Human-caused climate change intensified deadly rainfall in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and other states in early April and made those storms more likely to occur, according to an analysis released Thursday by the World Weather Attribution group of scientists.The series of storms unleashed tornadoes, strong winds and extreme rainfall in the central Mississippi Valley region from April 3-6 and caused at least 24 deaths. Homes, roads and vehicles were inundated and 15 deaths were likely caused by catastrophic floods.The WWA analysis found that climate change increased rainfall intensity in the storms by 9% and made them 40% more likely compared to probability of such events in the pre-industrial age climate.Some of the moisture that fueled the storms came from the Gulf of Mexico, where water temperatures were abnormally warm by 1.2°C (2.2°F) compared to pre-industrial temperatures. That warming was made 14 times more likely due to climate change, according to the researchers from universities and meteorological agencies in the United States and Europe.Rapid analyses from the WWA use peer-reviewed methods to study an extreme weather event and distill it down to the factors that caused it. This approach lets scientists analyze which contributing factors had the biggest influence and how the event could have played out in a world without climate change.The analysis found a rainfall event of April’s intensity could occur in the central Mississippi Valley region about once every 100 years. Even heavier downpours are expected to hit the region in the future unless the world rapidly slashes emissions of polluting gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that causes temperatures to rise, the study said.“That one in 100 years is likely to go down to once every few decades,” said Ben Clarke, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and the study’s lead author. “If we continue to burn fossil fuels, events like this will not only continue to occur, but they’ll keep getting more dangerous.”Heavier and more persistent rainfall is expected with climate change because the atmosphere holds more moisture as it warms. Warming ocean temperatures result in higher evaporation rates, which means more moisture is available to fuel storms.Forecast information and weather alerts from the National Weather Service communicated the risks of the April heavy rain days in advance, which the WWA says likely reduced the death toll. But workforce and budget cuts made by the Trump administration have left nearly half of NWS offices with 20% vacancy rates or higher, raising concerns for public safety during future extreme weather events and the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season that officially begins June 1.“If we start cutting back on these offices or reducing the staff the unfortunate result is going to be more death. We’re going to have more people dying because the warnings are not going to get out, the warnings are not going to be as fine-tuned as they are today,” said Randall Cerveny, a climate professor at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Isabella O’Malley, Associated Press
In honor of its 25th anniversary, the Gates Foundation made a major announcement. On Thursday, chair Bill Gates said he would give away most of his fortune over the next two decades.
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates wrote in an announcement on GatesNotes.
The statement continued, There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people. That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned.”
Gates explained that he would give away practically all of his fortune over the next 20 years, estimating about $200 billion in spending will occur in an effort to save and improve lives. The businessman and Microsoft cofounder said the exact amount will depend on the markets, as well as inflation.
A news release from the Gates Foundation called the plan “the largest philanthropic commitment in modern history” and said it will wind down operations circa 2045.
In his post, Gates shared that on December 31, 2045, the foundation will cease all operations.
An accelerated timeline for a world on fire
Gates noted that the plan is a major shift away from the foundation’s original plan to sunset 20 years after his and his ex-wife Melinda Gates’s deaths.
Post-divorce, Melinda French Gates has given away a hefty share of her own wealth, pledging over $1 billion to organizations supporting women and girls.
In Bill Gates’s statement, he also outlined three major goals for the accelerated spending plan:
“help end preventable deaths of moms and babies”
“ensure the next generation grows up without having to suffer from deadly infectious diseases”
“lift millions of people out of poverty, putting them on a path to prosperity”
“The Gates Foundations mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities,” Gates wrote in his statement Thursday. “I am excited to see how our next chapter continues to move the world closer to a future where everyone everywhere has the chance to live a healthy and productive life.”
The federal human resources agency at the heart of billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to slash the federal workforce is poised to roll out software to speed layoffs across the U.S. government, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The software could turbocharge the rapid-fire effort to downsize the government at a time when a number of larger federal agencies are preparing to execute plans for mass layoffs of tens of thousands of workers.
