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California and a coalition of other liberal-led states filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent demand that they turn over the personal information of millions of people receiving federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

USDA Secretary Brooke L. Rollins informed states earlier this month that they would have to transmit the data to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service to comply with an executive order by President Trump. That order demanded that Trump’s agency appointees receive “full and prompt access” to all data associated with federal programs, so that they might identify and eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Last week, USDA officials informed state SNAP directors that the deadline for submitting the data is Wednesday and that failure to comply “may trigger noncompliance procedures” — including the withholding of funds.

In announcing the states’ lawsuit Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the “unprecedented” demand “violates all kinds of state and federal privacy laws” and “further breaks the trust between the federal government and the people it serves.”

Bonta’s office noted that states have administered the equivalent of SNAP benefits — formerly known as food stamps — for 60 years. It said that California alone receives “roughly $1 billion a year” to administer the program in the state and that “any delay in that funding could be catastrophic for the state and its residents who rely on SNAP to put food on the table.”

The USDA has demanded data for all current and former SNAP recipients since the start of 2020, including “all household group members names, dates of birth, social security numbers, residential and mailing addresses,” as well as “transactional records from each household” that show the dollar amounts they spent and where. It said it may also collect information about people’s income.

Meanwhile, a Privacy Impact Assessment published by the agency showed that it also is collecting data on people’s education, employment, immigration status and citizenship.

The USDA and other Trump administration officials have said the initiative will save taxpayers money by eliminating “information silos” that allow inefficiencies and fraud to fester in federal programs.

“It is imperative that USDA eliminates bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency and enhances the government’s ability not only to have point-in-time information but also to detect overpayments and fraud,” Rollins wrote in a July 9 letter to the states.

The Trump administration, which is pursuing what Trump has called the biggest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in the nation’s history, has requested sensitive data from other federal programs and services — including Medicaid and the IRS — to share with immigration officials.

That has raised alarm among Democrats, who have said that tying such services to immigration enforcement will put people’s health at risk and decrease tax revenue. California sued the Trump administration earlier this month for sharing Medicaid data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On Monday, Bonta raised similar alarms about the administration’s demand for SNAP data, questioning what it will do with the information and how families that rely on such assistance will react. His office said it appeared to be “the next step” in the administration’s anti-immigrant campaign.

“President Trump continues to weaponize private and sensitive personal information — not to root out fraud, but to create a culture of fear where people are unwilling to apply for essential services,” Bonta said. “We’re talking about kids not getting school lunch; fire victims not accessing emergency services; and other devastating, and deadly, consequences.”

Bonta said the USDA demand for SNAP benefits data is illegal under established law, and that California “will not comply” while it takes the administration to court.

“The president doesn’t get to change the rules in the middle of the game, no matter how much he may want to,” Bonta said. “While he may be comfortable breaking promises to the American people, California is not.”

The new data collection does not follow established processes for the federal government to audit state data without collecting it wholesale. During a recently concluded public comment period, Bonta and other liberal attorneys general submitted a comment arguing that the data demand violates the Privacy Act.

“USDA should rethink this flawed and unlawful proposal and instead work with the States to improve program efficiency and integrity through the robust processes already in place,” they wrote.

Last week, California and other states sued the Trump administration over new rules barring undocumented immigrants from accessing more than a dozen other federally funded benefit programs, including Head Start, short-term and emergency shelters, soup kitchens and food banks, healthcare services and adult education programs.

The states did not include USDA in that lawsuit despite its issuing a similar notice, writing that “many USDA programs are subject to an independent statutory requirement to provide certain benefits programs to everyone regardless of citizenship,” which the department’s notice said would continue to apply.

Bonta announced Monday’s lawsuit along with New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James. Joining them in the lawsuit were Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as the state of Kentucky.

July 21 (UPI) — X declined to hand over data in allegations made by French authorities concerning a data tampering investigation on Monday.

“French authorities have launched a politically-motivated criminal investigation into X over the alleged manipulation of its algorithm and alleged ‘fraudulent data extraction,” X posted on social media. “X categorically denies these allegations.”

Prosecutors initiated an investigation in January following allegations that X’s algorithm was being exploited for foreign interference. This month, the investigation was moved over to France’s national police.

