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On Thursday, Florida put Edward Zakrzewski to death for the 1994 murder of his wife and children. He was the ninth person executed so far this year in the Sunshine State, surpassing its previous single-year high of eight executions in 2014.

Florida used lethal injection to execute Zakrzewski, one of two methods that, until recently, were the only ones allowed under state law. The other was electrocution, which an inmate could choose as an alternative to lethal injection.

There was nothing unusual about that law, as many other death penalty states specify more than one possible execution method. For example, Alabama law states that in death penalty cases, “lethal injection will be administered, unless the prisoner affirmatively chooses nitrogen hypoxia or electrocution.” There’s a similar law in South Carolina.

But Florida’s new law is the first of its kind. It gives the people in charge of carrying out executions, as the journalist Olivia Burke explains, “free rein to put prisoners who were given the ultimate punishment to death however they see fit.”

“The only condition,” Burke notes, “is that the technique is ‘not deemed unconstitutional’—which opens the floodgates to a host of barbaric ideas.”

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Actress Loni Anderson, who starred as receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati, died on Sunday at the age of 79.

Her cause of death is from “an acute prolonged illness,” Anderson’s publicist Cheryl J. Kagan said, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Newsweek reached out to Anderson’s representative via email for comment on Monday.

Why It Matters

Anderson’s role on CBS’ WKRP in Cincinnati catapulted her to stardom. The sitcom, which aired from 1978 until 1982, earned her two Emmy nominations and three Golden Globe nominations.

The actress went on to star in films like A Night at the Roxbury, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Stroker Ace, where she fell in love with her co-star Burt Reynolds. The pair later married in 1988 and divorced in 1994.

What To Know

Anderson died on August 3 at a Los Angeles hospital just days before her 80th birthday.

“We are heartbroken to announce the passing of our dear wife, mother, and grandmother,” Anderson’s family said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.

In an interview with Fox News in 2021, Anderson addressed her sex symbol status on WKRP in Cincinnati.

“I remember we all did posters back then. Everybody always asks me, ‘What made you do a poster?'” she recalled. “I would say, ‘Because someday my grandchildren will look at this. And I’ll be able to tell them that I really looked like that.’ What you saw is what you got.”The Minnesota native added, “I never thought I would be Loni Anderson, sex symbol. But I embrace it. I think I was lucky enough to have been able to play so many different things and sex symbol was a part of it. I took whatever my career threw at me.”

What People Are Saying

Steve Sauer, president and CEO of Media Four and Anderson’s manager for three decades, said in a statement, per The Hollywood Reporter: “Loni was a class act. Beautiful. Talented. Witty. ALWAYS a joy to be around. She was the ultimate working mother. Family first … and maintained a great balance with her career. She and I had wonderful adventures together that I shall forever cherish. I will especially miss that infectious chuckle of hers.”

I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden penned a sweet tribute to her “dear friend” on X: “The news just came through that my dear friend Loni Anderson has passed. Like many, I am absolutely stunned and heartbroken. Our friendship has spanned many years, and news like this is never easy to hear or accept.”

“What can I say about Loni that everyone doesn’t already know? She was a real talent, with razor smart wit and a glowing sense of humor… but, even more than that, she had an impeccable work ethic. Even beyond that, Loni was a darling lady and a genuinely good person … I am truly at a loss for words.”

“My condolences to her family, her husband Bob, and her children, Deidra and Quinton. Loni, you were one in a trillion, my friend, and even a trillion more.”

Morgan Fairchild, who starred alongside Anderson in the 2023 Lifetime movie Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas, wrote via X: “I am heartbroken to hear of the passing of the wonderful Loni Anderson! We did Bob Hope specials together & a Christmas movie 2 years ago. The sweetest, most gracious lady! I’m just devastated to hear this. Love & condolences to Bob (who was on set every day w her) & her kids and grandkids, who she adored. #RIPLoniAnderson”

Airplane! actor Robert Hays posted to X: “Today, my dear friend Loni Anderson passed away. She was an absolutely wonderful woman and friend, a wife, mother, and grandmother. Love and condolences to Bob, Deidra, Quintin, and all the grandkids. Loni is singing with the angels now. God bless her.”

