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The fallout from the implosion of the “Broadview Six” prosecutions lingers on, and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon. After the grand-jury shenanigans by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois caused the comical collapse of the case against a group protesting a federal immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, the office is scrambling to hide…

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The hack on car giant Jaguar Land Rover last year was one the most disrupting, damaging, and costly hacks of the last few years.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is considering a run for president as he approaches the end of his term, called for a national “billionaires’ tax” on Friday even as he fights another proposal targeting the wealthy in his home state.

⚡ Quick Take

• A retrospective look at our favorite TV shows of 2026, from adult animation to R. R. Martin’s fantasy series.

A multitude of great TV series have dropped this year, and now that we’re halfway through 2026, we can start to look at them retrospectively. From comedy horror to superhero animation, we have stayed fed when it comes to content. At Nerdist, we have plenty of strong opinions to go around, so we think these are the best TV shows that have come out this year so far, in no particular order.

Widow’s Bay Apple TV

This year’s biggest Apple TV success was definitely this small-town comedy horror set on an island off the East Coast. The series follows the mayor of (you guessed it) Widow’s Bay, as he tries to gain respect from the townspeople and increase tourism. The place has plenty of haunting mythology, which the mayor refuses to believe… until he sees it himself.

Comedy and horror are certainly hard to combine, but this show does so masterfully. With lovable, slightly odd characters and disgustingly horrifying monsters, it really does try to do it all, and succeeds.

Widow’s Bay debuted in April this year, and since then, critics and fans alike have praised it. In June, before the premiere of the first season’s finale, Apple TV greenlit the renewal of the show for season 2. There will be plenty more laughs and screams to come, but Apple has yet to reveal the release date.

Invincible (Season 4) Prime Video

Based on a comic series containing 114 issues, Invincible has been Prime Video’s geekiest crown jewel since 2021, when season one dropped.

This adult animated series follows a young superhero as he struggles with morality, his complicated (to say the least) relationship with his father, and one potentially world-ending catastrophe after another. Mark Grayson (Invincible) always pulls through, and season 4 was yet another series of those events. It was packed full of the gory action and well-animated fight scenes the series is known for. That said, it also showcased the more emotional side of all of the characters involved.

Invincible has a season 5 on the way, and a season 6 renewal came to the show on June 24. Its popularity definitely gave Prime Video the confirmation it needed to proceed with two more seasons. That, and the comic series it is based on, is not even close to over.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms HBO

If we had to guess, George R. R. Martin is making crazy money this year. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was adapted from his novella, The Hedge Knight, published in 1999. The series follows Dunk, a knight, and his squire Egg. The two exist within the same world as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, but the tone of their story is entirely different, focusing much less on royalty and more on the “little guy,” so to speak. According to our very own Michael Walsh, who reviewed the series, the vibe is much more “whimsical,” but it doesn’t take away from the high production value that fans know and love.

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The season only had six episodes, each between 30 and 36 minutes long. Season 2 is expected to come out next year, and will be based on Martins’ second novella, The Sworn Sword. The series’ director, Owen Harris, told Awards Buzz the next season will be more of a “road movie,” putting his own spin on the source material.

The Boys (Season 5) Prime Video

The Boys was popular from the beginning; however, this final season got more attention than ever.

The series is political and social satire disguised as a superhero show. It follows a group of ragtag revolutionaries as they attempt to stand up to what seems to be unyielding, absolute power of Vought and its bad supes. The fifth and final season of the show brought absolutely everything to a head (har har). Without significant spoilers, let’s just say most of the loose ends left from the first four seasons were tied up.

One Piece (Season 22) Toei Animation

If you’ve asked yourself how a show can possibly continue after 1,155 episodes, the answer is having a massive number of manga volumes the show is based on. As of March, the One Piece manga series has over 1,100 individual chapters. And boy, does the anime use the source material.

One Piece seasons have always varied in length, but none have been as short as this one with 12 episodes. One Piece season 5 was the closest in 2002, with only 13.

Season 22 follows the “Elbaph” story arc from the manga. In this storyline, the Straw Hat crew and the giants arrive in Elbaph, the Land of Giants. It focuses, too, on the Holy Knights of God and their plan to take over Elbaph

Monkey D. Luffy sails with his crew of Straw Hat Pirates through the Grand Line to find the treasure One Piece and become the new king of the pirates.

Since the series premiered in 1999, episodes have come out year-round. Now, the schedule has been changed so that only 26 episodes maximum are released each year. Netflix is also making its own The One Piece anime, which will debut in 2027.

Wonder Man Marvel Studios

Marvel’s TV series Wonder Man follows Simon Williams, a Hollywood star who gained his fame starring in a movie called Wonder Man. The series focuses on his relationship with fellow actor and comic relief character Trevor Slattery, who masqueraded as the Mandarin in Iron Man 3.

Wonder Man was a long-forgotten seventh Avenger who appeared in Marvel comics starting in the 1960s. Needless to say, this adaptation was long overdue. Even more niche Marvel heroes appeared in this show, such as Doorman, who appeared in the joke series Great Lakes Avengers.

Originally, his backstory included a deep hatred for Iron Man after Stark Industries beat out his family’s company, Williams Innovations. His involvement in the Avengers started merely as a way of getting back at Stark, but during his time there, his mind changed. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t delve into that story, but what is left is still a delightfully fresh take on the day-to-day life of a superhero.

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The series has been renewed for a second season, but Marvel has not yet announced a set release date.

