A federal judge in Miami reopened President Trump’s $10 billion case against the I.R.S. in a striking turnabout, saying that she wanted to investigate “grievous allegations” that the hasty deal to resolve it was “premised on deception.”
The ruling by the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, on Friday to revive the case shortly after closing it was a significant blow both to Mr. Trump, who had voluntarily dismissed the suit last week, and to the Justice Department. After the president withdrew the suit, senior department officials released a pair of extraordinary agreements that settled the case by establishing a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of government “weaponization” by Democrats.
The deal also conferred lucrative tax benefits on Mr. Trump, his family, and his businesses.
Judge Williams’s decision came in response to court papers filed on Wednesday by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges who urged her to bring the case back to life and dig into the details of the agreement to settle it.
The former judges said that Mr. Trump’s settlement agreement raised serious questions about his “candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system.”
Before she closed the case, Judge Williams, an Obama appointee, had in fact questioned whether the lawsuit presented an actual conflict that she could adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was on both sides of the suit, bringing claims against a federal agency that he controlled. When she closed it, she noted there was no “settlement of record,” but shortly after, the Justice Department released its agreement foreclosing the action.
In her brief but stern order on Friday, Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders who signed the agreements to settle the suit — chief among them, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official in the department.
In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any case before her, and ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because “the court was the victim of a fraud.”
She also wanted Mr. Trump’s lawyers to respond to the question of whether he had colluded with his own government to settle the case “to avoid judicial scrutiny.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Judge Williams pointed to reporting by The New York Times that described how the I.R.S. had prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining defenses against the suit that the Justice Department did not take up in court.
Lawyers for the former judges hailed Judge Williams’s decision.
“The judges and their counsel greatly appreciate the seriousness with which the court is addressing these grievous allegations,” said Norman Eisen, who represented the former judges for the nonprofit group, Democracy Defenders Fund. “We stand ready to work with the court as it investigates this matter.”
Mr. Eisen was joined by the law firms Platkin and Susman Godfrey.
In their filing this week, the former judges claimed that Mr. Trump had improperly used his suit against the I.R.S. as a way to obtain “unlawful private benefits” for himself and his family, and to create a fund that would dole out taxpayer money “without constitutional or congressional authority.”
They also argued that the president had tried to shield the deal from judicial oversight by rushing a settlement and “short-circuiting” Judge Williams’s ability to examine its terms.
The $1.8 billion fund has faced separate legal headwinds. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia temporarily blocked the Trump administration from taking any further steps to set it up or disburse money from it. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including many Republicans, have also been critical of the fund, which upended G.O.P. plans to pass a party-line bill funding immigration enforcement efforts last week.
Mr. Trump, along with two of his sons and the Trump family business, first sued the I.R.S. in January, claiming they were owed at least $10 billion because a former contractor at the agency had leaked their tax returns (and hundreds of others) during the president’s first term in the White House. The Trumps claimed that the I.R.S. should have done more to prevent the contractor, Charles Littlejohn, from disclosing tax information to The New York Times and ProPublica.
Mr. Trump’s suit, as I.R.S. officials laid out in their memo and other lawyers have noted, had clear legal flaws. Potential defenses against it include that it was filed after the statute of limitations, and that it incorrectly faulted the I.R.S. for the actions of Mr. Littlejohn, previously a contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton. But the Justice Department never made an attempt to contest Mr. Trump’s suit. No government lawyer entered an appearance in the case.
.
In a stern order on Friday, a judge said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding President Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Once people understood glucagonlike peptide 1 (GLP-1) drugs’ potential for weight loss, the race among pharmaceutical companies was on. Among the current options, Wegovy can help people lose an average of 10 percent of their body weight in a year, while people taking Zepbound have had about a 15 percent loss, on average, in the same period. Soon, the most powerful GLP-1 treatment to date could hit the market: retatrutide.
Already popular on the online peptide gray market, the new drug, originally developed by Eli Lilly, caused participants in a recent clinical study to lose more than a quarter of their body weight over 80 weeks at the highest dose—results comparable to bariatric surgery. U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval could soon follow.
But bodies don’t just drop weight with no potential adverse effects. Weight loss on its own can change muscle, bone and more. As new-generation GLP-1 drugs promote higher rates of loss, clinicians want to ensure that the desire to shed pounds and see improvements, such as better cardiovascular health are balanced with the very real risks that may come with the treatment.
Fat, Muscle or Bone?
People typically lose weight when they eat fewer calories than their body expends. A common way to cut calories is to diet, while bariatric surgery removes or changes part of the gastrointestinal tract to reduce food—and therefore calorie—absorption.
GLP-1 is a gut hormone released in response to a meal that helps people feel full. It also increases insulin release and reduces glucose in the blood. Semaglutide (sold as Ozempic and Wegovy by Novo Nordisk) binds to the hormone’s receptor for longer periods of time, making people feel fuller for longer and eat less. Newer versions of GLP-1 drugs, such as tirzepatide (sold as Zepbound and Mounjaro by Eli Lilly) and Novo Nordisk’s upcoming drug CagriSema, target more than one type of gut hormone receptor, while retatrutide hits three.