Comedian Loni Love said on X: “Very sad to hear about the passing of Loni Anderson.. I grew up watching this Queen and was so thrilled to meet her. Condolences to her family and fans.”

What Happens Next?

Anderson’s funeral plans have not been publicly announced.

She is survived by her husband, Bob Flick, daughter Deidra, son Quinton Anderson Reynolds, stepson Adam Flick, her two granddaughters, and two step-grandchildren.

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Actress Loni Anderson poses in a photo shoot on September 17,1986 in Los Angeles, California. Actress Loni Anderson poses in a photo shoot on September 17,1986, in Los Angeles, California.

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Devin Nunes, the former GOP lawmaker who now serves as chief executive for Donald Trump’s media company, has lost his defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal over comments MSNBC star Rachel Maddow made about his interaction with a pro-Russian operative.

In dismissing the lawsuit, which centered on remarks Maddow made during a March 2021 broadcast, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel concluded that “no reasonable jury could find” that Maddow engaged in “constitutionally-defined actual malice” against Nunes in the segment, which focused on a package he received from Ukrainian businessman Andrii Derkach.

When Nunes was still in Congress and served as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee in 2019, Derkach – who intelligence agencies described as a Russian agent – addressed a package to Nunes. According to Nunes, the package was promptly handed over the the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In July 2020, however, Politico published a piece with the headline “Democrats: Packets sent to Trump allies are part of foreign plot to damage Biden.” The outlet reported that Nunes “declined repeated requests for comment” but that “one person familiar with the matter said the information was not turned over to the FBI.”

Eight months later, Maddow and her show’s executive producer, Cory Gnazzo, relied upon that Politico article for a segment that covered an ODNI report and Nunes’ conduct with the Derkach package.

Furthermore, in a separate appearance on MSNBC the day before the Maddow segment, then-Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) remarked about Nunes: “And the fact is that [the Russians] were so comfortable using people like Devin Nunes that Andrii Derkach, a known Russian asset, sent information to Devin Nunes at the Intelligence Committee. We literally had the package receipt.”

Meanwhile, in the Maddow segment, the MSNBC host claimed that Nunes “has refused to hand it over to the FBI, which is what you should do if you get something from somebody who is sanctioned by the U.S. as a Russian agent.”

In the lawsuit, Nunes said that both Maddow and Gnazzo knew that he had handed the package over to the FBI right away, but they both asserted that they were unaware of other reporting that contradicted their segment. Maddow and Gnazzo were not named defendants in the case, as the complaint was instead directed at NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast. MSNBC will soon be spun off from NBCU into a separate company called Versant.

Nunes, who left Congress in 2022 and is now the CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, contended in his complaint that Maddow and the network harbored “an institutional hostility, hatred, extreme bias, spite and ill-will” towards him.

However, Castel said that there was no clear evidence that the “defendant’s admitted political bias caused defendant to act with a reckless disregard of the truth” or that Maddow was aware of “probable falsity” as it related to a separate Politico article that reported the FBI received the package from Nunes.

The Independent has reached out to Nunes and Trump Media. MSNBC declined to comment.

Unlike his boss, Nunes hasn’t been quite so lucky when it comes to his many defamation lawsuits against media organizations and personalities. Between 2019 and 2021, judges tossed out three other complaints that Nunes filed against CNN, the Washington Post, and two parody social media accounts that mocked him online.

Derkach, meanwhile, was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in September 2020 for attempting to interfere on Trump’s behalf in that year’s presidential election. He was later indicted for sanctions violations by federal prosecutors in 2022.

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Relationships are messy, whether you are an adult with lots of experience or a kid navigating tough times with a best friend, boyfriend or girlfriend. You can’t predict moods, interests or desires. For teens learning the ins and outs of relationships for the first time, disagreements, fights, and breakups can be crushing. 

But what if your teen’s best friend wasn’t actually human? It may seem far-fetched, but it’s not. A new report from Common Sense Media says that 72 percent of teens surveyed have used AI companions, and 33 percent have relationships or friendships with these chatbots.  