“French authorities have requested access to X’s recommendation algorithm and real-time data about all user posts on the platform in order for several ‘experts’ to analyze the data and purportedly ‘uncover the truth’ about the operation of the X platform,” X said.

X said the investigation is meant “to serve a political agenda and, ultimately, restrict free speech.”

“X has not acceded to the French authorities’ demands, as we have a legal right to do. This is not a decision that X takes lightly. However, in this case, the facts speak for themselves,” X said.

WASHINGTON — Even as the presidential campaign ended with a triumph for President Bush on Wednesday, armchair strategists and capital insiders were still scratching their heads over exit poll results on Tuesday that strongly, and erroneously, suggested Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry was going to the White House.

“The 7-Hour Presidency of JFK2” was the ironic day-after headline on Slate’s Web log called “kausfiles.” The headline referred to the period of time on Tuesday when raw exit poll numbers favoring Kerry were flying through newsrooms and around the Internet.

Such data caused Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to become so despondent at one point Tuesday afternoon that she e-mailed her mother: “All is lost.”

Similarly, respected election watchers John Zogby and Frank Luntz declared Bush defeated before the sun had set on Washington. “I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn’t materialize,” Zogby said in a statement posted Wednesday on his website.

Convulsions over exit polls, which sample the opinions of voters as they emerge from polling places, rippled up to the highest levels of both parties. President Bush was briefed on the data by advisor Karl Rove, according to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, and there was concern in the Bush camp in the late afternoon.

By contrast, the Massachusetts senator and his top aides were buoyed by raw — and entirely ephemeral — numbers that suggested he would carry such key states as Florida and Ohio, both of which ultimately went for Bush.

Pollsters and other analysts interviewed Wednesday said the exit polls — commissioned by a consortium of broadcast and cable television networks — had actually served their true function. They are not designed to predict winners and losers, but rather to help news analysts spot demographic and other trends.

The problem Tuesday arose when the raw exit poll data were treated by some who received it as the equivalent of a full-scale poll, without considering its limitations. Often exit polls, which are conducted quickly with a relatively small sampling of voters, fail to capture the true overall shape of the electorate.

In addition, the tight time frames can magnify distortions, especially in samplings taken early in the day, before a full spectrum of voters has been measured. This is especially true in a close, volatile election.

Though the early exit poll data proved misleading, experts said, the election results generally tracked closely with the findings of full-scale preelection polling.

For example, an average of the final week’s nonpartisan polls showed Bush with a 2-percentage-point lead over Kerry in the head-to-head national horse race, according to the website RealClearPolitics.com.

That was close to the 3-percentage-point victory margin Bush ultimately claimed, and it was within the margin of error.

Final battleground polls also forecast with relative accuracy the winners of most key states. Only in Wisconsin, where polls generally showed Bush with a tiny edge, did the outcome — a slim Kerry victory — belie the prediction.

“The preelection polls did a pretty good job — they mostly showed it either even or a small Bush lead,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, whose final poll nailed the outcome with a prediction of a three-point spread for Bush.

The final Los Angeles Times poll found a 49%-48% Bush lead nationally among likely voters — near enough to the final result to be within the margin of error.

Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, acknowledged that Tuesday’s outcome did contradict one major preelection assumption of many pollsters: that undecided voters would break in Kerry’s direction.

Despite the exit polls’ limitations, they were eagerly inhaled by impatient amateur analysts — and plenty of political pros — as soon as raw numbers began to flow in starting at about 2 p.m. EST Tuesday. They were rapidly leaked to websites such as right-leaning Drudge Report and left-leaning dailykos.com.

Drudge posted a headline — “Kerry Finds Comfort in First Batch of Exit Polls” — that alarmed many Republicans.

By the evening, dailykos.com posted a batch of exit poll results that showed Kerry leading Bush 51% to 49% in Ohio and Florida and running better than expected in some other states.

The Times, which purchased portions of the survey data, was told Kerry had a 51% to 49% lead in Ohio and that the Democrat and Bush were locked in a dead heat in Florida. But Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus said the exit pollsters warned the newspaper that the states were too close to call.

