It was in the quiet of the summer when a new president at Louisiana State University said the school would lay off 25 administrators, including several who were high in the campus hierarchy, and shift the savings to faculty hiring and research.
Transformational change, the president, Wade Rousse, called it. He was streamlining operations and finding efficiencies so the university can focus on its faculty.
The move got limited attention outside Baton Rouge. But similar layoffs have been happening at universities and colleges nationwide in what may be a little-noticed tipping point in U.S. higher education.
A decades-long increase in the number of employees on campuses who dont actually teachdisparaged by critics as administrative bloatis starting to reverse, new data suggests.
The number of noninstructional employees at U.S. universities and collegesthe many people on campuses who dont actually teachfell last year more than it has at any time in at least the last decade, according to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, or CUPA-HR.
And while the newly reported CUPA-HR figures cover only through the end of 2025, universities and colleges have continued to lay off noninstructional employees since then.
Another source, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, now projects limited employment growth for postsecondary administrators, which it says will be slower than for other occupations.
There are several caveats to these clues.
The CUPA-HR survey is limited to the roughly 1,000 public and nonprofit universities and colleges that agreed to participate, for instance. The association cautioned against generalizing across the large variety of higher education institutions; noted that past downturns in staffing often have been followed by increases; and said it might be too early to draw conclusions about trends.
But it shouldnt come as a surprise that universities are resorting to layoffs across their workforces as they try to lower spending in the face of domestic and international student enrollment declines and federal funding cuts, says Kevin McClure, professor of higher education and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Institutions are shrinking. Some are closing. Some simply have fewer students, so are having to contract, McClure says. Those types of situations are often where layoffs are experienced or reorganizations happen.
Since its typically harder to eliminate faculty than staff because of tenure and student demand for particular majors, he says, the newest layoffs are most likely to affect employees and staff who arent as protected.
Among administrators laid off at Louisiana State were the chief financial officer; a vice president who handled discrimination complaints; and 16 writers, video producers, and photographers in the marketing and communications office.
The University of Utah has announced it will eliminate as many as 855 noninstructional positions over the next year. The University of Minnesota cut 230 noninstructional jobs through layoffs and attrition. The University of Maryland laid off 84 staffers, eliminated vacant jobs, and froze hiring.
Private, nonprofit universities and colleges of all sizes also have been trimming their administrative ranks.
Johns Hopkins University laid off 110 workers and imposed a hiring freeze. The New School in New York City shed 68 noninstructional employees. At Baker University in Kansas, 21 staff positions were eliminated, 27 others were frozen, and the president and other administrators took pay cuts. Emerson College in Boston laid off 12 administrators.
Even Harvard University eliminated 165 noninstructional jobs, including the director of its writing center.
In most of these cases, the numbers represent small fractions of the noninstructional workforce, which accounts for more than half of all employees on campuses.
But its encouraging that there are any cuts at all, says Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, which has been critical of administrative bloat and of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, many of which are among those now being stripped of staff.
There have been decades of increases in the numbers of noninstructional employees, attracting criticism at the highest levels and on social media accounts devoted entirely to making fun of higher educations middle managers.
Colleges began to see themselves as providing this very broad suite of services, all of which were personnel-intensive, Wood saysathletics, housing, dining, security, transportation, mental health counseling, disability support, antidiscrimination efforts, information technology, data collection, fundraising, sustainability.
Some of these functions were expanded as students showed up who were not prepared for college-level work and needed more help. Some were in response to real or perceived demands from consumers for amenities that required additional staff, or were driven by intensifying competition and the race to rise up the college rankings.
Institutions also contend that their ever-growing workforces were required to comply with government red tape, though that has proven not to be as big a factor as theyve said.
The administrative workforce just grew and grewoften, Wood says, at the expense of academic functions.
In the process, administrative bloat became one of those rare issues that unites critics of higher education with faculty members, says Robert Kelchen, head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who has studied it.
A faculty committee convened at Yale University to consider why higher education has lost so much public trust cited administrative bloat as one of the reasons. It said that even determining how many administrators there were at Yale proved remarkably difficult.
That in itself was a finding, the committee said in its report, released in April. The university should be able to answer a straightforward question: What share of its resources is devoted to its core academic functions, and what share is not?
Universities and colleges have layers of bloated administration for which students and taxpayers are forced to foot the bill, U.S. Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent told a White House roundtable last year.
Students, families, and taxpayers are being asked to pay more and more each year to support rising institutional and administrative expenditures that often have little to do with actual learning, he said.