The language that AI companions use, the responses they make, and the empathy they exude can make a user feel as though they truly understand and sympathize. These chatbots can make someone feel liked or even loved. They are programmed to help users feel like they’ve made a real connection. And as adolescents have a naturally developing fascination with romance and sexuality, if you feel ignored by the girls in your high school, well, now, on the nearest screen is a hot girlfriend who is constantly fascinated by you and your video games, or a super cute boyfriend whom you never had to engage in small talk with to form a bond. 

This may be perplexing to some parents, but if your child is navigating the complex worlds of technology, social media, and artificial intelligence, the likelihood they will be curious about an AI companion is pretty high. Here’s what you need to know to help them.  

Chatbots have been around for a long time. In 1966, an MIT professor named Joseph Weizenbaum created the first chatbot, named ELIZA. Today AI and natural language processing have sprinted far past ELIZA. You probably have heard of ChatGPT. But some of the common companion AI platforms are ones you might not be familiar with: Replika, Character.AI, and My AI are just a few. In 2024, Mozilla counted more than 100 million downloads of a group of chatbot apps. Some apps set 18 as a minimum age requirement, but it’s easy for a younger teen to get around that. 

You might think your kid won’t get attached, that they will know this chatbot is an algorithm designed to give responses based on the text inputs they receive; that it’s not “real.” But a fascinating Stanford University study of students who use the app Replika found that 81 percent considered their AI companion to have “intelligence,” and 90 percent thought it “human-like.” 

On the plus side, these companions are sometimes touted for their supportiveness and promotion of mental health; the Stanford study even found that 3 percent of users felt their Replika had directly helped them avoid suicide. If you’re a teenager who is marginalized, isolated or struggling to make friends, an AI companion can provide much-needed companionship. They may offer practice when it comes to building conversational and social skills. Chatbots can offer helpful information and tips.  

But are they safe? 

A Florida mother has sued the company that owns Character.AI, alleging the chatbot formed an obsessive relationship with her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III, and ultimately encouraged him to attempt suicide (which he tragically completed). Another suit filed in 2024 alleges that the same chatbot encourages self-harm in teens and violence towards parents who try to set limits on how often kids use the app.  

Then there’s privacy: Wired, drawing on Mozilla’s research, labeled AI companions a “privacy nightmare,” many crawling with data trackers that might manipulate users into thinking a chatbot is their soulmate, encouraging negative or harmful behaviors. 

Given what we know about teens, screens and mental health, online influences are sometimes powerful, largely unavoidable, and potentially life-changing for children and families. 

So what do you do?  

Remind kids that human friends offer so much that AI companions don’t. IRL friendships are challenging, and this is a good thing. Remind them that in their younger years, play is how they learned new skills; if they didn’t know how to put LEGOs together, they learned with a new friend. If they struggled with collaboration and cooperation, play taught them how to take turns, and how to adjust based on their playmates’ responses. 

Friends give children practice with the ins and outs of relationships. A friend can be tired, crabby, or overexcited. They might be lots of fun, but also easily frustrated; or maybe they’re sometimes boring, but very loyal. Growing up, a child has to learn how to take into account their friend’s personality and quirks, and they have to learn how to keep the friendship going. Maybe most poignantly, they learn how incredibly valuable friends are when things get tough. In cases of social stress, like bullying, the support of a friend who sticks by you is priceless. In my study of more than 1,000 teenagers in 2020, keeping close to a friend was by far the most helpful strategy for kids who said they were the targets of bullies. Another study of more than 1,000 teens found that IRL friends can lessen the effects of problematic social media use. 

 If they are curious about AI companions, educate them. This can increase their skepticism and awareness about these programs and why they exist (and why they’re often free). It’s important to acknowledge the pluses as well as the minuses of digital companionship. AI companions can be very supportive; they’re never fuming on the school bus because their mother made them wear

a sweater on a cold morning, they’re never jealous when you have a new girlfriend, and they never accuse you of ignoring their needs. But they won’t teach you how to handle things when they drop you for a new best friend, or when they develop an interest that you just can’t share. Discussing profit motives, personal security risks, and social or emotional risks doesn’t guarantee that a teenager won’t go online and get an AI girlfriend, but it will at least plant the seeds of a healthy doubt.  