With any weight loss, not everything that comes off is fat. “You can’t just burn fat,” says Caroline Apovian, an obesity medicine specialist at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. (Apovian has previously consulted for both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.)
When someone takes in fewer nutrients than they need, their body begins to utilize fat stores. This metabolic process requires amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. If amino acids aren’t adequately replenished from dietary protein, the body will recycle parts of muscle instead. “Anything that is going to produce robust weight loss,” Apovian says, “there’s going to be a percentage of that that’s muscle.”
Reports suggest that GLP-1 treatments may cause between 25 to 40 percent loss of lean mass, which includes muscle mass—although more studies are needed to understand how this affects strength.
People losing a lot of weight very quickly will also lose bone mass, Apovian says. Losing muscle and fat puts less pressure on bones, she explains, so a lighter body could lead to lighter bones.
For many people, lighter bones might not be an issue. But women, who have higher rates of GLP-1 treatment use than men, may at be at heightened risk of bone weakening during menopause, when bone loss naturally accelerates. Apovian has seen patients who lose weight on GLP-1 drugs develop osteopenia, or low bone mass. “If that gets worse, they fracture,” she says. “These are women, primarily, who have reported back to us that [using GLP-1s] wasn’t worth the weight loss.”
Eli Lilly’s recent retatrutide clinical trial did not evaluate participants’ changes in muscle or bone mass, a company spokesperson tells Scientific American; “however, Lilly is continuing to evaluate body composition and long-term outcomes.”
Mind Your Gallbladder
People who lose large amounts of body fat in short periods of time may also be at greater risk of developing gallstones, says Rozalina McCoy, an endocrinologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Speedy weight loss increases bile acids, which are used to break down fat during digestion. As this happens, “there’s cholesterol saturation of the bile, so the bile becomes much more thick and gooey,” she says.
GLP-1 drugs also slow gastric emptying—the movement of food through the gastrointestinal tract—which stops the gallbladder from dispensing bile. “It kind of stays there and forms these gallstones,” McCoy says. Obesity raises the risk of gallstones in general, but data from clinical trials have shown that people on GLP-1 treatments have a 37 percent higher relative risk of developing gallbladder disease, which can include the formation of gallstones.
People considering GLP-1 treatments often worry about rare side effects, such as increased risk of thyroid cancer, “but gallstones happen in a decent subset of these patients,” says Armen Yerevanian, an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Weight Loss, Fast and Slow
The recent retatrutide trial found people on the drug lost 28.3 percent of their body weight—about 70 pounds—in a year and a half. Though this is comparable to long-term results from bariatric surgery, McCoy says the rate of weight loss from retatrutide isn’t actually as fast as with surgery. “With metabolic surgery, people lose a lot of weight in the first month. We don’t see that with the drugs,” she says.
Retatrutide’s results are also not as fast-acting as methods like the protein-sparing modified fast, a medically monitored diet in which people take in around 800 calories per day, Yerevanian says. (A sedentary adult generally needs to take in between 1,600 and 2,400 calories to maintain their current weight). “I don’t think weight loss from retatrutide is fast enough to be worried from that perspective,” he says.
People who might otherwise use modified fasts or bariatric surgery could be candidates for retatrutide, and some scientists think certain individuals could see health benefits from greater weight reductions than the drug provides. Retatrutide and other new-generation GLP-1 drugs might also aid people who don’t respond to the GLP-1s currently available.
Doctors need to closely monitor people on these drugs to ensure they aren’t losing too much weight or suffering from nutrient deficiencies, Yerevanian says. GLP-1 medication doses are “pretty easy to readjust, because if you pull back, they’ll gain the weight back,” he adds.
Preliminary evidence suggests that weight regained after stopping a GLP-1 treatment is more likely to come back as fat than as lean mass. The benefits to cardiovascular health and diabetes also appear to reverse. Experts, including McCoy, have suggested that such weight rebounds could leave people in an unhealthier state than they were before treatment.
Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Lost Muscle
There are ways to reduce muscle and bone loss while taking a GLP-1 drug, Apovian says. Calcium and vitamin D supplementation can help prevent bone loss. For muscle, protein is key. “It seems that most Americans eat enough protein,” she says, but “if you’re on a GLP-1, or you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re on a lower calorie diet, that’s when you need to be cognizant.”
That protein intake must be paired with resistance training, Apovian says. Weight training, even with light weights, can help prevent muscle loss, though she notes most of the patients she treats probably aren’t doing enough resistance training.
As these drugs become more effective and accessible, clinicians need better guidelines around who qualifies for which medication, Yerevanian says. People in larger bodies face significant societal stigma, which may cause some people to feel pressure to lose a lot of weight, fast. But some clinicians say that prescribing these drugs is about balancing risk and benefit, not about a person’s body size. “We never had the ability to lose this much weight in a healthy way before,” McCoy says. “I think as a society, we need to make sure that the focus of all these treatments remains on better health and not on the weight number on a scale.”
Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches.
A close read of history reveals that we white Christians have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the nation’s dominant cultural power, we have constructed and sustained a project of perpetuating white supremacy that has framed the entire American story. The legacy of this unholy union still lives in the DNA of white Christianity today — and not just among white evangelical Protestants in the South, but also among white mainline Protestants in the Midwest and white Catholics in the Northeast.