Some 260,000 government workers already have accepted buyouts, early retirement or been laid off since Republican President Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January, according to a Reuters tally. The process has been far from smooth. Some workers were mistakenly fired and had to be rehired.
The software is an updated version of a decades-old Pentagon program, known as AutoRIF, that had been little used in recent years.
Under direction from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), software developers at the U.S. Office Of Personnel Management (OPM) have created a more user-friendly web-based version over the past few months that provides targets for layoffs much more quickly than the current labor-intensive manual process, four sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The program is poised to be rolled out to the agencies by OPM just as Musk steps back from DOGE, which has driven the downsizing effort, to focus more on Tesla and his other companies.
AutoRIF’s name comes from “Reduction in Force,” a term used to describe mass layoffs. The revamped version has been given the more benign-sounding name “Workforce Reshaping Tool,” three sources said.
With the software revamp now complete, OPM will lead demonstrations, user testing and start adding new users in the coming weeks, one of the sources said.
DOGE, OPM, the White House, Pentagon and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Wired magazine was first to report on the revamp effort. But Reuters is reporting for the first time on the completion of that revamp, the capabilities of the new program, rollout plans and its new name.
JOB-CUTTING SCYTHE
Trump established DOGE to modernize government software, cut spending and drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce, which he complains is bloated and wasteful.
DOGE has said it has saved more than $160 billion through cuts to federal contracts and staff, but it has given few details publicly about what it is doing to modernize technology to make the government more efficient.
The update of the Pentagon software, which DOGE has not publicly confirmed, is the only known example of that effort bearing fruit.
Currently, most federal RIFs are done manuallywith HR employees poring over spreadsheets containing data on employee seniority, veteran status and performance, three sources told Reuters.
The new software is being rolled out just as larger agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs are set to move forward with plans to eliminate some 80,000 jobs. The Internal Revenue Service has said it wants to slash its payrolls by 40%, according to media reports.
The tool will allow agencies “to remove a massive number of federal employees from their positions,” if it works, said Nick Bednar, an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota who has been tracking the government layoffs.
“What DOGE has started is going to continue without Elon Musk,” Bednar said.
AutoRIF was developed by the Pentagon more than a quarter century ago. It pulled data from its HR system, sifted through firing rules quickly and produced names of employees eligible to be laid off.
But it was difficult to migrate it to other agencies, whose workers had to manually input data on potential candidates for dismissal, a cumbersome process that is subject to errors. The program, described as “clunky” by a 2020 Pentagon HR newsletter, also would allow only one employee to work on a RIF, two sources said.
The upgrade makes it web-based, easing employee access to the tool while enabling multiple people to work on a mass layoff, three sources said. It also allows for the upload of employee data for analysis, freeing HR workers from having to manually input personal records of possible targets for dismissal.
While speed is a clear advantage, the software could pose other challenges, according to Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.
“If you automate bad assumptions into a process, then the scale of the error becomes far greater than an individual could undertake,” Moynihan said.
“It won’t necessarily help them to make better decisions and it won’t make those decisions more popular,” Moynihan added.
Trump’s drive to downsize and reshape the government already has led to the gutting of entire agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which seeks to protect Americans from financial abuses.
The government overhaul has led to numerous lawsuits that seek to block the Trump administration from moving forward with some of the planned dismissals.
Alexandra Alper, Reuters
The price of Bitcoin is nearing the psychologically important price point of $100,000 this morninga level the cryptocurrency has not seen since early February.
As of the time of this writing, one Bitcoin is currently trading at over $99,800. Thats up nearly 3% in the last 24 hours and only $10,000 lower than the all-time high that the token reached earlier this year.
Heres what you need to know about Bitcoins most recent approach to six figures.
Bitcoin nears $100,000again
Bitcoin is currently trading at less than $200 shy of $100,000 per coin as of the time of this writing. The cryptocurrency king hasnt traded at levels this high since early February, and it has not surpassed the $100,000 mark since the first few days of that month.
