The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday that it will investigate living conditions inside the Washington, D.C. Jail following years of reports of filth, medical neglect, and brutality. 

The D.C. Jail, which holds all pretrial detainees and misdemeanor offenders in the District of Columbia, was the subject of an unflattering 2016 Reason cover story, "How Not to Build a Jail," describing how wretched conditions had persisted there for more than a century. Lawsuits, audits, and media investigations have all documented persistent civil rights problems. The jail gained additional infamy for holding pretrial detainees and convicted defendants who were prosecuted for their role in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol Building. 

The Justice Department received numerous allegations of excessive force, inadequate medical care, unsanitary living conditions, and malnutrition inside the jail, according to a department press release. The investigation will determine if D.C.'s Department of Corrections has a pattern or practice of violating prisoners' constitutional rights.

"The Constitution protects the rights of every incarcerated American, including those held in custody in our nation's capital," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a DOJ press release. "We are committed to upholding our federal civil rights laws so that no inmate is confined in unconstitutional conditions or subject to unconstitutional mistreatment at the District of Columbia Department of Corrections."

Last week, six current and former D.C. Jail inmates filed a class-action lawsuit alleging they found dead mice and cockroaches in their food.

Five different D.C. Jail inmates filed another lawsuit in September alleging guards failed to stop or adequately respond to a man in the jail's mental health unit from starting an electrical fire.

In 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service transferred roughly 400 inmates out of the D.C. Jail after a surprise inspection reported unacceptable living conditions, including guards withholding water and food from inmates as punishment.

A week before that inspection, a federal judge held the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt for repeatedly failing to turn over the medical records of a January 6 defendant who had been waiting for months for a scheduled wrist surgery. 

The antiquated jail, opened in the 1970s, has numerous structural problems, but plans to replace it have stalled. In the meantime, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division will write a report to add to the top of the pile.

The post Justice Department Will Investigate Conditions at D.C. Jail After Years of Reports of Filth and Neglect appeared first on Reason Magazine.

• Anthropic is looking to shape AI regulation by pitching an AI safety bill of its own.
• POLITICO obtained a confidential draft of the proposed legislation.
• The bill would let the government block an AI model only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people.

Representatives for the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic have quietly pitched Capitol Hill lawmakers on a draft bill to regulate frontier AI safety and security, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The confidential draft, obtained by POLITICO and not previously reported, marks a notable effort by the frontier AI lab to shape the rules governing its own technology as Congress weighs how to respond to the fast-moving industry.

"This bill represents the proposals outlined in Anthropic's Advanced AI Framework, which we have been advocating for with federal and state lawmakers since June," an Anthropic spokesperson said. "These are sensible policies we believe Congress should act on."

The bill would let the government block a model's release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people. The risk must stem from the creation or release of a biological weapon, the model evading its developer's controls or a cyberattack. The language mirrors that found in California's AI laws including SB 53, which was signed into law last year.

Leading AI labs disclosed a series of incidents this summer, in which AI agents hacked or probed websites and platforms. None reported so far appear to have caused widespread deaths or over $1 billion in damages.

Anthropic has yet to publicly back particular legislative efforts in Congress, but they have backed some state AI safety laws, including two in California. Their head of U.S. state and local government relations previously told POLITICO that they hope states will continue to pass ever-stronger AI safety laws that raise the standard nationwide.

Under the bill, independent evaluators, which would register with the Commerce Department, would be tasked with periodically evaluating the lab and its frontier models. The evaluators may be paid for their work by the lab itself so long as the payment is not contingent on the evaluations' results.

If the evaluators determine there is "imminent enumerated risk" for a company's frontier models, they must report it to Commerce within 72 hours of completing their assessment.

While the Commerce Department could bring a request to the judge to halt the release of a model after determining that it poses a risk, the language explicitly prohibits any other U.S. "department, agency, or officer" from suspending the model's development, deployment or internal use. A federal judge for the District Court for the District of Columbia could order the suspension of a model.

Over the summer, Anthropic was subject to sweeping export controls that shut down two of its most advanced models. The decision was made in a whirlwind series of phone calls between administration officials and the company's executives, worrying some in the tech industry that access to their technology may be restricted on the whims of government officials.

Anthropic's bill would also preempt some state AI laws related to public disclosure of risk, third-party evaluation and reporting of critical incidents. Preemption has been a political flashpoint on Capitol Hill, with Democrats rejecting some proposals they feared would neuter regulations passed by the likes of California, Illinois and New York.

Many tech industry groups have argued that a state-by-state patchwork of laws is difficult to comply with compared to a unified national standard.