The exit polls were conducted by Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research. Edison’s Joe Lenski, who helped oversee the surveys, said Wednesday he was happy with the results. The networks, which made no erroneous projections, were also pleased.

“I’m not designing polls for some blogger who doesn’t even understand how to read the data,” Lenski said. “It’s like if you were graded by your readers on the first draft of your article.”

But on election day, everyone in politics craves real-time data. Republican pollster Whit Ayres scanned the early numbers Tuesday and heard rumblings of fear from within his party.

“There were a lot of folks on my side who thought it was over,” Ayres said. “I worried, but once I looked carefully at the data, I realized it was ridiculously off.”

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Times staff writer Esther Schrader contributed to this report.

An $8bn trial, pitting Meta Platforms shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg and other current and former company leaders, over claims they illegally harvested the data of Facebook users in violation of a 2012 agreement with the United States Federal Trade Commission, is under way.

The trial kicked off on Wednesday with a privacy expert for the plaintiffs, Neil Richards of Washington University Law School, who testified about Facebook’s data policies.

“Facebook’s privacy disclosures were misleading,” he told the court.

Jeffrey Zients, White House chief of staff under former President Joe Biden and a Meta director for two years starting in May 2018, is expected to take the stand later on Wednesday in the non-jury trial before Kathaleen McCormick, chief judge of the Delaware Chancery Court.

The case will feature testimony from Zuckerberg and other billionaire defendants, including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, venture capitalist and board member Marc Andreessen, as well as former board members Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies cofounder, and Reed Hastings, cofounder of Netflix.

A lawyer for the defendants, who have denied the allegations, declined to comment.

McCormick, the judge who rescinded Elon Musk’s $56bn Tesla pay package last year, is expected to rule on liability and damages months after the trial concludes.

Cambridge Analytica scandal

The case began in 2018, following revelations that data from millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s successful US presidential campaign in 2016.

The FTC fined Facebook $5bn in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, saying the company had violated a 2012 agreement with the FTC to protect user data.

Shareholders want the defendants to reimburse Meta for the FTC fine and other legal costs, which the plaintiffs estimate total more than $8bn.

In court filings, the defendants described the allegations as “extreme” and said the evidence at trial will show Facebook hired an outside consulting firm to ensure compliance with the FTC agreement and that Facebook was a victim of Cambridge Analytica’s deceit.

Meta, which is not a defendant, declined to comment. On its website, the company has said it has invested billions of dollars into protecting user privacy since 2019.

The lawsuit is considered the first of its kind to go to trial that alleges that board members consciously failed to oversee their company. Known as a Caremark claim, such lawsuits are often described as the hardest to prove in Delaware corporate law. However, in recent years, Delaware courts have allowed a growing number of these claims to proceed.

Boeing’s current and former board members settled a case with similar claims in 2021 for $237.5m, the largest ever in an alleged breach of oversight lawsuit. The Boeing directors did not admit to wrongdoing.

The Meta trial comes four months after Delaware lawmakers overhauled the state’s corporate law to make it harder for shareholders to challenge deals struck with controlling shareholders like Zuckerberg. The bill, which did not address Caremark claims, was drafted after the state’s governor met with representatives of Meta.

Most publicly traded companies are incorporated in the state, which generates more than a quarter of the state’s budget revenue. Meta, which was reportedly considering leaving Delaware earlier this year, is still incorporated in the state.

Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital fund co-founded by Andreessen, said earlier this month that it was reincorporating in Nevada from Delaware and encouraged other companies to do the same. The company cited the uncertainty of the state’s courts and referenced the Musk pay ruling.

Andreessen is expected to testify on Thursday.

In addition to privacy claims at the heart of the Meta case, plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg anticipated that the Cambridge Analytica scandal would send the company’s stock lower and sold his Facebook shares as a result, pocketing at least $1bn.

Defendants said evidence will show that Zuckerberg did not trade on inside information and that he used a stock-trading plan that removes his control over sales and is designed to guard against insider trading.

BBC

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The United Kingdom set up a secret plan to resettle thousands of Afghans in Britain after a data leak accidentally disclosed private information of more than 33,000 people. Britain’s defence minister told Parliament Tuesday the breach that revealed details about Afghans who worked with British forces happened in 2022 but was suppressed under a “super injunction.”

