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Here Are the Workers Not Getting Paid During the Shut Down

admin - Latest News - October 2, 2025
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Government workers, from the military to food inspectors, are paying the price for dysfunction in Washington. NBC’s Tom Costello reports for TODAY on the impact of the government shutdown and who is not getting a paycheck.



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October 4, 2025
Oct. 3, 2025, 6:49 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 3, 2025, 6:53 PM EDTBy Natasha Korecki and Monica AlbaA federal workers’ union has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for altering U.S. Department of Education employees’ out-of-office email messages to include partisan language about a government shutdown without their consent.The American Federation of Government Employees, which is represented by Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group in the matter, accused the administration of going to “unprecedented lengths” to use government infrastructure to “shift the public debate in its favor.””This whole-of-government approach to partisan messaging is unprecedented, and it makes a mockery of statutory prohibitions like the Hatch Act,” the complaint states. “Especially pernicious, however, are the Administration’s efforts to co-opt the voices of rank-and-file employees in the nonpartisan civil service to take part in political messaging.”The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.The lawsuit comes after furloughed employees discovered their out-of-office replies had been manipulated to include language blaming a government shutdown on Democrats.On Thursday, five employees who spoke with NBC News and provided copies of their out-of-office messages said they were surprised to learn that the wording was altered from how they originally had composed them. All of them are civil servants, not political appointees.“The Trump-Vance administration is losing the blame game for the shutdown, so they’re using every tactic to try to fool the American people, including taking advantage of furloughed civil servants,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward said in a statement.“Posting messages without consent to broadcast messages on behalf of a partisan agenda is a blatant violation of First Amendment rights,” she added. “Even for an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the Constitution and rule of law, this is beyond outrageous. The court must act immediately to stop this flagrant unlawfulness.”The altered email messages included language saying:Thank you for contacting me. On September 10, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse of appropriations, I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.On Thursday, Madi Biedermann, the deputy assistant secretary for communications for the Department of Education, said of the out-of-office responses: “The email reminds those who reach out to Department of Education employees that we cannot respond because Senate Democrats are refusing to vote for a clean CR and fund the government. Where’s the lie?”Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement Friday that employees’ First Amendment rights were violated after “suffering financially by going without a salary due to this politically motivated government shutdown.”This isn’t the first lawsuit related to the shutdown and federal workers. Earlier this week, AFGE, along with another union representing state and local employees, filed one against the Trump administration over potential mass firings previously telegraphed by the White House.“The cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in Congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this Court,” the complaint said.Legal concerns have been raised about the president’s ability to lay off what the White House indicated could be “thousands” of people during a government shutdown, but administration officials believe it is within the president’s authority to approve “reductions in force.”“Issuing RIFs is an excepted activity to fulfill the President’s constitutional authority to supervise and control the Executive Branch, similar to conducting foreign policy,” said Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget.Natasha KoreckiNatasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Monica AlbaMonica Alba is a White House correspondent for NBC News.
September 24, 2025
Sept. 24, 2025, 6:20 PM EDTBy Dalila MuataThis week, dozens of Christian creators on TikTok prepared for what they thought would be a biblical Rapture. In Australia, Tilahun Desalegn said he sold his car. Thousands of miles away in Colorado, Melissa Johnston created flowcharts and care packages for those who would be left behind.In Chicago, De’Mico Harden began documenting the signs — pointing out anytime the clock struck 9:23, a date that was among the three-day window when the Rapture was supposed to take place.But by Wednesday afternoon, no such end had come — instead, confusion and disappointment had set in for some believers. Many had been posting videos to TikTok about what people should expect when the Rapture occurs, namely that Jesus will take true believers to heaven as Earth enters an apocalypse.“OK, um, Rapture update, Wednesday, 9/24, sorry to report, I don’t think it actually happened,” TikTok creator AveragePickleballGuy said. “Everybody I know is still here. … A lot of people on my comments have told me that I was duped and didn’t know what I was talking about. I just kind of fell into this, I didn’t have all the facts, so I wanted to issue a public apology to anybody who took me seriously.”The prediction that the Rapture would begin on Sept. 23, during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, appeared to originate with a South African pastor named Joshua Mhlakela, who had shared his theory in an interview with religious YouTube channel Centtwinz TV in June.Pastor Joshua Mhlakela’s Rapture prediction went viral in June.Got Reality? via YouTubeMhlakela doubled down on the theory in a later appearance on the podcast, saying that when the Rapture happens, people will disappear in the blink of an eye and “God’s judgment will leave the world unrecognizable.”As the date neared, his apocalyptic prophecy, which he projected with “100% confidence,” went viral.