For more than two decades, I’ve studied the attitudes of religiously affiliated Americans across the country. And year over year, in question after question in public opinion polls, a clear pattern has emerged: White Christians are consistently more likely than whites who are religiously unaffiliated to deny the existence of structural racism.
For example, surveys conducted by PRRI in 2018 found that white Christians — including evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and Catholics — are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans.
And white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with this statement: “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” And these trends generally persist even in the wake of the recent protests for racial justice.
As a white Christian who was raised Southern Baptist and shaped by a denominational college and seminary, it pains me to see these patterns in the data. Even worse, these questions only hint at the magnitude of the problem.
To determine the breadth of these attitudes, I created a “Racism Index,” a measure consisting of 15 questions designed to get beyond personal biases and include perceptions of structural injustice. These questions included the three above, as well as questions about the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system and general perceptions of race, racism, and racial discrimination.
Even at a glance, the Racism Index reveals a clear distinction. Compared to nonreligious whites, white Christians register higher median scores on the Racism Index, and the differences among white Christian subgroups are largely differences of degree rather than kind.
Not surprisingly, given their concentration in the South, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score (0.78) on the Racism Index. But it is a mistake to see this as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem. The median scores of white Catholics (0.72) and white mainline Protestants (0.69) — groups that are more culturally dominant in the Northeast and the Midwest — are not far behind. Notably, the median score for each white Christian subgroup is significantly above the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42), and Black Protestants (0.24).
.
White Christians are consistently more likely than whites who are religiously unaffiliated to deny the existence of structural racism. Glasshouse Images / Getty Images
Starting early in the morning on the second Saturday of May, first hundreds and then thousands of people gathered in the square in front of Hungary’s majestic Parliament building to celebrate the start of a new political era. This was the square where tens of thousands gathered in 1956 and 1989 to demand an end to the Soviet occupation, and in 2006 to protest a discredited government. It was the square on which Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s regime imposed a major redesign more than a decade ago — with traffic rerouted away, a large reflecting pool and raised beds installed, narrow pathways laid down — apparently to ensure that no such mass gathering could take place again. Today, it was the square where Peter Magyar, a former Orban loyalist, would be sworn in, promising a rebirth of democracy and liberty after 16 years of autocratic control.
Squeezing into the available spaces and gradually filling up nearby cafes and streets, the crowd absorbed people of all ages: young people who didn’t remember a time before Orban and who had voted in unprecedented numbers; aging intellectuals who didn’t think they’d ever celebrate their country again; multigenerational families who had arrived by bus after seeing Magyar in their hometowns and villages. During his campaign, Magyar had traveled to an estimated 700 locations, turning many of them into “Tisza islands” — outposts of support for his party. By the end, Magyar was holding five or more rallies a day.
It had looked like an impossible quest. Orban and his cronies dominated the media, persecuted and smeared opposition politicians, and changed election laws to benefit his party, Fidesz. Orban had seemed to achieve what the Hungarian sociologist and political theorist Balint Magyar (no relation) calls “autocratic breakthrough” — the point after which it’s impossible to unseat an autocrat using elections. Illiberal politicians from other countries made pilgrimages to Hungary to learn from Orban; CPAC, the gathering for American national conservatives, started staging an annual convention there; and Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest in advance of the election, in a show of support for Orban. And yet Hungarians handed Tisza not just a victory but a constitutional majority, enough power to reverse Orban’s changes to Hungarian laws and institutions. The triumph was stunning — unique in our era of democratic backsliding — and it holds clear lessons for the United States.
One obvious lesson of Peter Magyar’s success lies in the scale, reach, and relentlessness of his organizing network. “They had 2,000 Tisza islands with between 30,000 and 50,000 volunteers,” Balint Magyar told me, in evident awe. “Just in their call centers, they had 3,000 to 4,000 people in the last week of the campaign.” We talked two days before the swearing-in ceremony, at his office in the spectacular but largely empty building of Central European University. In 2018, Orban’s government forced most of the university’s operations into exile amid an antisemitic scare campaign focused on the Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros, the C.E.U.’s founder and principal funder. Some of Orban’s many other scare campaigns targeted migrants, “the Brussels elites,” and L.G.B.T.Q. people. During the latest election campaign, billboards and A.I.-generated social media posts warned Hungarians they were in danger of being overtaken by Ukraine and only Orban could protect them. It should have seemed absurd — it was absurd — but outlandish, xenophobic, and antisemitic propaganda had served Orban well for years. It didn’t work against Peter Magyar — probably because so many Hungarians got to see him in person, many of them repeatedly. This is another lesson of his success: Old-fashioned in-person politics can be a powerful antidote to media fearmongering.
Humans have chased immortality perhaps for as long as we have known we will die. But merely persisting forever may not be all it’s cracked up to be—especially if you are reduced to just lying there, unable to eat or do much of anything at all. That grim reality may be the eternal condition of severed sea cucumber tissue, according to a new study.