While a $100,000 price point of Bitcoin doesnt have any underlying meaning on a fundamentals level, the passing of the six-figure barrier again will likely signal an important psychological threshold in many investors’ minds.
In late January, just a day before President Trump was sworn in for his second term, Bitcoin traded at an all-time high of over $109,114 per coin. The coin had first crossed the $100,000 threshold back in December 2024, shortly after then-president-elect Trump announced the crypto-friendly Paul Atkins as the new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair.
Atkinss appointment was seen as signaling a much more friendly regulatory environment with the new administration. In the days leading up to Trumps inauguration, Bitcoin continued to rise.
But then came Trumps Liberation Day tariffs in Apriland along with the crash of global stock markets, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies crashed too. Last month, Bitcoin was trading at less than $75,000 per coin.
Todays nearly $100,000 price, then, marks a staggering turnaround for Bitcoin from just over 30 days ago. It is up over 30% in the past month and up over 4% in the past five days alone, with the price of the digital asset up nearly 3% in just the last 24 hours.
But what is the reason for Bitcoin’s flirtation with the $100,000 mark today? Trade deals.
Hopes of trade deals boost Bitcoin
Investing.com notes that Bitcoin’s rise to nearly $100,000 in the past 24 hours can be attributed to one main factor: trade deal optimism.
Yesterday, President Trump teased on Truth Social that today there would be a big news conference detailing a major trade deal with a big country. It was the president’s first firm sign that one of his many promised trade deals was actually imminent.
If the United States actually starts signing trade deals with other nations, investors will likely feel less uncomfortable about the state of the global economy and the economic uncertainty that Trump’s tariffs have unleashed within Americas borders and across the world.
Then, early today, Trump took to Truth Social to follow up on his earlier post, announcing that the U.S. has entered into a full and comprehensive agreement with the United Kingdom.
While Trump didnt specify that it was a trade agreement, that is the most likely type of agreement he is talking about. The president added, Many other deals, which are in serious stages of negotiation, to follow!
Details of the U.S.-U.K. agreement are expected to be announced at a press conference at 10 a.m. ET today, reports CNBC.
Anticipation of the U.S.-U.K. news further buoyed earlier optimism that, after nearly a month of uncertainty, major countries were closer than ever to working out new economic frameworks with the United States.
Other cryptocurrencies are also on the rise
Bitcoin isnt the only cryptocurrency to rise on trade deal optimism. As of the time of this writing, other major coins are also up, including:
Ethereum: up 6.2%
XRP: up 3.1%
Solana: up 4.2%
Meme coins are also up, including:
Dogecoin: up 5.8%
Shiba Inu: up 4.7%
Of course, it’s worth noting that cryptocurrencies are more volatile than more traditional assets, so theres no guarantee that Bitcoin will indeed cross the $100,000 threshold again.
However, todays move closer to that mark will surely please jittery investors who have been forced to watch the crypto king decline by tens of thousands of dollars over the past several months.