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord Lucasfilm

Another mature/adult animated series that came out this year was Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord. Expectedly, the series follows the fan-favorite Sith lord, Darth Maul. Identifiable by his double-bladed red lightsaber, Maul spends the show’s first season gathering his bearings, rebuilding his criminal empire, and plotting his revenge against Emperor Palpatine.

The series takes place about a year after the Clone Wars, during the Galactic Empire’s reign. While it is very action-heavy, there are certainly still emotional stakes for Maul. In an interview with StarWars.com, Lucasfilm president and Maul creator Dave Filoni said that the character is “relatable.”

“He makes mistakes. He’s not perfect. He desires power, and then he gets toppled. That’s relatable. You know, we all probably feel like that when we have a low moment. He just doesn’t deal with it well. He keeps trying to attack his problems the same way. He can’t ever really let go of his hatred and his anger.”

Though definitely more detailed and updated, the animation style is reminiscent of older animated Star Wars content, like Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Even ahead of season one’s debut, Maul was renewed for a second season. Disney has not revealed an official release date.

The Vampire Lestat AMC

After five decades since its publication, Film and TV aren’t quite done milking Anne Rice’s 1976 series The Vampire Chronicles, and we’re so glad. After Interview With the Vampire came out in 2022 and ran for two seasons, based on her first book, The Vampire Lestat continues the story.

The season gives an in-depth backstory to Lestat, its main character, an actor-turned-vampire. Did I mention it’s also a musical? And a good one at that. Fans absolutely love the songs the show is churning out, enough that Lestat performed in concert in New York City this June.

One thing fans love about this series is that the more queer elements baked into the original story are made overtly clear—not swept under the rug or written off.

The Pitt (Season 2) HBO Max

There is nothing people love more than a good medical drama. Grey’s Anatomy has run for 22 (soon to be 23) seasons, after all. But The Pitt is something unequivocally fresh and new. This HBO Max series is like Grey’s Anatomy—if it were much darker. It takes place at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, and it shows in great detail the emotional and physical struggle of healthcare workers and their patients. Noah Wyle stars as Dr. Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch, the center’s Chief of Emergency Medicine.

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The show stays very current and realistic, dealing with real-life issues like ICE detainments and the inaccessibility of healthcare. It also portrayed violence against healthcare staff in a terrifyingly raw way.

The Pitt season one came out last year, becoming an instant hit, and even before the second season premiered, it had been renewed for a third, which can be expected to drop in early 2027.

Fallout (Season 2) Prime Video

This apocalyptic sci-fi favorite show was based on a video game series by the same name. After a nuclear apocalypse rocked the world, humans retreated to underground bunkers, where they have lived for decades. Generations later, one “vault dweller” named Lucy, played by Ella Purnell, ventures onto the destroyed surface after her father was kidnapped.

The second season continued to develop Lucy’s story, as she encountered people and creatures on the surface and got closer to uncovering the inner workings of big bad corporations, Vault-Tec and The Enclave.

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The Biggest Questions After FALLOUT Season 2

The Prime Video series came out in 2024, with its second season dropping this year and a third coming soon. If you love the Fallout story and want to see more, Prime Video is coming out with a reality series based on the vault society aspect of the show, dropping contestants into a bunker environment where they will complete challenges and compete for a cash prize. Fallout Shelter has no set release date.

What Next?

We are only halfway through the year, and we already have such an extensive list of fantastic TV series. That said, there is much more to come. Elle, a prequel to the 2001 movie Legally Blonde, and Lanterns, focusing on notable Green Lanterns John Stewart and Hal Jordan, are just two that we are already excited about. Hopefully, this list will continue to grow as the year goes on!

The post The Best TV Shows of 2026 (So Far) appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean reopened with an all-new audio-animatronic.
• The first-of-its-kind tech combines real-time front projection with a traditional figure.
• This provides a new way for Imagineers to tell stories within stories.

Disney attractions temporarily shut down for routine maintenance all the time. Few of them ever reopen with an entirely new type of technology. That’s exactly what guests will find on Disneyland’s iconic Pirates of the Caribbean after its recent refurbishment. The ride now features a brand new type of audio-animatronic that will change how Imagineers can tell stories. It seamlessly combines real-time front projection with a traditional moving mechanical head.

After months of being shuttered, Disney has reopened its famous pirate ride. It was worth the wait. When guests head out on their boats they’re going to find a new mini-story within the grand tale of piracy. An old figure has returned with a very modern upgrade. The skeleton pirate in the grotto room, forever sitting atop a treasure he’ll never spend, looks (and sounds) very different.

Rather than just seeing bones in pirate clothes, visitors will see a first-of-its-kind audio-animatronic. Imagineers have transformed a static skeleton into a dynamic lively pirate. He’s holding a cursed coin that abruptly turns him into a frozen skeleton. That ghastly figure, once full of life, then drops the coin, bringing him back to human form. That cycle that will repeat forever, as the greedy pirate never realizes what’s happening to him.

Disney

To create this effect Disney patented a whole new tech. Imagineers use a physical animatronic, just as it has since the park opened, along with Epic Games’ Unreal engine to front project a face onto a sculpted animatronic head. The system also simultaneously controls the animatronics movements, a hybrid of old and new.

This is a much needed upgrade. Front projection is found throughout the parks. In recent years Disney has used facial projections onto flat surfaces with both new and updated rides. It’s led to mixed results. EPCOT’s Frozen Ever After recently switched to more traditional audio-animatronics, whereas Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom still employs it. But this new format adds much more depth, nuanced, and expressive capabilities because rather than a flat face it projects onto a sculpted mechanical face.

