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Today’s Lever story (click here to read it now): What happens when you privatize firefighters?

🎧 Flashback on Lever Time: The TurboTax mafia is trying to trap you this return season.

⏪ The Lever's ICYMI: Here’s why Trump is so obsessed with Greenland.

👇 Spend four minutes reading this 991-word newsletter to learn about:

  • The canary in the AI coal mine.
  • Trump’s wrench in your 2024 tax return.
  • The corporate corruption behind your fried chicken.
  • A legacy movie studio’s capitulation to MAGA.
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BONUS: What it takes to fight the country’s worst wildfires — and what could be lost amid Trump’s Forest Service cuts.
TODAY'S NUGGETS

👮 This is what anti-populism looks like. They just defunded the financial fraud police.

🤖 Skynet warns that Skynet could help terrorists. After Trump rolled back initiatives to regulate artificial intelligence, AI giants are admitting their systems are on the verge of being able to help users construct deadly weapons. OpenAI disclosed that its “models are on the cusp of being able to meaningfully help novices create known biological threats.” Anthropic says that in testing related to chemical and bioweapons, “there is a substantial probability that our next model may require ASL-3 safeguards” — which are for situations that “substantially increase the risk of catastrophic misuse.” Read more about AI threats here.