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Last week, Senate Republicans narrowly confirmed Emil Bove to a lifetime seat on a federal appeals court over the objections of pretty much everyone who cares about preserving an impartial judiciary. Bove has performed a series of cartoonishly corrupt misdeeds on President Donald Trump’s behalf from his perch in the Department of Justice, manufacturing the crooked bargain to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and firing prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases. Multiple whistleblowers have alleged that Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, instructed his staff to defy the courts if necessary to deport immigrants without due process and lied to Congress at his hearing. This egregious misconduct was not a deal-breaker for Senate Republicans, who rushed through his confirmation to avoid even more damning revelations from coming out before the vote.

But Bove will step into a judiciary that has not yet been entirely degraded by Trump’s influence. There are still plenty of courageous judges in the lower courts, and many of them have spent the past six months fighting vigorously against the president’s abuses of office. A trio of our finest district court judges, and their unflinching battle for equal justice, is the subject of Reynolds Holding’s new book Better Judgment: How Three Judges Are Bringing Justice Back to the Courts. Holding is a journalist, lawyer, and research scholar at Columbia Law School. On this week’s episode of Amicus, he spoke with Mark Joseph Stern about what we can learn from these three judges—Carlton Reeves, Martha Vázquez, and Jed Rakoff—in the shadow of Trump’s attempted transformation of the courts. An excerpt of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mark Joseph Stern: Emil Bove is one of Trump’s most corrupt hatchet men. More than 900 former Justice Department officials urged the Senate to vote him down, saying his confirmation would be “intolerable to anyone committed to maintaining our ordered system of justice.” And yet he has now been confirmed as a judge. We just talked about three judges who are the polar opposite of Bove, but now they’re serving in the same judiciary with him. What are we supposed to make of the courts as a whole when these two incredibly different kinds of judges are serving side by side in the system? 

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Emil Bove. Jack Gruber/USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

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However, Donalds recalled, Trump himself was unenthused about his medical head accessory when the pair met shortly after his convention speech. “I see the bandage, and the second thing [Trump says] is ‘what do you think of the bandage?’” Donalds said.

“I said, ‘I don’t like it. Take it off.’ That’s what I said. ‘I don’t like it. Take it off.’ I said, ‘let everybody see the ear.’”

“He was like, ‘you know, it’s not too bad. It’s not too bad’…”Doc Ronny [Jackson] says, I gotta wear the bandage.”

“I’m like, ‘so what? You’re the president, just take the thing off,” Donalds added.

The president’s bandage became the inspiration for many at the RNC, with one Arizona delegate, Joe Neglia, describing it at the time as “the newest fashion trend.”

“Everybody in the world is going to be wearing these pretty soon,” Neglia told CBS, while sporting a piece of white tape over his own ear. “When he came in [to the convention], and there was that eruption of love in the room, I thought, ‘what can I do to honor the truth? What can I possibly do?

“And then I saw the bandage, and I thought, I can do that. So, I put it on simply to honor Trump and to express sympathy with him and unity with him.”

At a rally shortly after the convention, Trump appeared to have downgraded his ear bandage, instead sporting a skin-colored band-aid covering the top part of his right ear.

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Donald Trump, with a bandage on his ear from an assassination attempt foiled at his rally on Saturday, speaks at the RNC after accepting the 2024 Republican nomination for president. (Getty Images)

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Every four years, soccer fans eagerly await the sport’s biggest event: the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup. But before each dramatic kickoff, artists and researchers spend years designing, testing, and revising the official match ball. Recently, images of the planned ball for the 2026 competition were leaked, and its design incorporates math, physics, and style in some surprising ways.

Called the Trionda (Spanish for “triwave”), the new ball celebrates the three host nations—the U.S., Mexico, and Canada—for the first multinational-hosted World Cup. The ball is stitched together from just four panels, the smallest number yet for a FIFA World Cup ball. And it represents a significant reduction from the 20-paneled Al Rhila ball that was used in 2022.

The design of any soccer ball hinges on an age-old question: How can one make rounded shapes out of flat material? Every FIFA World Cup ball so far has borrowed inspiration from some of math’s simplest three-dimensional shapes: the platonic solids. These five shapes are the only convex polyhedrons built from copies of a single regular polygon where the same number of faces meet at each corner.