It maintains its real-time match thanks to markers invisible to guest but that the computer can see. (We also love they installed a backup system to make sure it’s always running.)

As this happy cursed pirate shows, this provides a new way for Imagineers to tell stories within stories. That’s why this first-of-its-kind audio-animatronic will soon just be the first of many.

The post Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean Reopens With Patented New Animatronic appeared first on Nerdist.

Texas is poised to make the Bible required reading for five million public school students.

The Texas State Board of Education is expected to vote Friday to approve legislation to scrap teaching about “World Cultures” and make Bible stories and verses a permanent part of the K-12 curriculum—a blatant violation of the separation between church and state.

Critics of the measure argue that the changes risk alienating children from other religious or nonreligious backgrounds and infringe on the ability of parents to guide their children’s moral and religious education, CNN reported.

If the proposed reading list is approved, primary school-aged students would be taught stories like Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Middle school students would study the Shepherd Psalm from the Book of Psalms, as well as the religious writings of poets like Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. High schoolers would read from the second chapter of Genesis, detailing the creation of Adam and Eve—a story that exists across multiple religions but in vastly different forms.

Students would be able to opt out of these lessons, but as the texts would be made a part of the official curriculum, that could potentially affect their grades.

The proposed curriculum would only allow the use of verses from specific Bible translations, including the King James Bible, which is not embraced by the Roman Catholic Church but is widely used by Protestant and Evangelical churches, according to CNN.

In 2023, Texas became the first state to allow the hiring of chaplains in schools, and the next year the state offered extra money to public schools willing to provide optional Bible instruction. Last year, Texas became the largest of a slew of red states to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

These newest proposed changes come as President Donald Trump’s administration takes up the guise of “Christian nationalism”—while practicing policies that aren’t very Christian or particularly nationalist.

The lawsuit was connected to a fatal 2023 crash involving a vehicle using the company's advanced driver assistance system known as Full Self-Driving.

⚡ Quick Take

• Sheila Atim will play Akasha, Queen of the Damned and mother of all vampires in The Vampire Lestat.
• But who is Akasha in Anne Rice’s books? Among many things, she is the source of all vampire power, and if she dies, all vampires die.
• Ahead of her arrival in The Vampire Lestat, we breakdown Akasha’s history, her relationships with Marius and Lestat, and more.

One of the major players that AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe has been teasing since season two of Interview with the Vampire, Queen Akasha, will soon arrive as a character on The Vampire Lestat. She’ll be played by The Woman King’s Sheila Atim, and is sure to wreak much havoc. Many fans only know Akasha thanks to her portrayal by the late Aaliyah in the film version of Queen of the Damned. But that iteration only scratched the surface of her character. Before Akasha arrives on The Vampire Lestat, here’s the millennia-spanning existence of the Queen of the Damned.

Alfred A. Knopf/Ballantine Books Akasha Is First Introduced in The Vampire Lestat Book

In the Anne Rice lore, Akasha was first introduced in her 1985 novel The Vampire Lestat. Our titular undead narrator learns about the fabled Mother of all Vampires from her keeper, Marius de Romanus, who has tended to her care for nearly two millennia. She is an enigmatic figure in The Vampire Lestat, and doesn’t say much. Or even move much. But the follow-up novel, The Queen of the Damned, featured Akasha in a far more prominent role. And in that novel, she nearly destroyed the world as we know it.

The Mortal Life of Queen Akasha in Ancient Egypt

Akasha was born into mortal life over 6,000 years ago in the Kingdom of Uruk, in what is now present-day Iraq. At a very young age, her father married her off to the King Enkil of Kemet, which is now Egypt. This was long before the first pyramids. At the time, some local tribes practiced ritualistic cannibalism, which meant eating their dead in elaborate funeral feasts. Akasha considered this act barbaric and banned it. But this angered some of those tribes, and one of those tribes had two resident witches, red-haired twins named Maharet and Mekare.

How Akasha Became the First Vampire Warner Bros.

The red-haired twins, Maharet and Mekare, were able to communicate with powerful spirits who would obey their commands. When Akasha and Enkil’s forces attacked their village, the twins got their revenge by calling on a particularly powerful entity, Amel, to attack their kingdom. After Amel caused much destruction, there was a rebellion among Akasha and Enkil’s subjects. Mutinous soldiers stabbed the King and Queen in an assassination attempt. But as they lay bleeding, the spirit Amel entered Akasha’s body, fusing with her blood. She was not alive or dead, but an entirely new being. Akasha, we learn in The Vampire Lestat, became something we now call a vampire.

Queen Akasha and King Enkil Become “Those Who Must Be Kept”

Akasha now had an uncontrollable thirst for blood, one which she could not contain. She discovered that by spreading her blood to others, her hunger became less, as the spirit of Amel spread across more and more people. Akasha made her husband Enkil into a vampire right away, and then together they made more and more. But the more vampires she created, the less she herself needed to drink blood. But Akasha was vulnerable to the sun and fire. Eventually, she and Enkil were captured by the very vampires they created. These vampires kept them locked away because, it turns out, Akasha is the holy source of all vampire power. As the source, if Akasha dies, all other vampires will die as well in the world of The Vampire Lestat. And so Akasha and Enkil “Must Be Kept,” in order to keep all of vampire kind alive in Anne Rice’s world.