The number of noninstructional employees on campuses is hard to definitively connect with what students pay. Another analysis of federal data, by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, however, shows that administrative costs per student at public universities have generally been falling since their last peak, which came just before the COVID-19 pandemic. That analysis covers the period through 2024, the most recent for which the figure is available.
This seems really like a very stark correction, says Armand Alacbay, ACTAs chief of staff and senior vice president of strategy.
Gallup surveys find that fewer than 4 in 10 Americans have confidence in higher education, down from nearly 6 in 10 in 2015; cost edges out perceived political agendas as the top reason, Alacbay says, noting, Thats whats really animating this whole discussion of administrative bloat, is the price of the product reaching an unsustainable level.
The number of full-time administrators per 100 students at the top 200 universities that award doctoral degrees increased 39% from 1993 to 2007more than twice as much as the number of students or facultyaccording to one widely cited 2010 report by the conservative Goldwater Institute.
Another study picked up the trail in 2012 and looked at 1,529 public and private four-year colleges and universities. It found that administrative staffing continued to grow faster than instructional staffing through at least 2018, even after colleges and universities responded to the 2008 recession by promising to cut costs, and during a period when enrollment was declining.
Universities say their nonfaculty staff include employees in such areas as fundraising and sustainability, meaning they presumably raise or save money. Many others are in student services or provide technology support.
There are indications that some schools are cutting employees who provide those functions, too, potentially resulting in fewer support services for students.
The University of Southern California has laid off academic advisers. The University of California, Los Angeles, cut 27 information technology workers. Indiana University Bloomington laid off 13 IT staffers.
Higher education should be thoughtful about where its making cuts, says McClure, the University of North Carolina professor.
Criticism of administrators paints things in broad brush strokes, he says. Lets be specific. What positions are we actually talking about that we need or dont need? We should have that conversation.
Universities and colleges are in a different era now, McClure adds. And its going to require a different kind of staffing.
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our Higher Education newsletter.
He looks like a CoComelon character who grew up and mated with an E. coli microbe.
But dont let looks fool you. Under the hood, Metas new Muse agentic AI platform is incredibly powerfuland potentially incredibly risky.
Ive been testing Muse since Meta launched him on September 8. Hes a clever little bastard, provided youre willing to tell him basically everything about your life.
Late to the party
For years, Meta has seemed inexcusably late to the AI party. While flashy startups like OpenAI and Anthropic were winning trillion-dollar valuations, Nvidia was getting fat on its success as a shovel-seller, and Google was slowly replacing its core product with AI, Meta seemed stuck in the past.
The company encouraged AI slop on its platforms, only to change its tune. It did legitimate research in open-weight models, but also took some hilariously wrong-headed steps, like releasing AI chatbots that mimic celebrities without their permission.
It was tempting to write Meta off as an also-ran. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg was still gun-shy from the abject failure of the Metaverse, and was going to sit this particular revolution out.
Then, Muse landed.
Almost overnight, the platform was stealing market share from Metas competitors, and growing shockingly fast. Less than a month post-launch, Muse had wracked up 6.6 million downloads, and an even-more-impressive 1.8 million daily active users. Citi thinks it could generate $27 billion in revenue in fairly short order.
Meta, in other words, was late to the partybut now that its arrived, the companys tech is all anyone can talk about.
Distressingly fluffy
As with many things Mark Zuckerberg creates, Muse is weird.
The agentic AI platform is personified by a distressingly fluffy and cute little smiling mascot, who adorns every Muse billboard and types away cheerfully at the top of the Muse app when you chat with it.
Experts have long warned against personifying AI. Phooey! said Zuckerberg.
Muse is as anthropomorphized as platforms come. Users can customize their Muse avatar to their own preferences and give their specific Muse a name. (Mark Zuckerberg is apparently not allowed.)
When the bot chats with users, it does so in a friendly, personal manner. There are lots of first-person pronouns and text-message conventions. Ask Muse a question, and it will thumbs-up your chat while it slowly types out a response, just like your boomer uncle.
Chatting with ChatGPT feels a bit like schmoozing with your accountant, or perhaps your proctologist. Where ChatGPT is overly formal and stodgy, Muses language is zippy, confident, and a little cheeky. Behind that fluffy, personable facade, though, is a wholly different kind of AI. Most chatbots today act essentially like glorified search engines. You type in a query, the bot does some research, and you get a response back thats mainly informational.