The United States and Britain are expected to announce a trade deal on Thursday that will lower the burden of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and deliver a political victory for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that a deal due to be announced at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) will be a “full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years to come.”It’s the first bilateral trade deal announced since Trump began slapping tariffs on U.S. trading partners. He said: “Many other deals, which are in serious stages of negotiation, to follow!”Starmer’s office said the prime minister would give an “update” about U.S. trade talks later Thursday.“As you know, talks with the U.S. have been ongoing and you’ll hear more from me about that later today.” Starmer said at a defense conference in London.The agreement is likely to fall short of a full free trade deal, but will provide tariff relief to certain sectors.The president has imposed a 10% tax on imports from Britain, as well as 25% tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum on the premise that doing so would foster more factory jobs domestically.A major goal of British negotiators has been to reduce or lift the import tax on U.K. cars and steel. The U.S. is the largest destination for British cars, accounting for more than a quarter of U.K. auto exports in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.Britain has also sought tariff exemptions for pharmaceuticals, while the U.S. wants greater access to the British market for agriculture products. Starmer’s government has said it won’t lower U.K. food standards to allow in chlorine-rinsed American chicken or hormone-treated beef.The British government will see a deal it as a vindication of Starmer’s emollient approach to Trump, which has avoided direct confrontation or criticism. Unlike the European Union, Britain did not announce retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods in response to Trump’s import taxes.A trade deal with the United Kingdom would be symbolically important, and a relief for British exporters. But an agreement would do little to address Trump’s core concern about persistent trade deficits that prompted him to impose import taxes on countries around the world.The U.S. ran a $11.9 billion trade surplus in goods with the U.K. last year, according to the Census Bureau. The $68 billion in goods that the U.S. imported from the U.K. last year accounted for just 2% of all goods imported into the country.The U.S. is much more important to the U.K. economy. It was Britain’s biggest trading partner last year, according to government statistics, though the bulk of Britain’s exports to the U.S. are services rather than goods.Trump has shown a desire to strike a trade agreement with the U.K. since it voted in 2016 to leave the European Union. Yet as recently as Tuesday, Trump showed no awareness of the possible terms of the deal when asked about its possibility.“They’re offering us concessions?” Trump told reporters. “I hope so They do want to make a deal very badly.”Trump has previously said that his leverage in talks would be U.S. consumers, but he appeared to suggest that the U.K. would also start buying more American-made goods.“I think that the United Kingdom, like every other country, they want to . . . go shopping in the United States of America,” he said.A trade deal with the U.S. is one of several that Starmer’s government is seeking to strike. On Tuesday, Britain and India announced a trade after three years of negotiations. The U.K. is also trying to lift some of the barriers to trade with the EU imposed when Britain left the bloc in 2020.
Jill Lawless reported from London. Josh Boak contributed to this report from Washington.
Zeke Miller and Jill Lawless, Associated Press
After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a second time this week, Rite Aid is already planning to wind down operations at underperforming locations in at least nine states, court documents show.
The long-suffering drug store chain, which is scrambling to sell parts of its business less than one year after emerging from bankruptcy the first time, has identified 47 locations that it will initially close as is negotiates with potential buyers and moves through the Chapter 11 process yet again.
Rite Aid has 1,277 pharmacies, three distribution centers, and more than 24,000 employees across 15 states, and its hoping to sell many of its locations to preserve jobs, minimize the impact on customers, and extract the most value out of its business operationsespecially its prescription files, which it sees as its most vaulable assets.
However, it saw little or no value in the initial stores that were marked for closure in this weeks filing, and so it has either started the process of closing the stores down or will do so soon.
Fast Company has reached out to Rite Aid for more details about the timeline of these store closures.
Will all Rite Aid locations eventually close?
Some news outlets have falsely reported that Rite Aid is already planning to close all of its locations, but the company has made no such announcement.
While many stores will no doubt shutter as the bankruptcy process unfolds, others could be sold to new owners. Which stores will be sold and how many is unclear. What is clear is that this will be a fast-moving process, as Rite Aid believes time is of the essence.
Why is this process moving so quickly?
This is not Rite Aids first time at the Chapter 11 rodeo. The company knows from its bankruptcy in 2023 that the longer it takes to secure deal with buyers, the more pharmacy customers its going to lose.
That’s because people who get their prescriptions from Rite Aid are increasingly likely to transfer them elsewhere the more they read about the companys bankruptcy in media reports. A substantial customer exodus will make Rite Aid’s business less attractive to buyers.
“The timeline proposed for the contemplated sale process is, in the Debtors business judgment, essential to preserving value and facilitating an orderly sale process, Rite Aid wrote in a court filing. Based on Rite Aids prior experience selling similar assets, the longer the sale process takes, the greater the value erosion through attrition in the meantime. This risk is entirely one-sided and to the Debtors detriment.