Akasha and Enkil Become Isis and Osiris in Egyptian Mythology Warner Bros.

Most vampires don’t know that Akasha is the source of their power and the keeper of their existence. In Anne Rice’s universe, Akasha and Enkil pass into legend, mythologized as Isis and Osiris. The vampires who are aware of this facet of vampiric existence kept both Akasha and King Enkil locked away for centuries, believing both of them to be the fountains of vampire power. In this state, Aksha and Enkil eventually stopped feeding, and then they stopped moving entirely. They were still alive, but essentially became frozen, like statues. Once again, in this state, they are the legendary “Those Who Must Be Kept.” Akasha and Enkil need to be kept, because should they get destroyed, their entire race would instantly die along with them.

Akasha Spends 2,000 Years in the Care of the Vampire Marius AMC

One of Akasha and Enkil’s keepers in the late Roman era finally went mad after observing them for centuries, and watching as neither ever moved an inch. One day, he left them out in the baking Egyptian sun. However, Akasha and Enkil were too old and powerful to die by the sun after 4,000 years. Instead, their skin became darkened and hard, furthering their appearance as statues, not living beings. But while they did not die, younger, less powerful vampires all across the globe burned up and were destroyed. Only those as old as Akasha also survived. Akasha rose from her centuries-long sleep and killed her keeper, but soon, she and Enkil had a new guardian, the newly made Roman vampire, Marius.

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Marius cared for Those Who Must Be Kept in a secret shrine, moving them from country to country. He did this for over 2,000 years. In the 18th century, Marius decided to entrust the young vampire Lestat with the truth about Akasha and Enkil, under the promise that he would never reveal the truth to anyone, vampire or mortal. As Akasha was the source of all vampires’ power, she needed protection from the outside world. Marius swore Lestat to secrecy. He could tell no vampire or mortal the secrets of the undead lineage, or where their power truly was contained.

The Vampire Lestat Awakens Akasha (Temporarily) Warner Bros.

On his last night with Akasha, Lestat played the violin for her. This woke Akasha from a centuries-long slumber, and she allowed Lestat to drink her blood. This act made Lestat far more powerful than any vampire of similar age. But this short-lived lovefest between Queen and Brat Prince ended when a jealous Enkil also awoke and tried to kill Lestat. Marius was able to save him, but told him to run away from the secret sanctuary as fast as he could. He wound up in New Orleans not long after, encountering Louis for the first time. All with deep secrets he could tell no one, living or dead.

Queen Akasha Begins Her Reign of Terror in The Queen of the Damned

In the modern era, which we now see in AMC’s The Vampire Lestat series, Lestat finally threw caution to the wind and revealed all his long-held secrets about Akasha through song and music videos as a rock star.  This eventually awoke the Queen again—this time permanently. First, she killed her husband Enkil with one swift blow. She then used her Fire Gift to set nearly every vampire in the world ablaze. Akasha spared only those who were too old (which took far more effort) and those Lestat loved, like Louis, Gabrielle, and Armand. The vampire race was reduced to a mere handful. She made Lestat her new Prince Consort, seeing him as the only vampire equal to herself in terms of ambition.

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However, Akasha’s true intent was truly heinous. She planned to use her Mind Gift to kill 99% of all men on Earth, because, as she saw it, men were responsible for every grand injustice for the last several thousand years. She would keep just enough alive to continue breeding the species, and she would name herself “Queen of Heaven” and rule over humanity. A humanity where only women ruled. The remaining vampires find a way to stop her genocidal plan, all while keeping the source of the vampiric existence intact. But we won’t spoil that yet, as that is the literal plot of Queen of the Damned. We’ll see if Akasha’s story unfolds as it did in Rice’s novels in The Vampire Lestat series. Assuming we get a fourth season (perhaps with a new name).

Akasha’s Future in AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe AMC Networks/Warner Bros.

In AMC’s The Vampire Lestat, it remains to be seen how much we’ll see of Akasha outside her unmoving, frozen form. For now, she hasn’t yet arrived in the narrative, although Lestat has dropped the fact that he has “the blood of Akasha inside of him” more times than we can count.

pic.twitter.com/p768dipgbj

— xander (@BRATLEST4T) June 18, 2026

We imagine we’ll see Lestat awaken her by playing the violin, and her feeding her own powerful blood to him. But if there’s a fourth season adapting Queen of the Damned, then she’ll soon have a starring role. We can’t wait to see what Sheila Atim brings to the role and witness her onscreen chemistry with Sam Reid’s Lestat.

The Vampire Lestat airs at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to air.

Eric Diaz is a staff writer at Nerdist and a life-long Anne Rice fan. Yes, he is a member of the OG fan club.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post Who Is Akasha? THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’S Queen of the Damned, Explained appeared first on Nerdist.

TikTok may be working to become the app that people use for most of their digital activities.

AI models have progressed to the point where their capabilities have real political consequences. Dealing with those consequences will require collective action.