July 15 (UPI) — The Amazon rainforest — considered one of the world’s most important climate regulators — continues to face serious threats in 2025.

New data show that pressure on the ecosystem has intensified in Brazil and Peru during the first half of the year, while Colombia reports progress in curbing deforestation.

In Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research reported that 807 square miles of forest were lost between January and June — a 27% increase compared to the same period in 2024.

The spike was especially pronounced between April and June, coinciding with the dry season and a rise in illegal activities, such as large-scale cattle ranching. In May, the deforested area increased by a record 51% compared to the same month last year.

“The loss of forest in May 2025 was largely due to wildfires. … We are beginning to see a shift that confirms the warnings … that the rainforest is being severely impacted by climate change,” said João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.

The trend threatens to reverse the gains made in 2023 and 2024, when deforestation fell to its lowest level in nearly a decade, driven by stronger enforcement and improved monitoring.

In Peru, while official figures for the first half of 2025 have not yet been released, the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project warns of ongoing primary forest loss in regions such as Ucayali and Madre de Dios, where illegal mining and wildfires have caused significant damage.

Peru lost more than 140,000 hectares, or 346,000 acres, of forest in 2024, and active hot spots detected in early 2025 suggest the trend is continuing.

According to the country’s Ministry of Environment, deforestation in the first quarter of the year totaled 27,000 hectares, or about 67,000 acres — a 33% decrease compared to the same period in 2024. The drop was even more pronounced in Amazonian national parks, where forest clearing fell by 54%.

The reduction was driven by a government-led multisector strategy that combined satellite monitoring, community agreements and joint operations that involve the military, environmental agencies and prosecutors.

However, a separate report by the Office of the Inspector General warned that forest clearing continues in remote areas, with more than 88,000 hectares, or 217,000 acres, affected between October 2024 and March.

The upcoming COP30 summit, scheduled for November 2025 in Belém do Pará, Brazil, could be critical for setting commitments and securing concrete funding to protect the Amazon, which is essential for maintaining climate stability, not only for South America, but for the entire planet.

Defence Minister John Healey says about 4,500 people are in Britain or in transit under the secret programme.

The United Kingdom set up a secret plan to resettle thousands of Afghan people in Britain after an official accidentally disclosed the personal details of more than 33,000 people, putting them at risk of reprisals from the Taliban, court documents showed.

A judge at London’s High Court said in a May 2024 judgement made public on Tuesday that about 20,000 people may have to be offered relocation to Britain, a move that would likely cost “several billion pounds”.

Britain’s current Defence Minister John Healey told Parliament that around 4,500 affected people “are in Britain or in transit … at a cost of around 400 million pounds [$540m]” under the programme known as the Afghan Response Route.

The government is also facing lawsuits from those affected by the data breach.

A Ministry of Defence-commissioned review of the data breach, a summary of which was also published on Tuesday, said more than 16,000 people affected by it had been relocated to the UK as of May this year.

The breach revealed the names of Afghans who had helped British forces in Afghanistan before they withdrew from the country in chaotic circumstances in 2021.

The details emerged after a legal ruling known as a superinjunction was lifted. The injunction had been granted in 2023 after the Ministry of Defence argued that a public disclosure of the breach could put people at risk of extra-judicial killing or serious violence by the Taliban.

The data set contained personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had applied to be relocated to Britain and their families.

It was released in error in early 2022, before the Defence Ministry spotted the breach in August 2023, when part of the data set was published on Facebook.

The former Conservative government obtained the injunction the following month.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s centre-left government, which was elected last July, launched a review into the injunction, the breach and the relocation scheme, which found that although Afghanistan remains dangerous, there was little evidence of intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution.

Healey said the Afghan Response Route has now been closed and apologised for the data breach, which “should never have happened”.

About 36,000 more Afghans have been relocated to the UK under other resettlement routes.

British troops were sent to Afghanistan as part of a deployment of the United States-led so-called “War on Terror” against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

At the peak of the operation, there were almost 10,000 British troops in the country.

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‘Unprecedented’