Muse, in contrast, is an agentic AI platform. Rather than just providing information, its designed to take specific actions on behalf of its userswriting emails, booking travel, filling out forms, and signing into websites.
Meta pitches Muse as AI that gets it done” and suggests handing it tasks like booking a flight or registering for a 10K race.
To work this specific kind of magic, Muse makes use of virtual machines. Every user essentially gets a virtual computer in the cloud, which their Muse can use to carry out its duties. This lets the bot do things that others struggle with, like browsing complex websites on your behalf, signing into your accounts, drafting and sending emails via your internet service provider of choice, and more.
Its an approach pioneered by OpenClaw, a techie-friendly agentic AI platform. Using a virtual machine lets Muse do anything a human might do on a computer, without the risk of wrecking your actual computer when things inevitably go wrong.
Tell me everything!
That combinationa friendly and conversational demeanor, an agentic AI empowered to take specific actions, and a virtual computer that lets Muse actually act on its ideasis a compelling one.
If youve ever shouted at ChatGPT, Just do it for me!, when it gives you complex instructions for disputing a parking ticket or making a doctors appointment and then bows out, youll love Muses can-do attitude.
I asked what car I should lease, and Muse got me quotes for a Kia. When I asked how I could save money, it scanned through my financial data, determined Hulu was ripping me off, found better plans tailored to my familys actual usage, and offered to switch me to one. Its advice saved me $80 per month.
Muses virtual computer also allows it to work when youre not actively chatting with it. Periodically, Ill get a notification from Muse, telling me its prepared a report on how I can decrease my electric bill, or sell my old Tesla for top dollar.
All this power, though, comes with a price.
Most chatbots are squeamish about asking users for personal data, or access to their most intimate, sensitive accounts.
Not Muse.
The second you open the app, Muse asks for full access to your Gmail, as well as permission to read your text messages and browse the photos on your phone.
The app also wants to know your location at all times (via your phones GPS), and encourages you to share conversations youve had with other competing chatbots so it can get to know you better.
Muse also presumably has access to the copious amounts of data Meta has gathered about you through decades of low-key surveillance.
I once ran an experiment to see what data Meta was capturing about me. I found that the company was spying on nearly every website I visited, and was even tracking things like when I put a specific smoothie into my Doordash cart, even if I didnt buy it.
Now, Muse likely has access to all that data, as well as any live accounts and data I might choose to voluntarily hand it.
Again, all that information makes it uniquely clever. But using Muse also means handing complete control of your data to a friendly little dude who happens to be owned by a demonstrably less friendly one.
Tread Carefully
Is Metas voracious appetite for personal data a reason to avoid Muse? Does the apps friendly little face conceal a monster lurking below? Not necessarily.
Agentic AI is powerful, and its here to stay.
Muse is the first real attempt to put the technology in the hands of everyday people. But AI agents are already making huge impacts in the business world.
And now that Muse has proved the concept, Metas competitors are tripping over themselves to release personal agentic AI platforms of their own. OpenAIs version features a mascot that looks like a mash-up of Clippy and the poop emoji.
Eschewing agentic bots like Muse, then, would ultimately be about as effective as ignoring ChatGPT in 2023. The tech is here. And besides, even if you avoid apps like Muse, theyll likely slurp up your personal data via your friends and family members.
Still, personal agentic AI is a brand-new, largely untested technology. There are already reports of strangers appearing on users doorsteps, summoned by Muse for Facebook Marketplace transactions that no one authorized.
So its reasonable to proceed carefully. Personally, Ive handed Muse select bits of data directly, but I havent allowed it to access my calendar or Gmail.
Amid all the furor over agentic AI, its important to remember that you dont need to turn your entire life over to a gigantic tech company, even if a fluffy little bot asks you very nicely.
Chief AI officer may be one of the most important executive hires companies make in this decade. It may also be one of the shortest-lived.
Just a few years ago, most boards probably wouldve questioned whether they needed a dedicated leader for artificial intelligence. But when ChatGPT started to dominate public consciousness in late 2022 and early 2023, the conversation changed. The rush began to launch AI practices, assemble AI task forces and committees, and of course, appoint chief AI officers.
The rationale for hiring a chief AI officer was and remains sound. Without a dedicated person owning AI strategy, initiatives can fragment across teams or lack clear connection to talent, risk, and business opportunity. And given how quickly Ive seen the role gain traction in my work advising companies on technology leadership, Im not surprised that a recent IBM study found more than three-quarters of organizations have a chief AI officer.