If a self-driving car is going to stop, it may need to stop itself. US vehicle safety regulators are proposing to let robotaxi designers get rid of brake pedals, calling regulatory requirements for manually operated methods of stopping driverless vehicles a barrier to innovation. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a notice of proposed rulemaking on Friday to modify federal brake safety standards for light vehicles by eliminating the requirement for vehicles equipped with automated driving systems (ADS) and no manual controls to have foot-operated service brakes or manually operated parking brakes. The NHTSA argues the controls themselves could pose a safety risk by allowing passengers to intentionally or unintentionally override an ADS. Existing braking performance requirements would remain in place, the agency said, even as brake pedals and handbrakes are on the chopping block. “Regardless of the manner of brake control application, the brake systems must be capable of safely stopping the vehicle, as already required by the standard,” the agency said in its proposal. “This rulemaking would remove unnecessary regulatory burdens and costs with no negative impact to vehicle safety.” The NHTSA would keep existing stopping-distance requirements for robotaxis, thankfully, but said standardized methods for testing driverless vehicles may need further development. Vehicles equipped with ADS that still have steering wheels and other manual controls, as well as cars equipped with driver-assistance systems such as Tesla Autopilot, Ford BlueCruise, and similar technology, will still need to have brake pedals, naturally. A number of automakers and driverless taxi operators (Tesla, Waymo, Amazon, etc.) have been developing vehicles that lack manual controls, but current FMVSS still require them to have a brake pedal. That’s simply not safe, says the NHTSA. “The inclusion of a manually operated driving control that directly overrides ADS operation could pose a safety risk through intentional or unintentional misuse by a vehicle passenger,” the proposal argues. All people in a driverless taxi, it continues, are passengers who “should also not be expected to perform driver functions such as engaging the parking brake.” In other words, despite the NHTSA's admission in the proposal that ADS tech "is still maturing and many of the potential benefits are yet to be realized," the agency is prepared to remove mandatory brake pedals and handbrakes from ADS-only vehicles, even as robotaxis and driver-assistance systems continue to generate safety headaches, from Waymo vehicles entering flooded roads and running over dogs to fatal crashes involving Tesla's Autopilot, without requiring a standardized method for passengers to tell the vehicle to stop. It doesn't want to completely eliminate manual overrides, mind you, but the agency isn't going to force automakers to conform to any one method of giving passengers the ability to stop their driverless car. “It is NHTSA’s expectation that if these controls are removed, passengers will still be provided with a means to direct an ADS-operated vehicle to come to a stop, though how a passenger would indicate they wanted the ADS-operated vehicle to stop would likely vary by manufacturer,” the NHTSA said. The NHTSA has frequently butted heads with automakers deploying controversial driver-assistance technology, like Tesla, but the agency was gutted during Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s time heading up the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with the cuts falling particularly hard on staff responsible for regulating self-driving vehicles. Comments on the proposal are being accepted through July 27, but the docket number for the proposal (NHTSA-2026-0728) does not yet appear on the web portal for registering support or dissent. ®

In February 2025, Maksym Chernyak had a medical emergency. There were multiple signs that Chernyak—a 44-year-old from Ukraine detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida—was suffering a severe stroke. But ICE’s medical personnel missed those clues. By the time 911 was called, it was too late. Chernyak’s systolic blood pressure was more than 280 when he got to the hospital. He died soon after.  

Chernyak is one of 52 people who died in ICE custody during the 500 days after President Donald Trump returned to office. A new report from two watchdog groups argues that ICE’s mistakes “almost certainly” cost Chernyak his life. It also reveals that he was far from alone in receiving abysmal medical treatment while in immigration detention. 

The analysis—released on Thursday by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights—found that the mortality rate for people in ICE custody has skyrocketed during Trump’s second-term mass-deportation campaign. It’s nearly three times what it was during Joe Biden’s presidency and about two times higher than during Trump’s first term—a period that covered the first 10 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. In other words, far more people are now in ICE detention than in prior administrations, and a far greater percentage of those detainees are dying.

The report combines statistical analysis with detailed reviews of specific deaths in ICE custody. It states that PHR—whose medical experts investigate allegations of abuse across the world—identified a “high suspicion of inadequate or delayed health care” in several deaths that raised “serious concerns that the deaths may have been preventable.”

Along with calling for improved medical care within ICE detention, the report recommends that ICE reduce the number of people in detention and prevent overcrowding. Reagan Williams, a researcher in the Crisis, Conflict, and Arms division at HRW, told me that could partly be done by ending mandatory immigration detention, which has been greatly expanded under Trump.

The current policy, which is the subject of an ongoing legal battle, subjects people who entered the country without inspection to mandatory detention regardless of criminal history or how long they have lived in the United States. In the past—including during Trump’s first term—the people covered by the policy would have been eligible for bond hearings and could be released as their immigration cases proceeded.

NBC News reported on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is launching a review of the increase in deaths in ICE detention centers. ICE did not respond to my request for comment.

Williams said that HRW and PHR are also asking Congress to mandate detailed independent reviews of deaths in ICE custody. Additionally, HRW and PHR are calling for a new independent entity that would have authority and jurisdiction over the quality of medical services that are provided to people in detention.

Some of the most disturbing sections of the report focus on the medical treatment received by men like Chernyak in the lead-up to their deaths. In Chernyak’s case, HRW and PHR were able to gain a much more detailed understanding of what happened after obtaining medical records from his family. In other cases, they had to rely on inadequate information released by ICE that can obscure the scale of the agency’s mistakes. 

Oksana Tarasiuk shows a picture of herself and her late husband, Maksym Chernyak, inside the couple’s apartment in Florida.Rebecca Blackwell/AP/AP

Dr. Katherine Peeler, a PHR medical adviser and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard, told me that Chernyak’s case was “shocking” on many levels. One of the most concerning things noted by ICE’s medical staff while Chernyak was at the detention center was that he was unresponsive and had “dilated equal but nonreactive pupils.” He also experienced “seizure-like” activity. Peeler said medical staff should have recognized that Chernyak may have been experiencing potentially life-threatening brain swelling. 