Which locations are closing soon?
According to this weeks filing, the following 47 locations are set to close and may already be in the process of doing so. (Based on a search of their Yelp pages, some may have already closed.) Rite Aid says it chose the locations based on factors such as underperformance and lack of proximity to competitors that might be willing to buy the locations.
California
211 East 17th Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92627
1331 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90403
446 East Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90015
23 Peninsula Center, Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274
3300 East Anaheim Street, Long Beach, CA 90804
1203 West Imola Avenue, Napa, CA 94559
1550 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125
501 South Gaffey Street, San Pedro, CA 90731
4840 Niagara Avenue, San Diego, CA 92107
32450 Clinton Keith Road, Wildomar, CA 92595
720 Sutton Way, Grass Valley, CA 95945
34420 Yucaipa Boulevard, Yucaipa, CA 92399
2751 Del Paso Road, Sacramento, CA 95835
1038 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91106
6150 Van Buren Boulevard, Riverside, CA 92503
220 West East Avenue, Chico, CA 95926
1534 East Florence Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90001
4774 West Lane, Stockton, CA 95210
4920 La Sierra Avenue, Riverside, CA 92505
Connecticut
56 Rubber Avenue, Naugatuck, CT 06770
113-115 Mill Plain Rd., Danbury, CT 06811
180 Main Street, Cheshire, CT 06410
Massachusetts
10084-02 1031 Main St., Clinton, MA 01510
New Hampshire
354 Winchester Street, Keene, NH 03431
19 Wilton Road Ste 1A, Peterborough, NH 03458
75 Portsmouth Avenue Unit 1, Exeter, NH 03833
New Jersey
75 South Main Street, Neptune, NJ 07753
403 Sicklerville Road, Sicklerville, NJ 08081
New York
55-60 Myrtle Avenue, Ridgewood, NY 11385
8222 18th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11214
5901 Bay Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11204
50-15 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside, NY 11377
60-26 Woodside Avenue, Woodside, NY 11377
Oregon
2521 South Sixth Street, Klamath Falls, OR 97601
700 S.E. 3rd Street, Bend, OR 97702
514 NE 181st Avenue, Portland, OR 97230
1400 West 6th Street, The Dalles, OR 97058
Pennsylvania
304 Market Street, Harrisburg, PA 17101
23 North Elm Street, Kutztown, PA 19530
3773 Peters Mountain Rd., Halifax, PA 17032
843 Rostraver Road, Belle Vernon, PA 15012
400 West Second Street, Berwick, PA 18603
1039 2nd Street Pike, Richboro, PA 18954
10941-01 Pittsburgh Intl Airport, Pittsburgh, PA 15231
209 Atwood Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Washington
248 Bendigo Blvd S, North Bend, WA 98045
250 Basin Street SW, Ephrata, WA 98823
Last week marked Trump’s first 100 days in officeand when it comes to climate policy, things are already pretty grim. In just three months, the president has elevated fossil fuels, pulled back billions from green investments, and implemented tariffs that make it harder to import renewable infrastructure. And that’s just the start.
But despite Trumps relentless attacks on the environment, there are still some bright spotsfrom climate startups, from cities and states, and from nonprofits that are taking these actions to court.
In a recent conversation, Fast Company senior editor Aimee Rawlins and executive editor Morgan Clendaniel discussed some of Trump’s most significant attacks on the environmentas well as the ways that people are pushing back.
If you missed the subscriber-only event, you can catch the whole conversation in the video above.
At a recent fundraising event, I stood backstage with a young woman waiting to give a speech in front of 550 people to honor her alma mater. She was visibly nervous; I watched as she paced, taking deep breaths to calm the adrenaline that was flooding her body, twisting her hands, and looking toward the stage door as if she might try to make a run for it.