The icosahedron, which has 20 triangle faces and a relatively ball-like appearance, seems promising, but it’s still a bit too pointy to roll around. If we cut off (or truncate) the points of an icosahedron, each of the triangles becomes a hexagon, and each of the points becomes a pentagon.

This is the shape of the classic soccer ball, originally called the Telstar ball and used in the official FIFA World Cup match in 1970. The stark black-and-white color scheme was meant to increase visibility on black-and-white TVs, which were still prevalent at the time.

The Trionda ball is also based on a platonic solid—the tetrahedron—which at first seems the least ball-like of all the famous shapes. A tetrahedron is made of four triangles, three of which meet at every point. The trick in the Trionda design is in the shape of the panels. Though they have three points like a typical triangle, the panels’ edges are curves that fit together to give the ball a more rounded exterior.

This method of making a pointy platonic solid rounder by curving the edges of the faces may be familiar to soccer fans; in fact, the design of the Trionda ball strongly evokes the Brazuca⁠, a six-paneled ball based on a cube that starred in the 2014 World Cup.

Basing the Trionda ball on a tetrahedron might be a risky choice; the last match ball based on that shape was highly controversial. The Jabulani ball, whose name means “rejoice” in Zulu, might have been a bit too joyful. Players complained it was unpredictable in the air and didn’t react the way they expected it to. The design of the Jabulani combined both methods of turning a platonic solid into a sphere: cutting off the corners to make eight faces and turning the edges of the faces into curves. It also had a unique feature, shared with none of the official match balls before or since: three-dimensional, spherically molded panels.

The Jabulani may have been the roundest ball yet. So why didn’t it work as intended? The answer has to do with “drag”⁠—the force of air particles pushing back on the ball as it flies through space. Typically, the faster a ball moves, the more drag it experiences, which can slow it down and change its trajectory. But each ball also has a “critical speed” past which the drag on the ball decreases significantly. The smoother a ball is, the higher the critical speed barrier becomes. This is why the surfaces of golf balls have dimples: they lower the critical speed and help the balls move faster through the air. These effects mean that rounder and smoother isn’t always better—and may explain the Jabulani’s unpredictable behavior.

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Some Republican senators have expressed concern about President Donald Trump’s decision Friday to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after the release of the July jobs report.

Several Republicans told NBC News that they would take issue with the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS, if it is the result of Trump disliking the jobs report numbers, which showed the U.S. job market in the past months has been considerably weaker than previously thought.

Trump defended his decision Friday, saying without evidence that the report’s numbers were “phony” and accused McEntarfer of releasing favorable jobs numbers before the election to give former Vice President Kamala Harris an edge.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., said if the data is untrustworthy, the public should find out, but firing the commissioner before knowing whether the numbers are inaccurate is “kind of impetuous.”

“If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem,” Lummis said. “It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., blasted Trump’s decision to fire McEntarfer as well.

“If she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just did it because they didn’t like the numbers, they ought to grow up,” Tillis said.

Tillis announced in June that he does not intend to run for re-election, a day after opposing Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” and subsequently drawing the president’s ire, including a threat to back a primary challenge against the senator.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who found out about the commissioner’s firing from NBC News’ question to him about it, said he did not know much about the topic but proceeded to question whether the move would be effective in improving the numbers.

“We have to look somewhere for objective statistics. When the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that you know, the statistics won’t be politicized,” Paul said.

“I’m going to look into it, but first impression is that you can’t really make the numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting,” he added.

Paul also opposed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” in June. The senator said in June that due to his vocal opposition, he was uninvited from an annual White House picnic in the weeks leading up to the vote on the sweeping domestic policy package. However, Trump later said Paul and his family were invited.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she cannot trust the job numbers — and “that’s the problem.”

“And when you fire people, then it makes people trust them even less,” she said.

Democratic senators have spoken out against McEntarfer’s firing, too, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accusing Trump of acting like “someone who imitates authoritarian leaders” during remarks on the Senate floor Friday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called the move “the sign of an authoritarian type” and added, “what that means is, I think the American people are going to find it hard to believe the information that comes out of the government, because Trump will always want it to be great news, and when that happens, it’s hard for us to deal with the problems, because we don’t know what is going on.”