Nevertheless, it was recommended that Chernyak be sent to an emergency room via “non-emergency, medical transport.” Thirty minutes later—while Chernyak was still waiting at the detention center—he began having “additional seizures, vomited, and his pupils became unequal and remained non-reactive,” according to the report from HRW and PHR. Medical staff at the detention center then finally called 911. At the hospital, Peeler said, medical professionals immediately recognized that he was suffering from what proved to be a fatal stroke.

While conditions in ICE detention have deteriorated since Trump returned to office, HRW and PHR’s investigation makes clear that many of the problems are longstanding. That can be seen from the death of Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, a 45-year-old man from Ethiopia, on January 29, 2025. Dejene—who was first detained during the Biden administration in August 2024—began suffering from back pain around November 2024, according to information released by ICE. 

During one six-week period, he was evaluated four different times by medical staff at an Arizona detention center. On the last of those visits, after a nurse noted that he had an “abnormal slow gait,” he was provided with pain medication and instructions for spine exercises. The nurse recommended a follow-up in two weeks, but Dejene needed medical attention again just four days later.

This time, medical staff noted that Dejene had lost 20 percent of his body weight and sent him to a local emergency room, which then returned him to the detention center with a diagnosis of “probable lymphoma.” Dejene’s condition quickly deteriorated and he was sent back to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. 

Dejene died soon after. Peeler said the autopsy revealed that Dejene had a number of conditions that stemmed from AIDS that somehow went unnoticed by medical providers. According to the autopsy, those included “central nervous system toxoplasmosis, tuberculosis, Diphyllobothrium tapeworm, pneumocystis pneumonia, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Candida albicans, and Cytomegalovirus.” (ICE’s detainee death report for Dejene states that he denied having “any medical history.”)

“He was immunocompromised, which led him to have all these infections,” Peeler explained. “Which is how people used to die from AIDS. But people don’t typically die from AIDS in this country anymore because we have such effective antiretrovirals.” Peeler emphasized that ICE medical staff had multiple opportunities to potentially save Dejene’s life. “He must have looked sick,” she said. “There’s no way that he looked okay.” 

“This one I found really, really egregious,” Peeler added. “It was over so many weeks. There were so many opportunities that he presented where they should have drawn labs.” 

Williams, the HRW researcher, said she was struck in her research by just how little information is provided to people whose loved ones have died in ICE custody. She mentioned talking to a mother who “was desperate to know more about what had happened to her son.”

Williams stressed the human lives behind the numbers in the report. “When we talk about a rising death rate,” she explained, “we’re talking about a mother losing her son who cooked for her, who cared for her, who she loves deeply, and who she is now suffering without.”

The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision to allow President Trump to end temporary protected status protections for Haitian immigrants in the U.S. is being celebrated across the Trump administration, despite continued violence plaguing Haiti.

White House adviser Stephen Miller was asked by a reporter shortly after the ruling if the administration considers “Haiti a safe country.” His answer didn’t address any concerns.

“For Haitians? Absolutely,” Miller said, failing to say whether he thought the country was safe in general. “Haitians live in Haiti. It’s not of our position that Haitians should leave Haiti. It’d be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn’t live in Haiti. It’s their country.”

"Does the Administration consider Haiti a safe country?"@StephenM: "For Haitians? Absolutely. Haitians live in Haiti... It'd be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn't live in Haiti. It's their country." https://t.co/eEjl4F9ye7 pic.twitter.com/69adUrp5c6

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 25, 2026

When Fox News asked James Percival, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, on Friday morning if Haitians losing their TPS status would get a grace period before having to leave the U.S., Percival echoed Miller’s callousness.

“President Trump has been trying to end these programs for nine years, so these people have been on notice for nine years that this day is coming. So what we would say now is that it’s closing time which means you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home,” Percival said.

“The T in TPS stands for temporary…It is closing time. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home.” @DHSGenCounselhttps://t.co/YGo3uuNvrE pic.twitter.com/JDClLseFgA

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) June 26, 2026

Haiti’s security situation is very unstable. The FAA has barred U.S. flights from landing in the capital, Port-au-Prince, until at least September, citing risks from armed groups. In 2024, three commercial jets were hit by gunfire in the country. Armed gangs control the country, with no president in power or election scheduled.

Haiti’s national soccer team even had to play their World Cup qualification matches outside of the country in Curaçao because gangs had taken over the national football stadium in Port-au-Prince. Haiti still made it to the World Cup, even hanging with powerhouse Morocco for three-quarters of their third match before succumbing 4-2 and being eliminated from the tournament.

But despite the security situation in Haiti, the Trump administration doesn’t think Haitians deserve asylum in the U.S., and thinks that Haitian-Americans without citizenship or permanent residency can just pick up and go even if they’ve built lives or started families.

“People are running away from their homes,” said Don Deedson Louicius, a striker for the Haitian national team and professional player for FC Dallas in the U.S., to ESPN in November. He grew up near the Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince and still has family there.

“They can’t live well, and all the places are closed because of the gangs, and violence is crazy.”

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty on Friday to keeping security information from his work in his personal records—an act less egregious than what Donald Trump and Joe Biden previously got away with unscathed.