As a charity auctioneer who has spent more than two decades on stages around the world commanding rooms filled with thousands of people, I know that feeling. There were so many nights in the beginning of my career when I felt the same way. But spending 1,000-plus nights onstage has given me plenty of practice to learn what it takes to cultivate confidenceand keep itin my professional and personal life.
Here are two easy mindset shifts that anyone can use to boost their confidence walking into any room.
Find Your Strike Method
Every time I walk onstage as the auctioneer, I bring a small gavel to bang down three times to get the attention of the crowd. After many years of hearing the gavel crack three times against the podium, I associate the habit with the most confident version of me. On nights when I forgot my gavel, I started to use anything within reach to mimic the motion and sounda saltshaker from the table, a tube of lipstick, even a hockey puck when I was taking an auction at a hockey arena.
I also found I could use this offstage as well. Whenever I am about to step into a difficult meeting or a big presentation and find my confidence starting to recede, I visualize the gavel strike. The familiar method reminds me to throw my shoulders back, put a smile on my face, and walk in like I own the room.
For my book The Most Powerful Woman in the Room Is You, I interviewed professional athletes, CEOs, and people at the top of their industry and realized that most successful people have their own version of a strike method. Whether it be a mantra, an action, or a physical item, there is something that helps them conjure strength and confidence in the moments when they dont feel it.
To cultivate confidence, spend time thinking about the moments when you feel your most powerful. Come up with your own mantra or action that you can use anytime you arent feeling your most confident, and let your strike method empower you to move forward.
Nail Your Sales Pitch
When it comes to shifting your confidence mindset, inner work is as important as anything you do in your personal or professional life. You may dream about building the biggest business in the world and spend hours designing your dream life, but if you havent mastered your sales pitch, you will always find yourself fumbling when asked a question about yourself.
Sit down with a piece of paper in a quiet place and write down a list of everything you want people to know about you: what you are good at, what you do, where you are headed. If you find that you have written about things that you no longer want to be known for, simply cross them off the list.
Once that list is complete, spend some time writing a 30-second sales pitch that describes these key details: who you are, what you are doing, and, most importantly, where you are headed. Articulating this vision and putting it into a concise sales pitch will put you in control the next time someone asks, So tell me about you.
A few minutes before the nervous young woman stepped onstage, I walked over and gave her an unsolicited hype speech to help her own the moment. You are going to rock this speech, and everyone in the audience is ready to watch you command the stage. I saw her stand up taller, still nervous but now ready to take up space on the stage.
Confidence ebbs and flows, so dont forget to surround yourself with people who believe in youand give you a hype speech on the days when you arent feeling the most confident.
The 2002 sci-fi thriller Minority Report depicts a dystopian future where a specialized police unit is tasked with arresting people for crimes they have not yet committed. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the drama revolves around PreCrimea system informed by a trio of psychics, or precogs, who anticipate future homicides, allowing police officers to intervene and prevent would-be assailants from claiming their targets lives.
The film probes at hefty ethical questions: How can someone be guilty of a crime they havent yet committed? And what happens when the system gets it wrong?
While there is no such thing as an all-seeing precog, key components of the future that Minority Report envisions have become reality even faster than its creators imagined. For more than a decade, police departments across the globe have been using data-driven systems geared toward predicting when and where crimes might occur and who might commit them.
Far from an abstract or futuristic conceit, predictive policing is a reality. And market analysts are predicting a boom for the technology.
Given the challenges in using predictive machine learning effectively and fairly, predictive policing raises significant ethical concerns. Absent technological fixes on the horizon, there is an approach to addressing these concerns: Treat government use of the technology as a matter of democratic accountability.
Troubling history
Predictive policing relies on artificial intelligence and data analytics to anticipate potential criminal activity before it happens. It can involve analyzing large datasets drawn from crime reports, arrest records and social or geographic information to identify patterns and forecast where crimes might occur or who may be involved.
Law enforcement agencies have used data analytics to track broad trends for many decades. Todays powerful AI technologies, however, take in vast amounts of surveillance and crime report data to provide much finer-grained analysis.
