As of today, the US is no longer a member of the World Health Organization—and it leaves the United Nations health agency with hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills, according to reporting by Stat News.
A year ago today, the US informed the WHO of its intent to exit, setting the clock for a one-year withdrawal period mandated in a 1948 joint resolution of Congress. But, in practice, the withdrawal was immediate, with the Trump administration cutting all ties with WHO upon the announcement. In explaining his reasoning for leaving the WHO, Trump referenced his long-standing complaints about the agency’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, dues payments, and alleged protection of China. Trump had attempted to extract the US from WHO during his first term, but the Biden administration rescinded the withdrawal on the first day in office, well before the one-year notice period was reached.
The joint resolution also stipulated that the US would have to pay its financial obligations in full before departing. But, that too has not been honored by the Trump administration. According to Stat, the US owed the WHO $278 million in dues, which are a percentage of each member state’s gross domestic product. That dues payment covered the country's 2024–2025 membership, as WHO runs on a two-year budget cycle.
The privacy rights group Fight for the Future was one of 44 organizations that sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to pull back on funding for ICE, noting the growing threats to U.S. citizens and others as the agency spends millions of dollars on its growing surveillance capabilities.
Three offshore wind projects under construction on the U.S. East Coast are back to building after judges rebuked the Department of the Interior's actions.
In an attempt to alleviate rising electricity prices, the White House wants grid operator PJM to hold an auction for new generating capacity, and it wants tech companies to bid.
The FBI searched a Washington Post reporter's home and seized her work and personal devices as part of an investigation into what Attorney General Pam Bondi called "illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor."
Executing a search warrant at the Virginia home of reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday morning, FBI "agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch," The Washington Post reported. "One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Washington Post-issued laptop. Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe."
Natanson regularly uses encrypted Signal chats to communicate with people who work or used to work in government, and has said her list of contacts exceeds 1,100 current and former government employees. The Post itself "received a subpoena Wednesday morning seeking information related to the same government contractor," the report said.
President Donald Trump pressures Microsoft and Big Tech to cover the costs of powering AI data centers as rising electricity bills spark consumer concerns.
President Donald Trump pressures Microsoft and Big Tech to cover the costs of powering AI data centers as rising electricity bills spark consumer concerns.
Microsoft’s Fairwater data center near Atlanta is part of the company’s broader AI expansion. (Microsoft Photo)
President Trump was right about Microsoft — but he only leaked part of the story.
Microsoft is changing its approach to building massive data centers for artificial intelligence, unveiling what it calls a “community first” initiative in response to growing opposition from people across the country facing higher electricity bills and dwindling water supplies.
The new plan, announced Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C, includes pledges to pay the company’s full power costs, reject local property tax breaks, replenish more water than it uses, train local workers, and invest in AI education and community programs.
“This sector worked one way in the past, and needs to work in some different ways going forward,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft president and vice chair, in an interview with GeekWire. He later described the shift as “both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.”
Trump made headlines Monday night with a Truth Social post in advance of the news, saying his administration has been working with tech companies “to secure their commitment to the American People.” He called Microsoft “first up” and said it would “make major changes … to ensure that Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for their POWER consumption.”
Backlash against AI expansion
Microsoft’s rollout comes at a critical juncture for tech.
Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and others are betting hundreds of billions of dollars on AI, but those ambitions hinge on their ability to build out the infrastructure to support them — a prospect that depends increasingly on the cooperation of local communities that have grown skeptical of the costs and tradeoffs.
Smith said Microsoft has been developing its initiative since September. He described it as a response to shifting public sentiment — which he witnessed firsthand during visits to his home state of Wisconsin for Microsoft’s data center expansion. Back in 2024, local residents wanted to talk about jobs. By last October, the big topics were electricity prices and water use.
Microsoft’s Brad Smith announces the “Community-First AI Infrastructure Plan” in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. (Screenshot via webcast)
“We saw this catch fire, to a degree, for many other companies in many other places around the country as each month unfolded,” he said.
In data‑center hubs such as Virginia, Illinois and Ohio, residential power prices jumped 12–16% over the past year — noticeably faster than the U.S. average, according to U.S. government data — as grid operators scrambled to add capacity for large new facilities.
The issue has drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Last month, three Democratic senators launched an investigation into whether tech giants are raising residential power bills, sending letters to Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta. An Amazon-funded study found that the company more than covers the utility costs associated with its electricity use in some regions.