The legislation would also require frontier labs to create safety frameworks, publish transparency reports for new frontier models, implement protections for whistleblowers and report critical safety incidents to Commerce.

Capitol Hill has seen a flurry of activity on AI safety legislation this summer. In the House, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) spearheaded the FRONTIER Act, which would give the government the ability to stop the deployment of risky models and preempt some state AI laws.

In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have been negotiating an AI safety bill intended to mitigate catastrophic risks. But it has faced headwinds from some safety-minded groups and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on Cruz's Commerce Committee, who want the government to have a larger role in reviewing AI models.

Other progressives, including Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have gone well beyond their colleagues in calling for a pause in advanced AI development and a ban on superintelligence, a type of theoretical AI that far surpasses humans' cognitive capabilities.

This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

Upon reaching the summit, Glover lifted his spyglass to his eye to scan the horizon. What he saw exceeded his worst nightmares: over 150 British warships heading up the Long Island Sound and hundreds of Redcoats already flooding from their ships onto a small peninsula. 

The post Exclusive–O’Donnell: The Forgotten Battle that Saved Washington’s Army appeared first on Breitbart.

Janeese Lewis George, a D.C. councilmember and the city's presumptive next mayor, has come out against pending legislation that would allow autonomous ride-share vehicles onto city streets, citing the technology's potential to eliminate the jobs of ride-share human drivers. 

"DC is facing a jobs crisis. Rushing the legalization of autonomous vehicles is irresponsible given the anticipated AI-related job displacement and disruptions that put countless workers at risk," she said on X yesterday.  

DC is facing a jobs crisis.

Rushing the legalization of autonomous vehicles is irresponsible given the anticipated AI-related job displacement and disruptions that put countless workers at risk.

— Janeese Lewis George (@Janeese4DC) October 15, 2026

In a follow-up post, she said that the D.C. Council should delay consideration of a pending bill that would allow Waymo, which is currently testing its technology with human safety operators on District streets, to offer autonomous rides to the public.  

Ever since Lewis George won a commanding victory in D.C.'s Democratic mayoral primary earlier this year, pundits and wonks have been trying to read the tea leaves on how the Democratic Socialist will govern. 

D.C.'s economy is currently in a rough spot. Unemployment is high. The housing market is down. Population growth is slowing.  

Lewis George's comments about Waymo suggest the mayor has a deeply mistaken view about the effects and benefits of technological innovation. Contrary to her contention, Waymo legalization is unlikely to exacerbate a "jobs crisis" for at least three reasons. 

The first reason she's wrong is that very few D.C. residents work full-time as ride-share drivers. On her Capital Commonsense Substack, Ashley Schapitl reports that, by Lewis George's own estimate, there are only 200 District residents who work full-time as ride-share drivers.

For comparison's sake, the District has a labor force of roughly 400,000 people. So even if Waymo displaced all human drivers in the District, it would be a statistical nonevent. 

Few headlines, for instance, reported that D.C.'s labor force shrank by 1,000 people between May and June. Neither did many outlets report that the labor force grew by roughly 600 people between July and August. 

Yet here the mayor is talking about a "jobs crisis" over what would be an even smaller change in the number of employed workers in the city. 

The second reason not to fear an exacerbated "jobs crisis" as a result of Waymo legalization is that autonomous vehicles (A.V.s) will not completely replace human rideshare drivers in the foreseeable future. 

In the cities where Waymo has been active for years, A.V.s are still responsible for a minority of rideshare rides. 

That's the case in Phoenix, where Waymo has been offering autonomous commercial service since 2020. In an article from April, Business Insider cites one study that put Waymo's market share at 16 percent of ride-share rides. 

In other words, 84 percent of ride-share rides are still being performed by humans a full six years after A.V.s came onto the scene. 

That isn't to say the impacts of A.V.s are necessarily positive for human drivers' earnings.

Another study by Gridwise from August 2025 found that A.V.s appeared to be marginally reducing drivers' hourly pay and number of trips per hour. That's evidence of the market for rides becoming more competitive, but it's not, as of yet, evidence of a job apocalypse. 

Network design matters too. In places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Waymo is a standalone competitor to traditional ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft. In Austin and Phoenix, Waymo partners with Uber to offer rides on hybrid human-and-A.V. networks. 

A report by EnoTrans, funded by a grant from Lyft, found that the later cities' hybrid networks actually increased human drivers' trips per hour. Their pay-per-hour fell, albeit less steeply than in cities without hybrid networks. 

All of that is to say that while Waymo, as a competitor to human-operated ride-share services, shouldn't be expected to have a positive impact on drivers' earnings. It shouldn't be expected to have a catastrophic impact on them either. 

