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An ICE officer fatally shot a Mexican national Tuesday morning in Houston during an attempted traffic stop to conduct an immigration arrest, the Department of Homeland Security said.

Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.

Hackers attack Trump with Army websites

Two Army websites were taken down after the military was notified that hackers had gained control of the sites, which they used for political messages. Among the messages were an expletive-garnished attack on President Donald Trump and Tom Barrack, the scandal-plagued U.S. ambassador to Turkey, as well as one that read “Free Kurdistan.”

The Army told CyberScoop that the pages were “hosted on a legacy third-party platform that is not connected to the Army’s enterprise network and have since been removed.”

Read more at CyberScoop.

SCOTUS OKs age verification in Texas

The Supreme Court has given Texas the go-ahead to enforce its law requiring digital apps to employ age verification tools. My colleague Jordan Rubin wrote about the court decision to side with Texas in an emergency case over a law that critics said will require citizens “to prove their age before reading a newspaper, entering a bookstore, or even accessing the internet.”

Read more at MS NOW.

OpenAI’s socialist offer 

OpenAI reportedly proposed giving the federal government a 5% stake in the tech company as it looks to ease regulatory pressure. Noteworthy here is that OpenAI has previously announced a partnership with Nvidia, one of several tech companies that Trump has invested in, according to financial disclosure forms.

Read more at CNBC.

Hawking Dell at the White House

My colleague Steve Benen wrote about Trump promoting purchases of Dell computers during a White House photo op, underscoring how he is brazenly using the presidency to boost companies in which he owns stock.

Read more at MS NOW. 

Trump touts dropped crypto investigations

At the same White House event, Trump patted himself on the back for his administration’s successful scuttling of investigations and prosecutions targeting cryptocurrency investors. The president’s billion-dollar crypto ventures have recently come under closer scrutiny amid his latest financial disclosures. 

“Every time I see a crypto guy where they dropped an investigation, I said, ‘You’re lucky I’m president,’” Trump said. 

Trump: “Every time I see a crypto guy where they dropped an investigation, I said, ‘You’re lucky I’m president.’” pic.twitter.com/7Jgg0ffgq7

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 6, 2026

Judge blocks Musk’s request

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco denied Elon Musk’s bid to void a jury verdict that found he defrauded Twitter investors by trying to drive down the stock price during his $44 billion takeover in 2022.

Read more at Reuters.

Workday AI suit prompts warning

A federal court recently denied HR company Workday’s request to toss a lawsuit filed on behalf of people who alleged that the company’s artificial intelligence tools, which are used by employers to help find job candidates, enabled discrimination. Workday has denied the claims of bias. Nonetheless, as Roy Maurer explained for the Society for Human Resource Management, the lawsuit is a reminder to companies that “organizations can no longer treat AI as a black-box technology managed solely by vendors.”

Read more at SHRM.

Energy chief targets data center critics

Energy Secretary Chris Wright spoke at an Amazon conference last week and asked employees to help him “roll over” critics of data centers. I wrote about how the speech had him sounding like a supervillain.

Read more at MS NOW.

The post Hackers use Army websites to send explicit messages aimed at Trump appeared first on MS NOW.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Tuesday announced it is lifting the suspension of Russia’s Olympic teams, allowing them to compete at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.  In a release, the IOC said it decided to “provisionally” lift the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) after its legal affairs commission determined the…

A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the Trump administration of illegally sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with the Iranian government, alleging the disclosures violated federal immigration protections and endangered people who fled persecution.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, alleges that immigration agencies disclosed sensitive information from asylum applications to Iranian officials during efforts to deport Iranian nationals. The plaintiffs are seeking a court order to halt the alleged information-sharing and appoint an independent monitor to oversee compliance with federal confidentiality rules.

The lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin as defendants.

“Disclosing their confidential information to the Iranian Government violates the asylum seekers’ confidentiality rights, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran, directly or through chain refoulement via third countries, at risk of persecution, torture, and death following their arrival in Iran,” IALDF said in the 13-page lawsuit.

Federal regulations prohibit the U.S. government from revealing information that could identify an individual as an asylum applicant because doing so could expose them to retaliation or persecution if they are returned to their home country. While U.S. officials may coordinate with foreign governments on deportation logistics, the lawsuit argues the administration exceeded those limits by sharing protected asylum information.

“Congress made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them,” Ali Rahnama, interim executive director of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

The complaint alleges that beginning in March 2025, the State Department arranged monthly meetings with Iranian officials through the Pakistani Embassy, where U.S. officials provided detailed information about detained Iranian immigrants the government sought to deport. The lawsuit says the information included allegations of persecution based on religious conversion, sexual orientation and participation in Iran’s 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protests.

The complaint further alleges that Iranian asylum seekers held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities were forced to meet with Iranian government representatives who appeared to have detailed knowledge of their asylum claims. The plaintiffs say those disclosures continued even after the United States and Iran entered into open conflict earlier this year.

DHS denied the allegations.

In a statement, DHS said ICE facilitates consular access for detainees in accordance with applicable laws and policies while obtaining travel documents for deportations. The agency added that claims it shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are “FALSE.” 

The legal challenge comes amid the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown and follows a series of deportation flights that returned Iranian nationals to Iran beginning in late 2025. Advocacy groups say the administration’s alleged disclosures represent a sharp break from decades of U.S. policy aimed at protecting Iranian dissidents and others seeking refuge from the country’s government.

“The law is clear. State Department and DHS regulations prohibit ICE officials from revealing information from asylum applications to foreign governments. But that is exactly what they are doing,” said Michael Kirkpatrick, an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “Despite the U.S.’s ongoing war with Iran, the administration seems more committed to mass deportation than protecting human lives.”

Camille Ray and Fallon Gallagher contributed to this report.

The post Lawsuit alleges U.S. illegally shared asylum seekers’ information with Iran appeared first on MS NOW.

The sale of the Gucci Beauty brand to L’Oréal, first announced in October 2025, will be complete in 2027, a year earlier than originally planned.

Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has said he is considering his options. But Democrats in Maine and nationally are calling on him to withdraw from the race.

I’ve tested dozens of fitness trackers from Apple, Garmin, Fitbit and more. Here are my top picks for beginners, runners and anyone on a budget.

The political commentator accused the pop star of trying to “fill [a] void” in her life after she tied the knot with Travis Kelce.

“The Simp” is out now from Simon & Schuster.

{beacon} Technology Technology   The Big Story Americans’ concerns about AI outweigh excitement Americans are nearly three times as likely to be concerned rather than excited about the growing footprint of artificial intelligence in society, according to a new biweekly survey about the public’s sentiment on the advancing technology. © Getty Images The “Americans on AI” poll,…

Katherine Scarlett, a top environmental policy adviser in the Trump White House, has departed, an official confirmed to The Hill. Scarlett chaired the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), where she led a rollback of federal environmental standards for new infrastructure projects. According to Bloomberg Government, which first reported her exit, Scarlett is headed to consulting firm…