A Florida judge dismissed Trump’s case in 2024 for allegedly retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, saying that special counsel Jack Smith, who filed the charges against Trump, was illegally appointed by the Justice Department—rather than the President and confirmed by the Senate. 

And Biden was not charged for purportedly keeping documents in a former D.C. office and his personal residence in Delaware. One reason given was that Biden would likely present himself before a jury “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” which would make it difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him for “a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

But, as of Friday, Bolton has pled guilty to one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information out of a total of 18 official charges. Prosecutors said that Bolton faces a prison sentence of up to five years and agreed to pay $2.25 million in fines. His sentencing date is set for October 28.

Since leaving his position in the first Trump administration in 2019, Bolton has become a vocal critic of the president. When he was first indicted last October, Bolton said the case was an attempt by Trump to use the Justice Department to punish his political enemies. The president has gone after officials like former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. 

The Justice Department under Joe Biden continued to gather evidence in the case and the 18-count indictment focused on Bolton’s private messages containing national security information—not the contents of the memoir. The indictment alleged that Bolton used his personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1000 pages of notes with two family members. 

The indictment said that Bolton’s emails were later hacked by someone with ties to the government of Iran. “A representative for Bolton notified the U.S. government of the hack in or about July 2021,” the filing reads in part, “but did not tell the U.S. government that the account contained national defense information, including classified information.”

Right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson has pivoted from his cringeworthy praise of President Donald Trump as a “daddy” who would administer spankings to his political rivals to now referring to the president as “weak” following his Iran war disaster. In an interview with podcaster Jack Neel, Carlson described Trump as “buffoonish” and said he decided to retreat from hostilities in Iran…

Source

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Mamdani minces no words over ICE’s threat at the World Cup…

Source

A South Dakota Republican state senator has been hit with two felony charges for falsifying party nomination forms, reports the South Dakota Searchlight.

Tom Pischke, 44, allegedly submitted 16 forged forms to try to put candidates on the ballot for county party leadership, unbeknownst to the candidates themselves.

The fake forms were caught by Minnehaha County auditor Leah Anderson, who noticed that the address for one of the nominees didn’t match the one on their voter registration. She then noticed that all 16 forms had similar handwriting, and the signatures didn’t match other documents the candidates had signed.

Pischke initially denied forging the forms, but turned himself in after footage showed his car dropping off papers at the post office, and his DNA was found on the envelopes, reports the South Dakota Searchlight.

Pischke represents a deep-red district near Sioux Falls, and ran unopposed in his Republican primary, according to the AP.

Korry Petterson, the chair of the Minnehaha County Republican Party, said that he believes Pischke’s meddling was likely an attempt to interfere with his more centrist agenda and push the party to the right.

He told the South Dakota Searchlight that he wants prosecutors to push for a severe punishment for Pischke if the allegations are proven, and that he hopes the Republican Party as a whole will take this as a warning.

“If anything, I think it will help people realize that the extremism has got to stop,” Petterson said.

Peter Diamandis is the latest tech executive to argue that global surveillance will make the world a better place, following Larry Ellison's comments in 2024.

A high-severity flaw in Amazon's AI coding assistant for Visual Studio Code meant that opening the wrong Git repository could allow an attacker to execute code on a developer's machine and potentially hand them the keys to the dev's cloud environment. The bug, tracked as CVE-2026-12957 and assigned a CVSS 4.0 score of 8.5, centers on how Amazon Q handled Model Context Protocol (MCP) server configurations. Wiz found the extension would automatically load a repository's .amazonq/mcp.json file and execute the commands it contained when a developer opened the project and activated Amazon Q. "The security model assumes the user explicitly configures these servers. After all, you're granting an AI assistant permission to run arbitrary commands on your machine. This should require informed consent," the researchers write. "The vulnerability arose when this assumption was violated: Amazon Q automatically loaded MCP configurations from .amazonq/mcp.json within the workspace – no prompt, no consent, no workspace trust check." MCP lets AI assistants launch local processes to carry out tasks. In Amazon Q's case, those processes inherited the developer's environment, giving them access to AWS credentials, API keys, authentication tokens, SSH agent sockets, and other secrets already loaded into the session. "The combination meant that a single malicious config file could execute arbitrary commands with full access to the developer's credentials – no user interaction required beyond opening the folder and activating Amazon Q," Wiz said. To prove the attack worked, Wiz built a repository with a malicious MCP configuration. Opening the project and activating Amazon Q caused the extension to execute a command against AWS using the developer's existing credentials. Amazon fixed the bug in version 1.65.0 of its language server, which powers Amazon Q's IDE integrations. Existing installations should receive the patched component automatically unless you've blocked automatic updates. "We would like to thank Wiz for collaborating with us on this issue. We have remediated this issue in language server version 1.65.0," Amazon said in an advisory, though it didn't respond to The Register's questions. Wiz argues the bug is less an Amazon problem than an industry one. More and more AI coding assistants are adopting MCP to connect models to local tools and services, allowing them to execute commands on developers' machines. According to the researchers, similar workspace configuration flaws have recently surfaced in other AI coding tools. It suggests attackers have found a new place to lurk: the hidden files that developers rarely think twice about trusting. ®

Was Thursday among the darkest days in the history of the Supreme Court? You could make a case. First, a majority cleared the way for a pesticide manufacturer to get thousands of lawsuits off its books from farmers who’d used its product and gotten cancer. Next, it ruled that the administration could turn away asylum-seekers at the border. And then it held that gun owners could now freely carry their weapons into private establishments that serve the public.

