according to The Independent. (Fast Company has reached out to Jurado and DHS for comment.)
Jurado confirmed Martinez, originally from Colombia and in the U.S. for about four years, was convicted in 2023. He told ABC 7, however, that the DUI was never mentioned during the arrest.
Jurado also said Martinez passed out from trauma during the incident and was hospitalized. She is now being detained in Calexico, California, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for later today.
Beach season is almost is our rear view, but a number of beaches across the U.S. are closing a little early this year. The reason? High levels of fecal contamination in the water.
Beaches along the east coast, from Maine to Florida, are the most affected. Closures this week have included popular destinations like Keyes Memorial Beach in Cape Cod, Benjamin’s Beach on Long Island, and several beaches in the Florida Keys. However, warnings in San Diego, California, and even Hawaii have also been reported.
“Benjamins Beach in Bay Shore is closed to bathing due to the finding of bacteria at levels in excess of acceptable criteria,” one notice read. “According to Suffolk County Commissioner of Health Dr. Gregson Pigott, bathing in bacteria-contaminated water can result in gastrointestinal illness, as well as infections of the eyes, ears, nose, and throat.”
It’s not the first time this swimming season that unsafe water conditions have been reported. Just before the Fourth of July, at least six states issued closures or warnings over fecal contamination. Days later, Environmental America released a report that found the majority of U.S. beaches, 61%, had “potentially unsafe” levels of contamination in 2024. It said that roughly two-thirds (1,930 out of 3,187) of beaches had at least one day where fecal contamination was at unsafe levels. “Each year, there are an estimated 57 million cases of illness in the U.S. resulting from swimming in oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. The vast majority of these illnesses go unreported,” the report states. “Contaminated water can also trigger health warnings or closures that interfere with our ability to enjoy the beach.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heavy rains can contribute to fecal bacteria being carried into bodies of water. “Water contaminated with these germs can make you sick if you swallow it,” it says. “It can also cause an infection if you get into the water with an open cut or wound (especially from a surgery or piercing).”
Previous studies have found that frequent water-related events, like frequent floods and droughts, are inextricably linked to human-made climate change. Warmer water can fuel hurricane activity and floods, and is also linked to higher rates of dangerous flesh-eating bacteria in coastal waters.
“Many people with Vibrio vulnificus infection can get seriously ill and need intensive care or limb amputation,” the CDC says. “About 1 in 5 people with this infection die, sometimes within a day or two of becoming ill.”