But as AI becomes an enterprise-wide capability, the logic of a single owner is harder to sustain. If AI is part of every role, workflow, and major decision, why is only one executive in charge?
Thats where the paradox lies: The better a chief AI officer does their job today, the less their organization may need the role in the future.
Theres precedent for this kind of executive lifecycle. Think about the trajectory of the chief digital officer (CDO), which grew from a niche position at just 6% of companies in 2014 to 21% of companies in 2018; the pace of hiring appeared to peak in 2016.
In that era, companies needed a point person to design and implement digital strategy. But as CDOs helped transform their organization, digital transitioned from a specialized capability to something integrated across every domain. And in some cases, CDOs who weren’t integrated with the core business or overlapped with other C-suite roles struggled to maintain relevance.
AI adoption will likely mirror that trajectory because it is another operating model change. In theory, AI should fundamentally reshape how work happens, from how finance operates to how HR recruits talent to how CEOs make decisions. The desired endpoint is AI as an underlying infrastructure.
This means that if a chief AI officer does their job correctly, theyll eventually make their standalone role unnecessary. Theyll act not only as a technologist but a transformation expert who helps manage change, establish governance, and drive business value. Critically, theyll also build AI fluency across the C-suite until AI becomes everyones responsibility.
However, obsolescence doesnt need to be the endpoint for the chief AI officer. Instead, I see potential for these leaders to work themselves out of their role and into a different one through a three-stage evolution.
In the first phase, the chief AI officer is an evangelist. Their primary goal is to convince the organization that AI matters, building awareness of the technology and encouraging experimentation to support adoption. In 2026, most organizations have already moved past this phase.
The second phase is where most organizations are now: the shift from experimentation to accountability. The chief AI officer evolves into an operator, with the mission of driving value and demonstrating ROI for boards and investors.
The third phase is where the chief AI officer lays the groundwork for their next act. Over the next few years, they will become architects, building systems that enable other executives to take ownership of AI within their functions. They help distribute AI accountability, so the CFO owns AI-enabled finance, the CHRO owns AI-enabled talent, the COO owns AI-enabled operations, and so on.
In my work, Im already seeing signs of this shift. AI competency is increasingly appearing in job descriptions across all C-suite roles. Executives are expected to be AI enabled themselves, and also enable their teams to use the technology effectively. At the same time, companies are embedding AI champions within each business unit to identify potential uses and govern adoption, rather than relying on a centralized AI command center.
A chief AI officer who successfully orchestrates this transition will reduce the need for a separate AI department and, in turn, their role. But theyll also gain a unique understanding of the enterprise, spanning across technology, operations, talent, governance, strategy, and organizational change. That experience positions them to become a broader transformation leader, or even a strategic advisor to the CEO and board.
Right now, the vast majority of organizations still need a designated leader to prove where AI creates value and help embed AI as a capability within every executive role. But over the next five years, companies are more likely to eliminate standalone AI teams than create them.
Long term, chief AI officers will help their organizations win by embedding AI so thoroughly that it becomes nearly invisible. In doing so, they can prove their readiness for broader enterprise leadership. My bet is that some of the most successful chief AI officers will eventually move into COO, transformation, or even CEO succession pipelines.
While the specific role of chief AI officer may eventually disappear, the presence of these leaders doesnt have to. Organizations that are intentional about recognizing and developing their potential can turn a transitional role into a training ground for future enterprise leadership.
In most cases, confusing Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon, might be seen as an innocent faux pas. But in the case of political actors ahead of an election, it can be a costlyand frankly comedicblunder.
A recent attack ad targeting Troy Jacksonthe Democratic candidate in the Maine Senate race who is running against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collinshas appeared in front of users far from Maine, leading many to believe its placement was a mistake.
Funded by the Defending Main Street super PAC, the 30-second ad titled “Too Many Taxes” focuses on taxes and the cost-of-living crisis, which both Collins and Jackson have made central to their campaigns in the lead-up to the election in November.
But despite the ad reportedly costing Defending Main Street around $25,000, the message might not be effective. Shown for the first time on October 8, it has racked up over 1.2 million viewsbut to viewers in Oregon, not Maine.
“Ive gotten 5 anti-Troy Jackson ads in the last 24 hours. I choose to believe they mixed up Portlands,” one user, whose location is set to Oregon, said on X.
Many others with an Oregon location chimed in to share their similar experiences, with one saying: “I’ve gotten them too. lol.” Another added: “I’ve gotten so many this week.”
