Judge Blocks Trump’s Ban on Reporters, and How A.I. Is Driving Up Health Care Costs

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, September 24th, here's what we're covering. In a very late night ruling handed down after midnight, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. blocked President Trump from keeping CNN, MSNOW, and Politico out of the White House. The judge said Trump's ban on the news organizations, which the president announced last Friday, was likely unconstitutional, and told the administration to, quote, "immediately return, reinstate, and restore the press credentials for journalists who work those outlets." The White House had argued in a court filing that the ban was necessary to protect national security, but the judge rejected that. His ruling is a temporary reprieve for the journalists. It'll last 14 days while the judge considers the case further. For the last week, many media outlets have pulled back from their pool coverage of presidential events in solidarity with the banned outlets. It's not clear how quickly things could restart, or if, for example, a full spread of journalists will be there tonight to cover the state dinner at the White House for Chinese President Xi Jinping. Even before the ruling came down, Trump wrote on social media that his administration would, quote, "almost without question," appeal. A new report out this morning shows how the growing use of artificial intelligence by hospitals is causing medical costs to surge. The report, put out by a group of insurers, claims that over the past two years, hospitals have billed for nearly a billion dollars in additional expenses by using AI to code various medical conditions as more complex, even with no evidence that the patients received different care. For example, AI systems might prompt a doctor to list a secondary diagnosis like anemia or losodium, which would increase the overall bill sent to the insurance company. And it can really add up the CFO of one small hospital and health care system in Michigan told the Times that by using AI to more thoroughly document patients' cases, they'd been able to boost revenue by a million dollars a month. At the same time, just as providers are using sophisticated AI tools to say their patients are sicker, insurance companies themselves have been accused of using AI tools to delay or deny claims. There experts warned that the competing use of AI tech could get out of hand. With one doctor who founded an AI health company telling the Times, that's the danger, where it's bots, fighting bots, agents fighting agents, a horrible dystopic future nobody wants to live in. For the moment, patients are getting caught in the middle, as costs are projected to rise, with analysts pointing not just to AI, but also to the rising price of prescription drugs and other factors. This year, Americans who got health insurance through their jobs are paying an average of about $2,000 more than they were last year. And according to one recent estimate, those costs are expected to climb again next year, too. Now, in another AI development, I want to update Australians on an incident in which an artificial intelligence agent has infiltrated an Australian government website. The Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, said yesterday that AI agents from the tech giant OpenAI hacked into a federal healthcare website there, the first known instance of an AI breach into government systems. Albanese said it happened back in June when a team from OpenAI was using AI agents to research public health spending. The agents were trying to look up some statistics, and when they couldn't access parts of a website that they wanted to, they went rogue. The AI agent found a way around those blocks didn't accept no for an answer, if you like. While no personal health information was part of the breach, Albanese called it quote "unacceptable" and the Australian government said it's exploring whether OpenAI should face legal consequences. The hack is one of a growing list of examples of AI agents going beyond the limits set by their human operators. This week alone, researchers and government officials announced that they discovered at least three other incidents in which OpenAI's tools went rogue and tried to break into government and university websites without being told to do so. Systems from Anthropic Meta and Google have also recently gone around guardrails, fueling an urgent debate over AI safety. We have a choice in front of us. AI can either be more like a new renaissance of creativity and discovery or more like a new industrial revolution of upheaval and disarray. That was on full display yesterday at the United Nations, where the heads of OpenAI and Anthropic repeated their warnings about the technology their companies are developing. These questions are global in scope and concern all of humanity. As managed poorly, I even believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole. They called for international cooperation around safeguards for AI, with Daryl Amadev Anthropic saying, "No leader, no company and no nation can manage this alone." A new financial disclosure form from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has revealed that the health secretary accepted millions of dollars in book advances and gifts over the past year, from people who are working to advance his make America healthy again agenda. The bulk of the money, four million dollars, was for two books that Kennedy is set to publish. One of them titled "Unsettled Science." Federal rules prohibit government employees from getting outside compensation for books related to their official duties. The payment to Kennedy came from a publisher owned by Tony Lyons, a longtime Kennedy ally, who shares his skepticism of vaccine safety and who oversees a number of groups that accept political contributions from health-related companies. The disclosure form also showed that Kennedy's wife, Cheryl Hines, accepted more than $200,000 in consulting fees from a group led by Lyons, a former White House ethics counsel who served under President George W. Bush, said the fee to Hines, in particular, "reaks of conflict of interest." More broadly, ethics experts said the payments called a question Kennedy's ability to remain independent and impartial as he's shaping the country's health policy. In response to questions from the Times, a spokeswoman for the health department said that Kennedy, quote, "complies with all applicable federal ethics laws, regulations, and financial disclosure requirements," Lyons did not respond to messages seeking comment and hines could not be reached. And finally, for decades, the Klamath River, which runs through Oregon and California, had several major hydroelectric dams across it, but they've all since been torn down thanks to a lot of careful planning and a lot of explosives. It was the largest dam removal project in American history, and with the river flowing freely again, the fish have come back. Last year, native Chinook Salmon showed back up in the river's headwaters for the first time in more than a century, and an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife staffer described the site to Oregon Public Broadcasting as "amazing and once in a lifetime." Chinook Salmon are known for their epic journeys. They start in freshwater, grow up out in the ocean, and then swim back up river to spawn. Now a new study shows the salmon in the Klamath aren't just making a comeback, they are thriving. The fish and wildlife staffer thought they would trickle in, instead there's been a tidal wave. Coho Salmon and Steelhead Trout are also moving upstream. The scene on the Klamath River is part of a larger trend of undamming happening across the U.S. with the hope of creating healthier water systems. Last year, more than 100 dams were dismantled, reconnecting more miles of the country's rivers than at any other time in history.