UR MAG

NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) - Anthropic on Monday filed a lawsuit to block the Pentagon from placing it on a national security blacklist, escalating the artificial intelligence lab's high-stakes battle with the U.S. military over usage restrictions on its technology.

Anthropic said in its lawsuit that the designation was unlawful and violated its free speech and due process rights. The filing in federal court in ‌California asked a judge to undo the designation and block federal agencies from enforcing it.

"These actions are unprecedented and unlawful. The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company ‌for its protected speech," Anthropic said.

The Pentagon on Thursday slapped a formal supply-chain risk designation on Anthropic, limiting use of a technology that two sources said was being used for military operations in Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic after the startup refused to remove guardrails against using its AI for ​autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance.

The two sides had been in increasingly contentious talks over those limitations for months, Reuters first reported. Trump in a social media post ordered the entire government to quit using Claude.

The fight is seen as a test of the administration's power over business and whether the government or companies that make AI have the last word on its use.

AI AND NATIONAL SECURITY

The dispute is notable in part because Anthropic aggressively courted the U.S. national security apparatus before most other AI companies. CEO Dario Amodei has said he isn't opposed to AI-driven weapons, but believes the current generation ofAI technologyisn't good enough to be accurate.

Anthropic officials said the lawsuit doesn't preclude re-opening negotiations with the U.S. government and reaching a settlement. The company has said it does not ‌want to be fighting with the U.S. government. The Pentagon said it wouldn't comment on ⁠litigation. Last week, a Pentagon official said the two sides were no longer in active talks.

The designation poses a big threat to Anthropic's business with the government, and the outcome could shape how other AI companies negotiate restrictions on military use of their technology, though Amodei clarified on Thursday that the designation had "a narrow scope" and businesses could still use its tools in projects unrelated ⁠to the Pentagon.

"This could have a ripple impact for Anthropic and Claude potentially on the enterprise front over the coming months as some enterprises could go pencils down on Claude deployments while this all gets settled in the courts," said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

Anthropic and some of its business partners have said the Pentagon designation only affects use of Claude for contracts between the Pentagon and its suppliers, even though Trump in a social media post ordered the entire government to quit using Claude, and the lawsuit names many other federal agencies as ​defendants.

SUPPLY-CHAIN ​RISK

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In a second lawsuit filed on Monday, Anthropic said the government had also designated it a supply-chain risk under a broader law that could ​lead to Anthropic being blacklisted across the entire civilian government.

The scope of that designation is ‌not yet clear because the government must conduct an interagency review to determine how broadly the restrictions should apply, according to a person familiar with Anthropic's legal strategy.

A group of 37 researchers and engineers fromOpenAIand Google filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic on Monday. The group, which included Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, argued that the episode could discourage AI experts from openly debating AI's risks and benefits.

"By silencing one lab, the government reduces the industry's potential to innovate solutions," said the employees, who spoke in their personal capacity and not on behalf of their employers.

Anthropic said in the second lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the designation was unlawful and violated its constitutional rights.

Reuters has reported that Anthropic's investors were racing to contain the damage caused by the fallout with the Pentagon. A group including some of these investors as well as OpenAI expressed concern over the government's move.

Trump and Hegseth's actions came after months of talks ‌with Anthropic over whether the company's policies could constrain military action and shortly after Amodei met with Hegseth in hopes of reaching a ​deal. The Pentagon said on Feb. 27 that it would declare Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. It officially informed Anthropic of that designation on March 3.

The ​Pentagon said U.S. law, not a private company, would determine how to defend the country and insisted on having ​full flexibility in using AI for "any lawful use," asserting that Anthropic's restrictions could endanger American lives.

Anthropic said even the best AI models were not reliable enough for fully autonomous weapons and that using ‌them for that purpose would be dangerous. The company also drew a red line on ​domestic surveillance of Americans, calling that a violation of fundamental rights.