Some social media users shared screenshots of the ad’s Google Ads Transparency Center pagea public repository of ads served on Googlewhich showed the selected region for the ads as zip codes from Oregon.
The Google Ads page has since been updated with Maine zip codes.
The Intercept reported on the mix-up earlier.
“So out of touch”
The apparent error is not the first Republican mix-up this election cycle. In September, Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri tried to catch former special counsel Jack Smith in a gotcha moment during a Senate hearingonly to confuse two basketball teams (the Hawks and Hawkeyes), collapsing his line of questioning and sparking widespread mockery online.
While Collins’s campaign and Defending Main Street have yet to speak out on the mishapor respond to a request for commentJackson’s campaign has already noticed the situation.
“Susan Collins allies are so out of touch with Maine, they cant even find it on a map,” Dan Gottlieb, spokesperson for Jackson’s campaign, tells Fast Company. “Good luck convincing Mainers you know whats best for them when you dont know which Portland they live in.”
Workers removed more than 500 trees at a Washington, D.C., golf course over the weekend that President Donald Trump is working to remodel, and it happened like many of his other design projects in town: suddenly and without permission.
Preservationists asked a judge Sunday to halt the Trump administration after it removed 529 trees Saturday at East Potomac Park, a golf course managed by the National Park Service, and on Monday, a judge called the removal “inexcusable.”
The course is home to elms, oaks, pines, and willows, as well as some of the 3,000 Japanese flowering cherry trees gifted by the government of Japan in 1912. Together they told the story of golf’s rise in America from a mostly treeless game on the U.S. coasts to a sport known for its big, lush vegetation. Now, just like that, a century’s worth of landscape design history has been torn up.
[Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images]
The removal happened “faster than anticipated,” according to the lawsuit, and the Trump administration didn’t meet its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act, attorneys representing the D.C. Preservation League and a pair of local golfers said in a filing seeking an emergency action to pause further tree removal.
“‘Pulling a fast one’ has become the model this administration uses to circumvent the laws intended to protect the environment and D.C. landmarks,” Abbe D. Lowell, a founding member of Lowell & Associates, which is representing the plaintiffs along with Democracy Forward and Democracy Defenders Fund, said in a statement. “It did so with the East Wing and the Kennedy Center and we are continuing our effort to stop them before they succeed in destroying D.C.s historic public golf course.”
A brief history of parkland courses
The land that’s now East Potomac Park sits on a small island in the Potomac River south of the National Mall. The earliest known vegetation there was tall grass and willow trees, most of which were cleared to design the first course in 1917, but through the years, more trees were added to adapt to changing tastes. That’s according to a 2017 cultural landscape inventory of the course conducted by the Urban Heritage Project from the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design that tracked the park’s evolution.
The first course at East Potomac Park was designed by golf course architect Walter J. Travis who cleared the fairways of most willows but kept some existing trees along the course’s perimeter to separate the front and back nine. A new style of golf course design in the 1920s called parkland style, however, meant more trees would eventually be planted over the years.
[Photo: Historic American Landscapes Survey/Library of Congress]
As golf grew more popular and moved inland, parkland courses came to be known for their big, mature trees. The popularity of televised golf tournaments beginning in the 1950s and ’60s only made lush, green, gorgeous park-like backdrops that more appealing, according to the inventory, like the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, with its trees and plants imported from around the world in bloom.
At East Potomac Park, the Civilian Conservation Corps planted cedar trees in 1939 and additional trees in the 1960s and ’70s, including crabapple trees. The 2017 inventory also counted large wolf trees, large willow oaks, and a large American Elm.
Some trees were planted for reasons of gameplay, not just aesthetics. The park’s miniature golf course, for example, was designed around a limited number of trees that function as hazards, and the park’s White Course has few trees and open fairways and thus became popular with less competitive players.
The 2017 inventory noted that the park needed some care, including invasive vines and trees it said were damaging some cherry trees, and it said that a “piecemeal nature of planting” had resulted in “a variety of mature trees and shrubs scattered throughout the landscape” that had no overall harmony.
A “surprise demolition”
But those suing Trump’s Interior Department and National Park Service say the administration’s tree razing went far above routine maintenance or a thoughtful pruning and that the administration had even removed healthy, mature oaks and maple trees.
p class="wp-block-paragraph">“Unleashing a surprise demolition razing over 500 historic trees in this public park and claiming it is part of maintenance from a dated, years old landscaping plan is yet another brazen, lawless power grab that has become routine for the Trump administration,” Democracy Defenders Fund executive chair Norm Eisen said in a statement.