The third and final reason that Lewis George is wrong to think that Waymo will worsen a coming "jobs crisis" is that Waymo's employment impacts are not limited to its effect on competing human drivers. 

If Waymo earns any market share at all, it'll be because it's offering some travelers a better transportation option than the ones that currently exist. Increased ease of travel within the city would be expected to raise employment levels, not lower them. 

If Waymo makes it easier or cheaper for people to get from home to the office or from the office to their kids' school, they might be more willing to live in D.C. over Arlington or Silver Spring. If it's more convenient to get to the movies or dinner, residents will be more willing to patronize local businesses. 

None of that even touches on the economic and human benefits of Waymo's likely positive impact on road safety. 

The direct effects of Waymo on drivers' employment must be weighed against all the other economic activity that autonomous vehicles will facilitate. 

In the long run, the economic effects of autonomous vehicles may well be revolutionary. In the foreseeable future, they'll make the market for for-hire rides slightly more competitive. 

A reasonable assumption then is that Waymo will have a modest, but positive, impact on overall economic activity and employment in the District, even if it has a modest, but negative, impact on the small number of full-time ride-share drivers who live here. 

If the new mayor can't even tolerate that level of economic disruption, that does not portend good things for D.C.'s economy under a Lewis George administration. 

The post Presumptive D.C. Mayor Janeese Lewis George Demands Halt to Waymo Legalization To Protect Drivers' Jobs appeared first on Reason Magazine.

US defense-tech company CHAOS Industries introduced its Vespid interceptor family in Washington on 12 October, as the Association of the US Army (AUSA) annual meeting opened there, the company announced. CHAOS pitches the drones as low-cost defense against small and mid-size drones and one-way attack munitions. The company expects initial production capacity of 12,000 interceptors a year, expandable to 50,000 as demand grows.

The pitch lands as Russia moves its strike drones to jet power. Russia has stopped building the Geran-3, an earlier jet model, and makes about 3,000 faster Geran-4s and Geran-5s a month, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) told Militarnyi in August. In mid-September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two Ukrainian companies had passed combat tests with interceptors against such drones, while 67 were still working on them. Ukrainian defense outlet Defense Express measured the new US drones against exactly that threat.

One to carry, one to launch in batches

The Mk 1 made its first public appearance on 12 October aboard a Forterra MESA autonomous ground vehicle, Army Recognition reported. It fires from tubes on launchers such as the 10-round ISS Aerospace HAL10. It takes midcourse guidance from CHAOS radars or external command systems, then an AI-assisted infrared seeker handles the final approach, the company says. An electric ducted fan rather than a jet engine drives it, which CHAOS says cuts cost and logistics compared with turbojet interceptors.

The smaller Mk 0 is man-portable and needs no operator input once fired, its product page says. Both are rated to reach a target in under 100 seconds, with a listed range of 10+ km. Defense Express called that range a serious weakness that more launchers around a city could offset.

Explore further

Most drone interceptors ram or explode. This Ukrainian one just throws a net—six shots to a module

CHAOS lists cruise speeds of 100 m/s (360 km/h) for the Mk 0 and 150 m/s (540 km/h) for the Mk 1. Defense Express said those speeds may be enough to intercept the Geran-4 and Geran-5, which it puts at 340 km/h and 450–600 km/h.

Ukrainian makers say their interceptors already down jet Gerans

Wild Hornets’ Sting interceptors downed several of the slower jet-powered Geran-3s in November 2025. An unnamed Wild Hornets representative told NV, in an interview published on 22 September, that the company’s new interceptor had destroyed about ten Geran-4s and several Geran-5s in limited use. The company plans mass production within a month of finishing combat tests.

On 12 October, former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said he and Pavlo Yelizarov, commander of Lasar’s Group, had created a new interceptor with troops and engineers. He said it downed two Geran-5s headed for Kyiv.

Crews from Lasar’s Group, which Fedorov has called a National Guard special unit, flew those combat tests, he said. Separately, Fedorov reported in August that a Ukrainian jet interceptor with a top speed above 600 km/h had entered combat testing.

In part two of our series on conservative attempts to use D.C. as a testing ground for harsh criminal justice policies, Rattling the Bars host Mansa Musa sits down with Chelsea Canterbury and Eric Franklin of Voices for a Second Chance. They discuss the danger of proposed measures—including charging 14-year-olds as adults, increasing mandatory minimums, repealing the Second Look Act, and reinstating cash bail—and explain why doubling down on mass incarceration won’t make the city safer.

Additional links/info:

• Voices for a Second Chance Instagram
• Sarah Staudt, Prison Policy Initiative, “Bad Omens: Reform rollbacks in Washington D.C. are a warning sign for state-level advocates”

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Editor: Cameron Granadino