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, went a step further, calling McEntarfer’s dismissal “the stuff of fascist dictatorships.”

Former BLS Commissioner William Beach, whom Trump appointed to the position and was confirmed by the Senate in 2019, made a post on X calling McEntarfer’s firing “totally groundless,” “a dangerous precedent,” and undermining “the statistical mission of the Bureau.”

A statement by “The Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” co-signed by Beach, affirmed the accuracy of the bureau’s work and of McEntarfer specifically.

“The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent, reliable process to produce estimates every month. Every month, BLS revises the prior two months’ employment estimates to reflect slower-arriving, more-accurate information,” the statement read.

“BLS operates as a federal statistical agency and is afforded autonomy to ensure the data it releases are as accurate as possible,” it added

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Long ago, in a galaxy far away, two black holes danced around each other, drawing ever closer until they ended in a cosmic collision that sent ripples through the fabric of spacetime. These gravitational waves traveled for over a billion years before reaching Earth. On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) heard their chirping signal, marking the first-ever detection of such a cosmic collision.

Initially, scientists expected LIGO might detect just a few of these collisions. But now, nearing the first detection’s 10th anniversary, we have already observed more than 300 gravitational-wave events, uncovering entirely unexpected populations of black holes. Just lately, on July 14, LIGO scientists announced the discovery of the most massive merger of two black holes ever seen.

Gravitational-wave astronomy has become a global enterprise. Spearheaded by LIGO’s two cutting-edge detectors in the U.S. and strengthened through collaboration with detectors in Italy (Virgo) and Japan (KAGRA), the field has become one of the most data-rich and exciting frontiers in astrophysics. It tests fundamental aspects of general relativity, measures the expansion of the universe, and challenges our models of how stars live and die.

LIGO has also spurred the design and development of technologies beyond astronomy. For example, advances in quantum technologies, which reduce the noise and thereby improve LIGO’s detector sensitivity, have promising applications to both microelectronics and quantum computing.

Given all this, it comes as no surprise that the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to LIGO’s founders in 2017.

Yet despite this extraordinary success story, the field now faces an existential threat. The Trump administration has proposed slashing the total National Science Foundation (NSF) budget by more than half: a move so severe that one of the two LIGO detectors would be forced to shut down. Constructing and upgrading the two LIGO detectors required a public investment of approximately $1.4 billion as of 2022, so abandoning half this project now would constitute a gigantic waste. A U.S. Senate committee in mid-July pushed back against hobbling LIGO, but Congress has lately folded against administration budget cut demands, leaving it still on the table.

The proposed $19 million cut to the LIGO operations budget (a reduction from 2024 of some 40 percent) would be an act of stunning shortsightedness. With only one LIGO detector running, we will detect just 10 to 20 percent of the events we would have seen with both detectors operating. As a result, the U.S. will rapidly lose its leadership position in one of the most groundbreaking areas of modern science. Gravitational-wave astronomy, apart from being a technical success, is a fundamental shift in how we observe the universe. Walking away now would be like inventing the microscope, then tossing it aside before we had a good chance to look through the lens.

Here’s why losing one detector has such a devastating impact: The number of gravitational-wave events we expect to detect depends on how far our detectors can “see.” Currently, they can spot a binary black hole merger (like the one detected in 2015) out to a distance of seven billion light-years! With just one of the two LIGO detectors operating, the volume we can probe is reduced to just 35 percent of its original size, slashing the expected detection rate by the same fraction.

Moreover, distinguishing real gravitational-wave signals from noise is extremely challenging. Only when the same signal is observed in multiple detectors can we confidently identify it as a true gravitational-wave event, rather than, say, the vibrations of a passing truck. As a result, with just one detector operating, we can confirm only the most vanilla, unambiguous signals. This means we will miss extraordinary events like the one announced in mid-July.

Accounting for both the reduced detection volume and the fact that we can only confirm the vanilla events, we get to the dreaded 10 to 20 percent of the expected gravitational wave detections.

Lastly, we will also lose the ability to follow up on gravitational-wave events with traditional telescopes. Multiple detectors are necessary to triangulate an event’s position in the sky. This triangulation was essential for the follow-up of the first detection of a binary neutron star merger. By pinpointing the merger’s location in the sky, telescopes around the world could be called into action to capture an image of the explosion that accompanied the gravitational waves. This led to a cascade of new discoveries, including the realization in 2017 that such mergers comprise one of the main sources of gold in the universe.

