Google Tries to Blackmail Schools Into Using Its AI Tools

Schools that reject Google’s AI services apparently won’t be allowed to use Google at all.

The company announced Tuesday that it will turn off search engine access for K-12 schools that toggle off its AI tools as soon as next year. Google executives claim the decision is based on the technologies’ recent fusion.

“Search and AI are deeply integrated,” Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google, told The New York Times, adding that students at schools that have banned AI “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”

Many schools across the country have already invested in Google’s technologies, purchasing low-cost Google Chromebooks to assist educational instruction. Beyond that, Google’s search algorithm has led the industry for the last two decades, besting its competitors to the point that its mere name has become synonymous with research.

Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, argued in a statement on X that Google had used its “search monopoly to coerce schools” into adopting AI tools. She noted Google has been found legally liable multiple times for antitrust law violations.

“This latest move shows it remains unchastened,” Khan wrote. “As the public increasingly pushes back against the use of AI in schools … Google is making clear it will punish those who don’t fall in line.”

Studies conducted over the last several months have indicated that the risks attached to the use of AI in schools outweigh the potential benefits. A January report by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education found that AI can “undermine children’s foundational development,” and that “the damages it has already caused are daunting.”

New skill development and problem-solving abilities are among the chief concerns when it comes to early-age AI dependence. Children can easily fall into a catch-22 in which they continually offload their work onto the AI, diminishing their self-confidence and self-reliance in the process, according to the Brookings Institution report.

“When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is,” Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors, told NPR, “they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.”

The Trump administration’s final pitch to voters on Election Day seems to be that higher prices are a good thing.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told Newsmax Tuesday afternoon that the United States was “going to have record exports this year for corn and wheat and cotton and other incredible American industries while those prices are rising. So we’ve made so much progress.”

Rollins’s prediction that exports are going to go up while prices also rise seems to be rather presumptive, as people tend to buy less of a product when prices are high. And corn exports are actually down this year compared to previous years.

Rollins wasn’t the only administration official touting high prices as a positive. Energy Secretary Chris Wright went on Fox Business Tuesday morning saying, “This is what capitalism is all about.

“The markets are sending that price mechanism right now. Prices are high. The best cure for high prices is high prices. It grows supply,” Wright said.

Wright didn’t mention that high prices grow supply because fewer products are being purchased, which isn’t good for businesses or the economy. The American consumer is finding it harder to make ends meet, and at the end of the day, their disposable income doesn’t go as far. Consumer confidence has massively declined this year thanks to the Iran war and the president’s whimsical tariffs, and people are going to make that known in the voting booth.

For the first time in U.S. history, the White House has decided to monitor elections across the entire country.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it had placed roughly 1,000 election monitors and observers in all 50 states. They will be assessing polling places for compliance with federal election statutes.

The declaration also specified more than 100 jurisdictions that the agency intends to monitor. Most of the inclusions are either Democratic strongholds or hotly contested districts in the midterm elections.

“Election integrity has been one of the top priorities for this Administration and this Division,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement. “I am very proud we are deploying the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history, and pursuing transparency for elections in an assertive and nondiscriminatory manner.”

Previous administrations have similarly tapped monitors to oversee election cycles, but never before at this level. In 2024, the DOJ monitored 86 jurisdictions across 27 states. It was the largest such effort by the DOJ since at least 2004. But some election officials have already flagged the 2026 rollout as a potential intimidation tactic that could scare voters away from actually participating at the ballot box.

Within hours of the DOJ announcement, New Mexico’s secretary of state told PBS NewsHour that some of the agency’s monitors had been asking “some unusual questions and doing things that are not allowed by law such as questioning voters” in Bernalillo County.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department subsequently told NewsHour that their “team had a productive call with the New Mexico Secretary of State just a few minutes ago,” and that they “believe the issue is resolved and will not affect our ongoing monitoring for the rest of the day.”

Since 2020, Donald Trump and his allies have relentlessly opined about alleged voter fraud, attempting to not only rewrite prior election results but also unravel the tools of future elections, such as mail-in voting. But his rhetoric has also had the auxiliary effect of damaging public trust in American democracy, disenfranchising voters—and their faith in their individual power—as a result.

Dhillon herself has been tied to prominent election deniers and conspiracy theorists, including the president, 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, and former Trump fixer Rudy Giuliani.

Earlier this year, Dhillon oversaw a series of lawsuits against dozens of state election officials as the administration attempted to gain access to local voter rolls containing sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, as part of a nationwide investigation to uncover noncitizens who might vote in the November election.