Police departments use these techniques to help determine where they should concentrate their resources. Place-based prediction focuses on identifying high-risk locations, also known as hot spots, where crimes are statistically more likely to happen. Person-based prediction, by contrast, attempts to flag individuals who are considered at high risk of committing or becoming victims of crime.
These types of systems have been the subject of significant public concern. Under a so-called intelligence-led policing program in Pasco County, Florida, the sheriffs department compiled a list of people considered likely to commit crimes and then repeatedly sent deputies to their homes. More than 1,000 Pasco residents, including minors, were subject to random visits from police officers and were cited for things such as missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass.
Four residents sued the county in 2021, and last year they reached a settlement in which the sheriffs office admitted that it had violated residents constitutional rights to privacy and equal treatment under the law. The program has since been discontinued.
This is not just a Florida problem. In 2020, Chicago decommissioned its Strategic Subject List, a system where police used analytics to predict which prior offenders were likely to commit new crimes or become victims of future shootings. In 2021, the Los Angeles Police Department discontinued its use of PredPol, a software program designed to forecast crime hot spots but was criticized for low accuracy rates and reinforcing racial and socioeconomic biases.
Necessary innovations or dangerous overreach?
The failure of these high-profile programs highlights a critical tension: Even though law enforcement agencies often advocate for AI-driven tools for public safety, civil rights groups and scholars have raised concerns over privacy violations, accountability issues, and the lack of transparency. And despite these high-profile retreats from predictive policing, many smaller police departments are using the technology.
Most American police departments lack clear policies on algorithmic decision-making and provide little to no disclosure about how the predictive models they use are developed, trained, or monitored for accuracy or bias. A Brookings Institution analysis found that in many cities, local governments had no public documentation on how predictive policing software functioned, what data was used, or how outcomes were evaluated.
This opacity is whats known in the industry as a black box. It prevents independent oversight and raises serious questions about the structures surrounding AI-driven decision-making. If a citizen is flagged as high-risk by an algorithm, what recourse do they have? Who oversees the fairness of these systems? What independent oversight mechanisms are available?
These questions are driving contentious debates in communities about whether predictive policing as a method should be reformed, more tightly regulated, or abandoned altogether. Some people view these tools as necessary innovations, while others see them as dangerous overreach.
A better way in San Jose
But there is evidence that data-driven tools grounded in democratic values of due process, transparency, and accountability may offer a stronger alternative to todays predictive policing systems. What if the public could understand how these algorithms function, what data they rely on, and what safeguards exist to prevent discriminatory outcomes and misuse of the technology?
The city of San Jose, California, has embarked on a process that is intended to increase transparency and accountability aroud its use of AI systems. San Jose maintains a set of AI principles requiring that any AI tools used by city government be effective, transparent to the public, and equitable in their effects on peoples lives. City departments also are required to assess the risks of AI systems before integrating them into their operations.
If taken correctly, these measures can effectively open the black box, dramatically reducing the degree to which AI companies can hide their code or their data behind things such as protections for trade secrets. Enabling public scrutiny of training data can reveal problems such as racial or economic bias, which can be mitigated but are extremely difficult if not impossible to eradicate.
Research has shown that when citizens feel that government institutions act fairly and transparently, they are more likely to engage in civic life and support public policies. Law enforcement agencies are likely to have stronger outcomes if they treat technology as a toolrather than a substitutefor justice.
Maria Lungu is a postdoctoral researcher of law and public administration at the University of Virginia.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Given President Donald Trump’s well-established penchant for golden objects, it was not a surprise to many when images of his administration’s decorative choices in the Oval Office started appearing.
The space now abounds in gold. There are gold picture frames, gold statues, gold trophies, gold crown molding, and gold coasters. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump called in his Mar-a-Lago “gold guy” to assist with the redesign, adding custom-made and gilded carvings. Compared to those of presidents past, Trump’s Oval Office decor is a maximalist and glistening tour de force.
