Brad Heath
DC reporter for Reuters on crime, justice and investigations. Data, documents and "convoluted KGB style back-door" stuff. Lawyer, but not yours. 202-527-9709, brad.heath@tr.com
- The Washington Post told employees on Wednesday that it was beginning a widespread round of layoffs that are expected to decimate the organization’s sports, local news and international coverage. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/b...
- Maybe the Post's new AI helper can add some valuable insights?
- NEW: State prisons in the United States became more violent and nearly 50% deadlier over the past five years as authorities struggled to keep enough guards on the job, according to a government-funded report to be released on Wednesday. www.reuters.com/world/us/sta...
- Experts fear that Americans are losing their ability to distinguish between fact and fiction — and that fewer people seem to care about the difference. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/t...
- Elon Musk’s flagship artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, continues to generate sexualized images of people when users explicitly warn that the subjects do not consent. In 17 tests, Grok generated images after being told they would be used to degrade the person. www.reuters.com/business/des...
- One more way in which the FBI's search of an Atlanta election office was surpassingly unusual: President Trump spoke to the agents who conducted the search during a phone call afterward. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...
- Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, has been "rolling back guardrails on sexual material and ignoring internal warnings about the potentially serious legal and ethical risks of producing such content" to try to get more people to use its model. And it's worked. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
- Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
- President Trump has filed a lawsuit against the IRS, in which he demands that the IRS, which he as president controls, pay him $10 billion. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
- The case has been assigned to Judge Williams. It presents an array of unusual legal issues. But how - or whether - those get resolved will turn largely on how the Justice Department, which also reports to President Trump, handles the case.
- ICE currently has a code of professional conduct. Among other things, it requires agents to be "professional, police, respectful, considerate, helpful and patient in all official activities ... even in the face of considerable provocation."
- President Trump's national intelligence director has been "studying information about voting machines, analyzed data from swing states and pursued theories that President Trump has promoted to claim the 2020 election was unfairly taken from him." www.wsj.com/politics/ele...