After ​Hegseth's announcement, Anthropic said in a statement that the designation would be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for companies that negotiate with the government. The company said it would not be swayed by "intimidation or punishment," and on Thursday Amodei reiterated that Anthropic would challenge the designation in court.

He also apologized for an internal memo published on Wednesday by tech news site The Information. In the memo, which was written last Friday, Amodei said Pentagon ​officials did not like the company in part because "we haven't given dictator-style praise to ‌Trump."

The Defense Department signed agreements worth up to $200 million each with major AI labs in the past year, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI announced a deal to use its technology in the Defense Department network ​shortly after Hegseth moved to blacklist Anthropic. CEO Sam Altman said the Pentagon shared OpenAI's principles of ensuring human oversight of weapon systems and opposing mass U.S. surveillance.

(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; ​Additional reporting by Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Lisa Shumaker, Daniel Wallis, Nick Zieminski and Deepa Babington)

Obit Butterfield

His death was confirmed to The Associated Press by his wife, Kim, and John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon during the Watergate scandal and went on to, along with Butterfield, helpexpose the wrongdoing.

"He had the heavy responsibility of revealing something he was sworn to secrecy on, which is the installation of the Nixon taping system," Dean said. "He stood up and told the truth."

As a deputy assistant to the president, Butterfield oversaw the taping system connected to voice-activated listening devices that had been secretly placed in four locations, including Nixon's office in the Executive Office Building and the presidential retreat at Camp David.

Butterfield later said that, besides himself and the president, he believed that only White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, a Haldeman assistant and a handful of Secret Service agents knew about the taping system.

"Everything was taped … as long as the president was in attendance," Butterfield told Watergate investigators when testifying under oath during a preliminary interview.

The tapes would expose Nixon's role in the cover-up that followed the burglary in 1972 at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate building. To avoid impeachment by the House, Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, less than a month after the Supreme Court had ordered him to surrender the relevant tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.

Butterfield believed he'd had a hand in the president's fate. "I didn't like to be the cause of that, but I felt that I was, in a lot of ways," he said in a 2008 oral history for the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

Butterfield, a college friend of Haldeman's at UCLA who had contacted his friend to ask about opportunities in the new Nixon administration, served as a deputy assistant to Nixon from 1969 to 1973. In that capacity, he worked under Haldeman and, among other duties, was secretary to the Cabinet and helped oversee White House operations.

The Air Force veteran had left the White House to become administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration when Senate committee staffers privately questioned him on July 13, 1973, during their investigation of the Watergate break-in. A routine question about the possibility of a taping system had been prompted by former White House counsel John Dean's testimony that he believed a conversation he had had with Nixon may have been recorded.

When Butterfield acknowledged that a taping system indeed existed, he was brought before a public hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. The public revelation on July 16, 1973, of a taping system designed to record all the president's conversations stunned Nixon friends and foes alike. The tapes promised Watergate investigators a rich vein of evidence in their quest to determine what Nixon and others knew about the break-in — a great deal, as it turned out.

Efforts by investigators to gain access to the tapes sparked a yearlong legal battle that was resolved in July 1974 when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon had to give them up.

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The thousands of hours of tapes made public over the years — they are now controlled by the National Archives — provide a unique, if often unflattering, view of Nixon. His words exposed a bad temper, vulgar language, bigoted racial and religious views, and unvarnished opinions about national and international figures.

"I just thought, 'When they hear those tapes …' I mean, I knew what was on these tapes … they're dynamite," Butterfield told the Nixon Library. "I guess I didn't foresee that the president might be put out of office or impeached, but I thought it would be a perilous few years for him. I guess I couldn't conceive of (Nixon) being forced out of office. It had never happened before."

Butterfield later said he believed that Nixon's successor, President Gerald Ford, fired him as FAA administrator in 1975 as part of an agreement worked out between the Nixon and Ford staff members. He said he had heard from White House friends that he had been targeted shortly after his testimony to the Senate committee.