To some, the decoration is all a bit much. New York magazine called the overall decorative approach in the White House “tacky and trollish.” An opinion piece in The Washington Post called the decoration “gaudy-awful.” Another drew a direct line between Trump’s decorative leanings and the over-the-top opulence of the Palace of Versailles.
From left: President George W. Bush, circa 2008, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent under the recently gilded entry, 2025 [Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
“In order to gain a certain kind of reputational notoriety he emulates this style that’s connected with the elite. But he does so in a very pastiche way,” says Robert Wellington, a professor of art history at the Australian National University and a specialist in the arts in France during the reign of Louis XIV. Trump, who has called “the look and feel of Louis XIV” his “favorite style,” has interpreted this period mainly through items that are, or look like, gold. “Perhaps he’s trying to create a sense of material splendor around him that gives a sense of power and buttresses his claims to the success that his administration is having,” Wellington says. “He wants to give that illusion of success.”
From left: Oval Office seating area, circa 2010, and 2025 [Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images, Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images]
What are those things?
According to information from the White House, some items in Trump’s Oval Office actually do have legitimate value, both materially and historically. On top of the mantle, there is a line of seven historic items from the White House collection dating back to the early and mid-19th century.
This is the lineup, according to details from the White House curator’s office, that was provided by a source in the White House. On the outside edges there are two gilded silver dessert stands made around 1810. Next to those are two gilded silver figurative centerpieces made around 1843. Next to those are two gilded bronze vases made around 1817 and associated with James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. And in the center is a gilded bronze basket made between 1815 and 1820. All the items originated in either England or France.
[Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images]
The provenance of these pieces may have some subversive significance for those who read between the lines. The four outermost pieces were bequests from Margaret Thompson Biddle, heir to a diamond- and copper-mining fortune and one of the richest American women of the mid-20th century. Once married to a diplomat, she lived for many of the pre- and post-World War II years in Europe, and hosted famous salons in her Paris home with the leading lights of American and French society.
The centerpiece was a gift of Gifford B. Pinchot, an early trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an organization that by its own accounting sued the first Trump administration 163 times. Pinchot, who donated the piece in 1973 and died in 1989, was the son of Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forest Service and a close ally of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, with whom he helped formulate the federal government’s approach to resource conservation. Neither of these people would seem ideologically connected to the current administration’s policies.
Made in the USA? Not in the White House
More notable, perhaps, is the fact that none of the items on the mantle in Trump’s Oval Office were made in the U.S., which contrasts with the administration’s present focus on imposing tariffs on foreign-produced goods and services.
“There is a long passion for French decorative arts in America, through the Gilded Age patrons but also in the White House itself. So it’s not completely outrageous to imagine these French styles coming into the White House,” Wellington says.
The Hall of Mirrors in Versailles [Photo: Jessica Kantak Bailey/Unsplash]
But Wellington also sees a deep irony in Trump’s affection for Louis XIV and the Palace of Versailles, which he explores in a forthcoming book, Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury, Louis XIV to Donald Trump. Wellington notes that Versailles was built as a kind of advertising program, establishing France as the center for luxury production by putting its finest craftsmanship in furniture, metalwork, mirrors, silks, and paintings on display. The palace’s decorative approach was also a form of protectionism, meant to stop people from importing luxury products from other countries. “It was state-sponsored luxury production which led to France being seen as the place where the very finest things could be made,” Wellington says.
Trump’s version of Louis XIV’s approach is more surface than substance, Wellington says. In contrast with the industry-boosting decoration at Versailles, the White House decor undermines one of the administration’s key policies. “If Trump wanted to be a Louis XIV, I think he would be well placed to support the arts and culture. Instead, there’s very regressive ideas about arts and culture being supported under the Trump administration,” he says.
“To be a great model of patronage you would be looking to the greatest minds of the day, the greatest artists of the day to create an image of America, to make America great again,” Wellington adds. “The way that you would do that is to think to the future, not to lock into some old idea.”