One arm of that legal effort was torn to shreds by a judge last week, who argued that “never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch.”

This story has been updated.

A man pardoned by President Donald Trump after making threats in Washington, D.C., after the January 6 Capitol riot was just charged for making threats against federal judges.

Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. made multiple social media posts over the past few years, including commentary related to January 6, supporting Trump, and expressing QAnon conspiracy theories. At least one of them caught the attention of federal agents, according to a recent court filing.

In an April post on Facebook, Meredith said, “ALL J6 Federal JUDGES will be executed” with grinning and middle-finger emojis. In another post, Meredith threatened 10 federal judges by name, warning that “[Pete] Hegseth has plans 4U.”

Meredith’s posts have drawn attention from federal agents before, with the FBI interviewing him on November 12, 2024, and August 14, 2025. His April post, however, crossed the line, according to FBI Special Agent Richard Taylor, who said in a criminal complaint that due to Meredith’s history of “violent online rhetoric,” his post was either for “(i) the purpose of issuing a threat, (ii) with knowledge that his post would be viewed as a threat, or (iii) while consciously disregarding a substantial risk that his post would be viewed as a threat.”

This criminal complaint is very similar to the charges that Meredith faced in 2021. While he arrived in Washington too late to take part in the Capitol insurrection thanks to car trouble, he sent a text message from a hotel room to a relative the next day allegedly threatening to “put a bullet” in then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s head.

The FBI arrested Meredith, and after he consented to a search of his hotel room, they “found a 9 mm semi-automatic firearm, an assault-style rifle with a telescopic sight, approximately 2,500 rounds of ammunition, and multiple large-capacity ammunition feeding devices inside the trailer.” Meredith pleaded guilty to interstate communication of threats and was sentenced to 28 months in prison, though he later was included in Trump’s mass pardons and clemency for January 6 defendants.

Now Meredith is in trouble with the law again, not unlike other Capitol insurrectionists. As of June, at least 97 of them, or about one in 16, have been arrested for various crimes, including child molestation and reckless homicide, after they were pardoned.

Representative Haley Stevens does not seem to be handling her growing rift with the Democratic Party very well.

On Tuesday morning, the Michigan Democrat indicated she was unwilling to speak with the press before diving into a nonsensical diatribe as she marched into a polling place in Birmingham, Michigan, on her mother’s arm.

“Does it feel worth it to have endorsed Mike Rogers today? Any comment at all?” asked NewsNation’s Hannah Brandt.

“Look, I’m with my mom, this is our tradition here. You know what this is? It’s the people’s day,” Stevens said, with her enormous Vince Camuto straw Panama hat partially shielding her face. “And I—I told this to our Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries—it’s Majority Makers Day.”

“What do you mean by that?” Brandt pressed.

“And look, I released a big article, or set of thoughts, yesterday,” Stevens said, referring to an 890-word AI-assisted plea that she published on her X account.

“That’s right, I did read that. I want to know, does it feel worth it, ma’am?” Brandt asked.

“Absolutely, voting is always worth it,” Stevens concluded.

Stevens imploded her reputation and doomed her political prospects over the weekend. On Friday, Stevens demanded that Dr. Abdul El-Sayed—the man who bested her in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary—apologize for his prior criticism of Israel. Representative Debbie Dingell then waded into the mix, disinviting Stevens from a church event with El-Sayed and Representative James E. Clyburn, one of Stevens’s lower-chamber mentors.

That’s when Stevens went berserk. Rather than attempt to make peace or let bygones be bygones, she did a complete 180 and endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, aligning herself with the MAGA endorsee in an apparent effort to undermine El-Sayed’s odds. Notably, she did so without telling anyone, as her staff was reportedly at the El-Sayed event waiting for her arrival.

Since then, even Stevens’s aides have abandoned her in favor of El-Sayed. On Monday, nearly two dozen of her former Senate campaign staffers torched her recent behavior as “selfish,” “irrational,” and “shameful” in an open letter.

“For over a year, Rep. Stevens criticized Mike Rogers as a corrupt career politician who would blindly rubber-stamp Donald Trump’s chaos, regardless of the damage it inflicted on Michiganders. It’s infuriating to watch her become the very thing she once condemned,” they wrote.

“She told CNN there was too much ‘on the line’ to play games a few days ago,” the former staffers wrote. “Now, she’s doing just that. Her appalling behavior is an insult to anyone who wasted even a moment of their time supporting her campaign.”

Stevens’s MAGA endorsement could even cost her her job, as Democrats mull calls to banish her from the House, NBC News reported on Tuesday.