After leaving the FAA, Butterfield worked as a business executive in California. He earned a master's degree from the University of California, San Diego, in 1994.

Alexander Porter Butterfield was born on April 6, 1926, in Pensacola, Florida.

He left UCLA to join the Navy and later earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland in 1956 and a master's degree from George Washington University in 1967.

In 1948, he joined the Air Force and served as an instructor at a base near Las Vegas during the Korean War and later served in Germany. In Washington, he was a military assistant to the special assistant of the defense secretary in 1965 and 1966 and later served as senior military representative of the U.S. and representative for the commander-in-chief, Pacific Forces, Australia. He retired at the rank of colonel after 20 years in the Air Force.

Butterfield was unsparing in his criticism of the former president in later years. While he commended Nixon's achievements in foreign affairs, he considered his former boss "not an honest man" and "a crook" and believed that Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in before it occurred and was the architect of the ensuing cover-up.

Butterfield found himself "cheering … just cheering" the day Nixon resigned, he told the Nixon Library, because "justice had prevailed."

"I didn't think that it would for a while," he said. "This guy was the ringleader."

Daniel, the primary writer of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2023.

Immigrations Enforcement Texas Fatal Shooting

Brothers Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Joshua, 14, were detained along with their 12-year-old brother and their parents Feb. 25. The teenage boys were prominent members of the McAllen High School Mariachi Oro band, which has visited the White House, performed at Carnegie Hall and won eight state championships.

The two younger boys and their parents were released Monday from a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who visited them, marking histhird visitto the detention center.

Antonio was released on Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from a detention center in Raymondville, Texas.

"They were ecstatic. They were crying. They were excited to be reunited with their son and brother, Antonio, who was being held separately in Raymondville," Castro said at a news conference in San Antonio. "But their mom kept asking, 'What did we do wrong? We followed all the rules. We went to court, we haven't done anything wrong.'"

The family had been checking in regularly with immigration authorities, as instructed, when they were detained, according to a relative and a girlfriend who organized a GoFundMe account for the family.

The Department of Homeland Security said the parents, Emma Guadalupe Cuellar Lopez and Luis Antonio Gamez Martinez, were arrested by immigration authorities and "chose" to bring their three children with them. The department said they entered the U.S. illegally in 2023 near Brownsville, Texas.

Efrén C. Olivares, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center representing the eldest son, Antonio, clarified that the family entered lawfully through the CBP One app, a legal pathway, in 2023.

Olivares said Antonio was released after attorneys filed a parole request with ICE which ICE granted, and attorneys did not need to ask for a judge's order.

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Elected officials from across the political spectrum voiced support for the family, who are from Mexico and had sought asylum in the U.S. and were going through their immigration proceedings.

"I challenge my colleagues to work together for new enforcement policies that not only secure our border but make safer communities and that ultimately are common sense," U.S. Rep. Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman representing McAllen, in Raymondville after Antonio's release.

McAllen's Republican mayor, Javier Villalobos, said he supported the family and said he continues to advocate for "responsible pathways for law abiding individuals who want to contribute to our economy, support their families, and become productive neighbors in McAllen."

U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called the family's detention "outrageous."

The boys' mariachi directors visited the family held in Dilley earlier Monday. Alex Treviño, the mariachi director and Neri Fuentes, the assistant director, said the kids were concerned about losing their playing abilities.

"They were worried that their fingers weren't going to work, because they don't have instruments," Treviño said.

Antonio, who had been held apart from the family due to his age, recently won the first chair for trumpet in a state competition.

"This year he's going to be graduating from high school and going to college and joining some other groups in college. He wants to be a music educator," Fuentes said.

Castro attributed the release of the family to an "ensemble" effort and said he continues to push for the family detention center in Dilley to be closed. He said the population at the detention facility had gone down from about 1,100 people in January to about 450 people, with about 100 of them being children.