“For believers, the Rapture represents the ultimate validation,” Landon Schnabel, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell University, said. “Rapture beliefs create powerful in-group/out-group dynamics. Believers develop a sense of special knowledge and moral superiority, while simultaneously feeling persecuted by a world that doesn’t understand them.” The Rapture now joins the ongoing list of doomsday theories that have captivated the masses, such as the 2000 Y2K bug or when the ancient Mayan calendar predicted the apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012.But according to Schnabel, what sets this Armageddon apart from the rest is the explosive reaction from the public. Interest in the word “rapture” increased by 1,000% in the last three days, with a search volume of over 1 million, according to Google Trends. Peak interest in “rapture” in the U.S. hit around midnight on Tuesday, the day Mhlakela had said it would happen. On TikTok, more than 290,000 posts use the #rapture hashtag.The meme-ification of the Rapture across social media also helped thrust the prediction into the mainstream. Many of the videos posted to TikTok are sketches or jokes surrounding the theory. Even Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” poked fun at the theory.“Previous predictions spread through niche religious networks or required mainstream media coverage to go viral,” Schnabel said. “TikTok’s algorithm can take a South African preacher’s prediction and put it in front of millions of young people in hours.” In the last 24 hours, some who gave up after waiting for the Rapture to arrive have called on Mhlakela to apologize for his “fake Rapture prophesy.”Mhlakela could not be reached by NBC News. He is expected to appear on Centtwinz again on Friday for an exclusive interview, the YouTubers said in their Instagram story on Wednesday.Others online wanted TikTokers who pushed Mhlakela’s theory to admit they were wrong.But some believers continue to hold out hope, which Schnabel said is unsurprising. “The public mockery actually strengthens believers’ commitment by confirming their persecution narrative,” he said. “The social bonds created around shared belief are often stronger than the belief itself.”Or, as TikToker Desalegn put it in a video to his followers Wednesday: “At this point, I’ve got nothing to lose but to continue to believe.”Dalila MuataDalila Muata is the newsroom coordinator for NBC News Digital. 
September 24, 2025
Sept. 24, 2025, 3:40 PM EDTBy Julie Tsirkin, Monica Alba, Tara Prindiville and Alexandra MarquezPresident Donald Trump on Thursday is expected to sign a deal to facilitate the sale of TikTok from a Chinese-based company to a group of American investors, two senior White House officials told NBC News.Members of the Trump administration have for days signaled that a deal was being finalized between Chinese and U.S. officials.A senior White House official confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday that once the deal is implemented, TikTok’s U.S. operations would be run by a new joint-venture company. ByteDance, TikTok’s current China-based owner, will hold less than 20% of the stock of the new company, the official said.NBC News reached out to TikTok for comment.This structure will comply with a bipartisan law passed in 2024 that sought to ban TikTok if the platform wasn’t sold to U.S.-based owners this year. The app briefly shut down in the U.S. in January, just a day before Trump was inaugurated to his second term.The app came back online in the U.S. after Trump promised not to enforce the penalties against TikTok that were in the law and said he would seek to make a deal with China for the platform’s sale to the U.S.Trump has extended the deadline to avoid a TikTok ban several times this year. On Wednesday, a senior White House official said that he plans to extend the pause for another 120 days to allow time for the deal to go through.For years, technology experts and U.S. officials warned that TikTok, which has over 170 million U.S. users, was a national security risk and that ByteDance could give the Chinese government access to user data and to the app’s algorithm.During Trump’s first term, he signed an executive order in 2020 aimed at banning TikTok, but then-President Joe Biden reversed it the following year. Biden ultimately signed the bipartisan TikTok bill into law.On Wednesday, a senior White House official confirmed that as part of the deal, American users’ data will be stored in the U.S. and overseen by the software and cloud computing company Oracle. They added that the platform’s algorithm will be retrained and continuously monitored to ensure that U.S. content is free from any outside manipulation.On Saturday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the deal was almost over the finish line and that the “deal just needs to be signed.”She added that the deal would create a board to oversee TikTok with six seats reserved for American investors, but did not say who those American investors would be.On Sunday, Trump told Fox News in a separate interview that Oracle’s co-founder, Larry Ellison, would play a role in the deal. He also said that Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies, and the Murdoch family, which owns a media empire that includes News Corp and Fox Corp, would also play a role.The president added that the other business leaders involved in the deal are “really great people, very prominent people.”“And they’re also American patriots, you know, they love this country, so I think they’re going to do a really good job,” he added.Julie TsirkinJulie Tsirkin is a correspondent covering Capitol Hill.Monica AlbaMonica Alba is a White House correspondent for NBC News.Tara PrindivilleTara Prindiville is a White House producer for NBC News.Alexandra MarquezAlexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.