When humans lose a chunk of flesh, it dies and decays. That isn’t so with Psolus fabricii, a sea cucumber that is native to the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Its amputated bits just keep living. These lost pieces of tissue even repair their wounds and continue to grow—although not into new organisms. After observing tissues that survived in natural seawater tanks for more than three years, researchers declared them biologically immortal in a paper published today in Science Advances. “Something like this has never been seen before,” says lead author Sara Jobson, a doctoral student at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Sea cucumbers are masters of regeneration. But so are many lizards and salamanders, and yet, when detached, their limbs and tail deteriorate just like human tissue would. With the amputated pieces of P. fabricii, Jobson says, it’s “as if the tail dropped off and healed and wiggled around in the wild on its own.” She and her colleagues don’t entirely know what enables this feat, but they have a few clues: The severed tissues retain a strong immune system and chemical defenses to ward off microbial infection; their cells keep dividing to form new tissue; and, for fuel, they either absorb dissolved amino acids or cannibalize their own muscle.
These are all hallmarks of living systems, but severed P. fabricii tissue sits in a biological gray zone. “We often call them, lovingly, our little lab zombies,” Jobson says. “Because we don’t know: Do they count as alive? Do they count as dead?” They don’t reproduce. They don’t have a mouth or a gut. Yet they are complex biological structures enduring, somehow, apart from their original organism—perhaps indefinitely. “We haven’t seen any signs that they’re degrading or dying,” Jobson says. Whether this is an immortality worth living is another question.
Still, Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, a molecular biologist and president of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Missouri, says it’s “quite likely premature” to call this immortality. To further show that these tissues likely live forever, researchers will have to investigate whether their telomeres—DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that shorten with age—stay the same length after many rounds of cell division. Sánchez Alvarado adds, however, that “what is remarkable here is not infinite time per se but the sustained coordination” of so many biological processes for so long in an animal’s discarded parts.
Even if the zombie P. fabricii tissues are in fact slowly succumbing to entropy, they’ve outlasted the severed tissue of other sea cucumber species tested for this study by a long shot (the silver medalist perished before three and a half months). Their extreme longevity poses an evolutionary mystery: If reproduction is the basic imperative of life, why should the nonreproductive scraps of an organism remain viable at all, let alone for years? “It doesn’t regrow into a new sea cucumber, as far as we can tell,” Jobson says, “so the purpose of it is very unclear.” It’s possible the whole bizarre situation is just a by-product of P. fabricii’s regenerative powers.
Whatever the case, Jobson reckons that self-sufficient sea cucumber fragments—immortal or not, with or without a purpose in this world—are drifting through Earth’s oceans right now. “Maybe,” she says, “there’s a ton of zombies out there.”
.
Healed and surviving tube feet from Psolus fabricii several weeks after excision. Emaline Montgomery (Mercier Lab, MUN)
Leave it to Queen Latifah to turn a major career milestone into a full-on family affair. The legendary musician, actress, producer, and entrepreneur hosted the 2026 American Music Awards on Monday, May 25, 2026, and she did not come alone. Latifah brought her partner, Eboni Nichols, and their 6-year-old son, Rebel, to the show, making it one of the sweetest moments on the red carpet for the night.
This year’s AMAs carried extra special significance. The year 2026 marks 30 years since Latifah first took hosting duties at the show, and she returned to welcome audiences to what remains the world’s largest fan-voted awards show. Only a legend gets to celebrate that kind of anniversary on that kind of stage, and she wore every one of those 30 years like a crown.
The family outing took on an even warmer dimension with the addition of a very special guest. Kaayia James Union Wade, the 7-year-old daughter of Gabrielle Union and NBA legend Dwyane Wade, joined the group for the evening. Formerly known to millions of fans online as the “Shady Baby,” Union Wade has already built her own cultural footprint, charming the internet with her unshakeable confidence. Seeing her step into a night this big, surrounded by people who clearly adore her, was a reminder that this next generation is already something special. And she was not the only young star making her presence felt.
Teyana Taylor also brought her two daughters, Iman “Junie” Tayla and Rue Rose, to the show where she was a performer, making it clear that the 2026 AMAs was as much a celebration of family as it was of music.
As for Latifah, it’s not every day that she opens the door to her personal world. She has long been intentional about keeping her relationship with Nichols and their family out of the spotlight, which made the moment feel all the more significant. Choosing to mark this particular milestone with the people she loves most was a statement in itself.
.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MAY 25: EDITORIAL USE ONLY (L-R) Kaavia James Union Wade, Eboni Nichols, Rebel Nichols Owens and Queen Latifah attend the 52nd American Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 25, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
Ball State University in Indiana has agreed to pay $225,000 to a former administrator who was fired for her Facebook post accusing Charlie Kirk of spreading fear, the latest legal settlement awarded to a worker dismissed for criticizing the conservative activist after he was assassinated.
“As a public university, Ball State cannot fire an employee for protected speech made as a private citizen,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which sued on the administrator’s behalf, said in a statement this week announcing the settlement.
Employers in several states have also settled with or reinstated workers.
Scores of people — health care workers, lawyers, journalists, waiters and waitresses — were fired or faced other repercussions for their negative comments about Mr. Kirk, igniting a debate over how far employers can go in restricting employees’ political expression that occurs outside the workplace. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said it was tracking 13 lawsuits in federal court from people who had been disciplined or terminated for their comments about Mr. Kirk.