Microsoft’s change of course
Microsoft’s new approach, as outlined in a post by Smith, is a clear departure from its own past practices. The company has accepted tax abatements for data centers in states including Ohio and Iowa, and its identity was kept under wraps in a Michigan township until recently.
In the interview, Smith promised new levels of transparency.
He acknowledged that the traditional approach in the industry was for companies to buy land under nondisclosure agreements to avoid driving up prices — giving them a competitive edge but leaving communities in the dark about who was moving in and how they would operate.
“That is clearly not the path that’s going to take us forward,” he said. The companies that succeed with data centers in the long run, he added, “will be the companies that have a strong and healthy relationship with local communities.”
Asked if Microsoft hopes to inspire or compel others to follow suit, Smith stopped short of positioning Microsoft as the sole leader, crediting Amazon for “really good and well-executed work in this space” while adding that “the industry is going to need to set a higher bar for itself.”
Microsoft’s plan starts by addressing the electricity issue, pledging to work with utilities and regulators to ensure its electricity costs aren’t passed on to residential customers. Smith cited a new “Very Large Customers” rate structure in Wisconsin as a model, where data centers pay the full cost of the power they use, including grid upgrades required to support them.
The company’s other commitments include:
A 40% improvement in water efficiency by 2030, plus a pledge to replenish more water than it uses in each district where it operates. (Microsoft cited a recent $25 million investment in water and sewer upgrades in Leesburg, Va., as an example.)
A new partnership with North America’s Building Trades Unions for apprenticeship programs, and expansion of its Datacenter Academy for operations training.
Full payment of local property taxes, with no requests for municipal tax breaks.
AI training through schools, libraries, and chambers of commerce, plus new Community Advisory Boards at major data center sites.
Record spending on AI infrastructure
Microsoft did not say how much it plans to spend on these new initiatives, separate from its broader capital expenditures, which approached $35 billion in its first fiscal quarter.
Asked if the company would truly be able to follow through on all of these commitments, Smith said, “we have to follow through.” Internally, he said, Microsoft is “bringing some groups together” and “adding resources” to execute the plan, describing it as essential to the company’s long-term business strategy.
As for how Microsoft’s position squares with OpenAI’s push for federal incentives to support large-scale AI infrastructure projects, Smith drew a distinction. He said he supports federal help with permitting and land access, but not electricity subsidies.
“When it comes to things like electricity prices, when it comes to the water system, when it comes to training for local jobs, these are local issues,” he said.
Smith’s post references the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan and pledges to work with the Department of Labor on workforce programs. Microsoft says it will announce specific community partnerships during the first week of July, timed to America’s 250th anniversary.
Henry Lee Higginson would be aghast at an opera company leaving its opera house. But it’s true. For murky reasons the reporting has not clarified, the Washington National Opera said it would leave the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after operating there since 1971.
Higginson was a Civil War brevet colonel who, after investment success, founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881. You could get into a performance for 25¢. By 1900 the orchestra had its own home, the Boston Symphony Hall. Higginson died in 1919, but the orchestra occupies that historic building to this day. When in the late ’60s and early ’70s, my friends bought Doors albums and experimented with marijuana, I attended the Wednesday night BSO open rehearsals to hear (and watch) Erich Leinsdorf and Seiji Ozawa ply their arts. I was thrilled when the conductor would stop and order a passage replayed, maybe with a little exasperated scold.
In latter years, my wife and I have had season tickets to the Washington opera. Few locals thought the Trump administration’s appetite for change would affect, of all things, the opera. But it has, like lightning zigzagging through a thicket of branches to nail a squirrel.
Unlike the BSO, most opera and orchestral organizations don’t own their facilities, but instead have long-term, sometimes complex, arrangements with the governing bodies of places like Lincoln Center or Dallas’s Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Mostly, they’re public-private partnerships in one form or another.
For artistic organizations operating out of the Kennedy Center, there’s the added twist — not of municipal government, but of federal.
And Washington, D.C.’s federal landscape has been changing fast lately, mainly psychically but also physically. The most visible manifestation of the latter: The White House getting a convention-sized ballroom, and maybe a story added atop the West Wing.
Psychic changes we’re more accustomed to. The metronome of policy swings back and forth on everything from car mileage to vaccinations.