Beyond LIGO, the proposed budget also terminates U.S. support for the European-led space-based gravitational-wave mission LISA and all but guarantees the cancellation of the next-generation gravitational wave detector Cosmic Explorer. The U.S. is thus poised to lose its global leadership position. As Europe and China move forward with ambitious projects like the Einstein Telescope, LISA and TianQin, this could result not only in missing the next wave of breakthroughs but also in a significant brain drain.

We cannot predict what discoveries still lie ahead. After all, when Heinrich Hertz first confirmed the existence of radio waves in 1887, no one could have imagined they would one day carry the Internet signal you used to load this article. This underscores a vital point: while cuts to science may appear to have only minor effects in the short term, systematic defunding of the fundamental sciences undermines the foundation of innovation and discovery that has long driven progress in the modern world and fueled our economies.

The detection of gravitational waves is a breakthrough on par with the first detections of x-rays or radio waves, but even more profound. Unlike those forms of light, which are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, gravitational waves arise from an entirely different force of nature. In a way, we have unlocked a new sense for observing the cosmos. It is as if before, we could only see the universe. With gravitational waves, we can hear all the sounds that come with it.

Choosing to stop listening now would be foolish.

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the conduit for federal funds to NPR and PBS, announced on Friday that it is beginning to wind down its operations, given President Trump has signed a law clawing back $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting through fiscal year 2027.

The announcement follows a largely party-line vote last month that approved the cuts to public broadcasting as part of a $9 billion rescissions package requested by the White House that also included cuts to foreign aid. While public media officials had held a glimmer of hope that lawmakers would restore some of the money for the following budget year, the Senate Appropriations Committee declined to do that on Thursday.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said.

CPB informed employees that the majority of staff positions will be eliminated with the close of the fiscal year on September 30, 2025. It said a small team would remain until January to “focus on compliance, fiscal distributions, and resolution of long-term financial obligations including ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system,” according to the CPB statement.

Harrison noted that it was the first time in nearly 60 years that Congress had refused to fund CPB. The private nonprofit corporation was set up to channel federal money to public media stations nationwide, both for programming and emergency alert systems. Shock and sadness reverberated through the public media system Friday. “I didn’t really see a day where this separate institution, which is set up to serve the public, would be shut down,” said Tim Bruno, general manager of Radio Catskill, an NPR affiliate in upstate New York. “I don’t know what stage of grief I’m in right now.”Earlier this summer, some stations began laying off staff in anticipation of federal funding cuts. On Wednesday, WQED — which runs a TV station and classical radio station in Pittsburgh — announced plans to lay off 35% of its staff.

Other operations, including Nashville Public Media, Louisville Public Media, and KUOW in Seattle, say they are seeing a big surge in donations in response to the cuts.

Trump and his allies in Congress have argued that public media — especially NPR — is unfair to conservatives and a waste of taxpayer money. Both NPR and PBS have denied bias.

NPR, which produces news programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, relies on direct federal funds for only a small portion of its budget. But its approximately 1,000 member stations receive a heftier portion of their operating revenue through CPB. Those in rural and poor areas, in particular, rely on CPB grants. With its nightly PBS News Hour and children’s programming, such as Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, PBS gets around 15% of its revenue from federal money, as do its member stations on average.

“The ripple effects of this closure will be felt across every public media organization and, more importantly, in every community across the country that relies on public broadcasting,” NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher said in a statement.

She said NPR would respond by “stepping up to support locally owned, nonprofit public radio stations and local journalism across the country, working to maintain public media’s promise of universal service, and upholding the highest standards for independent journalism and cultural programming in service of our nation.” The network has pledged to take $8 million from its budget to help local stations in crisis.

While Republicans in Washington have accused public media of bias, most Americans still support public broadcasting. A Harris Poll last month found that 66% of Americans support federal funding for public radio, with the same share calling it a good value. Support included 58% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats. The online poll surveyed 2,089 U.S. adults with a 2.5 percentage point margin of error.

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