The Ball State case involved a health care administrator for the university named Suzanne Swierc (pronounced “swirtz”). She became one of many Americans targeted in a campaign by Mr. Kirk’s followers, including Vice President JD Vance, to expose and retaliate against those who had spoken critically of Mr. Kirk after his assassination last fall on a Utah university campus.
“If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends,” she wrote on her Facebook page several hours after he was killed. Her post expressed disdain for Mr. Kirk’s loyal fans but also condemned his death as the kind of violence she said was too common in American politics.
Her settings were private, but one of her followers took a screenshot without her knowledge and sent it to others.
Ms. Swierc’s post spread widely after it was publicized by Indiana’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, who had urged people to alert his office to anyone “celebrating or glorifying the tragedy,” according to her lawsuit.
Mr. Rokita’s action — together with a post by Libs of TikTok, a social media account known for mocking left-wing politics — prompted a deluge of phone calls, texts, voice mail messages, and threats to both Ms. Swierc and the university. Even Elon Musk weighed in.
The university, which admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement, said that after Ms. Swierc posted her comment, on Sept. 10, 2025, the university’s operations were seriously impeded. Though the First Amendment broadly protects political expression, the right to free speech is not as absolute as many assume — especially when a workplace is involved. The Supreme Court has established that a public institution like Ball State can restrict employee speech on matters of public concern if the comments interfere with the institution’s ability to function.
Ball State’s president, Geoffrey S. Mearns, wrote in an email to university leadership this week that “disruptive and disturbing” phone calls, as well as “more than 130 emails,” including from donors threatening to withhold contributions, “prevented our staff from performing their usual responsibilities.”
Some staff members who fielded the calls said they had been threatened with violence and felt uncomfortable being on campus, he said.
Ms. Swierc’s post, he added, had damaged her credibility to interact with students who did not share her views about Mr. Kirk. “I concluded that I had the legal authority to terminate Ms. Swierc’s employment,” he said in his email.
But the First Amendment makes such cases difficult to defend, as the recent spate of settlements in Kirk-related cases has shown. Florida officials agreed last week to pay $485,000 to Brittney Brown, a biologist, after the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission terminated her over a meme she reposted to her private Instagram account. In Tennessee, a professor at Austin Peay State University received a $500,000 settlement and was reinstated after posting about Mr. Kirk’s support for expansive gun rights. Clemson University in South Carolina rescinded its firing of an assistant professor in another case.
Greg Greubel, a lawyer for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that while public pressure campaigns have been around forever, the efforts to shame and punish private citizens, with the endorsement of political leaders, was new and troubling.
.
Suzanne Swierc was fired from her job as a health care administrator at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. Credit…Kaiti Sullivan for The New York Times
Hmmmm … Extremely enlightening article! How did Picard and Kirk meet?
Click the link below the bottom picture
.
What shape is the universe? This question is far more intriguing and truly unresolved than any debate over the shape of our planet, despite the claims of flat-Earthers.
We occupy only a tiny space within a gigantic cosmos. Our vantage point is limited. Nevertheless, cosmologists are now fairly certain that our universe is flat.
But that doesn’t explain the exact shape of space. It could extend infinitely along the three spatial dimensions or resemble a three-dimensional generalization of a donut’s surface—or take on even wilder forms. The mathematics of flat space is astonishingly versatile, and new research is upending the traditional thinking about the layout of our cosmos.
Triangles in the Sky
Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German astronomer who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, was one of the first mathematicians to study geometry in curved spaces. He knew, for example, that the sum of the angles of a triangle in a plane is 180 degrees and that it is greater on a sphere. On spherical surfaces, such as that of Earth, an equilateral triangle can consist of three right angles, for instance. Other geometries, such as the shape of a Pringles chip, can have angle sums of less than 180 degrees.
The same principle applies not only to triangles on 2D surfaces but also in 3D space. Depending on the curvature of space, the sum of the angles can vary. Gauss may have seen the triangle as a good starting point for investigating the shape of the universe, though this is debated. He is said to have measured the distances between three German mountain peaks (Hohenhagen, Brocken and Inselberg) and determined their angles. His result: the sum was close enough to 180 degrees that it suggested that there was a flat plane between the mountain peaks.
Depending on the curvature of space, the sum of the angles of a triangle can be equal to (yellow), greater than (pink), or less than (green) 180 degrees. Amanda Montañez
.
Unfortunately, although the triangle method is helpful for thinking about the curvature of space, it’s not going to answer the question of whether our universe is curved or flat. The cosmos is gigantic. Even if Gauss or another astronomer used a large telescope, triangulating the distances between stars wouldn’t work. Stars within our own or in neighboring galaxies are too close to us, measured against the vast scale of the universe. Furthermore, we must take into account that the observed objects are moving and that, as a result of gravity, the light traveling to us follows partially curved paths.
But experts can use other tricks to deduce the shape of our universe. For example, they look deep into the past—all the way to the oldest radiation, dating back to around 13.8 billion years ago.
A Brief History of the Universe
Exactly how our universe originated is still unclear. Fortunately, the precise details are not necessary to deduce its shape. Much can already be worked out from the oldest light that reaches us: the cosmic microwave background.
When our universe was very young, it consisted of very hot, dense matter. The building blocks of atomic nuclei, quarks and gluons, floated around loosely in a kind of primordial soup. The medium was so dense that photons could not move freely within it.
