KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Sunday, May thirty-first. The time is six a.m. central. I'm Keli, with Hast.
HAST Good morning. We're leading with a piece about the gap between what officials say and what they do — then we'll move through Ethiopia, surveillance of data-center critics, and some health-policy money questions.
KELI Back in November of twenty-twenty, California Governor Gavin Newsom held a dinner at a restaurant in Napa County. Twelve people, indoors. The California Medical Association's CEO and top lobbyist were both there. At the exact same moment, the CMA was funding ad campaigns telling Californians not to gather, to wear masks, to follow the rules. Newsom held a press conference afterward and said he'd made a mistake — he should have walked back to his car and driven home instead of sitting down. From our Ground News desk: here's what got covered and what didn't. The press reported the hypocrisy — a rule-maker at a gathering he'd told the public to avoid, while the organization funding his message was sitting across the table. What the coverage mostly didn't examine was the architecture underneath. These weren't separate worlds colliding by accident. The rule-writers and the lobbyists for the medical establishment are the same social circle. They move between those roles. The prediction you can check: as public-health orders tighten in coming months, watch whether the people setting them and the people funded to promote them maintain distance, or whether that revolving door keeps spinning.
HAST Staying overseas now. Voting in Ethiopia's national election has been suspended in multiple regions because of active conflict. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's party is expected to win decisively, but the country has been dealing with ongoing violence in several areas, and officials say the security situation in parts of the country makes conducting an election impossible right now. This is the second time we've covered the Ethiopian vote — the first suspension happened earlier in the month.
KELI On a different front: law enforcement is monitoring social media for people who post criticism of artificial-intelligence data centers. The Intercept obtained a document from a police agency showing officers scanning platforms for posts opposing these facilities — sometimes before those facilities even broke ground. The practice raises questions about whether speech critical of infrastructure projects can attract police attention. This has been reported before, but the document itself is new.
HAST Different scale, but connected to money and what gets funded. Medicare is being asked why it won't say what it costs to give seniors access to GLP-1 obesity drugs — the ones that can run fifty dollars a dose. Massachusetts sued United Healthcare over the same question. The financial picture of who pays for these medications and under what terms is still largely opaque.
KELI Lighter footing for this one. The World Cup is coming to the United States in twenty-twenty-six, and Houston is running a human-trafficking awareness campaign ahead of it. Researchers say major sporting events do draw traffickers, though the risk is sometimes overstated in coverage. The campaign is meant to train people to recognize signs of trafficking and report it.
HAST Before we close, a history note.
KELI On this day in nineteen-forty-one, the United Kingdom completed its re-occupation of Iraq and returned the regent Abd al-Ilah to power.
HAST That's the Independent News Drop. We'll be back this evening. From Inkwell.