October 5, 2025
Oct. 4, 2025, 6:00 AM EDTBy Jared PerloEarly last week in the Chinese tech hub of Hangzhou, a slick, larger-than-life video screen beamed out four words that would drive tech giant Alibaba’s stock to historic levels and signal a shift in China’s approach to artificial intelligence: “Roadmap to Artificial Superintelligence.”During his 23-minute keynote address at the flagship Alibaba Cloud conference, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu charted out a future featuring artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI). These terms point to a theorized era in which AI becomes roughly as smart as humans (AGI) and then much, much smarter (ASI).While these terms have been tossed around Silicon Valley for years, Wu’s presentation was notable: Alibaba is now the first established Chinese tech giant to explicitly invoke AGI and ASI.“Achieving AGI — an intelligent system with general human-level cognition — now appears inevitable. Yet AGI is not the end of AI’s development, but its beginning,” Wu said. “It will march toward ASI — intelligence beyond the human, capable of self-iteration and continuous evolution.”“ASI will drive exponential technological leaps, carrying us into an unprecedented age of intelligence,” Wu said, highlighting ASI’s ability to help cure diseases, discover cleaner sources of energy and even unlock interstellar travel.The U.S. and China are the world’s leading AI powers, each with immense computing capabilities and top-tier researchers developing cutting-edge systems. Yet observers have framed the countries as having different approaches to AI, with perceptions that China focuses more on real-world AI applications.For example, commentators recently argued that Beijing is currently “winning the race for AI robots” against the U.S., as China is home to much of the world’s most advanced robotics supply chains and a growing network of robotics, or embodied AI, labs.“There’s been some commentary in Western media recently about how the U.S. is missing the point by pushing for AGI, while China is focusing solely on applications,” said Helen Toner, interim executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “This is wrong.”“Some Chinese researchers and some parts of the Chinese government have been interested in AGI and superintelligence for a long time,” Toner said, though she noted this view was primarily held by smaller startups like DeepSeek.China’s push for global AI dominance04:44Afra Wang, a researcher focusing on China’s tech scene, said Alibaba’s invocation of AGI and ASI was remarkable.“This ASI narrative is definitely something new, especially among the biggest tech companies in China,” she told NBC News.Alibaba’s “roadmap to artificial superintelligence” seems to scramble mainstream perceptions. Any number of California techno-optimists, like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei or xAI’s Elon Musk, might have delivered Wu’s speech, selling a technology-enabled utopia while largely sidestepping darker questions about how humanity would co-exist with or survive an era of digital superintelligence.The concept of superintelligence has long been on the minds of — if not explicitly guiding — prominent American AI companies. For example, OpenAI released an article focused on the safe development of superintelligent AI models in May 2023. “Now is a good time to start thinking about the governance of superintelligence — future AI systems dramatically more capable than even AGI,” the statement said.The possibility of superintelligence is now even being acknowledged in Congress. On Monday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Ill., announced a draft bill that would, among other actions, “assist Congress in determining the potential for controlled AI systems to reach artificial superintelligence.”To some, ASI might seem like an outlandish concept when today’s AI systems fail to understand basic tennis rules, hallucinate or fabricate basic information, or do not seem to actually comprehend how the external world functions.At the same time, AI systems continue to approach and sometimes surpass human capabilities in many domains, from driving cars safely to winning international coding competitions, leaving many experts to say it’s a matter of when, not if, humans develop digital superintelligence.As the idea of superintelligence gradually enters mainstream debates, many American politicians have announced that the U.S. is in an AI race with China. The White House’s current AI manifesto is titled “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” while Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, proclaimed that “as a matter of economic security, as a matter of national security, America has to beat China in the AI race.”Yet charges of an AI race are muddied by a lack of an agreed end goal and swirling definitions of AGI. At worst, experts think an unfettered race toward AGI or ASI could lead to widespread catastrophe or even the end of humanity.But there’s also plenty of skepticism around talk of AGI and ASI and whether it’s primarily for marketing purposes.Alibaba is one of China’s largest tech companies, known for providing powerful, free AI models — also called open-source models — for download. Alibaba’s Qwen model series, a competitor to models like OpenAI’s GPT-5 or Anthropic’s Claude, is the most popular open-source AI system in the world.OpenAI launches Sora 2 wth AI social media app05:48Wu announced a new series of Qwen models in his speech last week, including a model that combines text, images, video and audio capabilities.Many observers point out that narratives about a U.S.-China AI race and a resulting sprint to build AI infrastructure serve AI investors by propping up company valuations and increasing their soft power. Alibaba’s stock has soared since Wu’s speech last week, part of a larger $250 billion comeback this year that has made it China’s hottest AI company.To unlock a powerful, superintelligent future, Wu predicted that large AI models will replace existing operating systems as the link between users, software and computational power. This future network of large AI models will run on cloud computing networks like Alibaba Cloud, he said.Irene Zhang, a researcher on China’s AI ecosystem and an editor of ChinaTalk, noted the business undertones of Wu’s announcement.“This is a vision of AGI and ASI that’s directly based on Alibaba’s business model,” she said.“Alibaba Cloud dominates China’s cloud computing market, and its global market share is now bigger than Oracle’s,” she said. “Alibaba’s commercial strategy and its publicly stated views on ASI/AGI are symbiotic.”Matt Sheehan, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed.“ASI is the ultimate frontier, as far as the discourse goes on AI,” Sheehan said. “It’s notable that Alibaba set this grandiose goal, but in reality, they’re selling cloud services.”Jared PerloJared Perlo is a writer and reporter at NBC News covering AI. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.
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