Let’s pause over that one for a paragraph. Here’s a good description of the particulars of the gun case and the legal arguments on both sides. But the upshot is this: Everywhere in America, gun owners will presumably be able to take their guns to shops, stores, malls, movie theaters, restaurants, bars, amusement parks, Baby Gaps, you name it. Does any rational person think that the Founders, who simply wanted men to have muskets to protect themselves from invaders, would want someone to be able to take a military-style semiautomatic rifle and 600 rounds of ammo into a Chuck E. Cheese?

But the worst of Thursday’s big four decisions was Mullin v. Doe, which will allow the Trump administration to begin deporting Haitians and Syrians who were granted Temporary Protected Status by the Obama administration in 2010 and 2012, respectively. My colleague Matt Ford shredded the decision in his piece, writing that the court “effectively blessed Trump’s bigotry toward Haitians and dealt potentially catastrophic damage to federal civil rights laws.”

The cases combine to give the executive branch more power. They turn several lower court decisions on their head (as The New York Times notes today, immigration hard-liners had lost case after case on TPS until yesterday). And in the case of Mullin, in particular, the highest legal authority in the land—namely, Samuel Alito, writing for the majority—pretends that Donald Trump’s blatant racism toward Haitians doesn’t exist; that there was nothing “overtly racial” in Trump’s many disgusting and false comments about the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, and beyond.

This conservative court is out of control—blatantly partisan and ideological, the six-member majority scarcely even pretends otherwise anymore.

Some major decisions about executive power—Trump’s power—are yet to be handed down this term, involving the firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, the removal of Democratic appointees from independent agencies, and of course the birthright citizenship case. If the court rules predictably on two of these three, or certainly on all three, it will have completed a term—with the aforementioned four decisions already on the books, as well as Callais v. Louisiana, which did away with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—that might well be the most reactionary in its history. And all this is on top of the earlier reversal of a 49-year-old precedent in 1973’s Roe v. Wade and the handing to Trump of sweeping immunity for all “official” acts.

It’s now unavoidable: This has to be a front-and-center issue in 2028. Democratic presidential contenders will have to answer the question: What do you plan to do about the Supreme Court?

Many of them will be afraid to dip a foot into these waters. They shouldn’t be. Poll after poll shows us that majorities disapprove of the court and think of its decisions as being more political than jurisprudential. According to Gallup, disapproval of the court topped 50 percent five years ago and has stayed there ever since (in contrast, that number was just 29 percent as recently as 2010). So the public—not just the progressive base of the party—is ready to hear ideas.

Terms limits, the most common idea bruited, are fine. But imposing term limits won’t really change the makeup of the court for years; maybe decades. How many more rights will they strip away before then? How much more power will they give to the uber-rich to buy political campaigns and candidates? How much more immunity will they grant to corporations? How many new ways will they find to weaken protections for workers and litigants against corporate power? And perhaps most of all, how will they figure out how to allow the executive branch to undermine the laws passed by Congress and refuse to write regulations and enforce the laws Congress has passed?

No—terms limits are no longer enough. It’s time to talk seriously about court expansion. And I think there’s a smart and totally constitutionally defensible way to do it.

The United States has 13 federal circuit courts. That number, naturally, grew over the course of the country’s history, as the number of states grew and as the population expanded. This is relevant here because each Supreme Court justice is responsible for overseeing a certain number of circuits. Historically, Congress has expanded the number of justices as it simultaneously increased the number of circuits.

Admittedly, all this happened a very long time ago. But still, it’s precedent. The court was established in 1789 at six justices. In 1807, Congress expanded the number of federal circuits to seven, and added a justice to match. In 1837, Congress created nine circuits and nine justices. In 1863—even while the United States of America had lost the 11 states of the Confederacy—Congress created 10 circuits and 10 justices. The current nine-justice format was set in 1869.

Later expansions in the number of circuits did not simultaneously add justices. But why not revive that thought? The country has had today’s 13 circuits since 1982. The population of the country in 1982 was 230 million. Today, it’s around 345 million. That’s a lot more people. And the courts are horribly backlogged.

That could be solved by just adding judges. But it’s also a justification for increasing the number of circuits. From there, a case can clearly be made that increasing the number of circuits requires increasing the number of high court justices. Or at the very least, Democrats can pursue a hybrid solution that would keep the number of circuits at 13 and add a large number of judges within those circuits—while increasing the size of the Supreme Court to 13. Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia, a leader on these issues, introduced such a bill in 2023, and it had around 60 co-sponsors.

It would all be completely constitutional and completely legal. Which is more than can be said for a lot of the things Trump and the Republicans are getting up to, as they try to find new and blatantly illegal ways to stop mail-in voting and otherwise take the franchise away from citizens.

But the big door-opener here by Trump and the GOP is their rancidly unconstitutional mid-decade redistricting move. The Constitution clearly and plainly states that districts will be redrawn every 10 years, after the decennial census. What Trump and his party are doing with this redistricting is completely lawless.

Once they’ve done that, all bets are off. Democrats should do whatever they need to do to rebalance power. But—they should stay within the law. What I’m talking about here, what Johnson’s bill would accomplish, would be entirely within the law. Congress can set the size of the Supreme Court. And I believe that a smart Democrat, framing the argument the right way, can take that case to the American people and win it. He or she can convince the voters that far from destroying the court, such an action would constitute saving it from its own extremism—and saving the rights we cherish that these ideologues are stripping away.

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.