The roiling of the Kennedy Center embodies both. Physically, the building now has the name “Donald J. Trump” added to its external signage. The letters are big; you can see them driving west on Route 66 en route to Virginia. I keep expecting a bust of Trump to pop up next to that busy selfie spot, the “Kennedy head” — a sculpture so big and ugly it’s become sort of lovable over the decades. Psychically, the center has undergone a wrenching change in its governing board members and its apparent approach to programming.
The announced departure of the Washington National Opera has drawn enormous press coverage. The departure is all wrapped up in the ongoing turmoil of Kennedy Center leadership, programming-slash-culture wars, and — frankly — artists and ticket-buyers perhaps cutting their own noses to spite their faces in reaction to what they see as Trump depredations. If you cancel a performance or stop buying tickets, who are you really hurting?
You can’t put on top-tier opera just anywhere. It requires a pit for the orchestra, a large stage with roomy rear and side areas for props and scenery. I’ve seen the behind-the-stage rooms at the Kennedy Center. They’re like caverns.
More than that, opera needs a dignified, uplifting place. The Kennedy Center fits the bill, or it did. Its concert hall interiors and gigantic hallways elevate the experience, just like the ornate Boston Symphony Hall with its statues along the sides and “Beethoven” inscribed over the stage add to the orchestral presentations. Despite its lackluster cafeteria and fluctuating water pressure, the Kennedy Center adds a certain distinction and elegance to a city that, 50 years ago, felt slightly backwater.
Big corporate benefactors have kept the Washington National Opera afloat. I often muse that gifts from Northrop Grumman and American Airlines plus individuals like investor David Rubenstein and candy heiress Jacqueline Mars mean I can buy a seat at the opera for $50 or $75. I often buy a Snickers at intermission.
I plan to keep supporting the opera regardless of where it ends up, and I’ll buy a Snickers bar at intermission. The departure from the marble temple on the Potomac is a loss for the city and an unfortunate reflection on the Kennedy Center’s leadership.
A worker on a forklift stands near the letters "The Donald" above the signage on the Kennedy Center on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
The University of Washington’s Red Square. The UW is one of the state institutions that employs H1-B visa holders. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
Washington state is part of a newly filed lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging the legality of a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visas that allow highly-skilled individuals to work temporarily in the U.S.
Attorneys general from 20 states claim the U.S. Department of Homeland Security set the fee at an arbitrary amount that does not reflect the agency’s costs, and that the fee was enacted without going through a required notice-and-comment process.
The visa is meant to recruit employees from abroad who have specialized expertise not found in sufficient numbers in the U.S. workforce.
Seattle-based Amazon has roughly 19,100 employees working under H-1B visas nationwide. Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., nationally employs more than 6,200 H-1B visa holders. Washington’s public universities and agencies have nearly 500 H-1B visa holders on their payrolls, according to federal data and state analysis.
Employers are responsible for paying H-1B fees, which used to run between $960 and $7,595, said Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown’s office. Raising the fees, the state warned, will result in empty university labs and science discoveries “will be made somewhere else.”
“These institutions will lose their competitive edge, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and medical fields,” said a press release from Brown’s office.
In announcing the increased fee in September, the Trump administration said the visa was being abused by employers to supplant Americans with “lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”
“The large-scale replacement of American workers through systemic abuse of the program has undermined both our economic and national security,” said a White House memo addressing restrictions of nonimmigrant workers.
Priyanka Kulkarni, CEO of the immigration tech startup Casium, said the H1-B workers are not low paid, noting that the median salary for the visa holders was about $120,000 last year.
“Engineers, scientists, healthcare specialists, and educators recruited from abroad often fill critical gaps that enable companies and institutions to grow, invest, and create jobs locally,” she added via email.
The Trump administration has specifically called out high-tech companies’ use of the program, saying they “have prominently manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields.”
Xiao Wang, CEO of the startup Boundless Immigration, noted that while tech giants are targeted for criticism, the visa also allows for doctors, nurses and researchers to work in the U.S. — echoing some of the concerns raised by Washington’s attorney general.
“Adding a $100K fee for all foreign talent trying to enter Washington to work in these fields would all but eliminate this pathway for anyone outside of the most valuable companies in the world and would leave the state with a significant shortage of important roles,” Wang said by email.
He added that putting a nurse and an AI engineer in the same visa category highlights an overdue need for immigration reform.
Wang called on Americans to demand that Congress “pass new immigration regulations to stay competitive as a country.”
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