As the universe expanded, it cooled; gradually, the first atomic nuclei and eventually atoms formed. As a result, the universe became transparent: photons could move freely. And this light, which originated around 370,000 years after the big bang, is what we can observe.
In this image depicting the Planck satellite’s measures of the cosmic microwave background, red areas represent regions that are warmer than the average temperature, and blue areas represent colder regions. ESA and the Planck Collaboration (CC BY 4.0)
.
The signal that reaches us from that time is surprisingly uniformly distributed across the sky, no matter where the detectors are pointed. This means that matter must have been very evenly distributed at this early stage. This observation leads to the cosmological principle: the universe must be homogeneous and isotropic. In other words, matter in the cosmos is uniformly distributed, in the same way in all directions. From Einstein’s equations of general relativity, it then follows that the curvature of space is constant on large scales.
This significantly restricts the possible geometry of the cosmos. If the curvature is constant, then three different cases can be distinguished:
No curvature: in this case, you have a Euclidean geometry, as on a flat surface.
Positive curvature: this corresponds to a spherical geometry, similar to that on a sphere.
Negative curvature: the geometry is hyperbolic, like a Pringles chip.
To determine which of the three cases is realized in the universe, one can again use cosmic microwave radiation. It is almost homogeneous, but not quite: there are tiny fluctuations within it that provide a clue to the geometry of the universe.
The small fluctuations in microwave radiation result from tiny density differences in the hot, bubbling primordial soup. And we can calculate how strong these fluctuations were in the early universe: the largest correspond to the greatest distance the density waves could travel.
These density fluctuations are also visible in our sky, specifically in the cosmic background. How large they appear depends on the geometry of the universe: If the universe is positively curved, the density fluctuations should appear larger than they actually are. With negative curvature, they should appear smaller. And without curvature, they should correspond exactly to the theoretical value (much as the angles of a triangle in flat space will sum to 180 degrees). According to measurements by cosmologists, this last scenario applies to our universe.
So the Universe Is Flat—But How Flat?
Density fluctuation measurements, along with other cosmological data, suggest that our universe is flat. But that still doesn’t mean we know the true shape of our universe.
Because curved 3D spaces are difficult to visualize, we can start with 2D examples. If our universe were 2D and flat, most people would imagine a flat surface. But that’s not the only 2D shape with flat geometry. Another example is the surface of a torus, which resembles a bagel or donut.
You can imagine creating a torus from a flat material by rolling it so the ends meet and then twisting the resulting tube into a ring. Amanda Montañez
.
A bagel looks curved, but in a crucial sense, it isn’t. You could, in theory, form a torus by taking a flat (and exceptionally stretchy) sheet of paper and gluing the opposite sides together to create a cylinder. You could then twist this sheet so the open cylinder ends meet, creating a hollow ring or torus.
In fact, there are three other variations of a flat space in two dimensions: a cylinder, a Möbius strip and a Klein bottle.
In three dimensions, the possibilities are even more diverse. In 1934, mathematician Werner Nowacki proved that there are 18 different flat 3D shapes. If our universe is truly flat, then it has one of these 18 shapes.
We can rule out some candidates because eight of the 18 are “nonorientable.” If you were to fly a rocket through a nonorientable universe, you would eventually return to your starting point, but in a mirrored form: your right would now be left, and vice versa. According to experts, such universes contradict the laws of physics.
That leaves 10 different forms that the universe can have:
An infinitely extended 3D space with x, y, and z axes.
A 3D generalization of the torus: in this case, one can imagine gluing together the opposite faces of a cube.
A half-twist torus: same as #2, but one pair of surfaces is twisted by 180 degrees, like a Möbius strip.
A quarter-twist torus: same as #2, but a pair of surfaces is joined by twisting them by 90 degrees.
A third-twist prism: instead of looking at the faces of a cube, one can also use a six-sided prism. Here, opposite faces are also glued together, but one face is rotated by 120 degrees.
A sixth-twist prism: same as #5, but one side is rotated by 60 degrees.
A shape called a Hantzsche-Wendt manifold that consists of two cubes stacked on top of each other, with the faces of the cubes joined together in a complex way.
A space consisting of infinitely many flat planes that can be twisted relative to each other.
A space consisting of an infinitely tall “chimney”: four surfaces arranged as the sides of a parallelogram. Opposite surfaces are glued together.
Same as #9, but one of the pairs of surfaces is rotated by 180 degrees.
All of these shapes share the same flat geometry, but each possess their own unique characteristics. Experts can therefore search for clues and evidence of these features to determine the precise shape of the universe using increasingly detailed cosmological data.
Infinitely Many Copies of Ourselves
Many of these candidates for the shape of the universe are compact, meaning they do not extend outward infinitely. Instead a striking characteristic that they share is repetition. In a torus-shaped universe, for example, light from our Earth would eventually reach Earth again, so we would see our reflection.
That said, our universe is gigantic, and light travels at a finite speed. This means that even if the light from our solar system or galaxy were to reach us again someday, we most likely wouldn’t recognize the image. This is because its shape at that time would probably bear little resemblance to our current surroundings. Furthermore, our cosmos might be so vast that light simply hasn’t had enough time to traverse it.