Trump’s planned makeover of the park (he had rubble from the White House East Wing taken after demolishing it), is part of a larger takeover of the federal government golf course system. Trump is reportedly offering his Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach in Florida as an official U.S. government golf course for presidents that his family’s company would continue to operate.
Like the rings of a tree tell its story, the landscape design of East Potomac Park told a story of a game that grew up to appreciate the value of mature trees and ample vegetation as it became more popular. With the Trump administration’s sudden tree removal, a part of that history is now gone.
In the era of streaming music and satellite radio, traditional broadcast stations are easy to overlook. AM radio, in particular, has fallen out of favor with younger drivers. So it’s perhaps no surprise that some automakers have begun dropping it from new vehicles. Congress, however, wants to put a stop to that.
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 979, the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2025.” The bill is now on the Senate’s legislative calendar and has broad bipartisan support. The Senate also has a companion bill, S. 315, which cleared committee last year and is awaiting a floor vote.
While AM radio is dominated by political talk shows, religious programming, and sports, it still draws a sizable audience. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which supports the congressional effort, says more than 80 million Americans listen to AM each month.
The group describes AM radio as “a platform for locally produced content that is relevant to their audience and speaks to their unique cultural and linguistic needs.” It also notes that AM stations have historically provided an entry point into radio ownership for racial and ethnic minorities.
Automakers, meanwhile, are grappling with tariffs and rising component costs, and looking for ways to trim expenses. Removing AM radio wouldn’t shave hundreds or thousands of dollars off a vehicle’s price, but it could offer modest savings.
Electric vehicle makers face another challenge: The technology that powers EVs can interfere with AM radio reception.
“The high-voltage electrical systems in EVs generate electromagnetic interference that, according to the Center for Automotive Research, ‘distorts AM radio signals, affecting the listening experience for drivers and passengers.’ In other words: really staticky,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, in 2024 congressional testimony. “Its not possible to eliminate that interference, and techniques to reduce interference add weight and mess with battery range and would cost an estimated $3.8 billion.”
Bozzella also argued that requiring AM radio amounted to a government mandate with no public safety justification.
Supporters of the legislation dispute that argument. AM stations play a significant role in the nation’s emergency alert infrastructure, including a FEMA-supported network of radio stations equipped to continue broadcasting during disasters.
Bozzella’s position was echoed by the then-president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, who wrote in a letter to the editor of The Washington Post that “a federal mandate that every car comes equipped with an AM radio in 2024 and beyond is like mandating that they come equipped with ashtrays or 8-track players.”
Still, traditional radio may have more life left in it than skeptics think, even as music streaming subscriptions approach 1 billion worldwide.
As more Americans return to the office, radio has benefited from renewed interest. Edison Research’s “Share of Ear” report, released in July, found that AM/FM radio accounted for 62% of ad-supported audio listening among adults, compared with just 6% for Spotifys ad-supported service. In cars, AM/FM commanded an even larger share of ad-supported audio listening: 82% among adults 18 and older.
Whether the Senate will vote on the AM radio bill before November’s midterm elections remains unclear. And despite its bipartisan support, its prospects at the White House are uncertain.
The auto industry may oppose the measure, but it has some influential backers beyond the broadcasting industry, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, AARP, and a coalition of public safety organizations.
Elon Musk, the world’s only trillionaire, has quietly become the biggest known donor in this year’s midterm elections, doling out more than $276 million since July to try to save Republican majorities in Congress.
The numbers, first reported by The New York Times ahead of this week’s federal filing deadline, were confirmed by Andrew Romeo, a spokesperson for Musk’s super PAC.
The money includes $158 million given to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidates, one of the largest known political donations in American history, according to the Times.
Another $76 million went to America PAC, a Musk super PAC, which has once again built out a major turnout operation like the one it used to help elect President Donald Trump by knocking on doors in 2024.
Musk also provided $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group that supports the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, Ken Paxton. The race has been a major focus of Musk’s efforts.
It’s a dramatic turnaround since last May, when Musk said he intended to cut back on future political spending. I think Ive done enough,” he said at the time.
Despite the cash infusion, Musk has generally kept a lower profile than in 2024, when he appeared onstage next to Trump at rallies, and in the early days of the president’s second term, when he led the Department of Government Efficiency.