Tagovailoa has agreed to a one-year contract to join theAtlanta Falconsin 2026 NFL free agency, according toreports. He is signing the veteran minimum which will be $1.3 million for 2026.

The deal cannot be finalized until Tagovailoa is released Wednesday.

The Falcons entered the 2026 NFL offseason in need of a veteran quarterback behind 2024 first-round pickMichael Penix Jr.after parting withKirk Cousins. Tagovailoa will fill that need, and the 28-year-old left profiles as a good fit for Kevin Stefanski's offense.

OT Tytus Howard: Traded to Cleveland Browns (previous team: Houston Texans)

" style="max-width:100%; height:auto; border-radius:6px; margin:10px 0;" loading="lazy" /> CB Trent McDuffie: Traded to Los Angeles Rams (previous team: Kansas City Chiefs)

" style="max-width:100%; height:auto; border-radius:6px; margin:10px 0;" loading="lazy" /> RB David Montgomery: Traded to Houston Texans (previous team: Detroit Lions)

" style="max-width:100%; height:auto; border-radius:6px; margin:10px 0;" loading="lazy" /> WR DJ Moore: Traded to Buffalo Bills (previous team: Chicago Bears)

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2026 NFL offseason tracker: Player signings, trades

OT Tytus Howard:Traded to Cleveland Browns(previous team: Houston Texans)

Tagovailoa is coming off his first losing season as an NFL starting quarterback. The 2020 first-round pick posted a 6-8 record across 14 starts while completing 67.7% of his passes for 2,660 yards, 20 touchdowns and 15 interceptions – good for second-most in the league behind only Geno Smith (17).

The Dolphins benched Tagovailoa in favor of rookieQuinn Ewersfor the final three games of the 2025 NFL season, throwing his future with the team into question.

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Days before free agency, Miami officially announced it would be releasing Tagovailoa – and absorbing an NFL-record $99.2 million in dead-cap space to do so – at the start of the new league year.

The Falcons will be hoping Tagovailoa – who made the Pro Bowl in 2023 – can enjoy a bounce-back season with a change of scenery.

Falcons QB depth chart

It isn't yet clear whether Tagovailoa will battle Penix for the team's starting job or just serve as high-upside insurance in case the third-year pro needs extra time to return from a torn ACL he suffered midway through last season.

Here's how things will look when Tagovailoa officially signs on Wednesday:

• Michael Penix Jr. (injured)

• Tua Tagovailoa

Easton Stick– the third quarterback on the Falcons' roster in 2025 behind Penix Jr. and Cousins – is a free agent.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Tua Tagovailoa signs: Falcons to sign QB to deal in NFL free agency

During an arraignment Monday in Attleboro District Court, prosecutors said they would not be able to prove a case against Barmore, 26, who faced assault and battery charges.

A woman who shares a child with Barmore and was previously his girlfriendfiled a criminal complaint in Decemberthat said Barmore threw her to the ground during a domestic dispute that allegedly occurred Aug. 8, 2025. The woman did not want to travel out of state for the case, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III told reporters,according to the Associated Press. Barmore was never arrested.

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The NFL and Patriots were aware of the charges and let the legal process play out. Barmore had been the second Patriots player charged with a physical crime after former wide receiver Stefon Diggs had been accused of felony strangulation of a former personal chef (Diggs pleaded not guilty Feb. 13).

"I think that these are allegations, like you mentioned in your question, it's things that we have to handle," Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said after the charges against Barmore were reported. "Everyday there are distractions. Some are smaller than others. Confident that we'll focus on the Dolphins and those two individuals that you mentioned will be able to handle the ongoing legal process."

Barmore started 16 games last season and had 2.0 sacks. He's been with New England since the organization drafted him in the second round (38th overall) of the 2021 draft. The Alabama Crimson Tide product is under contract with the team through the 2028 season.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Patriots' Christian Barmore has battery, assault charges dropped