But there could be other clues if we are living in a compact universe. The shape of the cosmos influences, among other things, how matter and light interacted in the early universe. And this should be reflected in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Researchers have searched for repeating structures within it, such as identical circular arrangements that would indicate a compact universe. To do this, they had to make some geometric considerations: because we receive the microwave radiation on the spherical Earth, the signal has the shape of a spherical surface. Our universe could have a more complex shape, however—and traces of this should be reflected in the spherical data we receive.
When experts searched for identical circular structures in cosmic microwave background radiation data during the 2000s and 2010s, they found nothing. Therefore, most cosmologists assumed that the universe had a fairly simple structure: it would be flat and extend infinitely in all three spatial dimensions. Research into the shape of the universe stalled because of a lack of new evidence—until the Collaboration for Observations, Models and Predictions of Anomalies and Cosmic Topology (COMPACT) was launched in 2022.
Researchers in the collaboration are comparing the latest data on the cosmological microwave background radiation with the various possible shapes of the universe. They have discovered that the lack of evidence for identical circular structures in the cosmic microwave background is far less restrictive than previously thought. In fact, it is quite plausible that we would not identify any of these structures in a compact universe. Furthermore, the experts are working on identifying other features in cosmological data that would point to complex shapes for the universe. The COMPACT team is still analyzing the data and developing suitable models. Exciting new results are expected in the coming months and years.
All of this means that the universe could be far more complex than previously thought. And the question of the shape of our cosmos is not merely academic. The topology of spacetime was likely determined by the quantum processes that occurred shortly after the big bang. Therefore, if we knew more precisely about the shape of the universe, we could learn more about the complex processes at its beginning—or so the hope goes.
.
To determine the shape of the universe, astronomers and cosmologists have had to think critically about the geometry of flat and curved space—and then narrow down options based on measurements. Amanda Montañez
As 7.4 million Americans sit unemployed, the path to employment has completely changed. Amid fake listings, AI filtering of candidates, and widening talent pools, job seekers believe that they’re competing against a hiring ecosystem that penalizes honesty and rewards perception.
The result? A hiring environment where the signals employers have traditionally relied on to evaluate candidates have become deeply unreliable. Now, both sides are operating with diminishing trust in each other.
What’s Driving the Deception?
Hiring today is not facing a character problem, but a structural one. When candidates believe that presenting themselves accurately will cost them a job offer, the rational response is to become the person they think the employer is looking for. But when this approach becomes standard, those who still choose to tell the truth take on an “honesty tax,” the systemic disadvantage honest candidates face when exaggeration becomes the market norm.
GCheck’s Trust in Hiring Report revealed that 93% of job seekers have lied or embellished their experience during the hiring process, while 60% do not believe they would have been hired had they presented their qualifications more accurately. This is beyond a confession—it’s a market signal.
Part of what drives this dynamic is opacity on the employer side. When candidates do not know what will be verified, they assume the answer is minimal, and they calibrate their self-presentation accordingly. In fact, GCheck found that although 88% of job seekers believe misrepresentation puts businesses at risk, 53% assumed employers wouldn’t verify their claims, and only about a quarter (26%) report ever being caught lying or exaggerating.
Verification that is invisible to candidates is not a deterrent. It is permission. And thanks to artificial intelligence, candidates can disguise their true skills and identity almost instantaneously.
AI Accelerates Dishonesty in Hiring
LinkedIn’s 2025 Work Change Report estimates that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change by 2030, driven largely by AI. When job seekers navigate a market where the definition of “qualified” is constantly shifting, the pressure to appear more capable than they are significantly intensifies. AI has not created that pressure, but it has handed candidates sophisticated tools to act on it at every stage of the hiring process.
Employer concerns have moved beyond job seekers’ using AI to compile resumes or assist with writing. Now, the degree to which AI has migrated into live interviews and assessments is worrisome.
GCheck found that 61% of candidates have used AI to rehearse interview answers until they sounded more impressive than authentic, and 25% reported deploying an AI avatar in place of their own face during a virtual interview.
The result is a hiring process where trust is eroding on both sides. On one hand, candidates feel pressure to optimize and automate their performance in a highly mediated, virtual environment; on the other, employers struggle to assess who is genuinely behind the screen. When interviews are increasingly remote, scripted, and technology driven, the lines between preparation and performance become blurred. This highlights how broken and transactional the modern hiring process has become.
There’s also an emerging phenomenon of systematic embellishment, distortion or fabrication of professional qualifications across resumes, interviews, and references as a deliberate competitive strategy driven by market pressure and weak verification expectations. It’s been dubbed “careerfishing,” and it’s no longer the behavior of a fringe group.
What Employers Must Do to Rebuild Trust
Rebuilding trust in hiring is not only a technology problem, but also a standards and transparency issue. Employers who treat verification as a confidential back-end process get exactly what opacity produces: candidates who assume they can game the system, largely because they can. Three leadership-level shifts matter most here:
Make verification standards visible. Communicate what will be checked before a candidate applies. Transparency disrupts embellishment at its source, not after the offer. The FTC’s guidance on employment background checks under the FCRA already mandates disclosure at specific stages. Moving that clarity upstream changes candidate behavior earlier in the process in measurable ways. For example, candidates who know credentials or work samples will be actually verified are less likely to exaggerate or rely on AI-generated materials they cannot defend later.