He had a falling out with Trump while leaving his government post, but the two have since reconciled. Trump presented Musk with the National Medal of Science last week.
Musk’s net worth has fluctuated around the trillion-dollar line this year based on changes in stock prices, but he topped $1 trillion again last week according to Forbes magazine.
Republicans have a gaping financial advantage over their Democratic counterpartsa disparity that has been a rare bright spot for a party that is bracing for major potential losses amid deep voter frustration over the president’s performance, stubbornly high prices, and the unpopular war with Iran.
They have been using the money to blanket the airwaves in the race’s final stretch.
These robust investments have allowed the GOP apparatus to get its message out so Republicans can have a fighting chance to defy history,” Romeo told the Times.
Democrats responded to the news by accusing Republicans of using vast amounts of cash to mask their shortcomings.
Republicans are hoping to buy these elections, injecting tens of millions into races to try and outrun their unpopular candidates, unpopular president, and unpopular economy, said Lauren French, a spokesperson for Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC.
By Jill Colvin, Associated Press
Kelly Clarkson just thrust a small Brooklyn boutique into the limelight, and not in a good way.
Art of Play, a high-end novelty shop offering playing cards, puzzles, games, and playful decor, apparently caught the singers attention. In a social media post thats since been viewed 44 million times, Clarkson said she thought the store looked really rad, but upon entering Art of Play in hopes of buying a certain item, she claims she literally was looked at as if I couldnt afford it.
Wow, dude. Youre an idiot and just lost a huge sale, Clarkson wrote. But yall should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out
Clarksons Pretty Woman reference implies that Art of Play made a big mistake (big, huge) by losing her patronage. But as her ensuing online back-and-forth with the shop proves, the situation isnt so simple.
Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldnt afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me. Wow, dude. Youre an idiot and just lost a— Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) October 10, 2026
A singing bird, a price tag, and a social media battle
The day after Clarksons post went viral, Art of Play responded on its Instagram page, saying that the item she wanted to purchase is a singing and dancing bird automaton named Molly. Art of Play claimed Molly is permanently attached to the wall and isnt for sale, which is why Clarkson was denied buying it.
Imagine our surprise when our small local business was suddenly attacked by 8 million people who have never visited our store. Its been a surreal experience to be the focus of such widespread outrage after just one mention by a celebrity, the post continued.
Were going to keep our heads down and hopefully, we can clear things up with Kelly someday, it concluded. As a talented popular singer once said what doesnt kill you makes you stronger.
Despite the stores apparent intention to clear things up, they only got more muddled when Clarkson took to social media once again. In a follow-up post, she shared an image of a price tag posted on the wall next to Molly, which listed the automaton for $15,000.
Cool, cool. Sure, it wasnt for sale. Thats the narrative Art of Play is gonna go with, Clarkson wrote, claiming that the salesperson she interacted with didnt say the bird wasnt for sale, but told her it was too expensive for her. So youre not only rude, youre also a liar, she wrote.
By the way, I obviously support small businesses because I was literally at a small business trying to purchase things. I love small businesses and know they are important and I always support them, but you dont get a free pass to treat people less than in your store just because you are a small business, Clarkson continued. Its not that hard to be kind. I never blast people but you my friend were an exception. Your store is really cool. Unfortunately, you arent.
Cool, cool. Sure, it wasnt for sale. Thats the narrative Art of Play is gonna go with so the whole conversation we had when I asked you if it was for sale whilst pointing to the price tag hanging on the wall with the title Singing Bird didnt happen as you elevator eyed me pic.twitter.com/9PEhUWnIOt— Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) October 11, 2026
Art of Play again responded on Instagram with the final update so far, insisting that Molly isnt for sale, but that they explained to Clarkson during her visit that she could purchase a nearly identical model for $15,000, or they could show her similar automaton for $2,000. According to the store, She did not stick around long enough to see it.
Weve reached out to Kelly directly to try and clear the air, the post concluded. We really do wish her the best and hope that someday we can all laugh about this misunderstanding.
The power of celebrity
Regardless of if youre Team Kelly or Team Art of Play, the feud has kickstarted discourse across social media and earned the store increased attention on review sites like Yelp. Not all that attention is for the best, though, as Clarksons fans are flooding the site with negative reviews, bringing its star rating down to 2.9.
Why does the bird have a price tag if it wasn’t for sale????????? reads one one-star review. I smell LIES from ur business establishment.
Be nice to EVERYONE. Don’t make assumptions on what someone can afford, scolds another reviewer. Big mistake treating Kelly Clarkson like a street person.
Other reviewers came to the shops defense, leaving five-star reviews and admonishments of the review-bombers.
Not everything there is for sale, regardless of how famous you are, one reviewer wrote. Go write a song about it. Stop using your online influence to sh*t on a brick and mortar shop that’s as dope as Art of Play.
So a celebrity walks in to a small privately owned business. She doesn’t get exactly what she wants so she cops an attitude and trashes said small business, reads another. Even if you weren’t lying, you still did the morally wrong thing.
Art of Plays Yelp page currently displays a disclaimer that the business is being monitored by Yelp’s Support team for content relted to media reports.
Shane Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend, and the response to the comedian’s opening monologue has been fast and mostly furious.
On Saturday, Gillis took the stage and almost immediately insulted women with a joke that pretty indisputably did not land.
In what first sounded like self-deprecating humor, the comedian vented about needing to lose weight and his awkward trips to the gym. Quickly, it turned into a misogynistic jab about women’s outfits.
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” Gillis quipped.When awkward laughter trickled in, he followed up with, “I’m sorrythere’s no other way to describehave you seen the shorts?”
Gillis then went into detail about women’s gym clothing and how men aren’t “allowed to look.” Gillis even added that, given so many women now film their workouts, he’s likely in the background of a handful of TikTok videos staring at them with his jaw on the floor.
Timing that’s hard to ignore
Immediately, much of the internet had a scathing response to what many seemed to consider not only unfunny, but misogynistic and problematic.
That was especially true given that much of the country is incensed over new details that have come to light in the case of the “Cornell 7″the fraternity brothers who allegedly drugged and raped a young woman in 2024 and talked about the situation in a massive group text.
The lawsuit sparked a social media movement in which women have been sharing their stories of sexual assault and, in many cases, naming their alleged assaulters.
Jessica Valenti, a gender and politics writer who writes the Abortion, Every Day newsletter, had a searing response to Gillis’s monologue, in which she asserted that Gillis didn’t make a mistake or simply go too far, but knew exactly what he was doing.
“Shane Gillis knows there’s a national conversation about sexual assault,” Valenti said, adding, “This is his contribution to that conversation.”
Valenti continued, pressing that the normalizing of misogyny is a straight line to a culture that allows rape.
“This is what turns young men into rapists. When you demean and denigrate and dehumanize women . . . what do you think rape culture is?” she argued.
Fast Company reached out to a rep for Gillis for comment.
“Could not be more tone deaf”
Valenti then pointed the finger at not just Gillis, but the show that gave him a stage. “Saturday Night Live platformed rape culture in maybe the country’s biggest reckoning on sexual assault and they should be f***ing ashamed,” she said.
Actor and comedian Dan Levy weighed in, too, with a video post on Instagram. “Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them ‘whores’ misogynists.
“There’s a difference there,” Levy said. He went on to assert that men show their bodies equally at the gym, and said he was “speechless” that the monologue was allowed to be made on live TV.
Other celebrities added their two cents on Levy’s post. Elizabeth Banks wrote, “Nailed it” in the comments, while Hacks actor Hannah Einbinder simply wrote, “Thank you dan.”
While much of the internet is unapologetically roasting Gillis over the monologue, SNL has, so far, been silent.
In a move that appears to support Gillis’s choice of words, SNL shared the clip of Gillis’s monologue on Instagram after the controversy was well underway. While some commenters on the post said they enjoyed the set, most viewers aired their disappointment.“SNL, I love you, but this could not be more tone deaf in light of recent events,” one comment reads. “This is so hard to watch,” another reads.
Fast Company reached out to NBC for a comment on the incident and the growing backlash, but we haven’t heard back.
This is not the first time that Gillis has been at the center of a controversy at the iconic comedy sketch show.
Back in 2019, he was fired as an SNL cast member just days after being hired. His firing came after a 2018 clip of his “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” resurfaced, where the star had used a racial slur against Asians.
Gillis apologized following the massive backlash at the time. Meanwhile, producer Lorne Michaels said the show had been unaware of the comedian’s comments. Gillis has hosted the show three times since his firing.
In spite of the fact that so many view Gillis’s humor as racist and misogynistic, the star has a massive fanbase.
So much so that he just broke a world record for the size of his crowd. In July, the comedian performed at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field and drew a record-smashing crowd, selling the most-ever tickets for a solo comedy show.
So while the world continues to wonder how rape culture persists, it keeps giving the stage to misogyny again and again.