Make screening decisions reviewable by a person. Candidates who know a human will review findings, not only an algorithm, engage with the process more honestly.
Make verification proportionate to actual risk. Applying the same screening depth to every role signals to candidates that the process is performative. Calibrating scope to genuine role risk makes verification more credible, more defensible, and more likely to deter the embellishment it is meant to catch.
Ken Paxton’s victory in Texas on Tuesday transformed the deep red state into the nation’s newest political battleground, expanding the Senate map, previewing lines of attack from both parties, and offering a test of President Trump’s influence in the general election.
Democrats still face an uphill battle in their quest to turn Texas blue, even with the excitement surrounding their nominee, James Talarico, a state legislator and seminary student who is pitching a brand of inclusive politics.
But the ascension of Mr. Paxton, a scandal-plagued state attorney general who trounced Senator John Cornyn after receiving the “Complete and Total Endorsement” of President Trump last week, promised a general election clash as big as, well, Texas.
Expanding the map.
Many Democrats, and some Republicans, said that they thought the nomination of Mr. Paxton could put Texas into play for Democrats, joining the relatively small number of battleground states that could decide control of the Senate.
With the Republicans holding 53 seats in the Senate, Democrats will have to defend all the seats they currently hold and flip four more seats in order to win control in November. Party leaders initially focused on flipping Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio. But with Mr. Trump’s approval rating sagging, some now see Texas as offering another possible path.
And, already, there are signs that the role Mr. Trump played in ousting another incumbent Republican senator — the president backed the challenger who defeated Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana this month in a primary — risks hampering his agenda on Capitol Hill.
Opening with attacks.
Both Mr. Paxton and Mr. Talarico framed the Texas race in existential terms on Tuesday night. Mr. Paxton cast Mr. Talarico as a “weird” liberal, while Mr. Talarico described Mr. Paxton as a tool of billionaire donors stealing public resources from regular working people.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, I will be the Democrats’ number one target in November,” Mr. Paxton told supporters at his victory night party.
Moments before Mr. Paxton took the stage in Plano, Texas, Mr. Talarico’s campaign released a video calling his opponent the “most corrupt politician in America.”
“For 50 years, megadonors and their puppet politicians like Ken Paxton have stolen from us with their bribes, bailouts, and billionaire tax breaks,” Mr. Talarico said. “That ends this year. In this state. In this race.”
Can Democrats finally put Texas in play?
No Democrat has won statewide in Texas since 1994. But many Democrats said that they believed the nomination of Mr. Paxton, with all his baggage, could offer them their best chance of victory in years.
While Mr. Trump’s late endorsement helped propel Mr. Paxton’s decisive victory in the low-turnout Republican primary, it is not clear how it will play in the general election, given the president’s low approval ratings, the unpopular Iran war and rising gas prices.
“Paxton doesn’t know how to broaden his appeal,” said Matt Mackowiak, a senior adviser to Mr. Cornyn. “He runs generals like they’re primaries. I don’t know that he’s run in an environment like this.”
Former Representative Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who came within three points of knocking out Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, predicted Mr. Paxton’s appeal to Republican primary voters will not translate to the much broader electorate in November.
“He’s too extreme, and he’s too tied to Trump, whose popularity continues to decline,” Mr. O’Rourke said.
Bobby Pulido, a moderate Democrat and Latin Grammy Award-winning Tejano singer who is running for Congress in South Texas, said that he thought the race would be competitive. “The Rio Grande Valley has conservative voters that are not necessarily MAGA,” he said. “And Paxton is definitely a MAGA candidate.”
Mr. Talarico was quick to extend an invitation to Mr. Cornyn’s supporters on Tuesday night, thanking the senator for his service to the state and telling his backers in a social media post that they have “a place” in his campaign.
A record-setting race is about to get more expensive.
After waging the most expensive Senate primary campaign in the country’s recent history — with $128 million worth of ads run in the Republican contest — both sides are preparing for a general
election contest that strategists estimate could cost tens of millions of dollars more.
Mr. Talarico has proved himself to be a prodigious fund-raiser, raising about $40.2 million from September through the end of March. Mr. Paxton, who is polarizing even among Texas Republicans, has struggled to meet his own financial goals for the primary race. He fell far short of the $20 million he previously suggested he would need to unseat Mr. Cornyn.
But even as he was heavily outspent, Mr. Paxton was able to cruise to victory in the primary.
Some Republicans supporting Mr. Cornyn had warned that nominating Mr. Paxton would require the party to spend millions more to defend a seat they had previously seen as safe, diverting money from other competitive races around the country.
.
Ken Paxton defeated Senator John Cornyn in a runoff for the Republican nomination on Tuesday, setting up a marquee race against James Talarico, the Democrat. Credit…Desiree Rios for The New York Times
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
In a stern order on Friday, a judge said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding President Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Love Employee/Getty Image
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MAY 25: EDITORIAL USE ONLY (L-R) Kaavia James Union Wade, Eboni Nichols, Rebel Nichols Owens and Queen Latifah attend the 52nd American Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 25, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
[Images: Adobe Stock]
James' World 2 